BELIEFS about STAIRS

By Arch. Ernesto R. Zárate, FPIA

An eastern orientation is usually required for stairs. Ilocanos position their stairs so that they rise with the morning sun. To them, if it were the other way around, you would be turning your back on your fate. But builders in Pandi, Bulacan, just like many typical Filipinos with the spirit of controversy running strong in their veins, believe that a stairway facing east is considered bad luck because, they say, anything facing the early sun dries up ahead of all others and, in the same token, wealth that is brought into the house will dry up much faster.

If there is no way you can make the stairs face east, at least make them face any nearby mountain. If your lot abuts a river, locate the stairs so that they rise towards the direction of upstream. This is so in order that good luck from your house would not be washed away together with the river’s flow. If the proposed house is beside the sea, or if you are building a beach house, plan the stairs in such a way that they run parallel with the shore to avoid having to grapple with the above precept. If the stairs were placed perpendicularly to the shoreline luck may flow in, but also flow out with the tides.

Do not place a large window in the wall directly facing the stairs so that good fortune will not easily go out through that window.

Most Western countries consider it bad luck to walk under a ladder. (Personally, avoiding this is more of a safety precaution.) In the early years of Christianity, according to mystics, the triangle symbolized eternity. A ladder set against a wall forms a triangle; thus passing under it is sacrilegious because it would be as though one was defying eternity.

Locally, one should not make into a passageway any area under the stairs. Tagalogs never use the space beneath the stairs as sleeping quarters (as the poor Harry Potter did). The underside of wooden stairs of Ilonggo houses are usually completely covered not because of peeping Toms but because the old folks say so.

For business establishments, especially the home-based small ones, the cashier or the place where money is kept should not be located under a staircase. In homes, rice should not be stored under the stairs because it would mean that whenever one goes up or down the stairs, “parang inaapakan ang grasya ng Diyos,” (It would seem like one is treading on the grace of God.)

When planning a structure with two or more storeys, the stairway should not be positioned at the exact center of the structure that would divide the building into two equal parts.

It is believed that the dried umbilical cord of a son or daughter of the house owner inserted in the staircase will strongly bond together the stringer with its supporting girder.

Workmen going up newly constructed stairs the very first time are admonished by the old folks to always use the right foot on the first step. As they go up and down the stairs on that first day, they must have full stomachs and must have money in their pockets. This is to ensure that prosperity and abundance will always be present in the house being built. The owner or contractor usually lends some money to the carpenters assigned to do the stairs. Oftentimes, the money lent for this purpose is not returned but later spent for snacks (pansit and soft drinks) to celebrate the successful erection of the stairs.

There was a time when dwellings in the north, from Moncada in Tarlac, and Pangasinan all the way up to the Cordilleras, had stairs—well, these were actually short ladders—that were removable and were stowed inside during the night or when the owners were away to keep off predators, rats, and thieves.

The Manobos of Agusan, meanwhile, place two spears across their doorway when they are away; if the spears point upwards, this would mean “keep out” but if they point downwards, the owners are saying “Please come right in and wait.”

It is but proper for a Filipino to call out “Tao, po!” when he announces his arrival at a house even before knocking at the door. This doesn’t mean he is asking if anyone is home—he is just declaring that it is a human being who is there, neither an animal nor a ghost.

In the olden days, Ilocanos living in small huts make known their absence from their houses by putting away the short run of their bamboo stairs or by straightening up the stairs making them point skywards thus not leaning on the threshold of the entrance door.

(From the book MORE FILIPINO BUILDING BELIEFS by Ernie Zárate.)