Scary Witches, Recast (for Halloween 2024)

It was two years ago this month when I wrote, "You Think Witches are Scary?" I am recasting it this year as a temporary antidote because we seem to be inundated with so much fear in the face of disasters and we worry for one reason or a  cluster of reasons. Fear that is either rational or not  differs from person to person but, of course, it is the irrational ones that seem to carry more weight in anyone who cares to be fearful. Folks from either side of the political divide are scared out of their wits over what will happen after November 5th. But that's the thing. Why do people care so much to be fearful over an election? We know that on November 6th, after all is said and done, everything is going to be alright. Besides, whether we worry or be fearful, there is little we can do but cast our votes.

Instead let's try to be fearful if only temporarily over something else - the one that goes away as we finish the last chapter of a scary book or at the end of the credits of a horror movie. As FDR famously said, "There is nothing to fear but fear itself".

Of course, it is not right for anyone, including myself, to diminish what people fear. Let's set aside  worrying  about the price of candy to dole out on October 31 or if prices of food and all essentials are ever going to come down?   Or, do we have enough in reserve to weather the scourge of inflation; or, the scourge of the weather?   We pray for those affected by it. But they need more than our thoughts, so please donate what you can to help.

Forget the upcoming election, the prices of candy, international news and to be thankful that if you are reading this means you have electricity, far away from the ravages of the weather.

What about our personal safety at a time when we are confronted by the instability of our surroundings or that of those from far away lands that today seem to dominate the news. "Wars and rumors of war" intrude with regularity because we are told that the world is again witnessing what used to be the time before 1914 or what it was like before 1939. 

For the moment, let's just be scared only temporarily until you're done reading this.  Happy Halloween.

Here it comes.

Halloween as traditionally celebrated may not be totally global but without exception, in any country or culture, there are enough stories and widely held tales to make many a childhood nightmare part of growing up. 

The scary witch in black loose clothing, cape and pointy hat straddling a broomstick will not hold a candle to the "aswang" where I grew up. From the other nearby islands they even evolved into taking different but no less menacing forms.

They're mostly female but the occasional male is more fearsome and unforgiving. During the day, they live normal human lives as regular members of the local community.  At night, when everyone is asleep, the "aswang" will go to a secluded place, usually thickets of vegetation of banana trees or bamboo.  There, the "aswang" will sprout bat-like wings and proceed to separate her upper body, from the belly button up at the waist, then off  she will fly away for a night of marauding menace, leaving the lower body unattended, standing still. Before sunrise the "aswang" will come back to the same spot to reunite with his or her lower body, back to  human form to the unsuspecting community.  

What did they hunt for? And how?  

They would fly to the towns or barrio away from their own community, which they typically leave  alone and unharmed.  However, that is not to say that other "aswangs" from the other towns will not be doing the same thing.  So, just because the local "aswang" will fly somewhere else, no one is safe in any town or barrio.

Vulnerable homes are those with thatched roof of nipa fronds, such as ours when I was growing up.  The "aswang" would alight at the top of the roof where a child or children are sleeping on the floor below. She then separates the nipa  ever so slightly for a good look.  Then, once she finds her victim, she would release through her funneled lips  a thin, continuous strand of her saliva through the slit on the roof into the child's mouth or nostril.  This takes away the child's spirit from the body. By morning, the child is dead. The "aswang" will come back later in the week, during wake. That is when she will devour the body from the inside.   It will take several night trips before the "aswang" is finished. The village people who attend the all-night wake are told to remain awake because even if only one person is up, it will keep the "aswang" from completing the task, but invariably everyone doses off, which enables the "aswang" to devour its victim through its long tongue from the rooftop.  The family and the villagers will take to the cemetery a body empty from the inside except for banana stalks and coconut husks  that the "aswang" replaced it with.

Then there was the famous "Tio Gimo" (nickname for the formal Spanish name of Guillermo) from the other island across from ours.  He had several attractive daughters, fair skinned with light brown hair - typical of mixed Spanish and native blood. Many young men would be lured into calling on the young maidens' home lorded over by "Tio Gimo"; Tio actually means "uncle", obviously endearing as it sounds.  These men, always from out of town, will never be heard from again. "Tio Gimo" and his daughters were "aswang" who had evolved into a different form by preying on love-struck adult males instead of young children. That is how "Tio Gimo" and his daughters survived  by feeding constantly on the strangers' flesh, blood and bones.

Listening to these stories, we were too young or perhaps even too scared to question how people knew of the story if nobody ever came out alive.

Something we did know, however, was how to defeat the "aswang".  One will have to find the lower half of the "aswang" as she forayed into the night. Pouring capfuls of salt or vinegar or a combination of both over the exposed lower half prevented the flying  "aswang" from reuniting and reconstituting herself or himself into a full human form again. At night when all is quiet, we occasionally hear a distant and faint wailing or moaning sound.  We were told by the elders that an "aswang" somewhere was pleading to allow its body halves to be put back together.  We will not sleep well that night.

The "tamawo" was something else.  

One side of the lot where our nipa hut stood, was where the edge of a pond began, part of a larger watery world of  mangrove - muddy, dark, as vegetation obscured the sunlight from getting through. From our lot stood a huge tree. One of its main branches leaned over as an overhang over part of the pond that was clear of aquatic grass and water lilies.  It was a perfect spot to fish. With one or two of my friends we would go up there, straddling horseback-riding-like on the huge branch, with our bamboo fishing poles, tiny hooks and wiggly worms in old rusty tin cans, excited to snag perch and mud fish just below the opaque water.  We were careful to always ask for permission in hushed tones addressed to whichever spirit was present every time we go there. We cannot see the "tamawo", of course, but they're bound to be there because that part of the pond was where their vessels would come to dock.  

The "tamawo" is invisible to everybody, except to some of the elders who are gifted with extraordinary eyesight.  They would tell us that the "tamawo" would leave us alone, in peace and free from harm, if we don't offend them. When asked what the "tamawos" look like, the gifted elders told us that the "tamawos" are pale skinned, almost white, but they have one distinguishing facial feature.  They do not have a philtrum - "the vertical groove on the surface of the upper lip, below the septum of the nose".

When we were out on that tree or anywhere else we ventured to go in the field or thicket of wild berries and such, not only were we not to forget to ask for permission to pass, we were not to point at anything or our fingers would fall off. At the pond, it was often that we saw a kingfisher a short distance away, perched on a drooping branch, watching for fish below.  The kingfisher had striking features of a pointy beak and plumage of beautiful colors of blue, green and red with a tinge of orange.  Not only can we not point at it, it was best to leave it alone. More than likely it was a "tamawo's" pet. 

In fifth grade, a beautiful classmate of ours did not come to class one day.  We heard later that she passed away  the night before. Our teacher took those of us who wanted to go to her wake. She was the quiet type who pretty much kept to herself, except to be with one or two close friends.  Though not very sociable, her pretty face and a rare but unemotional smile framed by long curly dark hair made it hard to ignore her. 

We were told she was taken by the "tamawo" away to their  invisible outer world, adopted to live among them.  There were many unexplained childhood deaths when we were growing up.  Half of them were attributed to the "tamawo" and the other half predated upon by the "aswang".

The "mantiw" was one that no one had ever seen but they were around when it was windy. During the night, of course.  They have long legs because everyone can hear them running over the homes, but not touching any of the structures; but they'd come by so fast  disturbing the air to rush out and back, accompanied by a whistling, sometimes roaring, sound. There could be a herd of these "mantiw" running, especially when it was raining, as if they were either fleeing from or going after something.  But nobody could see them and they were not known to harm anyone.

The "kapri" was another harmless creature but no less sinister. We never asked but I've always wondered why those who were "allowed" to see them always described them as male.  There seemed to have been no female "kapris".  The "kapri" is a giant, about 10-12 feet tall, who resided in big abandoned homes. They have a hairy body, large head with disheveled crusty hair, over large piercing black eyes.  Once, a bunch of us young kids and older teenagers and one adult went to an abandoned home because there was a "kapri" there.  The adult and an older teenager who could see the "kapri" described the creature to us.  The "kapri" was reclining his giant body with his back against the wall, legs splayed on the floor, smoking a huge cigar.  Yes, "kapris" were known to smoke cigars!  And the reason we go there to "gawk" at a creature we could not see was because the "kapri"  too was  a harmless denizen of the dark realm.

Up to this point of my musing, I was re-telling from memories of my childhood.  What follows below are those from sources that are at least two to more times removed from  directly hearing or experiencing them.

Many islands away up north of the archipelago were  creatures that those in our island felt fortunate to not have to deal with them.  I will only mention one here.  The "tikbalang" has a huge torso, hairy and muscular, an ugly face and disproportionately long legs like those of a giraffe's. We were told it indiscriminately preyed on anyone - adults and children - who wandered through the open field or empty streets late in the night.  Its hunger and appetite for human flesh rises with that of the waning and waxing moon, when the night is dark.

In the capital city in the main island was a story that today would seem to follow a universal pattern.  It is called the "Lady in White".  One major street, Balete Drive, so named because  one giant tropical tree species - Balete - stood in one corner, and there used to be several of them along that road.  There are so many versions of the story, episodes too long to cover here but what was consistent was that a Lady in White waiting by that tree would hail and get into a taxi, or privately driven car, in the middle of the night. After that, the stories would turn into so many different terrorizing versions.  Actually, this story may have started from way back when the method of conveyance was still a horse-drawn carriage. 

Photo of a Balete Tree

Below is a representation of what "witnesses" described what the lady looked like.

In the southern islands, at the university where I went, the school hospital had one prevailing story of a Lady in White, presumably the apparition of a deceased nurse, doctor, or previous patient. The reader will note that such stories abound in different parts of the world, across all cultures.

As I said in the first paragraph, we outgrew the stories by about the same time we learned there really was no Santa Claus, some later than others.  Whatever the effects were on the other children I grew up with, I am in no position to assess.  For me, those stories that included episodes from the comic book version of The Twilight Zone (we had no TV then) were what pushed me to the sciences by the time I got into my freshman year in high school. I embraced physical science, math, algebra and geometry because elements of those subjects were provable, and as in geometry, postulates and theorems and proofs of congruence, shapes whose areas and circumferences can be solved, etc. without any ambiguities.

But I wondered why the stories, even to this day, in many parts of the world, remain in circulation. Is it because fear is just a natural  human instinct, stoked by so much we do not and cannot know?

I was scared of moving from home for the first time to go to college. Integral calculus scared me after I failed it the first time I took it.  College graduation was a happy time but we were all scared about not getting a job.

Potential recession, the threat of war, crime, waiting for medical test results, all of these feed into our capacity for all sorts of mental anguish from what seems like our instinctual nature to be fearful.

I feel that those stories that I seem to remember so well, though I cannot vouch with a hundred percent accuracy of my recollections, may have actually prepared me in how I dealt with all kinds of fear later in life. For example, I knew that the "mantiw" that our elders would tell us about came during the monsoon season when rains would be accompanied by high winds. That explained for me the whistling and roaring sounds, which were much too fearsome when one lived in a nipa thatched home.  The death of young children - so difficult to comprehend or accept - which could only have been caused by the "aswang" or "tamawo" is not a good accounting of the fact that the childhood mortality rate could have been explained by inadequate health care and prevention during those times.

Imagine what it was like for our early ancestors to be fearful of so many things beyond their comprehension. But fear must have been and still is a survival tool. As children, our learning brain with a default feature to be fearful of the unfamiliar perhaps have yet to discriminate between and among a lot of stimuli.  

The question is why adults relish the idea of scaring young children.  There are a lot of reasons, I'm sure. It is fun. It is passing on an initiation tradition of the time they too had been scared. It is a way to get the kids to behave or be wary of unfamiliar environments. Who knows?

All of these can be relegated to superstition because who doesn't have one? We eventually outgrow almost all superstitions and  childhood lore we hear, but woe to those who do not.

I think it is best to quote Carl Sagan, from his book, "The Demon-Haunted World" (Science as a Candle in the Dark):

"..when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness..."

"The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”

I hope I have redeemed myself for subjecting the reader to some of the ghoulish recollections of my childhood, then coming up with rational explanations as to neutralize the irrational.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN !

What's Up With 6174 and 495

They are numbers. But not just ordinary numbers. But before we try to explain why, I suspect there are among the readers who already know what they are.   The explanation will not be for them. However, they might benefit from whatever insights they will read into  why these numbers are special, along with several others more popularly, if not commonly, known. But I must hasten to wager that these numbers are rarely known to many.

First, we acknowledge that language, in every manner that they are used or exhibited, is the single and most special quality that separates us from all other creatures. It is what makes us human. Words - singly or part of a group - are what and how we communicate. They are spoken or written.  In prose or poetry, in songs and speeches, in sad or happy tones, words are the meat and potatoes of language. But lest we forget, we have numbers that are significantly part of language as well, and they are what give superpowers to language.  

One example of the superpowers of numbers are when they are employed in statistics; in polls (in about a month, numbers will decide the fate of a nation in crisis); in defining socio-economic issues because numbers can dominate in how goods are sold and purchased; inflation numbers affect the rich and the poor and sometimes the very viability of a business or how a family manages to make life livable, and so many other things too lengthy to list here.

Okay, so let's dive into these two numbers: 6174 and 495. Then we'll go into  more insights on numbers later. Including zero, which technically is not a number but it is the most important fuel that provides numbers with unlimited energy because it not only can double up, it can exponentially increase the power of numbers.  However, it too can literally render a number as powerless as a feather wafting in the air, practically reducing a number to inutility. We'll get to it later.

6174 is named after an Indian mathematician named D.R. Kaprekar who discovered it. It is now known as Kaprekar's constant.

The number will show up constantly when manipulating the digits of a four-digit number in a certain simple way of subtraction that will result in 6174 all the time.

"Take any four-digit number, with at least two of the digits to be different from each other (leading zeros are allowed).

Arrange the digits in descending and then in ascending order to get two four-digit numbers, adding leading zeros if necessary.

Subtract the smaller number from the bigger number.

Go back to step 2 and repeat".

It's best to illustrate with an example.  Take the number 8457. Arrange it in descending order to become 8754. In ascending order it becomes 4578. Now, subtract the lower number from the higher number.

8754-4578=4176, now, 7641-1467=6174     

Let's try the number 1234:

4321-1234=3087, now 8730-378=8352,  8532-2358=6174

Try this on your birthday, using month and days, i.e. Dec. 7, as 1207. 6174 will always show up at the end, in as short as two steps but no more than seven. Remember though that at least there must be two different digits. It will not work, for example in 1111, or 0000. Which makes you special if your birthday is November 11. Your birthday thwarts the Kaprekar's constant.

Now imagine if you are tasked to determine the variety of numbers or number combinations that will give you the constant 6174? It is a huge number. That's why, even a combination padlock, shown below, poses a challenge. Put simply, four digit combinations are a formidable challenge even if we know that given the Kaprekar's routine, you will always come up with a constant, 6174.

495 is the constant when using the same operations on three digits (always keeping in mind that at least one digit is different from another. Sometimes, it only takes one routine to arrive at 495. The number 612 will give us 621-126=495. And on and on for any 3-digit number.

Now, y'all know the Kaprekar's constant.  What is it good for?  Other than 

that it works almost beyond our ability to understand why and how? You've heard a lot lately about algorithms and AI. 

 

al·​go·​rithm ˈal-gə-ˌri-t͟həm 

: a procedure for solving a mathematical problem (as of finding the greatest common divisor) in a finite number of steps that frequently involves repetition of an operation

broadly : a step-by-step procedure for solving a problem or accomplishing some end

n+1... is a simple example of an algorithm instruction to add 1 to any number in a series, say 1+1, 2+1, 3+1. It can easily be made complex by simply modifying the definition of n or the value of 1 to something else.

The algorithm behind the Kaprekar's constant is just a tad more complicated.

Throughout our history since our ancestors discovered it, the role of numbers has gone from that of marking how many deer Grog the caveman had to his credit by scratching them on a piece of bone to treating numbers with superstition or fear.  Before the Babylonians kind of invented zero, humans had gone on with their lives without it.  But once known, the Greeks actually banned the use of it, while the Hindus worshipped it. We will not get into constants like the value of pi or the Hubble constant because they deserve more pages than merely be part of a musing.

Today, there is just no way we can conduct our lives and businesses without the zero. The zero to the right of any digit, and however many is added, gives power to that number and we had to come up with words like billion, quadrillion and gazillion when children run out of words in place of so many zeros.  And don't forget the Googol (different from Google). On the other hand, when a zero is written to the left of a number with a decimal point before the zero, the number gets smaller and smaller and for the purpose of nomenclature we add 'th', say, to the million or billion to signify how small a number has become. But get this. Computers only understand zeros and ones when they do the gazillion calculations with "the speed of summer lightning" (from Henry Higgins, in My Fair Lady).

Then we invented infinity (∞) and every number became even a lot smaller, in comparison. We hear that the universe began with a huge explosion 13.7 billion years ago. With infinity to look forward to beyond today, the beginning of the universe might as well have started this morning, relatively speaking, that is. But (∞) is real to anyone who uses integral calculus.

But numbers too have gone on to influence our psyche. They have become tools for superstition. At one time there were no 13th floors in tall buildings. 8 is revered in Chinese culture but 4 is not. 666 is not to be written down or uttered by devout Christians. 7 and 12 are good numbers in both the Old and New Testaments but 40 seems to have a disastrous connotation as when it rained for 40 days and nights that floated Noah's ark.  And nothing good came to the Israelites when Moses went to spend 40 days away from them.  Before that they wandered through the desert for 40 years.

When I was in college my lucky number was 13.  It annoyed my friends but what I was going for was that 13 is a prime number, the consecutive numbers 6 and 7 when added together is 13. 7 is a prime number but although 6 is not, the product of multiplying the consecutive numbers 2 and 3 makes 6.  At the gym, the locker number I always use when it is not occupied is no. 67.  It is not superstition but simply to help me remember every time I go to retrieve my stuff after swimming.

Now, if you are encountering it for the first time, you will not forget 6174 or 495. I know what you are going to do. You are likely to make number combinations from those two on your next lottery pick.  If you win, I hope you remember to send me a commission. I'll take a small fraction because  even with just a few zeros my share from $120 million  will still be a windfall.  GOOD LUCK !