The Pamela Quests: Ella

A Cyberspace Book by Tony Perez

This is Volume II. Volume I (The Pamela Quests: Pam) is accessible via http://www.tonyperezphilippinescyberspacebook2.blogspot.com.

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Welcome to my third cyberspace book, The Pamela Quests: Ella (Volume II)!

The Pamela Quests: Pam (Volume I) is accessible via http://www.tonyperezphilippinescyberspacebook2.blogspot.com/.

Posted by Tony Perez's Electronic Diary at 8:07 PM

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Other Cyberspace Books By Tony Perez

The Pamela Quests: Pam (Volume I)
The Replacement
Magic for Squares 1
143 Gayuma
Orakulo Ni Heneral Kung Ming (Ang Maluwalhating Orakulo Ni Chuko Kung Ming) [Translation]
Sample Fiction
Tony Perez Philippines

Go GREEN. Read from

THE SCREEN.

THE PAMELA QUESTS

A Cyberspace Book by Tony Perez

The last, previously unpublished, and unexpurgated recorded narrative

of the Spirit Questors

and the twin volumes containing the author’s training exercises in psychism.

The release of this book, written in the narrative format that the author finally deemed

most appropriate for Spirit Quest reports, was withheld pending the author’s attainment

of his M.A. in Religious Studies at Maryhill School of Theology,

and after he desisted from university teaching in 2000.

Ironically, after the text was released, there was a demand for the elective courses

described herein, but the author was no longer interested in classroom teaching.

Important Note:

The author no longer engages in classroom teaching

and may not be contacted at any of the universities mentioned in this volume.

Authored 2000

Posted in cyberspace April 2013.

Classification: General Public

Category: Spiritism

IPR of Tony Perez

Photo Illustration IPR of Kyndal Co

Proofread in cyberspace by John Labella

Important Notes:

This is the only legitimate, electronic version of this cyberspace book.

This cyberspace book does not exist in any other format.

This cyberspace book may not be reproduced or adapted in part or in whole without the written or electronic permission of the author.

2000 and 2013

For my second granddaughter, Nielsen Tegelan

CONTENTS:

Book I:

THE PAMELA QUESTS: PAM

at http://www.tonyperezphilippinescyberspacebook2.blogspot.com

Special Thanks

Foreword

The Pamela Quests: Pam

Book II:

THE PAMELA QUESTS: ELLA

Special Thanks

Foreword

The Pamela Quests: Ella

BOOK II:

THE PAMELA QUESTS:

ELLA

Special Thanks

To Pamela R. and family; the Spirit Questors; Eloisa San Juan and Tina Tayag for their management of the Questors’ network during the writing of this volume; Doreen G. Fernandez, Noel McRae, and Merlyn Servañez of Ateneo de Manila University’s Department of Communication; Ateneo’s switchboard operators; the students of my first-semester, school year 1999 – 2000 Ateneo classes in Independent Research and Psychology of Communication; the students of my second-semester, school year 1999 – 2000 Ateneo classes in Independent Research and Design and Management of Training Programs; and most especially Nelson.

Book II:

The Pamela Quests: Ella

Photo courtesy of Kyndal Co

Book II:

The Pamela Quests: Ella

FOREWORD

The idea for this double volume developed out of the synchronistic arrival of two young women named Pamela in my life in the third quarter of 1999: Pamela R. of Ateneo de Manila University and Pamela D. of De La Salle University. They were my trainees in the development of psychic abilities and magic. These two volumes are parallel records of their progress. These are also the volumes about the Spirit Questors in which I describe or refer to actual training exercises I conducted through the turn of the decade.

One story begins with a death, the other ends with another.

I wrote this segment, however, not in celebration of death but in celebration of life.

I constantly remind the Spirit Questors, a group of young, psychic volunteers, that physical death is neither to be feared nor dreaded, since it is merely a transition to a higher form of life. In the words of Sister Kathleen Coyle, a theological anthropologist and my Religious Studies professor at Maryhill School of Theology, “in death we simply move from temporal time to eternal time.”

I first met Pamela R. 7:00 PM Saturday, July 17, 1999 after winding up a session in Psychology of Communication, a graduate class I was teaching for the Department of Communication at Ateneo de Manila University in the school year 1999 – 2000. Wendell G., a senior Psychology student, brought to our Questors’ meeting seven friends who were interested in signing up for training in psychic abilities and magic.

The earliest memory that I have of Pamela R. is that she came to the meeting wearing a bracelet attached to a ring on her middle finger by means of a tapered meshwork of brass beads. I asked her if she was aware that she was wearing a slave bracelet, specifically a harem bracelet, from the Middle East, and if this did not clash with her concept of modern women’s rights. She flashed her companions, and then me, a smile, and replied that she was still considering being either my slave, or a member of my harem. I laughed; it was the most hilarious thing I heard the entire day. Of the seven students, however, she was the only one who did not step forward to shake my hand when Wendell introduced them to me. I thought that she had come with her friends to meet me either out of a sense of curiosity or as a result of peer pressure. I thought that she would not come back for training, and that I would never see her again.

I was wrong.

Although one’s initial impression of Pamela R. is that she is friendly and easygoing, she is inwardly reserved, preferring to be trained on a one-to-one basis or with only one or two other Questors in her company, never in a huge group.

The night of Saturday, November 20—long after the Questors’ 16th training session that quarter and approximately four weeks after our initial meeting towards the end of the first semester, I required her to strive to read every book I had ever read, to be capable of journalistic and creative writing, to be capable of channeling and facilitating, and, like the other Questors, to master at least one card deck and one set of casting stones.

Like Pamela D. (Pam), Pamela R. (Ella) represented the new wave of Questors. Her participation here underscored the first major change in the Questors’ training after three years. From February 13, 1996, through February 13, 1999, all quests centered on only a handful of senior channels. This arrangement gave rise to an internal “star system”, which the group eventually demolished by putting together a standardized training program that all Questors were then required to go through. Thus, every Questor underwent training with the objectives of functioning successfully as facilitators and channels, whether alone on in a group, and of being capable of substituting satisfactorily for one another.

Tony Perez

Cubao, Quezon City

January 2000

THE PAMELA QUESTS:

ELLA

People come to the Spirit Questors for a variety of reasons. One is to have a spirit quest scheduled at their residence or workplace. Another is to psychically scanned and cleansed. Another, to obtain a psychic snapshot of themselves by having cards spread or stones cast or any method of sortilege used for them. Still another, to be administered alternative forms of healing. And, yet another, to receive psychospiritual counseling.

There are two foremost reasons, on the other hand, why people come to me. The first is to be trained the development of psychic abilities.

The second is to be taught how to perform magic, specifically for the manifestation of their wishes.

As a teacher and trainer, I believe that psychic abilities are not special abilities, because I also believe that everyone, not just a chosen few, has them.

Aside from your five physical senses—sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell—you possess six psychic ones—psychic vision (clairvoyance), psychic hearing (clairaudience), psychic feeling (clairsentience), psychic intuition (prophecy), psychic taste (clairsavoring), and psychic smell (clairolfaction).

Psychic vision, more popularly known as the “third eye”, is the ability to see or sense the presence of entities on the astral plane either externally (independent of the self, as projections of the self, or as perceived projections of others) or internally (cogitated, consciously or subconsciously imagined, or dreamt), in imagery that is either literal or symbolic.

Psychic hearing is the ability to receive verbal or instrumental information beyond the range of normal, physical hearing. Such information comes from distant sources on the physical plane, from entities on the astral plane, or from within one’s self. The sources may be personified as spirit guides, guardians, spirits of the deceased, elementals, the higher self, the inner self, the shadow self, subpersonalities, past-life personalities, fictional characters, imaginary companions, aliens, abstract forces, or archetypes.

Psychic feeling is the ability to empathize, voluntarily or involuntarily, over a period of time or spontaneously, with another’s physical state and emotions, with a specific incident, or with the atmosphere of a particular environment. This may be done directly or through contact with intermediary stimuli such as objects associated with a person, incident, or environment that one is accessing.

Psychic intuition is the ability to interpret signs, read oracles, or obtain knowledge of the past, the present, and the future by attuning to another person, to nature, to higher forces, to the universe or the cosmos, or by using instruments of divination.

Psychic taste and psychic smell are the abilities to obtain supplementary information by the spontaneous activation of the senses to receive psychic stimuli pertaining to taste and smell.

I am often asked what people wish for most when they come to me for training in the development of psychic abilities.

Is it to wield power over others, including revenge? Is it to be successful at home, at work, or in some profession or field of interest? Is it to amass, inherit, discover, or possess great wealth? Is it o be endowed with perfect health and strength and beauty? Is it to satisfy one’s lust or passion, or experience loving and being loved? Is it to come upon, in general, good fortune, and to have, in general, good luck?

Looking through the slew of motivations of all the students and participants I have ever had in all of my classes and workshops over all of these years, I say no.

What people desire most is the most impossible desire of all.

It is the desire to become immortal.

It is the desire to live forever, or to abolish illness, ageing and death, or to defy destruction, deterioration, and decay, or to go beyond the restrictions and limitations of one’s physical body, or to keep things that one likes exactly as they are through all seasons, or to make love changeless, or to be united with one or more persons through the end of time.

It is a desire that I myself have had, and more than once.

It is, perhaps, why I adopted a family, and why I write, and why I paint, and why I knit, and why I teach. It is why I accept groups of people and train them. Such as, for instance, the group that Wendell, a senior student of Psychology at Ateneo de Manila University, brought to me for training in psychic abilities 7:00 PM Saturday, July 17, 1999, at the Questors’ meeting. At that time I had just wound up a session in Psychology of Communication, a graduate class I was teaching for the Department of Communication at Ateneo de Manila University in the school year 1999 – 2000.

So why, despite our realizations, disappointments, and disillusionments, do we keep on desiring?

It is because we desire not only for ourselves, we desire also for others, and, others desire for us.

And, I believe that, since there is a superior force that governs this world and sets everything in order according to a grand design, there is no such thing as an accident. Everything has a reason for being, for having been, for becoming.

I usually reserve weekday evenings to pursue my master’s degree in Religious Studies at Maryhill School of Theology and teach either at De La Salle University (DLSU) or at Saint Scholastica’s College. Saturdays I teach at Ateneo de Manila University. At 7:30 PM each Saturday I meet with the Questors either to dispatch them in teams or to conduct two hours of training in psychic abilities and in magic. Sundays I usually reserve for Questors’ workshops or whole-day training.

I had desisted from actually going on quests in 1998, having turned over the administration and management of the Questors to senior channels Eloisa S. (an Ateneo Legal Management graduate), Bambi G. (a DLSU Organizational Communication graduate), Mikah T. (an Ateneo Management Engineering graduate), Tina T. ( a Colegio de San Juan de Letran Communication Arts graduate), Moose M. (an Ateneo Math graduate), and Tommy L. (a DLSU Psychology and Marketing Management graduate). I functioned merely as the group’s trainer and adviser.

The training program for the Questors was subdivided into six curricula, which are equivalent, in terms of content and training time, to major subjects that juniors and seniors would have to take to pursue a college degree in the paranormal: Development of Psychic Abilities, Shamanism, Magic, Dreamwork and Dream Analysis, Divination, and Alternative Healing.

The month of July was not an easy one for me. I was at the tail end of teaching two sections of SHAMANS: North American Indian Shamanism for the first term of the school year 1999 – 2000 at DLSU (Thursday and Friday evening), enrolled as a graduate student in Old Testament I (Monday evenings), Fundamental Theology (Wednesday evenings), and Missiology (Saturday mornings) at Maryhill School of Theology for a master’s degree in Religious Studies, and teaching Independent Research for undergraduate students (Saturday afternoons) and Design and Management of Training Programs for graduate students (Saturday evenings) at Ateneo for the first semester of the school year.

Wendell’s training group held their first session the evening of the following Saturday, July 24. I had spent the entire day conducting exercises in emotional truth for my students. As what usually happens, two of the students inadvertently accessed spirits while doing their exercises: one the spirit of a relative who had recently passed away, the other the spirit of her father whose demise occurred many years ago.

Among the trainees with Wendell and Pamela R. (Ella) were Kevin C., Mossey M., and Brian F., all of them Ateneo seniors. I asked Eloisa to read cards for each one of them before our group session and was satisfied to learn from her that none of them had the predisposition to practice black magic.

Wednesday, July 28, the Questors did oracle readings for the SkyCable launch in the Rizal Ballroom of Shangri-la Hotel, in Makati. The next time I saw Ella and the Questors’ new trainees was Saturday, July 31, Saint Ignatius Day, an Ateneo holiday. That night I taught them the individual meanings of casting stones and how to interpret them in different layouts for one another.

We ended late that night because we had to wait for the members of a quest team to finish up with a love magic spell for a woman whose lover had suddenly and inexplicably abandoned her for someone else.

I scheduled a third, more intensive, training session the whole day Sunday, August 1. In the evening the members of the Questors’ Luna y Sol convened at a rest house in Tagaytay to celebrate Pag-ani (The Harvest Season). Since the rest house is isolated and is surrounded with trees, they performed this celebration outdoors. As in other seasonal celebrations, Eloisa and Elo R. (a Philippine Christian College graduate, a theater director, and an actor) led the rituals.

The following Sunday, August 8, the Questors observed an afternoon session in medieval sword fighting conducted by Butch Montejo, the Questors’ self-defense trainer.

Saturday, August 14, I decided to go on a quest, my first time after a lull of more than one year. A week earlier, while I was working at home on the manuscript of a book, Mrs. Lynette O., the mother of Yong, an Ateneo Business Management major who was in my Introduction to Graphic Design class two years ago and graduated last year, called me on my cell phone. Lynette was permanently estranged from her husband, Oni, who migrated to the United States after Yong, their third and last child, was born. Yong and his two elder sisters, Lizanne and Aline, had seen their father only three times in the past 20 years.

I was surprised that Yong had referred his mother to me. He had never expressed any interest in questing or in quest-related matters during that one semester that I had him. Lynette herself, moreover, informed me on the phone that while she did not “believe in these things” she wanted me to visit her at the condominium building that she owned and managed in Xavierville, particularly the storey that she and her children lived in.

Lynette’s call had been prompted by a series of synchronistic events involving Oni. The man had planned to visit in June, see his children once again, and have a talk with them. However, he suffered a fatal heart attack before his trip to the Philippines. Lizanne, who had been closest to him, dreamt of him three consecutive nights. And, once, while Lynette and Aline were inside their unit, a yellow butterfly—which could not have entered the building in any natural way—floated across the dining area.

I decided to go on this quest rather than pass it on to Eloisa for scheduling and dispatching. In the first place Lynette requested that I be there. Second, Yong had been my student, albeit for only one semester. Third, new Questors were currently in training, and I realized that the only way that they could ever say that I trained them how to channel and how to facilitate was for me to actually show them. If I were to resume going on quests I would have to take the trainees with me one at a time.

After the Questors finished up with consultations that evening and the teams had been dispatched to their respective quest venues I took with me senior channel Roy R. (a DLSU Math graduate), Sheila M. (an AMA Computer College Computer Science graduate), Marvin M. (a University of the Philippines [UP] Political Science major), my nephew George Bregendahl (who was completing his academic requirements for Ateneo’s Interdisciplinary Program), and Ella.

Yong met us at the entrance to their condominium building and brought us to their unit on the second floor, where Lynette, Lizanne, and Aline were already waiting for us. Lynette gave us a briefing, during which she explained that Oni had remarried in the United States. Of their three children, only Lizanne, the eldest, still felt any affection toward him. Everyone else recalled that he was a moody, inconsistent person who often did not keep his promises.

The Questors and I leafed through the couple’s old wedding albums. Other than Oni’s wedding ring, Lynette kept nothing that had belonged to her estranged husband. I was able to pick up, from the ring, the real reason behind the separation. Since the reason had never been articulated either to me or to the Questors, however, I decided to keep it to myself. Also, I knew that Lynette still loved him, although she told me, several times, that she no longer did.

I located the family members and the Questors in a circle in the living area. I stayed outside the circle and drew cards from one of my decks on a low, side table. I located Ella beside me so that she could see me drawing cards. I then alternated between channeling and facilitating Roy.

Oni’s messages were essentially of love for the family he had left behind, and his need for their forgiveness. It was a strangely touching experience for me because all throughout our conversation only Lynette and Lizanne expressed any kind of emotion toward him, and only Lizanne shed tears. Aline and Yong remained impassive. Yong even told me, aside, that he knew next to nothing about his father and therefore felt nothing toward him, alive or dead.

I read cards for each member of the family from two other decks. Afterwards the family took us to the mezzanine of a fast-food station that Yong himself was managing, on the ground floor of the condominium building. Marvin and Sheila took out their own decks and read cards for Lynette, Lizanne, and Aline.

We ended our quest a little past midnight. Yong drove Ella, George, and me to Cubao.

The evening of Thursday, August 19, another group of Questors assisted me in administering the yuwipi exercise, which I adapted from a Sioux (Lakota) sacred ceremony, to one of my two sections of SHAMANS at DLSU.

The following evening, Friday, August 20, after the Questors did the same for my other SHAMANS section, Michael, Tommy, and Jon held alternative healing sessions for three students: Chona N. (a DLSU Psychology and Marketing major), who was able to channel a spirit during a mirror-gazing exercise the previous week, Jeremy L. (a DLSU Political Science and Business Management major), and Bon M. (a DLSU Economics and Management of Financial Institutions major). It was the evening before Bon’s group thesis defense; he was running a high fever yet chose to come to class.

Ella and her companions had their fifth training session the evening of Saturday, August 21. That same evening the Questors held two consultation sessions. Eloisa dispatched teams to Taytay, Valle Verde, and Malate.

A sixth training session was held the following afternoon, Sunday, August 22.

Thursday, August 26, and Friday, August 27, were the final meeting days of my two sections of SHAMANS and the end of the first term at DLSU.

The evening of Saturday, August 28, Prudence A. and her boyfriend Uther L., both of them my upperclassmen at Maryhill, came to the Questors’ meeting place for consultation. Prudence and Uther had been having a relationship for several years until another woman, an Elsa T., came into Uther’s life and took him away from Prudence. Uther and Elsa had a two-year affair that recently ended. Uther ultimately came back to Prudence. Yet, not all was well. According to Prudence, Elsa was “casting spells” on both of them.

Prudence was referred to me by Rochelle V., one of my classmates in Missiology. Prudence herself came up to me to introduce herself prior to our screening of Roland Joffe’s The Mission in class the previous week. That was when I invited her and Uther to come for consultation at the Questors’ meeting place.

I assigned three Questors to do a scanning on Prudence and Uther and afterwards read cards for them. I then performed a cleansing exercise on Uther in a separate room.

That same evening Ella and her companions had their seventh training session, which included the activation of their psychic hearing abilities. I conducted a series of exercises designed to activate the trainees’ psychic hearing: listening to faraway sounds through the psychic hearing areas on one’s head; accessing memory from the year 1896; the Tibetan singing bowl; the static exercise, which I adapted from Harold Sherman’s tape and telephone exercises using the AM band of a karaoke machine; and listening to the voices of spirits.

While I was conducting training Eloisa dispatched the Questors: one team to Valle Verde and three to Bel-Air Village, Makati.

The Questors were scheduled to lead two sessions for Ateneo’s Alternative Class Program Wednesday, September 1: one on reading cards, the other on spirit questing. Franco F., whom I first met when he was 15 after the Questors’ Klaseng Ibang Klase program at Ateneo High School more than two years ago and who was now an Ateneo college sophomore and a History major, participated in this program. He and the Questors formed three circles near the creek, off Seminary Drive.

Ella could not participate in either of these sessions because she had to attend her own classes.

Friday, September 3, Eloisa, Mikah, Roy, Sheila, and Terrence L., a member of the Questors’ Team Alpha, flew to Zamboanga for a series of quests that would be held on a residential compound that had been converted to a clinic but that had been infested with troublesome spirits. That same evening another team conversed with the spirit of one of two sisters who had been raped and murdered in the Visayas; this quest was held at the residence of the victims’ relatives, in Manila.

The evening of Saturday, September 4, I conducted the eighth training session for Ella and her companions, during which the Questors administered the yuwipi exercise to Ella, Kevin, and Brian.

Aside from two quests that were ongoing in Zamboanga City we had scheduled two consultations and four quests—one on Panay Avenue, two in Makati, and one in Parañaque—that night. In addition, a group of students from Miriam College came to do an interview with three Questors for Chi Rho, their college paper.

Sunday, September 5, Eloisa dispatched a team of Questors to Olongapo City. The team came back to Quezon City in time to attend the first training session for more new trainees that afternoon. We did exercises designed to activate and interpolate psychic hearing.

Friday, September 17, was the first meeting of my SHAMANS class for the second term at DLSU. In this class were Pam (an Organizational Communication major), Edie A., and Art K. (both of them Psychology and Business Management majors), who would eventually become Questors, and Questor Jing O. (a Computer Science and Technology graduate who would sit through the course the entire term). I invited the DLSU class to the launch of my books Beings and The Departed (Anvil Publishing Inc., 1999), which would be held in Quezon City the following evening, Saturday, September 18. None of the students, however, were able to show up.

The Questors put together a full program for my launch. Wesley G. sang the national anthem a cappella. The opening ceremony was emceed by senior channel Chad (a University of Santo Tomas [UST] Tourism graduate who works as a television character actor for ABS-CBN). Karina Bolasco, Anvil’s assistant general manager, and I gave short speeches. The entire event was a trifle disorienting for me, however, because the audience was a composite of my family, the Questors, Ateneo co-faculty members and students, former DLSU students, former Saint Scholastica’s college co-faculty members and students, classmates from Maryhill, psychic colleagues, and personal friends, whom I usually do not see all together in one location, at any one time.

Chad had made arrangements for SkyCable to videotape portions of the launch for a television feature. Michael set up torches at the entrance to the venue and hooked up a laptop showcasing the Questor’s Web site in a corner of the studio. Amy A. (a graduate of my 1996 Ateneo Magic class) operated a book and battle sword sale, Michael and Connie their Q shop magic bazaar, and Tommy a sales display of his collection of crystals. The night was capped by an oracle festival that lasted through 2:00 AM.

I had asked the trainees to invite their parents to the event, partly as a test to see whether they had, as they claimed, parental permission to be trained under me. Apparently only Ella had done so. She came up to me and introduced her mom and dad, who are members of the Couples for Christ movement and who I felt, at first, were not very receptive of me. After Ella left us to join her friends they asked me, in not so many words, whether I were still a practicing Catholic. I assured them that I am. They asked me questions mainly about religion and Christian values. I was glad to be able to answer them. I even enlightened them with the knowledge that advisers of the Couples of Christ movement are typically focused on marital issues, and that they are usually pastoral counselors, as opposed to theologians.

The morning of Sunday, September 19, Roger G. and Lee L. (both DLSU students but never in my classes) picked me up at my apartment in Cubao. We proceeded to the Questors’ meeting place for a training session in which I merged Ella’s group and the new group of trainees. Three guests whom I had met the previous evening during my book launch arrived to participate in the training session. One of these was Rupert Y., a DLSU graduate who was still searching for a full-time job.

At 2:00 PM, after we brought in lunch from a fast-food station and had finished eating, we left the building and convoyed to the fifth level of MegaMall, where Anvil had scheduled me for a book-signing at their stall in the 1999 International book Fair. Among the people who queued up for autographs were a couple from Laguna and their nine-year-old son, who, according to both parents, was an avid fan of mine. I was secretly surprised. When I asked them if their son had shown any psychic abilities, however, they replied that he did not but was very much interested in reading my books.

Later that afternoon Michael, Jon, and two other Questors walked in with their oracle sets to do readings for Anvil’s guests. Ella and I snuck out for a respite on the fourth level, where I purchased a resin statue that I had seen a month before and had thought of acquiring.

Rupert drove Ella and me to Cubao later that evening.

The afternoon of Friday, September 24, a representative of Anvil picked me up from work on Roxas Boulevard. We rushed to the Richmonde Hotel in Pasig, where Jessica Zafra and two other journalists were waiting in the dining hall to interview me for the Sunday edition of Today. Jessica, who had recently arrived from a visit to the United States to participate in the 1999 Yale-China Summer Institute in American Studies, brought ma set of South American wishing dolls.

The evening of Saturday, September 25, Andree L., a former agent and a graduate of my Magic class three years ago, visited the Questors at one of our meetings. She had been performing alternative healing on Agnes A., a visual artist who had become very sickly over the past few months. Andree had begun to feel “exhausted” and “depressed”, and wondered whether Agnes had not been draining too much energy off her.

I taught Andree how to borrow energy from alternative sources other than her own. She had requested aura cleansing when she called me on the phone a few days ago, and so I asked Eloisa to take her into a separate room.

When a subject asks for aura cleansing I ask him or her to lie on the floor inside a small, dark room. I then light seven tea candles—each candle corresponding to a color of the rainbow, i.e., red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet—and place them in seven colored glass holders. These are placed on the subject’s body and aligned on his or her chakra areas, or energy centers. The subject is led through a progressive relaxation exercise, brought to the Silva state of alpha (simulating the hypnogogic and hypnopompic states), and then left inside the room for 30 minutes. The candle flames are programmed to cleanse, and afterwards balance and fortify, the subject’s chakras. Since, as in candle burning or candle magic, candle flames signal to the astral world that a prayer is being announced to the cosmos, the subject’s intention is amplified and delivered to helpful entities who proactively assist in the manifestation of the subject’s wishes. And since, as in mirror-gazing (or mirror-scrying), candle flames are also invitations to helpful entities on the astral plane, it is not uncommon for these entities to reveal their presence via the subject’s psychic senses and deliver significant messages to him or her.

Whenever a subject expresses that the candlelight is distracting, the subject is blindfolded. When a subject is not blindfolded I find that it is advantageous for him or her to locate a big mirror inside the room within his or her range of physical vision. The mirror may or may not be used by the entity(ies) for visual manifestation.

After setting up the necessary paraphernalia Eloisa left Andree alone inside the room and timed her for half an hour. I had instructed Andree to go to alpha and told her that, during this time, she would be approached and addressed by at least one of her spirit guides.

Later she would report to me that she had seen and spoken with her daughter, who had been killed in an accident on a ranch five years ago.

The year after her daughter died Andree contacted me and asked that the Questors hold a session in her house in San Juan. That was the first time I saw her, and it was evident to me that she was full of anger and pain because she was still unable to accept the manner of her daughter’s death. She could not let go despite the Questors’ collective support of her, even throughout the entire semester that she was enrolled in my Magic class.

After the cleansing exercise, however, Andree came up to me, her eyes brimming with tears. She said that, while she was waiting for a spirit guide, her daughter walked into her field of vision, told her how much she loved her, and expressed her wish that she fall in love again and resume living a normal life.

A group of UP students came to interview the Questors that evening. Later Eloisa dispatched four teams: one to Ortigas Center, another to Sikatuna Village in Quezon City, and two to Taytay.

I had informed Ella that I was not planning to go on any quest that night. Tommy’s father had died, after a lingering illness, a week ago, and this was the only night I could be free to visit him and his family at the funeral chapel.

Andree offered to drive me to Funeraria Paz, on Araneta Avenue. Tommy met us at the door to the chapel and introduced us to his mother and sisters. Other siblings were expected to fly in from abroad. Their father’s remains would be cremated on Wednesday.

I stepped up to the coffin of Tommy’s father and said a prayer. A feeling of love and peace washed over me, and I knew that, while the departed had “moved on” and “to the light”, he was very much present to provide the bereaved consolation and guidance.

While were seated at the pews Tommy explained to us the meanings of the Chinese characters emblazoned in gold on the red banners flanking his father’s coffin. He also explained to us the difference ceremonies involved in Chinese funerals. Andree seemed particularly interested in a small altar that had been set up in front of the coffin. A framed photograph of Tommy’s father, an incense burner, and the red, wooden pwei, divination blocks attributed to the Taoist deity Ma-Tzo, had been set on it.

I briefly paused from work the morning of Wednesday, September 29. I thought of Tommy, and that his father’s remains were being cremated that morning. Once again I said a prayer, and I sent Tommy and his family rays of protective and healing light.

Tommy would take a respite from questing for two months in deference to his mother’s wish that the family observe a period of mourning.

The evening of Saturday, October 2, the Questors held oracle readings in Malate, in connection with a special event organized by San Miguel Corporation. Two quests were scheduled that day: one in Sikatuna Village, the other in Pampanga.

After my Psychology of Communication class that evening I conducted a mirror-gazing exercise and an on-site quest for eleven adult trainees. A group of UST students arrived to interview some of the Questors for their class project.

George and I attended a family reunion the morning of Sunday, October 3. After lunch we proceeded to the Questors’ meeting place in Quezon City. Butch conducted another session in medieval sword fighting with Eloisa, Mikah, and Ella. Wendell dropped by to watch, but I ended up teaching him how to refine his card reading while we waited for the end of the sword fighting lesson. Mikha drove Ella and me to Cubao later that evening.

Wednesday, October 6, I received an urgent call from Sister Therese E., a Catholic nun of the novitiate of L. According to her one of their novices, a Sister Leticia A., had been possessed by a maleficent spirit. A charismatic prayer group had tried laying hands on her in order to heal her, to no avail.

Since I had to be at work all of that day I phoned Eloisa to arrange a consultation with Sister Leticia. Eloisa contacted Sheila and two other Questors to meet the novice, who was escorted by two other nuns, Sister Martha I. and Sister Rebecca I.

That same evening another group of Questors visited Pepe and Nene Pestaño, who had requested that a return quest be scheduled at their residence in Xavierville.

Thursday, October 7, Michael and Connie were interviewed on Munster Radio for an October, pre-Halloween program. (I have since that time discouraged the Questors from making any kind of appearance on or about Halloween, since this associates them with sensationalism and disassociates them with spirituality.)

That Saturday, October 9, Marissa Pestaño, Phillip’s sister, visited us to schedule yet another quest at her parents’ residence and a congregate quest at their family warehouse in Parañaque. According to her the warehouse, which was dominated by a multitude of elementals, was generating so much negative energy that workers were always in a surly mood and had begun to pick fights with one another. All this was affecting the stability of their business enterprise.

The Questors were interviewed by a group of students from DLSU Plaridel. They had one other consultation that evening, after which they were dispatched in three teams to Parañaque, Cainta, and Caloocan.

Saturday, October 16, was a rainy day. Ces Drilon and her TV crew came to videotape an interview with me for their Halloween special on Pipol, the last TV interview I would ever grant anyone. That same evening the Questors held a congregate quest that Roger had arranged in an abandoned house in San Juan. I invited Ces and her companions to join the Questors, but they declined due to the rain. (They would shoot a return quest in that same house, however, the following week.)

The Questors’ schedule overflowed with media appointments as the days drew closer to Halloween, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day. Saturday, October 23, Channel 5’s Extra! Extra! took footage of the Questors on the case of a haunted house in Bulacan and Pipol took more shots of the Questors in action before the teams were dispatched that evening. The next evening, Sunday, October 24, Pipol followed Andree, Amy, and me to a full-moon celebration in Quezon City, during which I gave a lecture-demonstration. Tuesday, October 26, Pipol resumed taking shots of me at Ateneo and in my apartment. Thursday, October 28, Kontak 5 shot a short interview with me at home. The following day, Friday, October 29, Pipol shot a quest at Roger’s family’s abandoned house in San Juan; Brigada Siyete took along with them some Questors for a scanning in Cherry Hills, Antipolo; and Michael and Tommy appeared in a trailer for a TV feature titled Pinoy Ghostbusters. That same evening the Rotary Club of Kamuning West had me picked up at DLSU after my SHAMANS class and brought me to a Chinese restaurant on Morato. On the way there the traffic had really gotten heavy, and it took us two hours to get to the restaurant. I felt weak and exhausted, and in the middle of the trip considered going home and standing up the club, but the better part of me won this internal argument, and I survived the night without disappointing anyone. The next day, Saturday, October 30, a small crew from Channel 7 visited me at home and shot yet another short interview. That very evening the Questors formed three circles at the Pestaño warehouse in Parañaque; Mae A., one of my Independent Research students and an Ateneo Communication senior, joined one of the circles and channeled and elemental; these quests were shot by ABS-CBN’s Correspondence.

Although I stayed home to rest all of Sunday, October 31, radio people managed to reach me for patch-up interviews on my landline. At 9:15 AM I was on a DZXL block-timer with Congressman Jesli Lapus; at 12:15 noon on the same stations Anak Ng Masa with Jude Estrada, Micky Ferriols, and Benjoe Alejandro; at 1:30 PM on a program hosted by Congressman Dondon Bagatsing and Councilor Don Bagatsing; at 5:30 PM on DZMM’s Pinoy Psychology with Joebart Bartolome.

(I look back at this episode as a protracted nightmare. I realized that I was being used as an instrument to miseducate the masses, rather than enlighten them, by allowing media practitioners to continue encouraging them to fear life after death and beings on the astral plane. My participation in such events had another one, unfortunate result: succeeding applicants for training were comprised of dysfunctional persons whose sole ambition was to become media stars. I need to state here that, should you happen to see, in any form of media, anyone who claims that he or she is a Spirit Questor, I immediately disclaim that that person was ever my student or trainee.)

In the meantime Ella and the members of Luna y Sol gathered at the rest house in Antipolo, once again, to celebrate Paggunita (The Season of Reminiscing). I was in such a surly mood after having so thoughtlessly given in to the media blitzkreig that I became upset that Ella, who was still in training, attended this event without first asking my permission. When I am training someone, I seem to resent it when they go off on their own without my knowledge, with or without other Questors. I also do not like it when they pick up bits and pieces from other “teachers” during the time that they are undergoing training under me—I consider this most undisciplined. I prefer that they learn all that they must learn directly from me, without distortions. My full training program covers a period of two years, after which I “set free” the trainees, and they may go then if they want to.

I chastised Ella for having done this. I also cautioned her against hanging out with observers who were joining our quests merely as weekend “gimmicks”.

Paggunita culminated at midnight with a divination session, during which the Questors were approached by one of my spirit guides and given guidelines for the rest of the year.

That night I received a text message from Ella that read, “Do you have work on Monday? May I have an individual training session?”

I phoned her and said that I was available. We agreed to meet after lunch at the rear entrance to Ali Mall Shopping Complex.

The morning of the following day, Monday, November 1, DZXL called me once again and patched me up with Rolly Gonzalo’s radio program “In Forum” to answer questions from listeners; this was a commitment I had made two weeks earlier and could not renege on. After lunch that day my nephew Bill offered to drive me to Ali Mall Shopping complex to pick up Ella, and afterwards take is to the Questors’ meeting place. Ella, who walked all the way from Oxford Street to the mall, arrived after ten minutes.

Since Ella had attended at least two seasonal celebrations I thought that her training session that day should be on the Philippine calendar of seasons. I did not have to lug all of our equipment to the training venue. I have a portable, miniature, ritual set that I use for solitary practice—and that can be comfortably used by two—that fits inside a small wooden case. While going through each ritual I stopped, from time to time, in order to explain to Ella what we were doing, what was happening, and why. I also explained to her that the Questors and I do not practice any of these rituals as reflections of our religion but simply as attunements to Nature. We use terms such as “the male archetype within” and “the female archetype within”, for instance, and ensure that these are Asian, if not Southeast Asian.

The sun had set by the time Ella and I finished up. We took a taxi to Cubao. We window-shopped for everyday items that, I pointed out, could actually be used as magical implements. At that time she had, in her collection, only a borrowed deck of cards, a ritual dagger, and a small crystal ball.

We supped at Yum-Yum, Rustan’s, and discussed her progress and how she was feeling about it thus far. Her individual training that day was only the first of a long series of individual training sessions.

The morning of Thursday, November 11, I gave a lecture-demonstration for a huge group of National Book Store section heads on the penthouse of National Book Store Superbranch, in Cubao. Both Anvil’s marketing consultant and National Book Store had arranged this session for me so that the book store network’s section heads would have a deeper understanding of the subject matter of my books and could better answer questions for walk-in customers. At the end of the session I told them that if customers had questions they could not answer, they could simply refer them to me. I wrote my cell phone number of the whiteboard..

The evening of Saturday, November 13, I conducted yet another training session for a new group that had recently joined the Questors, composed of Boom G. (a Miriam College Mass Communications sophomore), PJ D. (a UST Biochemistry sophomore), Mike G. (an Ateneo Legal Management junior), Kit E. (a UP Tourism sophomore) and Bhonny C. (an Ateneo Math sophomore).

That evening, Eloisa dispatched one team to UP Village, another to Ortigas Center. A congregate quest with three circles was held in Las Piñas much later.

The morning of Sunday, November 14, Roger and Lee picked me up at my apartment once again. We proceeded to the Questors’ meeting place for a whole-day training program with all three training groups: Ella’s group, the group that followed Ella’s, and Boom’s group. Among the topics we covered that day were banishing magic using black candles and candle magic using birthday candles and red, yellow, white, blue, and black triangle burners.

Roger had asked me whether we could consecrate his new card deck, one that he had asked an aunt to purchase for him when he was in the United States two weeks ago. It was an extremely dark deck. He had been reluctant to even open it and look at its cards and manual, and insisted that I do this for him.

I asked the Questors to form two circles in the middle of the room. In the inner circle I located myself north, Roger east, Ella south, and PJ west. I lit candles inside four lanterns with doors that I use for ceremonial magic with the Mages of The Dawn.

The cards were rendered in surrealist art, their backs and borders coated in simulated silver leaf. Sometime during the ritual I drew one card each for myself, Roger, Ella, PJ, and the other trainees. I was surprised to learn over the following months that we could use the same cards, even when drawn from decks of other names, to communicate with one another. The card that can be used to communicate with me is The Star.

Neil, Pats, and Candice dropped off Ella and me in Cubao after our session. As usual, we window-shopped for magical implements. We went to Ali Mall Shopping Complex to check out some silver jewelry before having a brief supper.

I was unable to leave Ateneo’s campus immediately after my Design and Management of Training Programs class on the evening of Saturday, November 20. Cody A., a former Questor, visited me in my office prior to the Days with the Lord anniversary Mass that was scheduled to be held the same evening, and that he was attending, on the College Covered Court, beside the Communication building. Terrence had gone off to attend the Mass; I had promised to wait for him because we were having dinner at Behrouz, a small, Persian restaurant off Morato, later that evening.

Perhaps I should mention here that Terrence is a popular singer and actor, and that Team Alpha, which he belongs to, is composed of Questors whose identities are not revealed to the public at any time, for various reasons.

I have known Terrence ever since he was in sixth grade. He played the lead in a musical play I had written for Ateneo Children’s Theatre, where I was resident playwright for eleven years. Terrence graduated from Ateneo’s School of Arts and Sciences last year. He had enrolled in my Psychology of Communication and Visual Communication classes. He joined the Questors because, when he was ten, a tikbalang latched on to him, manifesting to him as a maleficent voice. The tikbalang constantly teased him and caused him mental torture. Its activity peaked when Terrence was in his senior year in high school. I taught Terrence, several years too late, how to harness the tikbalang and make it an ally in his creative work.

Terrence eventually became a channel. I had brought him with Eloisa and Michael to two quests in Cagayan de Oro City last year. As I have mentioned, he recently came back from a series of quests in Zamboanga City. He was now teaching on a full-time basis at the Department of English Literature.

After the Days Mass Terrence and I proceeded to the Questors’ meeting place. May had already gathered there, including Roger and Lee, who were DLSU Daysers and also attended the Mass.

I took Ella aside and had a long talk with her that evening. She had a dissatisfied air about her. I knew that, the day before she had been expecting Melito A. (an Ateneo college sophomore and Business management major), the boy she had been going out with, to ask her to go steady with him. I asked her about it, and she said it was “a disaster” because his parents didn’t want him going steady with anyone. She said, however, that they were still good friends and “happy the way things are”.

Looking back through my journals, I recall that that was the night I had actually given Ella certain guidelines to remember as a trainee:

First, the trainer and the trainee must be willing and able to sustain a mental, intellectual, and non-emotional relationship between them against all odds.

Second, the trainer should be adept in the execution and teaching of magic under the categories of five elements: earth, air, fire, water, and spirit. The trainer should commence the trainee’s magical schooling with the trainee’s predominant element or elements—a trainee will usually already have two—and after the trainee has mastered these move on to magical training with the other elements, until the trainee has mastered, or has become adept in, all five elements.

A trainer therefore has the option to choose to have five trainees, each trainee representing one element, instead of only one.

A trainer and a trainee should share all knowledge with each other.

A trainer and a trainee must be able to communicate telepathically with each other. This may be reinforced by the trainer by his maintenance, casting of spells over, and lighting of candles in a specific formation of five triangles representing the trainee, on the trainer’s altar. This may also be reinforced the trainer and the trainee by their simultaneous maintenance of an astral ley line between themselves, anchored on two charged objects—inside their rooms, on their altars, or on their persons, by which they can bounce telepathic messages to each other.

A trainer and a trainee may be matched, among other means, by divination.

A trainer and a trainee should practice the discipline of magical silence.

Ideally, a trainer and a trainee should have shared a previous lifetime or should belong to each other’s karmic group, which may be determined by a series of exercises in past-life regression.

I informed Ella that I would not be questing that night. I invited her to join Terrence and me for dinner at Behrouz, but she said that she preferred to go on one of the quests scheduled that night, if I would allow her. Five quests were scheduled that evening: one in Diliman, another in Mandaluyong, a third in Pasay, a fourth in Sampaloc, and a fifth in Malate. I chose which quest she should go on, and I asked Eloisa to put her on that team.

Ella asked that I introduce her to Terrence, and I soon discovered why; Melito was in one of the English Literature classes that Terrence was teaching that semester.

Before we parted that night, Ella asked permission from me to inform her parents that she was now officially one of “my” trainees. Initially I did not consent to this. I articulated my apprehension that her parents would either not understand, or misconstrue, this arrangement. I also thought to keep the trainer-personal trainee relationship no big deal; it would create petty jealousies among the other trainees, if not among the other Questors. As time went by, however, Ella grew more and more defiant of this arrangement, and I myself eventually accepted that it is basically dishonest to keep such secrets. Two hundred years from now, after all, my narratives and poems about her, and my sketches and paintings of her, would still exist. She would always be a part of my history; I, of hers. People in the future, who have not yet been born and whom we shall never even meet, may happen to read this narrative among all my other works and will simply know that, once upon time, there was a girl named Ella, and that she was one of my trainees.

And if someone is your trainee—well, she is your trainee, and there are no two ways about it.

By the month of November I sensed that Ella had already informed her parents that she was “my” trainee. Fortunately I also sensed that they did not mind.

The morning of Sunday, November 21, Roger and Lee picked me up at my apartment. We met up with Tommy, Neil, Pats, and Candice. Other Questors trickled in for a series of video screenings and an afternoon session in emotional truth.

That morning, while the Questors were screening my videos in the studio, I began working on a portrait of Mae. She arrived for her first sitting with her boyfriend Bill M. (an Ateneo Development Studies senior). I met Mae’s parents for the first time later that morning, when they arrived to see how their daughter’s portrait was coming along.

Ella, Wendell, and some of their companions dropped by at lunch time en route to Ateneo’s campus, where the High School Department was celebrating the feast day of Christ the King.

The Questors trained through 6:00 PM that day.

Tuesday, November 23, a panel of Questors gave a talk on spirit questing during a Filipino class at DLSU. That Friday, November 26, another panel of Questors addressed a congregation of Jaycees in Caloocan City.

Saturday, November 27, after my Design and Management of Training Programs class I cancelled the Questors’ training session because Ella was not feeling well and wanted to go home. I forgot that I had invited Pam the previous night, in my DLSU SHAMANS class, to come that evening and join the training session that I had previously scheduled. I informed Pam that I would not be training that evening but that I would place her, instead, in one of three teams that were doing a congregate quest in Antipolo. Before the Questors were dispatched my nephew George drove Ella and me home. Pam rode with us, and then proceeded to Antipolo with George.

The congregate quest that was formed with three circles in Antipolo that night had been requested by the members of five houses in the neighborhood where channel Marvin lives. A group of warrior-like elementals residing there had been responsible for a series of infantile illnesses and deaths in the neighborhood.

I left my cell phone on that night but its battery drained off while I was sleeping.

The following morning, Sunday, November 28, Mae and her parents picked me up at my apartment for Mae’s second sitting for her portrait. Since I wanted to focus my attention on Mae’s portrait all of that morning I had scheduled the Questors to resume their training in the afternoon. I was, therefore, not expecting to see any of them until after lunch time.

While working on the portrait I suddenly remembered that I needed to recharge my cell phone battery. As soon as I plugged it in, the phone rang.

It was Pam. She was in tears. She had been trying to reach me since dawn. She came home from the congregate quest at 2:00 AM and was informed by a distressed household that her younger brother, 16-year-old Luke, had met an accident and had been brought to De Los Santos Medical Center.

Pam informed that Luke was lying in state at Loyola Memorial Chapels, on EDSA, and that her parents, Brent and Loida, asked for me to come. I said that I would be there as soon as I could. I told Mae and Bill that I would have to discontinue work on the portrait that morning. I rang up Neil, who was still at home and had just risen from bed, to come and pick me up so that we could go to the chapel.

While waiting for Neil to arrive, Mae and Bill asked me about Pam and my DLSU SHAMANS class.

“Would that be Jason’s sister?” Mae asked herself, aloud.

I learned that, like Jason, Mae was on the board of Aegis. Bill made a few calls on his cell phone and confirmed that Pam, indeed, was Jason’s sister, and that their brother Luke had died early that dawn in a car crash.

Neil, Pats, and Candice came by for me an hour later. We picked up Ella at her residence in Cubao. Tommy, who lives very near EDSA, met up with us at the chapel. Mae, Bill, and a group of Jason’s friends followed some time later.

Brent and Loida were out at the entrance to the chapels when we arrived. I introduced the Questors to them and then went into the chapel where Luke’s body was interred.

Only Jason and three or four other people were inside the chapel, which was still devoid of flowers. I walked up to the coffin and said a silent prayer for Luke. He was temporarily dressed in his Don Bosco High School gala uniform.

I escorted Pam to the coffin, explaining to her the importance of viewing a loved one’s remains. I asked her to remember everything, and to say a prayer for Anne.

Mae, Bill, and some of Jason’s and Mae’s colleagues at Aegis arrived about half an hour after we did. Jason sat with them in the middle pews on the right side of the chapel.

I had a long talk with Pam. She told me about the quest that she had joined the previous night. She said that, during the quest, one of the high-ranking elementals threatened, through the channel, that the illness and death that plagued the neighborhood would follow the Questors to their own homes. She asked me whether the elemental had, in effect, been responsible for Luke’s death.

I told Pam that the elemental could do no such thing. I said that the most that it could have done was access the impending event of the car crash on the astral plane and then relay this information, hoping that she would make an erroneous connection. I assured her that, while elementals can cause illnesses that may eventually lead to death, God created humans as higher beings whose destinies cannot be controlled by lower beings.

She seemed initially satisfied with my answer. Yet, she would be obsessed with this issue over the next two months. I asked her who the channel and facilitator were in the circle she had joined. However, since she did not yet know most of the Questors by their names and psychic abilities, she was unable to identify them.

The Questors and I left at noon, but I promised Pam that I would be back. Ella, Neil, Tommy, Pats, Candice, and I lunched at McDonald’s Timog. I asked them about the congregate quest in Antipolo the previous night. Chad had been the channel, Tommy the facilitator. I told them of Pam’s report, and asked Tommy whether he could corroborate any of it.

Despite my cautious grilling, Tommy, whom Pam had approached with the same questions at the chapel, denied that any of the elementals they conversed with had made such a threat. Later I would grill Chad on the same topic, and he would make the same denial.

Selo, Ella’s father, was celebrating his birthday that evening, and so we brought Ella home since she could not join us for training that afternoon. Sheila, PJ, Roger, Boom, Kit, Mike G., Bhonny, Ola, Joanne, Leo, and Lee were already waiting for us at our meeting place when we arrived. Neil and Tommy had texted them about our detour to the chapel.

Our training session that evening focused on the inner child, which included an exercise on fairy tales, re-authoring lifestyle patterns, and encountering the child within. I used a deck of inner-child cards for this session.

I was on leave from work the following day, Monday, November 29. George dropped me off at Loyola en route to a late lunch date with Rita B. (an Ateneo graduate student of the Department of Communication, a Questor, and a senior channel).

The front part of the chapel was now arrayed with sprays of flowers. Luke had been fully made up and clothed in a suit that had been cut out of pearl-white fabric. Two of his most recent photos were placed on top of his coffin.

I spent most of the afternoon with Brent and Loida. Jason was in school, Pam out looking for a black, nylon cord to string a crystal pendant I had given her. She came in much later and was surprised to see me. Unlike Jason she had decided to cut her classes at DLSU that day. She showed me a small news clipping containing a report on the car accident.

George and Rita came to pick me up at 5:00 PM. We stopped by for hot chocolate and coffee at a small shop on Morato before they took me to Maryhill, where I was to attend my evening class in Liturgical Theology. Later that night Ella, Sheila, Tommy, Beil, Pats, Candice, Boom, PJ, Mike G., Kit, and Bhonny picked me up at the school for a quest that had been scheduled in Urdaneta Vilalge, Makati.

I could not say no to this weekday quest because its agent had been referred to me by an uncle who is a Jesuit priest and a close friend of the agent’s family. Mr. Panos A., who managed several successful business enterprises including a mountainside resort in Davao City, suffered a fatal heart attack while playing tennis at a private club a year ago. According to Nettle, his widow, two members of the family, their younger daughter Lisbeth, and their only son, Ice, and psychic friend of Lisbeth, Liana, could sense his presence in the family bar area and in the master’s study.

Roy, who would be our primary channel that evening, was waiting for us at the gate to Urdaneta Village. We picked him up and proceeded to the A. residence.

Nettle, Lisbeth, and Liana were in the living room when we arrived; Ice drove in much later. We decided to hold the quest inside the den. It was much more quiet there, and darker. When we formed a circle I realized that it was a huge one, and regretted that I had brought along too many Questors with me.

After we had turned off the lights I asked Roy to lead the group through a visualization exercise to activate the psychic vision of everyone in the circle, including our agents. As soon as he had finished Ice walked in through the door and joined us. I then instructed Rey to begin the session.

The quest began with fits and starts. I was outside the circle, as usual, and drawing cards from a deck. I sensed, at first, a lot of negative energy inside the den, and I knew that this was affecting Roy’s reception of Panos’s spirit, who I knew was there but, it seemed, would not converse with us.

Ice volunteered to step out of the den, explaining that he might be producing this negative energy since he had had an argument with a co-manager earlier that day. After Ice stepped out I still felt that there were too many persons in the circle. Yet, I did not have the heart to ask anyone to leave the room.

I drew more cards. I wondered, aloud, whether Roy wanted me out of the den. I picked up, from the cards, that he was beginning to feel intimidated by my comments, and that channeling tonight might be easier for him if I gave him free rein.

Roy concurred.

As I rose and crossed the room to get to the door Liana spoke up and said that she was beginning to feel dizzy. She was also very much afraid. She said that she could feel a throbbing pain in her chest and on the right side of her head. I told her that it was all right; these feelings were not of her own body but were the spirit’s manner of relaying information about his own body at the time that he died. (Nettle later explained that when Panos collapsed, the right side of his head hit the ground.)

Liana channeled Panos’s spirit that night, with Roy facilitating.

The quest lasted about an hour. Afterwards we were served a midnight snack in the dining room, and Nettle gave us little tumblestones of smoky quartz from her collection of crystals.

Nettle confessed to me that she was disappointed that Liana and not one of the Questors had done the channeling that night, since Liana knew the family and may have given information biased by her previous knowledge of the family. We both agreed that I and only two other Questors should come back for a return quest a week or two later.

Nonetheless, that return quest did not materialize. I had picked up so much information about the family from drawing cards, from reading the family members’ minds, and from memory embedded in Nettle’s crystals that I decided to leave things alone. I sensed that Nettle actually wanted me to “relay” information that Ice should transfer the management of the family’s financial affairs, which Ice had taken over, to herself.

I sent an e-mail message to my uncle and apologized that our quest was not as successful as the agent had expected.

The morning of Wednesday, December 1, screenplay writer Ricky L. called me up on my cell phone regarding the case of two participants of his writing workshop who had spontaneously “activated” their psychic abilities and had begun to access entities on his lot. Since I had to be at work and could not handle this, I referred the case to Eloisa and Mikah, who were available that day and visited the writers at Ricky’s home. I reminded Eloisa and Mikah that this had happened to us before—writers coming to us for “urgent” consultations with the hidden agenda of researching on the development of psychic abilities and studying the Questors’ process for stories of scripts that they were writing. I advised Eloisa and Mikha, as I had done before, to let the writers do most of the talking, provide standard answers and advice, not administer any of our exercises, and not hold a spirit quest.

Neil, Pats, and Candice picked me up at my work place 4:30 PM Thursday, December 2. We drove through the rush-hour traffic to pick up Tommy and Ella at their respective homes. It was, incredibly, 7:30 PM by the time we got to Ella’s place. We proceeded to Green Hills as quickly as we could to do some pre-Christmas window shopping, hoping that the shops would not be closing by the time we got there.

Pats helped Ella choose and buy for herself a new cell phone, since someone had accidentally sat on her old one, damaged its LED display, and rendered it incapable of receiving text messages. I had been bugging her since then to get a new one.

I bought us dinner at KFC I Green Hills. We were all in high spirits, especially Ella, who had informed us, after we picked her up, that she and Melito were finally on. We all congratulated and teased her for this.

The company dropped me off on P. Tuazon, and then Ella on Exford, before going back to Green Hills on a quest that had been scheduled by Bambi. The quest would be held at a private residence in which a baby girl was repeatedly falling ill because of “a curse” that had been imposed on the family.

Later that night I sent Ella a text message: Again, congratulations.

The night of Saturday, December 11, I took with me Ella, Pam, Mikah, Sheila, and M (a University of the Philippines [UP] Broadcast Communication sophomore) on a quest that also involved a sick child, in San Juan.

Six quests had been scheduled in different locations that evening: Multinational Village, Quezon City; Caloocan City; Angono; Muntinlupa; San Juan; and Cubao. I chose not to take my team on the Cubao quest because its site was too near my apartment and I did not want to be in a situation in which an agent could visit me at home conveniently and too often. I went on the San Juan case because it had been scheduled for Mamel Z., a cousin of Gwenn G., marketing consultant at Anvil Publishing Inc. Then younger of Mamel’s two boys, six-year-old Marco, had developed a lingering fever and skin rashes that could not be cured by at least two doctors. Marco had been brought in and out of hospital and subjected to several blood tests. Yet, no one could come up with a correct diagnosis or trace the boy’s symptoms to their origin.

Marco also began “hearing and seeing things”, frequently pointing to figures that “talked to him” yet remained invisible to everyone else inside the house. It was at this point that Gwenn gave Mamel a copy of Ruel S. De Vera’s The Spirit Quest Chronicles I. In addition, one of the school bus drivers at La Salle Greenhills, where both Marco and his elder brother, eight-year-old Miggy, went to school, suggested to Mamel that she contact me.

As we rode through the labyrinthine streets of San Juan, I stayed in constant contact with Mamrel on my cell phone. She was waiting for us at the gate when we arrived. I introduced myself and the Questors to her. Inside the house, which was surrounded by a well-kept and romantically-lighted garden, were her parents and her husband, Vic. We sat in the living room, where they conducted a full briefing.

I had brought with me a black candle to banish the negativity inside the house. I asked Vic to wet the wick with his saliva and turn the candle round, counterclockwise, three times. I then asked him to set up the candle at the front doorstep, propping the front door open with a wooden chair. The candle would remain lit until it burned out completely, after which I instructed Vic to bury the residue in the earth.

The candle flame sputtered and leapt. I asked M to sit beside it and tend it, at the same time visualizing the negativity inside the house exiting through the front door and going into the black candle, and afterwards burning in its flame and dissipating with the smoke. Since she is a theater actress and can channel her emotions at will, she was able to do this effectively.

I went back inside the house and asked Mikah to read cards for Mamel and her parents to obtain a general picture of Marco’s situation. I left Pam with Mikah just so she could observe her style of laying out, reading, and interpreting cards.

I then asked Vic to take Ella, Sheila, and me upstairs, to the boys’ bedroom. We pussyfooted our way up the staircase and into the room in order not to wake the brothers, who were fast asleep: Miggy on a single bed against a wall, Marco on a trundle bed under the window. I lit a cotton ball dipped in oil on a small prayer burner and instructed Ella, in a hushed voice, to move it in a counterclockwise direction over Marco’s sleeping body while visualizing the ailment going with the flame and into a purple, glass ball in my hand. I asked Sheila again in a hushed voice, to oversee the energy flow and guide it.

We did all this in silence. The last thing I wanted was for the boys, especially Marco, to wake up and see three strangers inside their bedroom. Sometime during this ritual, however, Miggy briefly opened his eyes and raised his head, but, fortunately, closed his eyes and went right back to sleep again, probably thinking that he was dreaming.

I asked Sheila to say when. As soon as she felt that we had transferred the boy’s ailment from his body to the glass ball she signaled us to stop. I then went downstairs and submerged the ball in a pail of water mixed with rock salt, to cleanse it.

Both Sheila and I had scanned Marco and determined that he was “being favored” by a resident gnome who had no intention of harming him, and, on the contrary, had endowed him with a gift of healing that would activate as soon as he came of age.

Mikah had finished reading cards by the time we went downstairs. I asked the questors to scan the garden and the backyard and decide whether it would be necessary to form a circle and converse with the resident gnome. I waited by the front doorstep while they did this. When they came back they reported that the lot had many resident elementals, especially fairies and gnomes.

When I asked Sheila whether we should converse with the gnome that had “favored” Marco, she replied in the affirmative. It seemed that, while the gnome was a high-ranking one, it had no idea that it had been causing the family much distress.

We brought garden chairs to a small grove on the west side of the house, which Sheila identified as the best location to hold our quest. I located Sheila, who would function as our primary channel, directly in front of me, Ella to my right and Mikah to my left, Pam to Sheila’s left and Mamel to her right, and M between Mikah and Mamel. Afterwards we asked one of the household help to douse the garden lights.

I waited until Sheila was ready, then asked her to invite the gnome into our circle. It came in willingly. We did a round of introduction and narrated the sequence of events that led to our visit. It affirmed, as Sheila and I already, intuitively, knew, that it developed a fondness for Marco, who often played in the grove, and it sought to endow him with psychic gifts—psychic visions and psychic hearing, for starters. I explained to the gnome that all this had inconvenienced not only Marco but his parents, who had suffered through the boy’s fever and outbreak of rashes and had already spent a fortune paying hospital bills. It apologized, reiterating that it actually meant the boy no harmd.

I had asked Mamel and Vic, after the Questors scanned their garden and backyard, whether they were comfortable with the situation at hand, that a resident gnome had was endowing Marco with healing abilities that would remain dormant for some time but would activate after his mid-teens. Had they said that they were not, I would have offered to shut down the boy’s psychic abilities. They said, however, that they did not mind at all. In view if this we asked the gnome to desist from its manifestations, since they terrified the boy, for the time being.

In the end it was the gnome who thanked us, and not we who thanked it, for the quest. It gave us a boost in psychic abilities. It also instructed me, through Sheila, to charge two green crystals, one of which I would give to Ella, the other to Sheila.

One of the questions that Mamel and Vic asked me before we left that night was about the first rashes that broke out on Marco’s feet some months ago. According to Mamel the rashes covered the boy’s feet in such a way that it looked like he was wearing “a pair of red socks”. I explained to them that the rashes were symbolic. They indicated the ability to cross boundaries, to travel astrally, and to straddle both the physical and spiritual planes.

The couple served us a particularly delicious spaghetti dinner, during which we learned that Mamel, who is no mean cook, actually caters food for special gatherings.

Our teams topped by for coffee, milk, and apple cider at a café in Green Hills. Afterwards Pam drove me home.

I had already undressed for bed when the earthquake of December 12 occurred. My first impulse was to check whether everyone inside the house was all right. Only Catherine, my daughter-in-law Ivy’s cousin, was awakened by the series of tremors. My younger adopted son, Chito, his wife, Ivy, and their daughters Angelique Pearl and Aubrey Rose, were fast asleep. Some of our next-door neighbors had gone out into the street.

I dialed Ella’s landline to find out whether she was already home. Selo answered the phone; he, too, had been awakened by the earthquake. I assured him that one of the Questors was taking Ella home and that she would be there any moment soon. Just as I said this, as a matter of fact, Ella walked in through their front door.

Only Pam, who was at the wheel, had sensed the earthquake. She had just stopped the car outside Ella’s house and asked her companions whether they had felt anything. Ella had replied that the car, which had rolled over a mound of sand on the shoulder of the street, might simply have slid over the sand.

Half an hour later Neil called on my cell phone to inquire whether I was all right. He and his teammates had just finished up with their quest in Muntinlupa and were on their way home. Fifteen minutes later, Pam also called. She had dropped off the rest of the team at the Questors’ meeting place, where Mikha had parked her car, and was just turning into their driveway at Golfers Villas.

One month later I called up Gwenn and Mamel to ask about Marco. According to both of them he was completely well and doing fine.

Friday, December 17, the SHAMANS class and I held our last meeting at DLSU. After class, Pam, Jing, and I stopped at Burger King on E. Rodriguez for a light supper. I envied Pam and Jing for having a prospectively restful weekend ahead of them, while I not only had a Theological Anthropology class the following morning; I was also scheduled to go on a night quest in two private residences in Tarlac, involving a Chinese matriarch who had suddenly and unexpectedly passed away.

Ella and I agreed to have lunch the following day at Shin Ramei Tei, a Japanese restaurant on Katipunan Avenue that Eloisa and Mikah, who as also auditing my Design and Management of Training Programs class, frequented. While supping at Burger King Pam, Jing, and I were so engrossed with anecdotes from our SHAMANS class that I paid no attention to my cell phone, which had already begun rejecting text messages, most of which were from Ella.

I checked out all of the messages that I received that night. In addition to having called on my landline while I was still at Burger King, Ella sent me five messages that read: May I invite Melito to have lunch with us tomorrow?

I text-messaged her back: I would be greatly honored to meet Melito.

Before hitting the sack I hastily packed an overnight bag and a bag of implements for the Tarlac quest the following night. These I would tote all the way to my Theological Anthropology class, during which we screened a video on paradigm shifts, in the morning, Ella was with Melito, who was himself attending a Saturday class on Ateneo’s college campus. After my class at Maryhill I took an FX to Cubao and waited to get a cab whose driver was willing to take me to Katipunan through the holiday traffic.

I was still on P. Tuazon when Ella text-messaged me, asking for my location. She and Melito had gone on to Shin Ramen Tei and were already waiting for me. Ella informed me that Eloisa and Mikah, who had brought with them their own overnight bags for the Tarlac quest, were having lunch at a separate table in the same restaurant.

I arrived at the Japanese restaurant close to 1:00 PM. We nonetheless had a great lunch. It was also a pleasure to meet Melito, who is friendly, and who warmed up to me immediately. Later Eloisa would tell me how impressed she was at Ella’s regard for me as a second father, since she ensured that I met not only her parents but her first boyfriend.

I had wanted to take Ella with me to Tarlac. She and Melito, however, had planned to do some Christmas shopping in MegaMall. After we had eaten, Eloisa, Mikah, and I proceeded, under a heavy drizzle, to the Questors’ meeting place.

Although our agent had been waiting at our meeting place with his L-300, it took some time for our team, which would be composed of Eloisa, Mikah, Sheila, Rita, George, Jon, and Wesley, to assemble. While waiting for Jon and Wesley, who were the last to arrive, I called up Ella on her cell phone just to make sure that she and Melito had been able to get a taxi; they already were in one and were on their way to MegaMall.

Some of the Questors asked that they be allowed to grab a bite at a nearby, fast-food station. We left Quezon City, finally, at 6:30 PM. Chiqui, a senior Questor, would dispatch two other teams that evening: one to a bar in Sampaloc, Manila, which Pan would be in, the other to a residence in San Antonio Village, Makati.

Our team spent four hours on the road, stopped by for dinner at Max’s Restaurant in Tarlac at 10:30 PM, and rode through another hour and a half to the Chinese matriarch’s residence. The reason for this further delay was that a vehicular accident had occurred on MacArthur Highway; we saw its remnants as we passed by the site.

I text-messaged Ella the all throughout our trip to Tarlac, keeping her apprised of where we were and what we were going through. She was already in bed and ready to sleep, of course, by the time we were having dinner at Max’s. In a sense I was glad that she had been spared the experience of a “hardship quest”.

As for ourselves, we returned to Manila at noon time the following day.

We scheduled a “Fright Night”—an overnight training session designed to open the third eye of new trainees and introduce them to the concept of channeling—Wednesday, December 22, at Eloisa’s rest house in San Mateo. Juco N., whom I first trained when he was a 16-year-old high student at Malate Parish School, came to my apartment 11:30 that morning. Juco was now a freshman at NAMEI Polytechnic Institute in Mandaluyong.

Juco and I walked to the Mercury Drug branch on Aurora Boulevard, where Ella was waiting for us. We took a taxi to Angelino’s, on Katipunan Avenue, where we had a pasta lunch before proceeding to the Questors’ meeting place in Quezon City. We met up with Eloisa, Mikah, and Chad; Neil, Pats, and Candice; and Boom, PJ, Mike G., and Kit. We left Quezon City 2:30 PM and reached San Mateo an hour and a half later.

We were slightly delayed at the final leg of our journey by a funeral procession that was wending its way into one of the town cemeteries. As soon as we arrived at the rest house I divided up the trainees into three subgroups and had them play, over the next hour, with six sets of right-brain-hemisphere parlor games that I had brought with me. In the meantime Eloisa, Mikah, and Chad drove over to Eloisa’s house and the nearest grocery store to pick up our food and additional provisions for the night.

After the trainees had been sufficiently calibrated by the games I conducted two exercises designed to strengthen their powers of observation—a memorization exercise and a description exercise—using panels from a picture portfolio.

Using the same panels I then encouraged the trainees to gradually open the doors to their creative unconscious by asking them to give spontaneous titles to panels that I flashed before them. Following this, I asked each of them to recite a story with a beginning, middle, and end upon being shown yet other panels.

I repeated these exercises, this time switching from the portfolio panels to cards from a deck. After they were done reciting spontaneous stories with a beginning, middle, and end using three-card spreads, I instructed each one of them to connect with the person to their left and do, instead of a beginning-middle-end reading, a past-present-future reading, an origin-issue-outcome reading, and a problem-obstacle-resolution reading.

The three senior Questors rejoined us during the session on clinic-ing card readings that followed. Most of the trainees had brought their own card decks, but I had also brought along several spare decks that they either had never seen or were not familiar with so that they would not rely on habitual interpretations or on the manual-meanings that they had picked up.

To simplify the learning process I recommended that we all use the seven-card, chakra spread for the session. The senior Questors and I first read cards for volunteers, after which each trainee was to read a spread for some other trainee. Comments by and interpretations from the observers augmented every reading. To end that afternoon’s activity I raffled off empty Habana cigar boxes that could be used as cases for card decks or magical implements, and some pieces of jewelry. The sun had set by the time we finished up with everyone.

That night we were to have the biggest full moon of the entire lunar year. Magic practitioner Marvy R. had sent me the following e-mail message from her home in the United States Sunday, December 12:

“This year’s December 22 winter solstice coincides with the full moon—a combination that happens only every three decades or so. But, that’s not the only celestial oddity for the day: The moon also reaches perigee, the point in which the moon’s orbit is closest to Earth. The moon will appear about 14% larger than it does at apogee, the point in its elliptical orbit when it is farthest from Earth. And since Earth is also several million miles closer to the sun at this time of the year than in the summer, the sunlight striking the moon is about 7% stronger, making it appear all the brighter. So, this solstice, which brings together the year’s lowest sun and longest night, comes at the same time as the closest moon—and a full moon to boot.

“The last time the full moon, lunar perigee, and winter solstice fell on the same day was in 1866—133 years ago. But, even then, in 1866, the moon merely reaches its closest approach of the month. On December 22, 1999, the moon will be at its nearest point of the year. It’s the kind of even that would have driven ‘primitive’ (whatever that means) cultures bonkers. In fact, the last time this happened, on December 21, 1866, the Lakota (Sioux) took advantage of the exceptionally bright moonlight and staged a devastating retaliatory ambush on soldiers in the Wyoming Territory.

“The day of Earth’s maximal tilt (when the axis is directed most fully away from the sun) will also combine with a very close sun, which reaches its nearest point to the earth, 12 days later. The confluence of all these forces at ‘the very least’ will brew up proxigean tides, also called ‘closest of the false moon’ tides. They will extend a few, but crucial, inches farther than normal, ranging from reaching the boardwalk highs to lows that uncover rarely exposed marine life. If you add a low-pressure storm-at-sea scenario to this day, unusually strong tides could go over the edge and even earthquakes occur more often during strong tide effects.

“On December 21 and 22, a full moon will rise just as the sun goes down in its leftmost position of the year along the horizon. Look for an eastern looking, hiking or padding or being or praying place, and between December 20 and December 24 you can enjoy some good nature activities in the moonshine…” (Attributed to Theodore Parker, Darien De Lu, Patricia Lay-Dorsey, Ginger Collins, and others, on the Internet)

I led a group ritual using a leather chessboard that I always use for magic. I asked the trainees to choose chess pieces to represent their selves and place them around miniature castles that I gave them, to represent their houses or their selves, in the middle of the board.

Each trainee wrote a wish for manifestation on a slip of paper, which I put inside a stained-glass manifestation pyramid. We then lit four candles and four kind of incense in burners at the cardinal directions of the chessboard. Later we burned the slips of paper in an iron receptacle and threw the ashes outdoors, to the east.

We broke for supper, after which we gathered round one of my three talking boards to access a spirit guide. We made three unsuccessful attempts: too many entities wanted in, including one with extraterrestrial characteristics and a dark one that suddenly loomed in the doorway and gave Eloisa and Mikah the creeps.

Without informing the group I silently invited G., one of my spirit guides, to come and converse with us on the board. She did so, and things went a-hopping; the quality and style of the messages spelled out by the crystal disc changed.

I asked Chad to describe what he saw. He gave an exact description of G., whom he had first met during one of our training sessions in Quezon City. I then asked the trainees if any one of them could tell me her name.

Ella spontaneously responded with a name similar to G.’s. I was impressed, but I was not yet satisfied.

The group carried on a consultation with G. After some time I silently invited W., another of my spirit guides, to come and converse with us on the board. She did so; again, the quality and style of the messages spelled out by the crystal disc changed.

This time I informed the trainees that I had invited another spirit guide to the board. I did not ask any of the senior channels for a description. Instead I asked the trainees, again, if any one of them could tell me her name.

Again, Ella responded with a name similar to W.’s.

After the session on the talking board I divided up the group into subgroups of four, assigning one each to Eloisa, Mikah, Chad, and myself. I took, in my subgroup, Ella and PJ.

We turned off the house lights and stepped outside. The full moon was so bright that it bathed everything with its silvery luminescence. Each subgroup went off to a remote area outdoors, where the trainees would be given an opportunity to channel one or more entities. Since PJ could already channel I would focus my efforts on Ella.

Ella, PJ, and I walked towards the edge of the field and stopped a hundred meters away from an isolated bush, which I intuitively knew was the residence of an old, gnarled gnome. PJ was able to see it easily, Ella, in her mind and with some difficulty.

We formed a small, tight circle under the moonlight and held hands. I led Ella and PJ to alpha, and then asked Ella to keep her eyes closed and scan the immediate environment for entities. I could already see one standing behind her, against the stone fence. I waited for Ella to identify it.

She did.

“Male or female?” I asked.

“Male.”

“approximate age?”

“Mid-twenties.”

“Describe him.

“He’s wearing a light blue, cotton barong. Dark pants.”

I asked for a name, but Ella was unable to get it. PJ, however, obtained it for us. We determined that this was the spirit of the person whose funeral cortege we had followed that afternoon.

“Is he earth-bound?”

“How do I determine that?”

“Inspect him visually, in your mind, and interpret what you see symbolically. If he looks disheveled, wounded, covered with blood, suffering or undergoing any kind of intense emotion, he is earth-bound. If he looks bright and clean and at peace, he is not earth-bound.”

“He looks clean.”

“All right. Now tell me what caused his death.”

“How do I do that?”

“Listen to your body. In which part or parts of your body do you feel some kind of pain?

“Don’t be afraid of this part of the exercise. It’s not really your body that’s in pain. The spirit is only using it to relay information.”

“My stomach. My back.”

“Are you able to interpret these and tell us the actual sickness or cause of death?

She was unable to, but, again, PJ supplied the information.

“Now tell me the story of his life,” I said, not without anticipating that she would be flabbergasted by this request.

A skeptical pause.

“He’s telling me things, but I can’t understand them. He’s mumbling his words.”

“You don’t have to use your psychic ears,” I said. “Use your intuition. Clear your mind. Suspend your judgment. Wait for the first bit of information to come through. Don’t create it. Don’t consciously think of it. Just wait for it. Then pull it in.

“Recall the exercise we did earlier today with the picture cards. Open the door to your unconscious, then to the collective unconscious.

“And tell me a story.”

“Something about his family—“

“—Go on.”

And she was able to.

After some time, she spoke up again.

“Something’s happening to me. I’m growing bigger.”

“It’s okay, let it happen. I’ll explain what that is in a moment. Just keep describing what you see.”

“I’m becoming a giant. I’m becoming taller than the trees.”

“Look around you. What do you see?”

“I can see the cemetery.”

“Do you see the cemetery as it is at this time of night or as it was earlier today?”

“At this time of night.”

“Are you looking at the cemetery through your own eyes, do you think, or through the spirit’s?”

“My own.”

“Describe the cemetery.”

He did so.

“Are the people there?”

“No.”

“What is the predominant feeling?”

“Emptiness. Loneliness.”

Later I would explain that what she experienced that what she experienced was a form of astrally traveling in space, and that what she had accessed was the post-death trauma that a spirit undergoes due its change in existence.

There was not much issue over the young man’s death, and so I decided to move on to elementals. We invited the gnome in the bush to come and converse with us, but it would not.

PJ then said that an entity had been pestering him since we sat on the grass and formed our circle. I asked him to describe it. I knew that it was a tikbalang but did not yet volunteer this information. I asked Ella to attune to it and see if she could describe it further.

“See if you can send it to Chad’s subgroup,” I suggested.

He was able to do so, and grinned. Later, however, the tikbalang would come back to him, and I would have to tell him of my three previous experiences with tikbalangs.

Before ending our outdoor session I decided to subject Ella to one, final test.

“There’s a smudge on the stone wall behind you,” I said. “It’s shaped like a letter, and I’m looking at it, over your shoulder, right now. I want you to tell me what the letter is.”

She said, immediately, “R”.

She was right.

I was able to send her mental messages and she was capable of receiving them. That was the least we had accomplished that night. And I was satisfied.

The training group reconvened inside the rest house. While waiting for the last subgroup to end its session, Ella, PJ, and I once again consulted G. on the talking board. Our questions dealt mainly with the additional training that I was to give Ella and PJ. This time around, her messages were swift, eloquent, clear, and specific.

After our session on the board PJ informed me that the tikbalang snapped back to him like a rubber band and continued to pester him. He seemed to be distressed. I had to explain to him and to Ella that, as a general rule, every man is “pestered” by a tikbalang whenever he is undergoing a major transition or transformation in his life. I described three incidents in my own life when a tikbalang manifested itself to me. (Stories of The Moon: More Adventures of the Spirit Questors, co-authored with Michael Marlo R. Duque and Dion Michael Fernandez, Anvil Publishing Inc., 2000.)

Ella herself described an entity residing in her house which, from time to time, would climb in through her bedroom window. She requested me to mentally access it in order to determine whether it was a tikbalang. I said that I would do so from one of my altars at home, and that I would text-message her my findings. (It was not a tikbalang but a kapre, or tree spirit.)

I brought Ella and PJ to the loft of the rest house, where Eloisa had set aside one of the two bedrooms for me, and performed a tawas, or shamanic diagnosis, on PJ using a clear glass of water and a fresh egg. (Also in Stories of The Moon: More Adventures of the Spirit Questors.) I also showed them how to cleanse auras by cutting off black astral threads with a karma knife and afterwards vibrating tuning forks around auric shells.

I called it a day at 11:30 PM. Everyone else would bunk on the balcony, in the living room, and in the kitchen. I drifted off to sleep to the sounds of the trainees shuffling cards and playing board games on the ground floor.

The evening of Thursday, December 23, I called up aura reader Denia Claret to do a distant scanning on Ella, Pam, and two other trainees. She asked me to give her their full names and birthdays over the telephone. She proceeded to describe each one of them both physically and psychologically. I asked her whether I was on the right track in having selected them for training. I was relieved to be told by her that all of them, especially Ella and Pam, would do fine. I said to her that I hoped she would actually be able to meet them some day.

Denia invited me and the Questors to join her husband, Jaime, and their family to visit the Holy Family Chapel in Bamban, Tarlac, on Tuesday, December 28, and celebrate its feast day.

Earlier that evening I was on the phone with Boom, who lives in his grandmother’s house since it is near Miriam College. He informed me that he was going to his dad’s house in Baesa, Quezon City, the following day, Friday, December 24, because his dad was sick and needed him to take him some medicine. I offered to go with him. He informed me that, after we visited his dad, we could check out an abandoned house that belonged to Norben O., a friend of his who was also a Mass Communications sophomore at Miriam College. The house had been used as a frat house in the 1960s and the 1970s and was the site of hazing, initiation rituals, gang rapes, and one or two possible homicides. Boom explained that he and his friends had stayed there overnight and had sensed hot and cold spots.

Boom picked me up at home after lunch the following day. He was with PJ, who wanted to check out the abandoned house with us. We proceeded to Baesa and actually spent most of the afternoon at Boom’s dad’s house. His dad, Noli G., is a painter. I found him to be a warm and friendly person, perhaps quite unlike his art, which is cold and dark and somewhat reminded me of some of my own.

Boom logged on his PC and drew up some shots that had been taken with a digital camera during a party recently held in PJ’s house. Among other young men and women in the shots were Mike G., Kit, and Ola. Boom and PJ wanted me to see the pictures, however, because, in all of Ola’s shots, there were at least three elementals prominently limned on the wall, above her head. PJ asked me whether the elementals were house residents or whether Ola had brought them with her. It seemed to me that Ola had not brought them with her, but that they had been with her for quite some time.

We stopped by Norben’s abandoned house later that afternoon. It was an old, early 1950s house, meaning that it was designed after the houses of the late 1940s, a charmingly dilapidated affair surrounded with trees and unkempt shrubs, and located in a quiet neighborhood. A tall, stone fence with a rusty, iron gate concealed it from view from the outside.

I soon learned that it was not the house itself that had been used as a frat house but the servants’ quarters behind it. Boom and PJ led me around the side of the house and showed me there. Like the house, the quarters also had two floors. The structure was plain and unpainted, and seemed to have been built merely as an afterthought. None of the doors were locked. Since we had obtained Norben’s permission to look over the place we walked through both floors, our footprints making patterns on the thick carpet of dust beneath us.

The ground floor was comprised of a narrow room that once served as a bedroom on the left, and a much wide room with a living area, a sink, and a wooden staircase that led to the upper floor. Upstairs there were three rooms: a hallway that the stairwell led to and two small bedrooms partitioned with single-walled plywood dividers rising a quarter short of the rain-tinted ceiling.

The ether was thick with memory, the atmosphere, heavily charged with negative energy. We walked through the rooms in a silence punctuated only by the sounds of our shoes scuffling on the wooden floor and the occasional buckling snaps of old tin and wood heaving in the heat. I sensed a lot of physical brutality there, some of it sexual, and at least one death, which I could not qualify.

Over an early evening meal at KFC on P. Tuazon I asked Boom and PJ whether they thought that we should hold a quest in the former frat house—not for Norben or his family, who had made it clear that they were not interested in whatever we would find there, but as a training exercise in accessing memory. They eagerly conceded. With Norben’s consent we scheduled a quest on the night of Monday, December 27. Kit and Bhonny would join us. I would take along Ella. Later, Maricris and PJ’s girlfriend would ask if they could join us; I consented, but they were unable to join us the appointed time and date for various reasons.

I was still on holiday leave Monday, December 27. The day dragged on through 5:30 PM, the projected pick-up time that Boom and I had agreed on. Due to the already consistently heavy traffic, however, Boom and Kit arrived at my apartment 6:15 PM. By this time Ella had anxiously text-messaged me at least three times, inquiring about my present location. We spent a tedious and incredible hour at the EDSA-P. Tuazon intersection. I text-messaged Ella as soon as we turned left on Ali Mall Shopping Complex towards the Mercury Drug branch on Aurora Boulevard. When we reached Oxford Ella was already standing at their front door, looking out for us.

We drove from Oxford to Marikina, where we picked up Bhonny, who unabashedly informed me that he had snuck away from home, at a local grocery store. Only then did we proceed to Norben’s abandoned house in Quezon City, where we would meet up with PJ, who had already been there the past two hours.

The house was steeped in pitch-darkness. Its silence seemed foreboding. I felt that it had been waiting for us—to enter without its permission, to make the first wrong move, to commit our first transgression. The power was off and so we lit candles in order to see more clearly around us. None of us had bothered to bring torches since we would most likely be using candles for he quest anyway.

We crept round the house to the servants’ quarters, which seemed even darker and more foreboding. PJ had arranged six chairs around a table in the living area on the ground floor. We sat round the table—I noted that PJ had wiped the chairs and table clean—and set up a candle in the middle.

I asked Ella, in preparation for the night’s activities, to read cards to determine the overall situation of the entities on site. She was the least biased among us, since, of the six of us, she was there for the very first time. She was able to affirm my initial impressions, that the atmosphere was filled mostly with memory, particularly of the fraternity group’s miscellany of goings-on in the servants’ quarters. While I had felt, in addition, that at least one death had occurred inside the building, I did not voice this out, and Ella made no mention of any such thing.

I read cards for each member of the group from my own decks, which I had brought along with other implements. Afterwards I took Ella outside and asked her to stand at the door to the narrow bedroom, which opened out into the concrete yard. I led her to alpha, then asked her to look straight ahead of her, into the opposite wall of the room.

The room was empty, damp, and grimy.

Yet, I asked her, “Describe the room.”

“The walls are yellow. There is a bed on the right side. A small table is beside it. One chair. A mirror and a calendar, both on the left side.”

“Is there anyone inside the room?”

“A lot of guys, a lot of movement. They’re all from different times, but I can see them together, all at once.”

“Wait until the other images fade away.”

A pause.

“Who do you see now?”

“One person. One guy.”

“Describe him.”

“T-shirt. Denim pants.”

“Approximate age.”

“Late teens or early twenties.”

“Clean or covered with blood?”

“Covered with blood.”

“His predominant emotion?”

“Anger.”

I terminated this scanning and asked her to go back to the living area. I then took PJ with me and asked him to go through the same process.

PJ accessed the same images: the room as it looked at least 20 years before, the superimposed bodies of young men, the angry young spirit.

I led Kit through the same exercise, having to use a quartz crystal egg to amplify his psychic vision, and then instructed Ella to lead Bhonny, and then PJ to lead Boom, to do the same.

We made one more walk-through of the servants’ quarters, ending up in the middle of the hallway on the upper floor, where Ella and PJ both determined the energy to be the strongest.

We sat round in a circle on the floor. I placed Ella in front of me, PJ to her left, Kit to her right, Bhonny to my left, and Boom to my right. We decided to snuff our lit candle and quest in the dark.

I led the group to alpha, after which I asked Ella to invite the spirit of the young man to come upstairs and into our circle. I guided her to travel astrally through space and escort the young man’s spirit to the upper floor. After a while, though, she paused and shook her head, and said that the image of the young man “changed”.

“It’s not the same guy,” Ella said with some frustration. “It’s also a college student, but his face is not the same, and he’s not wearing the same clothes.”

“Did he die here?”

“No.”

PJ repeated the answer: “No.”

I determined that this spirit was merely a transient, and that conversing with it would not fulfill our objective for the night.

I alternately focused on Ella and PJ to scan the immediate area for the presence of any entity that wished to converse with us. PJ identified a dark spirit, possible an elemental, at the far end of the corridor, but said that it would not come near us and was, inexplicably, creating a “barrier” around us so that no spirits could get through. Ella, too, sensed this “barrier”, which she described as “a tall, black, circular wall”.

I abandoned the idea of holding a quest on the upper floor. We conceded, instead, to access memory from our location. Ella and PJ were able to access memory most quickly, while Boom and Kit had the most difficulty.

I led the group through a visualization, enabling them to travel back astrally in time and create a collective picture of what the ground and upper floors had looked like. In all of their visualizations, without any prompting them, it was daytime, specifically, late afternoon.

I then asked each member of the group to extend a mental invitation to any of the personifications—for want of a better term—on the upper floor. Each one gave a name, a physical description, and province of origin. I instructed each Questor to “merge” with his respective “personification”, an exercise not unlike one of Eric Morris’s emotional truth exercises that I use in activating subpersonalities. Some of the “personifications” spoke in English, some in tagalong. Strangely, all of them were fraternity officers or leaders—no one accessed initiates or observers, for instance.

I interviewed each “personification”, asking them such questions as, “How old are you?” “Which university do you go to?” “Why did you decide to join this fraternity?” “What is your greatest fear?” “What is your greatest dream in life?”

Afterwards I instructed the members of the group, especially Ella and PJ, to roam around the ground and upper floors and describe to us what they could see. We witnessed several incidents through the group’s collective eyes, as though we were utilizing a digital camera on the astral plane that rendered images in three dimensions: An initiate being beaten up on the ground floor. Another initiate screaming out in pain and pleading to his tormentors to stop. A young woman in shorts being raped inside one of the small bedrooms on the upper floor. A female frat groupie allowing the first of a series of frat members to use her body for sex.

I felt strong waves of lust go round the circle. Later, even Bhonny would admit that he was having an erection. Waves of fear—perhaps terror—alternated with these waves of lust. I caught myself wondering whether we were being aroused by the scenes of sex, the scenes of violence, or both.

I quickly went inside each Questor’s mind to take stock of the situation. Ella seemed cool and detached, which was a plus factor, except that she was at alpha and open, and, therefore, vulnerable. Bhonny seemed eager to bring this quest to its wildest possible extreme, an orgiastic confluence of corporeal humans and spirits; he was anticipating my transformation into a commanding, Dionysian satyr at any moment. PJ seemed to be feeling the same way, desiring it as much as Bhonny was, willing to chalk this prospective, group fling to experience, the difference being that, whereas Bhonny would be in this for sex, PJ would be in this for sadism. Kit seemed amenable to go where the current flowed. Mike seemed tolerant and amused, and would regard anything that transpired as a night of unusual entertainment.

As for myself, I saw that allowing ourselves to be taken over and possessed by horny spirits would sound the lamest excuse for giving in to shameless abandon. Worse, it would have landed all of us males in jail.

Sometimes the cosmos provides the dots, and all you have to do is connect them. How you connect the dots is what really matters, because you can do so in infinite patterns of your choice. Every decisive moment in our lives is, as a matter of fact, a constellation of dots in ether. I checked the myriad of patterns to choose from. Being the oldest, and having to be the most responsible person in the group, I made my choice.

I was reminded of the word games that are thrown in amongst anagrams and acrostics in paperback collections of crossword puzzles. In one of those games you are supposed to transform one given word to another given word by changing one letter from each succeeding word at a time, with the shortest possible number of words in between. For example, to transform “HEAD” to “TOES”, you could go through the following:

HEAD

READ

ROAD

TOAD

TOED

TOES

or a total of five words in between.

Or:

HEAD

LEAD

LOAD

TOAD

TOED

TOES

or a total of five words, also, in between. Or:

HEAD

HEAR

TEAR

TEAS

TEES

TOES

for the same total of words in between.

Yet, the shortest possible number of words in between would be:

HEAD

HEED

TEED

TOED

TOES,

with a total of three words only.

I recall thinking that transforming “LUST” to “LOVE” would be easier, and would only take two words in between:

LUST

LOST

LOSE

LOVE.

There could be no shorter transformation from “LUST” to “LOVE” than this.

I also recall thinking that, while lust mounts in a man’s belly like a volcano wanting very much to erupt, once it is sated he feels a fool for having allowed his Shadow to triumph, albeit fleetingly. He looks around him and sees himself surrounded with the broken shards of a once-whole clay image that, even when he manages to glue the pieces together, will never be the same again.

I gently terminated the exercise, counted slowly to five, and led the group out of alpha. We remained sitting on the floor and discussed the strongest images that we had seen. After I had answered all of the questions that the group directed at me, I proposed returning to the narrow bedroom on the ground floor and, reminding myself of the spirit of the young man inside it, making a second attempt to quest there.

We went downstairs, picked up the chairs in the living area, and brought them into the narrow bedroom on the ground floor. I sat under the jamb of the open doorway and I placed Ella in front of me, against the wall directly opposite the door. I located everyone else as I did when we were on the upper floor. Ella would be the primary channel and PJ the secondary channel, and I would function as facilitator. This time around we decided to light a candle in the center of the circle.

I led the group to alpha.

“Ella, do you see him?

“Yes.”

“PJ, do you see him?”

“Yes.”

To Ella: “Ask for a name.”

“Fred.”

“Is his predominant emotion still anger?”

“Yes.”

“Determine the cause of his anger.”

“He’s angry because of the way he died. He was killed. He keeps saying that it’s unfair.”

It eventually became clear that Fred was already a fraternity member and not an initiate when he died, and that his actual death did not occur on-site. Ella and PJ received images of Fred being beaten up and killed, not by members of a rival fraternity, but by “figures of authority”. Ella said that Fred was “framed”. PJ supported this by saying that Fred was a “sacrificial lamb” who had been offered for “slaying” in exchange for or in payment of “something”.

We did a message round for Fred, relaying to him the importance of forgiveness and of extending love to his enemies. Through Ella, he asked me questions about God and about God’s will, which I tried my best to answer. Despite our efforts to draw him “to the light”, however, he would not relent. He rejected everything we said, and expressed hostility, even resentment, at our attempt to converse with him.

I dipped briefly in alpha, and I was not encouraged by what I saw. Fred was the type of guy who wouldn’t get caught being friendly with an Ateneo teacher and his group of students. We represented everything that he was against. He didn’t like the way we dressed, he didn’t like the way we behaved, he didn’t like the way we talked, and he didn’t like the way we thought. He wasn’t interested in the things that we were interested in. He was the classic stereotype in one of my elevator exercises—(Step inside a crowded elevator. Look around you. Who would you talk to first? Who would you talk to last?)—and in this case he was the person doing the exercise, and all six of us were his choice for talking to last. I already saw that our quest was headed for some trouble but I thought that it was still worth trying.

Fred confronted me with a series of challenges that I parried, deflected, and addressed in as calm a manner as I could. He asked me about “the light”. What was “the light”? How was I sure what lay beyond “the light”? In what way was love more important than life? In what way was forgiveness more important than survival?

In the end I simply asked Fred to place his trust in me and, with the rest of the group’s assistance, I instructed Ella and PJ to escort him to “the light”. I assured him that he would still be able to do everything that he preferred to do after “crossing over”.

Ella and PJ noted that there was “less blood” on Fred. Yet, after taking him three-quarters of the way, they also informed me that he nonchalantly turned and went back to the shadows, in the farthest corner of the room.

I had no other choice but to initiate a parting, message round for Fred, in which we all wished him the best and hoped that he would seriously consider everything that we had said to him.

There are spirits, and there are spirits.

And you can’t please all of them.

Again, I broke the circle only after answering all of the questions that the group directed at me. We snuffed the candle, cleaned up, and stepped outside the gate, remembering to lock it behind us.

PJ and Bhonny drove Boom and Kit to Boom’s dad’s house in Baesa, where they would all stay overnight, then Ella and me to Cubao. We stopped by for pizza at Little Caesar’s on Katipunan. I ordered an extra pizza so that PJ and Bhonny could take it out for Boom and Kit.

I invited PJ and Bhonny to join us the following morning so that they could meet Denia and go with us to Bamban. They both thought that the time frame was iffy. PJ said he would try; I gave him Denia’s address so that he could meet us there at 5:30 AM just in case. Bhonny couldn’t go because his uncle was leaving to go abroad and he had to substitute for him to do a number of household chores.

I realized, of course, that it was overly demanding of me to have scheduled a quest that ended past midnight and then expect the same companions to be up at dawn for a day trip to Tarlac. Ella herself was reluctant to go, particularly since she had an afternoon date with Melito that day. Indeed, I felt that she concurred to go only because I asked her to, and not without extracting from the pledge that we would be back in Quezon City by 2:00 PM.

Ella and I arrived in Cubao 1:30 AM.

At 5:00 that morning, Tuesday, December 28, Tommy, Neil, Pats, and Candice picked me up at my apartment on P. Tuazon, then Ella on Oxford. I was pleased to see that Ellas was bright and cheerful despite the fact that she had had only a few hours sleep. We proceeded to the Claret residence in Marikina. As soon as we arrived, Jaime, his wife, Denia, and their sons Carlo, Miguel, JC, and JM boarded their family van, which was parked on the road outside their gate.

I had asked Ella to invite Melito to join us, but his parents would not let him. PJ, on the other hand, was not able to catch up with us; he decided to sleep through the morning with Bhonny and their friends in Boom’s dad’s house in Baesa.

We convoyed to Bamban. I asked Denia to ride with us so that she could converse with me and the Questors, especially Ella, and get to know them a little better.

After passing the steel bridge in Bamban, we turned left at a sign that read, “Holy Family Chapel”, into an inconspicuous dirt road. We drove on, following the road round the undulating base of a low mountain range.

Our first visit was to the house of a man whom Jaime and Denia introduced to us as “Mang Ramon”. He lives in a peculiar house in the middle of a huge yard on the mountainside. In the center of the house is an octagonal, four-level tower, which is his personal meditation center. Although he accepts visitors, the center is mainly there for his and his friends’ use.

We arrived at the Holy Family Chapel, which was in a larger compound also on the mountainside. Denia introduced me to the proprietress and her family. We were just in time to attend the feast day Mass inside the chapel, which was circular-shaped and, like most faith healers’ chapels, filled with religious paintings and statuary.

Immediately after the Mass Denia introduced me to the resident psychic, Apo Simon, whose real name is Francis Lazatin and who lives in a house on the northeast side of the chapel. I introduced Ella to Apo Simon as my trainee and requested a reading for her. Apo Simon took Ella’s hands in his and studied her palms. He initially described Ella as being “pure of heart” and “sensitive”, and “a determined young woman” who “forms strong bonds” but “avoids noisy people”. Then he said that Ella was “clairvoyant” and could “communicate with higher entities”. On the down side, he predicted that Ella would eventually “bear the burden” of his family’s problems.

We partook of the feast that the proprietors prepared for their guests. A buffet of Kapampangan food had been laid out on the front porch of the proprietress’s residence, on the southeast end of the compound. We left ahead of the Clarets, however, since Ella had to be in Quezon City for her date with Melito.

A fine drizzle fell as soon as we hit Quezon City. I commented that we all had a rainy Christmas celebration, and wondered aloud what the Millennium had in store for us. I recalled that Apo Simon asked Ella about her most frequent dreams and that Ella replied that they were mostly about volcanoes. While Apo Simon interpreted these to reinforce his favorite predictions about earth changes, both Ella and I agreed that they were merely symbolic.

I had set a post-Christmas, pre-New Year lunch date with Ella and Pam, who had just come home from a family vacation in Urdaneta, Pangasinan, at Tibreizh, a crepes restaurant outside Ateneo’s Gate 3, on Katipunan Avenue, so that Ella could read cards from her light deck and her dark deck, both of which I had given her, not only for Pam but for his brother Luke.

Pam picked me up at home the morning of Thursday, December 30. We then picked up Ella at her house on Oxford and proceeded to Tibreizh. Pam mentioned to us, after we had ordered lunch, that she had somehow developed an obsession with dragons.

Wendy B., one of the restaurant’s four managers and a singer of the rock band Spindrift, introduced herself to us and informed us that she recently discussed with Eloisa and Mikah, who were regular customers, the possibility of holding oracle readings by the Questors on a regular basis. The readings would be held on the upper floor of the restaurant Saturday nights from 7:00 PM through 2:00 AM. We agreed that the Questors would commence doing this January 8, the second Saturday in the year 2000.

Wendy watched Ella read cards for Pam. I noted that guilt feelings figured prominently in Pam’s cards but I did not voice out my observation.

After the reading Wendy casually informed us that she had been able to sense, more than once, the presence of entities inside the managers’ office on the restaurant’s upper floor, particularly whenever she was napping on the couch, and that the entities were “playful”. Since I was confident that, at this point, Ella was capable of doing a scanning without my guidance, I asked whether she wanted Ella to go upstairs and check it out. She assented, and brought Ella to the upper floor. Minutes later they came back. Ella reported that there were white gnomes residing in the managers’ office, but that there was no cause for concern because they were benevolent ones. Wendy replied that another psychic had scanned the same office and had reported the same.

Before we left Tibreizh I told Wendy that I would schedule Ella and another Questor to do card readings in the restaurant the night of Saturday, January 15, 2000. I gave Ella a green crystal tumblestone which I had charged, reminding him that it was a gift from the gnome that we conversed with on the Z. compound the night of December 11. I also gave him a pewter talisman with a mystic symbol engraved on it, to protect him from any negative energy generated by others during his card readings.

Pam and I then brought Ella to her family reunion in Fort Bonifacio after lunch, before Pam drove me home.

Text message from Ella the afternoon of Thursday, December 30: I want you to know how much I appreciate the fact that you are training me, and I’m sorry that I often forget to thank you.

Friday, December 31, 1999. New Year’s Eve. While all of Manila hurried off to “places to be seen in” to celebrate the Millennium that night I decided to stay at home with my family. I had told Denia in our phone conversation last week that I would do this to “counterbalance” the excess of festivities.

I lit a wishing candle in my bedroom that night. Only Tommy and Jon bothered to text-message their own wishes. I received many text-messages from former Questors and students. The last text message I received that night was at 12:00 midnight, from Pam. It read, HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Brent and Loida had requested me, during their son Luke’s wake, to check out Tonga, their family bar and restaurant in Antipolo. According to them employees and diners had been attesting to several ghostly manifestations, particularly near the rest rooms on its upper floor. One of the hands had also mentioned that a woman had been raped and killed on the site many years ago.

Brent and Loida had informed me, in addition, that the bar and restaurant was not doing well and that, perhaps, we could scan the place identify the reason behind this. We scheduled the actual quest Saturday, January 8, 2000. Pam and I agreed that Ella would channel on this quest.

Saturday, January 8, was a painfully long day for me. After my usual, morning class at Maryhill and afternoon and evening classes at Ateneo’s Department of Communication I rushed to the Questors’ meeting place. A group of DLSU students were there to interview some of the Questors and join some of the teams that were scheduled to be dispatched that night. GMA’s Eyewitness crew also descended on us to shoot a television feature on New Age activities for their program, including an interview with and sample oracle reading by Tina T.

The shoot ended 10:30 PM. By then Eloisa had dispatched all the other teams to their designated agents, except for mine, which included Ella, Pam, Maricris, and Jason P.

Five teams were dispatched that night. One of them had Judith S., who would channel on a quest for agent Grace U. in Santa Cruz. Grace was the young wife of Warner U., a staff member of Maria Angela C., former Quirino Representative and now Presidential Assistant for Northern Luzon. He and a coworker and close friend, Bobot R., were on an Asian Spirit flight the morning of December 7, 1999, to Cauayan Airport in Isabela to check out an important dam project when the twin-engine aircraft slammed into the side of Mount Mamparang, between the Caraballo and Sierra Madre mountain ranges.

My team was scheduled to check out Tonga that night. I was getting antsy because Brent, Loida, and Jason had been there since 8:00 PM, anticipating our 9:00 PM arrival. Pam was constantly on the cell phone with them. I was overjoyed when the TV crew finally packed up.

Pam drove us all the way to Antipolo that night. We arrived Tonga 11:30 PM. I apologized profusely to Brent and Loida for the big delay, and they were very gracious about it. I learned that Pam’s 15-year-old cousin, Colt (a sophomore at Ateneo High School and a varsity volleyball athlete), one of Colt’s elder sisters, and a female friend had been waiting with Brent, Loida, and Jason for us.

Loida offered to have dinner served for us as soon as we got there, Ella, Maricris, and Jason P., however, preferred to do a scanning first. I asked Pam to take them through the place. When they came back Jason P. reported that they had met a huge, hostile, high-ranking elemental in the middle of the dance floor. Ella affirmed that this was the strongest presence on the lot.

While we were having dinner Brent informed us that the nth in a serious of vehicular accidents had recently occurred on a notorious curve in the road, and wondered whether any of the spirits in the vicinity was responsible for this.

We could not form a circle, of course, on the bar and restaurant’s ground floor, because of the presence of patrons. While Ella proposed that we do so on the upper floor, where we had eaten, I foresaw that other diners would eventually sit there. I also pointed out that the upper floor rest rooms were frequently being used.

We had no choice but to form our circle inside the manager’s office, near the top of the staircase on the upper floor. The room is L-shaped, and contains two office desks with chairs, a couch, and jam-packed filing cabinets and shelving systems. I intended, in order to cause no inconvenience to anyone, that we configure our circle around the existing arrangement. Pam and Loida, however, insisted that the desks be pushed against the wall, below a one-way viewing mirror, and that an electric fan and additional chairs be brought in.

I located Ella where I could see her best, Jason to her right and Loida to her left, and Jason P. across him. I then located Jason P. across Ella, Colt’s sister to her right and Colt to her left, and Pam between Loida and Colt’s sister. I sat on the couch, in front of a low table, so that I could draw cards from my deck. Maricris and the R. family’s female friend sat on desks. Brent decided not to join us; I sensed that the idea of our holding a quest made him feel nervous. I saw him pacing back and forth outside, on the upper floor, through the one-way viewing mirror in the wall behind Ella.

Even after we had turned off the lights and joined hands I found that it was extremely difficult to commence our session. The bar and restaurant’s music system on the ground floor began playing; its amplified sounds carried through to the upper floor. The office telephone intermittently rang. The most jarring distraction, though, was the loud buzzer that kept being activated in the service area adjacent to our room.

I asked Ella to contact, in her mind, the elemental they had met on the ground floor earlier that night. In the midst of the chaotic noises she said that she could not. I asked her to try again. I was beginning to sense mounting frustration within her.

Ella said that the elemental was essentially unwilling to converse with us. Maricris and Jason P. affirmed this. I suggested that I lay out and read cards for the family and the family’s situation first, which I did. All of the cards that I drew, however, flashed negative meanings: disaster, injustice, failure, deceit, defeat, an illicit relationship, hurt feelings. In the middle of my reading I stopped, reshuffled the cards and asked Jason P., who had never met Pam’s family before tonight, to do the reading.

Jason P. brought out his deck, laid out cards on the floor, and commenced his own reading. His findings, however, were similarly negative in nature.

I was torn between calling off this quest and seeing it through no matter what. Since Brent and his family were friends, and since Ella was in training, my latter instinct won.

I stood up and led the group through a progressive relaxation exercise and guided them to alpha. I took care to instruct them that, since the mind resents any attempt at controlling or restricting it, they were to include, rather than exclude, all of the distractions in the environment: the music, the telephone, the buzzer, the humming of the air-conditioner and the electric fan, and other incidental noises outside such as the voices of diners, footsteps, and the clinking of cutlery.

This worked. The group became more relaxed, more attuned, more accepting.

I then primed Ella for her first experience in channeling for an agent. Instead of focusing on the elemental on the ground floor I turned my attention to Brent, who, I could see, through the one-way viewing mirror, was seated in a chair in the dining area and was faced towards Ella. Only I could see Brent and the interior of the dining area, since everyone else was seated on the floor.

I should mention here that it is possible to channel not only spirit guides, power animals, spirits of the deceased, elementals, and other astral entities; it is also possible to channel live human beings, and this was the exercise I was going to lead Ella through.

I asked Ella to briefly stand up, look through the mirror and see where Brent was located, and then sit down on the floor once again. I then asked her to project, in her mind, rays of light connecting all of her chakras to all of Brent’s. After I was certain that she had done this I asked him to visualize Brent’s aura.

In essence Ella was able to affirm the portions of my and Jason P.’s card readings that directly applied to Brent. I asked her to obtain a symbolic picture of what was disturbing Brent and how we could get rid of it. She replied that she could see a black elemental—not the same one that she had seen on the ground floor—on Brent’s left side and within his auric shell.

I asked the rest of the group to project, in their mind, rays of light from their heart chakras to Brent’s. As soon as they had done this I asked Ella to visualize the elemental shrinking in size to nothingness.

At first nothing happened.

Then Ella said, “It’s getting smaller.”

She was able to visualize the black elemental shrinking down to approximately a foot in height, but after that she could no nothing more.

I asked Ella to scan Brent and to tell me exactly what he was feeling.

“Fear. Fear of failure. Fear that the business will not prosper. He’s afraid that he’s already had all the opportunities he’s ever going to have, but he wants to have one more chance to do things right.”

Something flashed through my mind, something that indicated that I should rely on synchronicity.

“The next number on the music system will summarize this,” I heard myself saying.

We waited. The system played “Just Once”.

I then asked Loida, Pam, and Jason to articulate and impart messages of love and of forgiveness to Brent, which they did so. I knew that, even if they were addressing Brent’s subconscious, Brent would actually receive these messages. I watched him through the mirror while his family described how much they love him. Brent fidgeted, rose, walked about, and moved to another part of the dining area.

I felt a release of tension in the circle after Jason, who was the last to impart his message, finished speaking.

As for myself, I was satisfied that Ella was finally able to use her channeling abilities, though not without initial difficulty. I consider this quest as her first successful attempt to function as a channel on an actual site and in the presence of agents and co-Questors.

Wanting to take advantage of the fact that the group was still in alpha, I thought that we should have one more go at contacting the high-ranking elemental on the ground floor. Since Jason P. had already read cards and Ella had already channeled I shifted my attention to Maricris. I asked her to scan, in her mind, the ground floor once again, locate the elemental, and invite it into the circle.

She was unable to do so. However, she mentioned that “a female spirit” was trying to get near her and was “crying out for help”.

“Is she human or elemental?” I asked.

“Human.”

“Is she clean or covered with blood?”

“She’s covered with blood.”

“A woman or a girl?”

“A woman.”

“approximate age?”

“Early twenties.”

We invited the spirit into the circle. With Maricris as channel we were able to determine that it was the spirit of the rape victim, and that she had been responsible for the ghostly manifestations near the rest rooms on the bar and restaurant’s upper floor.

The spirit gave us its name and its life story. It was intent on wreaking revenge on all those who had abused her. It admitted that it was responsible, in the main, for the series of accidents that had occurred on the curve in the road. Most of the drivers of the vehicles that figured in the accidents were male, and had been drunk.

We did one round of emotional truth, focusing on the issue of letting go, for the spirit. This was not without hitches, because Loida, Jason, Colt, and Colt’s sister had no inkling of what a round of emotional truth should be. Colt was also not prepared for it.

In the end we were able to convince the spirit to forgive its tormentors, and assist it to “move on”. I asked the group to visualize it “going to the light”, and Maricris to escort it most of the way, while continuing to impart to it messages of love and encouragement. I waited until Maricris said that it had already “crossed over”.

We restored the manager’s office to its original condition and congregated once again in the dining area on the upper floor. I asked Brent how he was doing and casually touched his back with the palm of my receiving hand. He replied that he was fine. I did sense that he was, and that there was a lift in the atmosphere. I told him about our second quest and asked him to observe, over the next few months, if the frequency of accidents on the curve in the road would go down, if not become zero.

We ended way past midnight. Pam was too tired to drive for us, and so Brent made arrangements for their driver to take all of us home.

The evening of Saturday, January 15, the Questors gathered once again at their meeting place in Quezon City. I brought for Ella her own talking board set, which I had ordered for her from amazon.com and gave her as her birthday gift in advance. She was scheduled to read oracles with Mikah at Tibreizh that night, and had brought along, aside from her decks of cards, her own scented candle and holder.

I gave Ella and Mikah the usual briefing on oracle readings that I give the Questors before sending them off to the restaurant, stressing the following guidelines:

1. An oracle reader must feel unconditional love for the person(s) that he or she will be reading for, otherwise it will not be possible to do a valid reading.

2. Reading an oracle, like channeling, is primarily intuitive.

3. Channeled information is truthful but not necessarily factual.

4. The reader must relay impressions and not definite statements.

5. The reader should not “make predictions” or “foretell the future”.

6. An oracle reading provides merely a psychological snapshot, and nothing more, of the person whose oracle is being read.

7. An oracle reading is valid only for the here and now and not for extended stretches of time.

8. A reader may interpret trends but at the same time explain that trends can be consciously and deliberately changed.

9. The source of energy is the reader’s inner self and not the oracle, which is used merely as an instrument or stimulus.

10. The source of intuitive information is the superconscious, which can be accessed like a Web site.

11. When reading for members of the general public, not all persons who will sit for a reading will be serious about it.

12. When reading for members of the general public, some persons who will sit for a reading will do so only out of curiosity.

13. When reading for members of the general public, some persons who will sit for a reading will do so only to test the reader’s abilities.

14. When reading for members of the general public, some persons who will sit for a reading will do so to confuse, fluster, or foil the reader’s psychic process, out of the sitter’s sense of malice.

In light of the last four points, I reviewed a set of protective exercises with Ella and Mikah. Since this would be Ella’s first time to read oracles in public, I gave her two talisman: one to wear round her neck and another place in her right pocket. Pam, who was just as excited about the oracle readings at Tibreizh and who herself would be reading oracles there in the near future, had asked his brother Jason and their cousins to drop by the restaurant and have their oracles read that night.

GMA’s Eyewitness crew arrived once again to shoot an actual quest and an interview on magic with Eloisa. Afterwards Eloisa dispatched teams to several quests, including one in Cubao and another in Cavite City. The morning of Monday, Jauary 17, I received the following belated text message from Ella: “My grandmother died at 11:00 PM last night.”

I was momentarily stunned by this message. A painful, searing memory of Pam in tears over her brother Luke’s death flashed across my mind. I watched myself punching Ella’s number on my cell phone, driven only by the impulse to know if she was all right. No such luck; her cell phone was either off or out of range—most probably off, if she was in school.

I text-messaged the Questors to inform them of the news, wondering, at the same time, whether Ella would have objected, considering that it took her a day before she decided to inform me of what happened. Later that evening Ella and Gaye, Ella’s mother, finally responded to my text messages. Ella’s grandmother—Gaye’s father—had suffered her third heart attack while Gaye was visiting him at her house in Novaliches the afternoon of Saturday, January 15. Gaye rushed her to hospital, where she was immediately placed in ICU. She didn’t make it through the night.

Ironically, or, perhaps, predictably, the only Questor who was available to go with me to the funeral chapel that night was Pam. She picked me up at home after I arrived from my evening class in Liturgy at Maryhill.

I thought there was some kind of pattern there—Ella going with me to Loyola Memorial Chapels to visit Pam and her family, Pam going with me to Arlington to visit Ella and family—and I voiced it out to Pam as we rode from Cubao to Araneta Avenue.

I commented that the Questors are constantly surrounded with death and the dying, that our lives are often perceived as a series of visits to hospitals and funeral homes, and that this can seem to be disparaging, even formidable, to outsiders and to the weak of heart. I cautioned Pam, who was both a trainee and a new Questor, that when our vibrations are attuned to higher levels, our spirituality—and, consequently, our karma—is sped up, so that we are more likely to experience more than the usual pain and suffering in our present lifetime, albeit to increase our spiritual merits. I explained to her that, once upon a time, poverty, sickness, and death were mistakenly considered as punishments from God, but that in truth our experiences of them bring us not farther from God but closer to God, especially since they make us more aware of the reality of the spiritual.

In one of my rare moments of disclosure I informed Pam that the speeding up of karma is not without rewards on the physical plane, among which are the amplification of psychic abilities, the power to do magic, and the ability to influence others. I made a mental note to explain the same to Ella later.

I knew that Pam was still hurting from his brother’s death, as I still was from my son’s, even if that was more distant in time. I said that I would write, some day, about my son’s death and about my process of letting go, and that this would be the appropriate book to end this series.

We parked on the shoulder of Araneta Avenue. Ella and Selo were waiting outside the building, We stepped up to them to give them our condolences, then trudged up the stairs to the chap4el they had been assigned to on the third floor.

I entered the chapel with some trepidation, then with a surge of relief as a bright aura of peacefulness greeted me from within.

Gaye and her two younger boys were inside the chapel. I walked up to the coffin and whispered a silent prayer. The spirit of the old woman, appearing to me as she must have looked like when she was 35, stood at the head of the coffin. It was the source of the bright aura of peacefulness inside the chapel. It exuded a warm friendliness that exhilarated me as I said the prayer, though I was not sure that it recognized me or that it even knew me. I nonetheless introduced myself to her as Ella’s teacher and, without any previous knowledge of how close she had been to Ella, I pledged to her that I would continue to look after the girl.

I had the opportunity to meet a few of the family’s relatives, some of whom had traveled all the way from Bohol to pay their last respects to the deceased. One of them, Ella’s uncle, regaled me with stories of his own uncle, who was a psychic and a practicing medium, and of the eerie manifestations that he, his brother—Ella’s dad—and a household helper used to experience in their ancestral house. I began to understand that psychism was in Ella’s blood, and why her parents ultimately became accepting toward me.

At the end of our visit I walked up to the coffin once again to repeat my pledge. This time around Selo followed me and lingered at my right. I knew that he sensed that I had been communicating in some manner with his mother-in-law’s spirit, but I also knew that he was unable to hear what I said.

Although I had work and Pam had classes at DLSU early the next day, I could not help but linger and chat with Ella’s parents well into the night. We went home feeling drained. That was one family visit, however, that I would never have neglected.

The morning of Wednesday, January 19, Grace U., Warner’s wife, called me on my cell phone to inform me that she was able to obtain for me, from a distributor in Hong Kong, a tape loop with a Buddhist chant on it, which I could use for meditation. I picked it up at her office after work that day. She informed me that the Buddhist chant on the tape loop was “LAM-U-OHMI-TOHUT” and that I should chant it, in my mind, while listening to it.

Ella absented herself from all of her classes that day, and was staying overnight with her family at the funeral chapel prior to her grandmother’s burial in the morning.

I set the tape player on the Chinese altar at my headboard that night and played it while drifting off to sleep, ensuring that only I and none of my family in the adjoining bedrooms would hear it.

I discovered, at alpha and with the tape loop playing, that I could actually ride on the chant—as I could ride on a drum—and that I could use the chant as an astral bridge over which I could send telepathic messages. I tried this out on Pam, since she had heard the same tape loop on a previous quest. (See The Pamela Quests: Pam [Volume I] at http://www.tonyperezphilippinescyberspacebook2.blogspot.com/.) I created mental images of three Chinese goddesses against a bright, blue sky and a dragon boat, and then sent these to Pam. After five minutes I sent her a text-message that read, “Are you receiving Chinese images?” She called me on my cell phone immediately afterwards and asked, “How did you do that?”

That night I dreamt of a boy named Francis Heslet (a jewelry agent), Frank Regis (a metaphysician), and Frank Jenista (a former supervisor). I am all tied up inside a room, and all three of them are torturing me. In the end I am able to set myself free and I overcome them with water sprayed from a hose.

I entitled the dream, “The Franks”. I wondered, all of the following day, what it could ever mean. I finally interpreted it to mean that I was beginning to feel “tied up” with obligations and expectations in my waking life, that “the three Franks” represented frankincense, or the need for purification, and that I decided not to suffer through the ordeal, reverting, instead, to my emotions (the element water) as a defense mechanism.

It rained hard Saturday, February 5. Cathy and a friend picked me up at Maryhill after lunch to take me to Ateneo, where ten of us were scheduled to watch the final performance of “Sierra Lakes” at Rizal Mini-Theater. Although thesis defense sessions for my class were ongoing I wanted to catch this production not only because theater artist Gabe Mercado directed it but because Mimi Tiu, a student in my thesis class, was acting in it.

I had invited Ella to watch the play with Melito, but she text-messaged me back a cryptically terse and negative reply. I thought, at the time, that, for some reason, her relationship with Melito had begun to cool off. I would confirm this only much later, during the launch of my book A Filipino Werewolf in Quezon City: An Author’s Notebook (Anvil Publishing Inc., 2000) at the National Book Store branch at the Shangri-la Complex, in Pasig City, which she attended with her parents, her brothers, and a new boy whom she introduced to me and to the Questors as “a friend”.

The evening of Saturday, January 22, Pats and Jason P. took their turn reading oracles at Tibreizh. The Questors had one consultation that evening and five quests. Ella had already informed me, by this time, that she needed to stop questing for at least one month in order to rehabilitate her grades, which had gone down. Although Wendell had told me that Ella had indeed neglected to submit some of her required projects that trimester, I felt that Ella also needed time to heal from her breakup with Melito.

I was restless during this period because, of all people, Ella, who was doing superbly, would have to suspend her training for a while. Yet, as I had made it clear to all Questors who were students, their academic grades and not the development of their psychic abilities should always be their priority. (I was myself, after all, an first-honor student in college and the recipient of the departmental medal from the Department of Communication.)

I plodded on through the succeeding days without Ella, receiving text messages from her and hearing her voice on the cell phone from time to time. I was satisfied to learn that she had picked up her enthusiasm for school and that her grades were gradually improving. Once, she called me up at home to consult me on possible major sources for an oral report on card reading that she said she was working on for her English class. A red flag went up in mind as soon as she mentioned this. I remembered that, years ago, I discovered that Franco F. and Arthur V., sophomore students at Ateneo High School, had been bringing their card decks to school and, without my knowledge, reading card spreads not only for their co-students but for their teachers! I gathered all the high-school trainees as soon as I learned about this and lectured to them at length about the dangers of being misperceived by others and the necessity for discretion.

I gave Ella the same precautions. She insisted, however, that her English teacher had no biases against card reading and had even approved her topic beforehand. To keep her covered nonetheless, I went through her report and ensured that it was from a psychological, as opposed to an occult, perspective. She received a grade of 82 for her report, which, I told her, was “not bad at all”.

Towards February the main activities of my Ateneo Independent Research class started coming to a head, and I began scheduling mock thesis defense sessions on weekday nights. I recall that Mia C., an Ateneo Communication senior in one of the thesis groups, picked me up from the office on a Friday afternoon for a series of evening sessions at the Department of Communication. We passed by Ella’s house on the way to Katipunan Avenue so that I could drop off a copy of a book that he had asked to borrow from my collection. Again, I text-messaged her as we approached Oxford. She came out of their front door as soon as we arrived. As I handed her the book she gave me one of the thank-you cards that her family distributed after her grandmother’s funeral.

The next time I saw her was the evening of Saturday, February 26, during my book launch. It was a nostalgic night for me because the Questors who arrived to celebrate with me and read oracles for guests ranged between those were in my 1995 Ateneo class in Psychic Powers and Shamanism (The Calling, Anvil Publishing Inc., 1996) and those who had recently signed up for training.

I was delighted that Selo, Gaye, and their two younger boys came to the launch. That was how I knew that Ella was also coming. According to Gaye she had left home earlier and should have arrived at the book store before they did. They, as did most of the guests who were there that evening, decided to try out the newly-opened MRT transport system.

Ella came a quarter of an hour later. She was with a friend whom she introduced to me as Carl, who lives in his neighborhood and, like her, is a member of the Youth for Christ (YFC) movement. Ella and Carl mingled with the Questors. It didn’t take long before Ella herself joined the Questors and read cards for guests. We stayed through 9:30 PM, when the Questors and I were compelled to leave because the mall was shutting down for the day.

Pam took Ella and Carl home that night. A bigger group of Questors took me home, then rushed to Tibreizh for the rest of the night’s oracle readings—it was, after all, a Saturday, and Wendy had anxiously text-messaged me to inquire whether any of the Questors would be at the restaurant. I text-messaged her back to assure her that some Questors were already on their way, but would be late because they had come from my book launch in Pasig City.

Since I hadn’t been able to talk to Ella during the launch I decided to text-message her before going to bed that night.

“So, how are you doing?”

“Okay.”

“You owe me some answers.”

“Yes.”

“What happened to Melito?”

“We’re off.”

“Is Carl your new boyfriend?”

“No.”

I punched her number, and we had a long conversation before saying good night. Her romantic relationship with Melito had lasted but three months. Since his parents insisted that Melito focus on his studies and began bearing down on their seeing each other, they considered terminating the relationship but remaining good friends.

I asked about her grades. She said that they were fine, and that she would be questing with us again, and soon.

Despite the hiatus that already lay behind us I felt that we had become closer to each other, and more than ever.

The next that Ella came back to the Questors’ meeting place in Quezon City was the evening of Saturday, March 11. Three consultations and three quests had been scheduled that night. Serendipitously, Franco dropped by to visit with his girlfriend and classmates to interview me and a few Questors for a group presentation that they were working on for their class in General Psychology.

I placed Ella on a team that would be dispatched to Valenzuela, Bulacan. I would not be questing that night because I was scheduled to take my final exam in Liturgy the following day in my professor’s office. Still, I was glad that Ella had come back and that we would resume her training.

As I finish writing this volume Ella continues to be my trainee. Her interest remains in the development of psychic abilities. In addition to the training that she receives from me, she trains in sword fighting at Hai Dong Gum Do. We had once planned to spend a Sunday afternoon with Carl and open his third eye, but this didn’t happen because of scheduling problems.

We have always tried to make do, however, with whatever time allows us. During the summer, for instance, Ella had to travel to Bacolod to attend a YFC convention, and then to Bohol, with her family, over the Holy Week. Whatever else came between us, she was always my trainee.

I will always remember the pledge that I made to her grandmother’s spirit.

If I were made to start all over again, way at the beginning, in July 1999, I would still take Ella into training at the end of the first semester, continuing to make my life as it is, and perhaps, continuing to confront sickness, fear, and death by constantly creating positive values that center on unconditional love. Because, I know that we are what we are, and we have what we have, and the things that happen to us are the things that were meant to happen to us, because we are all a part of a grander design.

All these things, I accept.

I must be content.

And know that, because of my faith in God, while we cannot be immortal, we can seek to be more and more a part of the divine.

—2000

A Note Written April 2013:

The Pamela Quests: Pam and The Pamela Quests: Ella, end the narratives of the second generation of Spirit Questors.

Related readings in paper publication format:

The Spirit Quest Chronicles I by Ruel S. De Vera, Anvil Publishing Inc., 1996

The Spirit Quest Chronicles II by Ruel S. De Vera, Anvil Publishing Inc., 1997

The Calling: A Transpersonal Adventure by Tony Perez, Anvil Publishing Inc, 1996

A Young Man Cries for Justice Beyond His Grave: Compilations on the Ensign Phillip Azarcon Pestano Case by Tony Perez, Anvil Publishing Inc., 1998

Beings: Encounters of the Spirit Questors with Non-Human Entities by Tony Perez, Anvil Publishing Inc., 1999

The Departed: Encounters of the Spirit Questors with Spirits of the Deceased by Tony Perez, Anvil Publishing Inc., 1999

Stories of the Moon: More Adventures of the Spirit Questors by Tony Perez (with Michael Marlo R. Duque and Dion Michael Fernandez), Anvil Publishing Inc., 2001

Tony Perez lecturing inside a classroom in 2011

Photo by Hedwig de Leon

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

TONY PEREZ is a creative writer, playwright, poet, lyricist, painter, portraitist, fiber artist, and psychic journalist and trainer. He is one of the 100 Filipino recipients of the 1898-1998 Centennial Artists Awards of the Cultural Center of the Philippines. His other awards include the 13 Artists of the Philippines, the Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas from the Writers Union of the Philippines, four National Book Awards from the Manila Critics Circle, a FAMAS Award for Best Story, five prizes from the Cultural Center of the Philippines Playwriting Contest, the National Fellowship for Drama from the Creative Writing Center of the University of the Philippines, the Irwin Chair in Creative Writing from Ateneo de Manila University, and a prize in photography from the Children’s Museum and Library, Inc. He was a member of the first official Philippine delegation to the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali, sponsored by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, in 2010.

Some of Mr. Perez’s works in Filipino have been translated into English, French, and Polish. His artworks have been showcased in 21 individual and group exhibits curated by Marian Pastor Roces, Nonon Padilla, Bobi Villanueva, Judy Sibayan, Lalyn Buncab, Nilo Ilarde, Ernie Patricio and Jun Veloso, Chari Elinzano, Reverend Father Loy Divino (CICM), and Raven Villanueva.

Mr. Perez holds an A.B. in Communication and a Cand. M.A. in Clinical Psychology from Ateneo de Manila University, an M.A. in Religious Studies, magna cum laude, from Maryhill School of Theology in New Manila, and certificates in Publication Design and Production from the Department of Journalism at the University of Wisconsin and Fundamentals of Graphic Design from the University of California at San Francisco. His master’s thesis, titled Pagsubok sa Ilang: Ikaapat na Mukha ni Satanas, was awarded the National Book Award for Theology and Religion by the Manila Critics Circle in 2006.

Mr. Perez has been working as a full-time Cultural Affairs Specialist at the Public Affairs Section of the Embassy of the U.S.A. in Manila since 1979. He conducts workshops titled “Writing from The Heart”, “Writing from The Creative Unconscious”, “Dramatherapy”, “Community Theater”, and art classes nationwide.

Mr. Perez has two sons, Nelson I. Miranda and Chito I. Miranda, and four granddaughters, Angelique Pearl Miranda, Nielsen Tegelan, Aubrey Rose Miranda, and Chevy Keith Miranda. His daughters-in-law are Agnes Tegelan and Ivy Vercasion. They live in Cubao, Quezon City, where Mr. Perez has resided since 1955.

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