The Luck of the Ancestors

According to the local economic-cosmological model, luck—vital in every endeavor—was controlled by the ancestors. Certainly the Buguias people considered hard work essential for realizing potential good fortune, just as sloth was considered capable of bringing its own destitution. But fortuity was primary. The nature of a couple's luck hinged on their concourse with their deceased parents, grandparents, and more distant ancestors. To ensure blessings from above, they had to please these amed, and since the dead yearned to return periodically to feast with their descendants, pedit was mandatory. If the offerings were inadequate, the amed would readily indicate their displeasure.

The ancestors relished dance, but they were also greedy for the

spiritual essences of hog flesh and rice beer. They also rejoiced in blankets and even money; a cache of silver peso coins, placed upon a stack of funeral blankets, adorned every pedit ceremony. The dead needed such (non)material things because they too existed within a wealth-based, and mutable, social hierarchy. A soul entered the afterworld with a blanket-signified rank, but could subsequently rise or possibly even fall according to the oblations offered by living descendants. To cinch the matter, an ancestor's power to bestow bounty on the living depended, in turn, on his or her afterlife position. The welfare of the living was thus partly contingent on the gifts that each couple managed to send skyward. The newly rich encountered a special burden here, since to ensure continued success they had not only to placate but also to empower their lowstatus spiritual allies.

Normal communications between earth and heaven were indirect, vague, and subject to misinterpretation. A clear channel, however, opened with every death. While in the death chair, an individual remained in limbo, shuttling back and forth between the two realms until the final burial on earth, corresponding to acceptance in the afterworld. Hence the extravagant attention lavished on the corpse; revelers at the wake sang and chanted unceasingly to the body, asking it to convey special requests to the ancestors. Here also lay the significance of the double burial; with the first interment the soul sojourned in the afterworld, gathering a store of luck that it could redistribute if brought back to earth for a brief period. Since the cooperation of the recently released spirit was vital to the success of this endeavor, the living hoped that through flattery they might secure an enthusiastic messenger. A funeral of an elder was thus not an entirely unhappy occasion. Story telling, joking, and drinking lightened the somber ceremonies at the house of the dead.

Even if well-feted, the ancestors still constituted a threat, thus requiring additional ritual precautions. Two parallel dangers lurked here: an amed might pine for a specific living person's companionship; or, a certain living soul might opt for more constant spiritual communion. In either instance, death could come prematurely. Here lay the peril in visiting a wake on an odd number of occasions; if the pair (essentially a sexual metaphor) were not completed, one's now unbalanced soul could more easily be lost. Spe-

cial ceremonies were also needed to resegregate the quick from the dead. In nonritual settings, however, the afterworld was not so beckoning; in fact, languishing elders would occasionally bundle themselves within their own death shrouds, hoping to frighten their souls into remaining earthbound a while longer.