In one of the comments in the Daily Inquirer, one posited, albeit with levity, that a sorcerer-consultant is dictating Duterte to kill as many as he can, so that he can can be macho forever. I find this plausible, considering that in his campaign sorties, Duterte would mete out towels with his lint to his fans–and how they go crazy! A definite sign of sorcery.

Perhaps, he gave a lint-filled towel to Senator Alan Cayetano, for him to sniff every now and then. Guess how Cayetano behaves these days–a bewitched son of a gun.

Marcos, whom Duterte adores, was also into sorcery or that he had a sorcerer consultant. Or do you remember his being gaga over the number 7?

Sorcery has been in world government since the onset of civilization. In Mexico, the Aztecs butchered men and women as sacrifice to their gods. In Russia, one notes that Rasputin, the sorcerer, held sway to the Tsar and Tsarina in 1901 onward.

In contemporary times, we have the Rosicrucian holding sway in government. Ditto the Masonic Lodge, where most government officials are members.

In Africa, we have this account by Harry West:

“On the Mueda Plateau,Mozambique, it is said that sorcerers feed on the well-being of their rivals, neighbors, and/or kin. By rendering themselves invisible, they transcend the world inhabited by ordinary people, producing and inhabiting an invisible realm from which they gain powerful perspective on the visible—a platform from which to elaborate and bring to fruition ghastly visions of carnage that feed their insatiable appetites. These acts, however, do not go unchallenged. Responsible figures of authority, including healers, lineage councilors, settlement heads, and even contemporary village presidents, are also said to be capable of entering into the invisible realm of sorcery. Acting as “sorcerers of construction,” they transcend not only the world inhabited by ordinary Muedans but also that of “sorcerers of ruin,” fixing the latter in their gaze, monitoring and controlling sorcerers’ activities, unmaking sorcerers’ acts, and remaking the world in accordance with their own visions of a world reordered. . .and so the game of one-upmanship, comprising transcendent maneuvers that Muedans gloss with the verb kupilikulu (to invert, reverse, to overturn, to negate, to annul, to undo), continues in perpetuity.”

Granted that Duterte’s sorcerer commands him to kill millions as sacrifice, this is anathema to the norms of the civilized world, hence the friction with the European Union, the United Nations and the United States, from which the Philippines depends much in terms of trade and defense.

The question now is: Who will blink?