The millipede stone makes you look like lots of people...

Magic stones abound here. I suppose they should really be called pebbles, because they are mostly small items. And they abound only in the sense that they are a big part of the culture in the minds of the people. There are not necessarily that many magic stones. You are not supposed to go out looking for them. You basically just have to happen to find them. A few people have them around here, probably like around 1 out of 10 people. If you happen to find one, put it away and take good care of it, because they are very valuable.

Usually they are found in different kinds of food. The taro stone, for example, was found by a shaman who was eating his taro root, and there happened to be a small smooth black stone inside one of the roots. This stone gave him the power to reduce or remove someone’s anger. Just like when you cook the leaves of this plant – you fill up your pot with the leaves, but when you cook them the visible amount in the pot shrinks down to much less than what you filled it to. So it is with the taro stone – if you have it, and someone is angry and comes looking for you, when they start to get near you, their anger will slowly be reduced. That way, by the time they arrive where you are, their anger will have gone away completely. That is the power of the taro stone.

The centipede stone is another one. If you see a centipede carrying a small rock, you pin it down until it drops the rock, and then you take the stone. This gives you the power to win at gambling, because a centipede is aggressive and hurts anything that bothers it. So you will most likely win, and when you win, whoever you beat will be afraid to hurt you in their anger because of the aggressiveness of the centipede. Note that gambling is not actually part of Palawano culture, but it has been introduced by the lowland people, and this stone specifically applies to relationships Palawanos have with lowlanders who gamble.

One of the guys here was eating monkey one time, and he found a stone in the monkey. So he kept it as his monkey stone. The monkey stone made him especially adept at climbing trees, they say. I asked if he was better than other people at climbing trees, and they said, “about the same.” But the monkey stone makes him really good at climbing trees, and he is not afraid when he gets up high. Also if there is a tree all by itself, with no other trees next to it, he will still be able to climb it easily.

The thunder stone is in a class all by itself and has multiple special powers. It was found when lightning hit a tree (which they said was “bit by thunder”) next to someone’s house, and the stone came out. It gives someone the power to call down thunder and heavy rain on a person who has been threatening someone else.

The coconut stone is really special. It makes a person handsome! Ah, so that is why his wife married him… :)  If you find this stone and put it in a jar with oil in it, and then put the coconut oil in your hair, you look especially good. It also makes people think you are a good person, as in, not someone who would start a fight. Like a peacemaker of sorts. For that reason, people won’t want to start a fight with you.

The millipede stone is the one that I found the most intriguing. It makes you look like you are lots of people! If you see a millipede carrying a stone, take it, because it will afford you some special protection. As long as you have your millipede stone, when you go into town or to the market alone, the people there will see lots of people coming, not just you by yourself. Because of this, they will not mess with you – you know, safety in numbers.

I had heard before about the very important rock that the chief found a long time ago, but I didn’t know there were multiple classes of magic rocks before all this came out a few days ago. It is interesting how all this came about. I was asking questions about what someone should do if they find different things walking through the forest. I was asking about items of different value in order to compare the pattern of speech regarding finding things of great value (like lots of money) to finding things of basically no value. Since rocks are very common, I figured they had no value, so I asked my language helper what he would do if he found a box with a rock in it in the forest. Well, ironically there was a treasure trove of information in asking about finding a rock!

Life in the jungle continues…