 For three years now, the University of the Philippines Press has been publishing, one volume at a time, the Sugidanon, the complete epics of the Panaybukid non-people. The product of decades of painstaking research and translation work by a team of researchers from the UP Visayas, headed by Professor Emeritus Alicia P. Magos, this series marks a singular moment in the history of Philippine publishing. It presents in textual form the replaceable wisdom and communal lore of this indigenous community. This is the first time that such a substantive oral corpus has been recovered, transcribed, translated into three languages and subsequently published in our country. Our people's epics are, of course, forms of native mythological knowledge and it would do us well as a nation to preserve and cherish them in the modern medium of the written word. While the technologizing of the spoken word can't help but reify and transform this knowledge away from the provisionality of performance into the stasis of print, these books hopefully document something of the original experience of this native community's primeval and mythical world. Mythology is a form of spiritual orature that has provided human beings one of the oldest paths to the divine. Myth represents in ritual, narrative and symbolic forms, intuitions of the spiritual realm and it has done so from the earliest times. The basic theme of all myths is that there is an invisible reality that supports the visible world. Mythology in this sense is fundamentally mystical in character, rendering into images the amorphous essence of all things, through which it can be experienced and known. We may then see myth as a creative and imaginal field whose referent in the ultimate sense is transcendent. Its purpose is to enable us to experience the world that opens to us the spiritual dimension that enfolds it. Myths make us realize the mystical presence in everyone and in everything. For according to their deepest insight, we have all been poured out of the creator's eternal self. We are all manifestations of the One Divinity. Hence, mythology elicits in us a sense of wonder and awe. We come to realize the mystery of ourselves and of the universe we live in, the mystery implicit in all the forms of creation. Reading and experiencing myths, we come to see that our actual situations like the different situations of the characters of these stories are underpinned by a transcendent truth. But mythology also evinces other functions. Like science, myth describes for us the various shapes and textures of reality. Unlike science, however, if more easily exceeds to the realization that what is real is ultimately unknowable. And then we may also say that myths serve a didactic or pedagogical purpose as well. They provide individuals residing in their specific communities, guides or manuals on how to live under whatever conditions. Finally, myth also serves to legitimate the social order as it exists. It's in this sense that myths are culturally bound as well as place-specific. They are entirely the products of their own time and circumstance. The problem of literalism is precisely its reduction of myths to this literal level, this sociological function to the neglect of everything else. By contrast, the moment we understand that our stories about God are myths, the moment we see that our religions proffer not literal truths but rather symbolic and spiritual ones, then our faith can be set free from the cultural presence of fundamentalist ethnocentrism and literal mindedness. The comparative study of myth makes us see that the various myths, actually all religions, are at once false and true. False because what they give us are mere symbolic images or metaphors which by definition cannot be facts, cannot be literally true, but true precisely because these very same metaphors gesture toward the one transcendent mystery. All these insights are in full and splendorous evidence in the Sugidanon which are descriptive not so much of the Panaybukidnon's everyday physical reality as expressive of their aspirations, chiefest of which is the vision that not only recognizes duality but also and more importantly, yearns to transcend it. Indeed, in these stories, the sky world and the earth world are not divided but actually interpenetrate one another, their creatures freely trafficking across the non-absolute and proximal realms of the present and the non-present either the past or the yet to be as well as the abodes of the deities and supernatural forces and of ordinary people. Resurrection bridges the chasm between the living and the dead and because time in this world is experienced as a cyclical seasonality, it happens over and again in these heroic tales. Even the distinctions of gender and enmity prove to be typically mutable. Female-ness shifts into maleness if it must and the enemy or the other is actually inextricably part of the same. It's even, shockingly, its blood relation if only you allow yourself to look more closely. These plot twists happen in these epics to precisely confound and finally collapse these onerous binaries. Finally, evil can be good too once you into it pass the surface of the apparent into the hidden and implicit depth. We may, for example, think of the villain, the monster woman Amburukai from the series second book whose actions emerge entirely out of her maternal benevolence. In light manner, there's really no conflict between the body and the spirit as can be intuited from the way these stories perceive and present the truth of human sexuality. Namely, that it is nature's entirely beautiful, indeed it's preciously fleecy and altogether golden gift. Astonishingly, this sex positivity is an insight that we may glean from the story of the theft of the luminous and beloved strand of gristly hair-sutness, a violation that actually gives this villain her own memorable hero's journey, consisting of a ritualistic and genitally self-flagellating quest to regain her sacred treasure, as well as inaugurates the journey of one of the Sugidanon's primary protagonists. Moreover, in the first two books of this series, we can see the mythical motive of the one forbidden thing that resonates with the story of the Edinic Garden and its mortally faithful tree. In the first book, Tikung Kadlung, the Datu's enchanted black dog, warns his master against cutting down the sacred bamboo in the middle of the magical forest. In the second, Laboudonggun's parents warn their son not to carry out his plan to steal the forest hag's glittery pubic hair, to use as a replacement for the broken string of his heirloom guitar for such an act would surely bring about disaster. Of course, the moment something is explicitly forbidden in a myth, we can expect it to be trans-dressed, for this is precisely how the plot of powerful stories, ancient as well as modern, may be said to unfold. Then, as now, a perfect paradise has little or no narrative interest. The stasis and equanimity of the ordinary world will need to be disturbed if the heroic journey should commence. Perhaps the most interesting idea in these epics is that of the Tuos or sacred pact embodied in this preliterate world, not in any written contract, but rather in actual tangible things that are thereby invested with spiritual potency and incalculable worth. In the absence of writing, this ancient and oral people found a way of indicating and pinning down memory through the worldly objects that signified beyond their physical forms and whose radiance effused their everyday existence. Most certainly, the act of investing meaning into their world was of a peace with this people's reverential attitude toward nature that they knew was animated by the same spirit dwelling inside themselves. It's important to remember that written words are signs as well, except that they have the tendency to stand apart from creation, which isn't the case with these natural and meaning-endowed objects which abide fully inside their natural context even as they come to embody realities that refer to truths glimmering beyond their shapes. Given this form of mystical mnemonics, we are reminded of the psychodynamics of oral consciousness which is situational, sympathetic and participatory rather than abstract and individualistic. Moreover, evident in the language of these epics is the fact that oral thinking is, in the words of the historian Walter J. Ong, immediate, practical, close to the life world and at once copious and voluable, which is to say, the plenitude of their adjectives, epithets and thought pictures helps keep the listener focused and attentive on one hand and on the other, the structure of their epic utterance as with other examples of folklore rests on additive and iterative sentence patterns. Obviously these exist for the purpose of easier recall represented best in the Sugidanon's ritualistic formula where we ended was where we paused. Of course, what these self-same qualities finally tell us is that oral cultures are living in dynamic social formations in their own right. Despite being pre-analytical, orality is a mode of consciousness that is eminently capable of generating as well as nurturing its own profound forms of thought. In fact, the ideas of harmony and unification between humanity and nature are the worldly and the divine on one hand and between the conflicting interests of different groups of human beings on the other are priceless bequests that these stories would seem to particularly wish to offer us especially now that they have been transcribed, textualized and translated and therefore made newly abstract and categorical. In the face of a fractious and divided country, these are insights that Filipinos all need to embrace and to champion more and more. This is especially true now when so many of our Lumad brothers and sisters in Mindanao are being imperiled by militarization and armed insurgency. The mineral resources of their ancestral domains becoming the object of corporate avarice and state-sponsored capitalist exploitation. By becoming more deeply aware of the rich oral traditions of our indigenous peoples and by learning about and actualizing their mystical realizations about our spiritual oneness as a nation, Filipinos in general will be able to recognize and respect the difference of our indigenous brethren whose well-being and interests we will now see as being ultimately inseparable from our own and whose identity coincides with the vital otherness living inside ourselves. These epics remind us that we were all Lumad once upon a time because of their enduring value as gifts of the creative imagination through which empathy or solidarity becomes possible and may finally be realized as a collective truth. The Sugidanon also tell us that right in the marrow of our mythic bones despite the epistemic violence and ruptures of our history the luminous chance still croons that we are Lumad still and all. There are a number of pedagogical opportunities being offered by these myths, particularly in relation to the teaching of literature in our schools. I am thinking in particular of the deployment of creative writing strategies in the teaching of literature courses, especially in the high school and early college levels. Insofar as a literature course is ostensibly about activity of reading and understanding literary texts, we might wish to consider how we as literature teachers can best instill the love of reading in our students. Whatever the language of instruction in teaching the short story, for instance, we might now consider taking our students through the process of storytelling by not simply enumerating its elements but by letting them experience these on their own. With our guidance, they can make up plots, think up characters and dialogue, imagine settings, play around with point of view, contemplate ideas or themes. In teaching poems on the other hand, the teacher might wish to end or emphasize certain lessons with a poetic exercise that may or may not eventuate in the writing of a poem but at least presents a demonstration of certain poetic skills. Poetic description or metaphor making, for instance, the correct use of other figures of speech or even an illustration of certain rudiments of versification. In short, we can encourage students to tell stories. For yes, poems also tell stories by way of imagery and figurative expression. Rather than alienate them from literature, we can enjoin our students to actively participate in its production by writing texts and not merely passively receiving them. After all, creation is the highest form of literary appreciation. A particular activity we may deploy in our classroom is what literary scholars call mythopia. This word isn't as scary as it sounds because it simply refers to the creative appropriation of folkloric material for whatever purpose in whichever genre. The Philippines abounds in folkloric sources originally oral, although a number of them have already been transcribed. There exists an abiding interest in these materials among local readers as evidence in the fact that folklore anthologies of myths, legends, tales, riddles, proverbs, epics and songs are still for decades now the bestselling titles of the UP Press. Why we are seeing a preponderance of mythopia in contemporary Philippine culture from films, TV shows, theatrical productions to books can partially be explained by the cultural simultaneity of Philippine society where oral and textual, prirational and rational forms of knowledge blissfully coexist. The persistence of folkloric also codes superstitious beliefs in an age of global digital information is probably one of the areas in which the syncretism of our local cultures is most obvious. And indeed, young Filipino writers seem particularly receptive to this dissonance and are thematizing it in their works in horror, fantasy and the speculative subgenras. There are to my mind two kinds of mythopoetic projects really aesthetic modes. We may refer to the first mode as ironic. And this treatment is typically exemplified by parodic narratives involving mythological heroes as well as villains. An example that immediately comes to mind is Carla Vergara's uproariously funny graphic novel Jaja Zatorna whose story implicates both the native belief in amulets and the modern mythos of comic book-generated big-breasted super heroines. On the other hand, ready examples of earnest mythopoetic work are commonly seen in the fantasarias or primetime television or the heroic fantasy films mostly historical but sometimes also futuristic. I can say that mythopoetic works typically as fiction or verse are being carried out by more and more of our young writers. While some of these works are ironic, the bulk would still be of the serious or even poetic sort. Offhand, I can bring up Mayat M. Bayugas novel sa amin sa Dagat-dagatang apoy about the libidinal lives of elementals and aswangs who are frantically searching for the last male virgin. Also, Will Ortiz's prospective series of young adult novels in Filipino as well about Aya Akiling, an awkward 12-year-old girl who discovers that she is in truth, the reincarnation of the well-known and beloved nature goddess Maryang Makiling. Because myths are metaphorical figures for transcendent mysteries, my suggestion to writers who wish to undertake their own respective mythopoetic projects is, first and foremost, to bear in mind that a metaphor being a figure of speech about resemblance and paradoxical unity is composed of two elements, a vehicle and a tenor. While the former is easy enough to identify, we must remember that the latter, being the very heart or message of the myth, is always a matter of interpretation. It is in this sense that mythopoetic retellings will always be subjective. The message or truth of the myth being utilized is always, in fact, an intimate and personal one. It's crucial, however, for the writer to also realize that it is precisely this message that ultimately takes precedence over the contingent vehicle, which indeed can be adapted, revised, rewritten and transformed. Thus, for example, in the case of Ortiz, because the makeeling myth is, to her, really about the importance of human accountability in the face of nature's imperial beauty. Keeping this firmly in mind, she indeed elect to transfer the setting of the gentle and nature-carrying native goddess away from the mountainous fastness of laguna to the contemporary cityscape, and even to portray her not as a self-assured maiden, but rather as a confused, pubesant girl who will grow into her own goddess self and have a heroic adventure in the present-day urban world. Nevertheless, I believe there are certain questions that our myth-inclined writers should ponder. What should the Filipino writers' fundamental attitude toward mythology be? Is it simply material or is it rather a distinct frame of mind or perspective that bids one to see an aquease to the uncertain and the luminous in our midst, and the mysterium tremendum et fascinans? Related to this is the question of whether the stance of thoroughgoing irony is even appropriate in our case, when it's quite possible that the multofiring, tabitabi po murmuring, horoscope consulting, fongsoy abiding, and church-going present-day Filipino is still very much living in mythological times. And then, might there be an ethical dimension to the issue of center-based writers appropriating the ancestral stories of cultural minorities? Many of whom have been literally dispossessed by the cruel inflections of the national reality that blatantly privileges their status as urban artists. And lastly, why must we promote the fantastical mode of writing when it's possibly amounts to little more than escapism, especially in the face of the urgent realities of our everyday lives? The answers to these questions are many and different from one writer to the next, but I suppose for me I will have to begin by reminding myself that as a source of knowledge, mythology remains valid despite the ascendancy of science which itself can only offer provisional and self-rectifying explanatory narratives for the nature of reality. As we may have heard, the best and most honest practitioners of science as a method of inquiry acknowledge reality as essentially mysterious, still and all. We may think, for example, of the hard problem of consciousness, the qualya or inner experience that cannot be remotely reduced to the brain's gray matter, the singularity that lies at the heart of the Big Bang, the finely-tuned universe, black holes in their event horizons, dark matter and dark energy, quantum superpositions and entanglements, the plank scale and all the other imponderables that scientists have been cojoning forth of late. Myth does not really compete with science for its function isn't primarily explanatory or even descriptive of the physical universe. We can compare the value of myth to the experience of watching a film which we know to be make-believe, a production that's been captured in a medium and replayed. And yet, the experience elicits an effective response and encourages our playing along with its depictions, thereby eliciting our semi-credulity, a provisional suspension of disbelief and acceptance of the illusion that the movie offers while it lasts. Myths provide guides too rather than depictions of the world. As such, they express hopes and aspirations rather than direct representations of reality. Finally, mythology remains relevant in our time because it is intertwined with creativity itself. So much so that the former is really the loftiest that the latter can ever wish to become. In other words, all literature, all art, finally aspires to turn into myth. For myth is nothing if not narration, wielding powerful and transfigurative magic over the communal psyche that invents it, providing not so much explanations as experiences of its innermost depths, its uppermost visions, its intuition of the transcendental without which it would be quite impossible for any of us to grieve, to judge, to love and be fully a person in this world. I would now like to read one of my mythopoetic engagements, a poem about the creation of the world that comes from the Bilaans of southern Mindanao. In this poem, I try to retell the story of the curious sky god named Melu. Writing it, giving myself over to it, I was surprised to be led into the mythic insight of kinosis, which is to say, a ritual of sacrificial self-emptying that proves entirely generative. And the magic in this is the realization that we ourselves enacted each and every time we love. Why must it be strange that a world should spring from an itch? Melu, creator of the Bilaan, was as black as a stone's pure heart. In the first twilight he rose, his eyes and teeth glinting like stars in the horizonless sky. Sensing a gap all over his body, he discovered he desired nothing but to rub himself with his hands. Palm against skin, he scratched and stroked and flake by sheer flake the earth drifted away from his shape to gather in a heap below him. As he rubbed and his rubbings fell, he felt himself grow lighter and whiter. Soon he was invisible as air floating above the crumbled shell of his old self. This story tells us creation is the body sure and clean of a God's brilliant need for formlessness. We cannot help but wonder as our skins slip past each other in this life. Do we not help this first sacrifice to proceed? Its work a sacred duty meant for us all along out of love or pain and every time our edges touch we grind our itchy bodies hard against this world's darkness praying we too may know light.