Much more importance attaches to the dreams of the priest than to those of ordinary individuals, for the former are thought to have a more general application and to be more definite in their significance. But the difficulty of interpretation may frequently make the dream of no value because it may happen that the future must be determined by recourse to other divinatory methods.
There is a general belief that both the ordinary priest and the warrior chief may receive a knowlege[sic] of future events in their dreams and also may receive medicine, but I know of only one case in which the latter claim was made. In that case a priest maintained that he had been instructed in a dream to fish for eels the following day. He stated that he had done so and that he had found a bezoar stone which he had given to a sick relative of his.
However, when once the dream has been interpreted to the satisfaction of the dream experts as ill-boding, means must be taken immediately to avert the impending evil. A common method of doing this is by the fowl-waving ceremony and in serious cases by the blood-lustration rite.
DIVINATION BY GEOMETRICAL FIGURES
THE VINE3 OMEN
3Bu-dá-kan, a species of creeper.
I witnessed the taking of this omen both in 1905, before the war expedition referred to on previous pages, and also at the time of the selection of a new town site for the town of Monacayo[sic] on the upper Agúsan. As a rule the omen is taken on occasions of this kind. The procedure in the rite is as follows:
A piece of a vine one fathom long is cut up into pieces the length of the middle finger; these pieces are then arranged as in the figure shown herewith as far as the number of the pieces permits. The sides of the square and the pieces which radiate from the corners are first laid in position. One piece is then placed in the center, and those which remain are set at right angles to the rectangle. (See fig. 2c, e.)
The six pieces of vine that are set at right angles to the rectangle, as in figure 2a, represent the ladders or poles by which entrance is gained to the house, represented in this case by the rectangle itself. The pieces that radiate from the four corners represent the posts that support the house. Now, whenever the pieces of vine are not sufficient to form even one "ladder," it is evident that all hopes of entering the house and getting the enemy are vain. The principle of the omen consists in the observation of the presence and number of ladders, and of the length of the central piece which represents the inmates of the house to be attacked. The following are some of the main and more intelligible figures.