A Morion Picture Book

"Being a morion is an amulet against fear itself..."
(Raul Quizada)

A most expressive figure, perhaps only a bit player in pageant but could well be the Mater Dolorosa (cropped from the photo in the home page and improved with a little Photoshop)

In full regalia

Contests of viciousness

The apparent stars of the pageant

The grieving women of Jerusalem

JC Superstar actually manhandled

Anti-Morions?

Morion generations

A morion named Raul & two exalted centurions

It seemed like an endless cavalcade of costumed dolls and apparitions from our Catholic past, our ambivalent Hispanic heritage, a pilgrimage into our imposed memory that has nevertheless become part of us. There were morions and morions—classic, elaborated, improvised, Baroque. There was a female morion whose tan faux-leather costume and quaint headdress made her look like she came from the Mongol horde. There was a morion with a vest of puka shells or woven water-reeds. There was an updated morion straight the current movie then, "300." There were father-and-son, grandfather-and-granddaughter morions, fulfilling perhaps a lifetime panata. There was a gas-masked morion that seemed to have come out of the mustard fog of World War I, or the post-nuclear landscape, except that he had on a black mohair tunic. But all that made it a pageant after all, a Lenten ritual about the death of the Son of God that is always on the brink of celebrating His resurrection, somberness on the brink of laughter.

Moriones is a festival of faces that hides the faces of the pious, the repentant, the supplicant, the curious. We, both tourists and pilgrims to the sites that serve as landmarks on the way to knowing this thing called being Filipino, were privileged not just to participate in the ritual but have some personal glimpses into the faces behind the masks. Raul Quizada cautiously told us a bit about himself. Being a morion, he said, is an amulet against fear itself: when you're in the engine room of some ocean-going vessel and the waves are bigger than houses, you tell yourself you're a morion and you know you can survive "the devil himself." We had a few words with the privileged Longhino, whose mask bore the blind eye but whose name I failed to get. He was a public official, an engineer, I seem to recall, and also hermano mayor, the headman of celebrations. We shook his hand. But the chariot-riding centurion, with his authentic-looking costume and finery that said he was a devotee from the big city, stayed aloof and distant. Or he just wanted to play his part to the hilt.

Happy Easter!