Line #33 Myth/PhilippineMythology


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bathala_philippines_mythology_deity.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:Bathala, creating the world.]]
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4	The islands of the UsefulNotes/{{Philippines}} in Southeast Asia have gone through a long and tragic history. While in the modern-day they are home to multiple different ethnicities with most of them having been converted by the Abrahamic, Buddhist and Hindu religions, this page deals with the mythologies of the ancient indigenous peoples. However, be warned that plenty of stories aren't for people with the faintest of hearts. Please be sure to check out the pages of the [[Myth/MalaysianMythology Malaysians]], [[Myth/ThaiMythology Thai]] and Myth/{{Vietnamese\|Mythology}} to find out more interesting information about the religions and the mythologies of the other Southeast Asian civilizations.
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6	!!Philippine mythology provides examples of:
7	* AlwaysChaoticEvil: With some exceptions (like [[GuardianEntity the Kapre]], [[ThePhoenix the Sarimanok]] and [[TheTrickster the Alan Bird]]), all of the Philippines' monsters are either man-eating demons or soul-stealing ghosts.
8	* CockFight: In many epics, the/a main male hero goes to try and get a bride but often there is/are a/many rival suitor(s) which often leads into a fight. It either ends with: a) the hero wins; b) the rival wins; c) a tie with the hero and rival(s) who become friends.
9	* CreationMyth: The Tagalog, Igarot and the Visayan people have myths that gives the origin of the world. Most are secondary creation stories which the deities/higher powers take what has already existed and use them to make something new.
10	** The Tagalog tells that a bird instigated the conflict between the sea and the sky to make the land.
11	* CrossoverCosmology: A rare occurrence but possible due the diversity of precolonial Philippines' polytheistic pantheons. Even though there are some deities and characters who can be equivalents of each other, there are some tales where two or more of them have encountered.
12	** There is a story where Dayang Makiling (Maria Makiling) led the Tagalogs in a war against Apúng Suku and the Kampampangans over resources. Makiling's Tagalog navy lost to the Kampampangan army and submits to Apúng Suku who then changed his name to Apúng Sinukuan which literally means "to whom one submits to".
13	* CulturalChopSuey: Centuries of Western colonization thanks to Spain and the US plus centuries of contact with Chinese, Malay (and through them, Indian) and other cultures prior to that have resulted in mythical/legendary/folkloric beings and concepts that in many cases bear some inescapable foreign influence, and it can be hard to uncover the root "native" or "indigenous" element, if such truly applies. For instance, the terms "duwende" , "engkanto", "kapre" and "santelmo" are clearly Spanish-derived (''duende'', ''encanto'', ''cafre'', and ''fuego de Santelmo'' i.e. "St. Elmo's fire") and ''cafre'' itself is from Arabic ''kaffir''. Other terms like "diwata" are Indian-influenced, as diwata is from Sanskrit ''devata'', a variant of ''deva''. The Filipino generic word for spirit is "espiritu", straight from Spanish, though the Tagalog word for soul is "kaluluwa". And so on and so forth.
14	* DarkIsNotEvil: In Filipino mythology monsters are usually AlwaysChaoticEvil, but there are exceptions; [[GuardianEntity The Kapre]], for example, is a sasquatch like creature that usually only reveals itself to people because it wants to be their friend ([[InterspeciesRomance or more]]) and will follow them throughout life afterward, implicitly protecting the people they like. [[TheTrickster The Alan]], meanwhile is a [[TheGrotesque deformed]], [[{{Troll}} mischievous]] [[WingedHumanoid bird-like]] creature with [[BodyHorror backward-facing hands and feet]], that steals drops of menstrual blood, miscarried fetuses, afterbirth and other reproductive waste... [[ParentalSubstitute and turns them into human babies that they raise lovingly as their own]].
15	* DependingOnTheWriter: Because multiple ethnic groups could inhabit the same island, there could be multiple myths to describe common features. For example, Mount Kanlaon on the Island of Negros either received its name from a pair of heroes named Kan and Laon, a hero-god named Khan Laon whose name was eventually corrupted into the name of the mountain, or as the home of a Goddess named either Laon or Kanlaon, among others[[note]]Amusingly all these stories belong to the same Hiligaynon culture[[/note]].
16	* DragonsAreDivine: Recently rediscovered myths show a common motif where ''crocodiles'' are seen as Asian dragons, filling the roles of [[NatureSpirit powerful water-spirits,]] if not outright {{Physical God}}s like with East Asian mythology. Of course, being [[NeverSmileAtACrocodile crocodiles,]] they're naturally more fearsome than most Asian dragons: They were held as minor gods because they protected mortals from the ''other'' dangerous water-spirits lurking in the seas and rivers. It was often thought that being eaten by a crocodile sent someone directly to the positive "heaven-type" afterlife, without the arduous sea-journey needed after most other deaths, and some tribes thought that normal crocodiles needed a HumanSacrifice to turn INTO dragons, as they [[SoulEating needed to eat a human soul]].
17	* TheFairFolk: In the Philippines, stories of "Engkanto" abound. These elementals come as close to EldritchAbomination as they do to this trope with the forms they take varying on both witnesses and folklore. They may even take the form of a HumanoidAbomination at times if it would help with preserving their position.
18	* GenderFlip: The Spanish wanting those of Pampanga to stop worshipping the Kampampangan sun god of war and death Apúng Sinukuan, who lived on Mount Arayat, by rebranding him as a woman named Maria Sinukuan as well as changed his wife Mingan into her husband.[[note]]For context, Spaniards have a "macho" mindset as in amongst other things, both positive and negative, a male dominant social hierarchal view. So in their mindset in that era, turning the natives' male god into a woman would instil humility onto them.[[/note]] It wasn't as impactful as they would have hoped since the TopGod of Kampampangan mythology, Mangachey (Mangacha), is a woman. It did changed reverence of Sinukuan from a male sun god of war and death to a mountain guardian goddess.
19	* GodOfTheMoon: Mayari is one of three sisters born to Bathala, king of the gods. Her sisters are Hanan, goddess of the morning star, and Tala, goddess of the evening star. In one myth told by the Kapampangan tribe, Bathala died without an heir, and both Mayari and her brother Apolaki vied to be ruler of the heavens. Being war gods, they settled this the only way they knew how, until Apolaki struck his sister in the eye, was horrified by what he'd done, and the two agreed to split the heavens evenly. Mayari's missing eye is meant to explain why moonlight is not as bright as sunlight. Further, as Mayari is considered the WorldsMostBeautifulWoman, she also symbolizes that something can be beautiful despite, or even ''because of'', its imperfections.
20	* TheGreatSerpent: The Bakunawa of is an enormous {{Sea Serpent\|s}} with a nasty habit of trying to swallow the moon. It is often used as an explanation for why lunar eclipses happen.
21	* HaremSeeker: A lot of male heroes from precolonial epics and folktales marry more than one spouse.
22	* HijackedByJesus:
23	** Thanks to the colonization and Christianization of the Philippines by the Spanish, several local deities and spirits were rebranded to make them more church friendly. For example, the goddess of Mt Makiling in Laguna, Dayang Makiling (Lady Makiling), became the guardian spirit Mariang Makiling (Mary of Makiling), later simplified to just Maria Makiling.
24	** Before the Spanish, the Tiyanak weren't born from babies who died before they could be baptized (since that would be every baby born before the Spanish came) but of children whose mothers died before they could be born. Nowadays they're sometimes said to be from aborted babies, after the sexual revolution became a hot topic in the 1960s to 1970s amidst Catholic disapproval.
25	* LightIsNotGood: Adlaw/Apolaki, the Tagalog god of the Sun, fought against his sister Mayari the moon-goddess for supremacy of the world, refusing to share it with her, and even ''took out her eyes'' so that he could rule. He's also associated with war. In some versions he "only" takes out one of Mayari's eyes instead of both, but he realizes [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone he's gone way too far]] and lets her rule the world by night, while he gets to rule in the daytime. [[JustSoStory Being (part-)blind is why the moon is no longer as bright as the sun.]]
26	* MagicIsFeminine: The shamans of the pre-colonial Philippines (today best known as the babaylan, but this is a Visayan term and not universal; various regions and ethnic groups and subgroups had variations like Bikolano "balyan" or altogether different terms like Tagalog "katalonan" and Kinaray-a "maaram" ) were almost exclusively female. Male shamans thus adopted feminine aspects in some way like wearing women's clothing. The sources don't go into much detail and it would be tricky to say the least to read 21st century ideas of gender into them, but today "Babaylan" has been adopted as the name of a Filipino LGBT advocacy organization.
27	* MaleSunFemaleMoon: Apolaki is the god of the Sun and Mayari is the goddess of the Moon. The JustSoStory of the Moon's phases is that Apolaki and Mayari had a fight on who could rule the heavens and he hit her leaving her blind with one eye, and made peace by taking turns with him ruling the day, and her ruling the night.
28	* MenAreStrongWomenArePretty: In many pantheons/ethnic folktales, there are people who's names mean "strong" and "beautiful."
29	** The first man and woman according to Tagalog myth are named Malakas ("strong") and Maganda ("beautiful") respectively as they were born fully-formed from split bamboo, after a bird pecked it open.
30	** In Bikolano mythology about how Mt. Mayon was made, the tribal chief of the Rawis is named Makusog ("strong") and his daughter is Magayon ("beautiful"). The story and heroine are hence called ''Ang Daragang Magayon'' ("The maiden Beauty" since it's her name, but literally "The beautiful maiden").
31	* MixAndMatchCritters:
32	** The Tikbalang from Philippine mythology has the body of a man, but with the head and feet of a horse. Its legs are so long that when it sits down, its knees are above its head. Some legends also give it a mane of spikes. They are known for messing with travelers by shapeshifting into someone's relative, but if you find the right one, you can control it and ride it through the sky. Like the Kapre, the Tikbalang sometimes appears as a guardian of a tree or grove and can be befriended by those living near the tree.
33	** The Anggitay of Philippine mythology are the SexyDimorphism of the Tikbalang; a counterpart to centaride (female centaurs) of Greek mythology. They have a human female upper body with a horse lowered body. Some have a single horn growing from their forehead like {{unicorn}}s.
34	** Curiously, there is no evidence of horses (whether native or imported) and horse domestication in the Philippines before the arrival of the Spanish, and the earliest mentions of these creatures in Spanish colonial records emphasized them being shapeshifters and nature spirits. The part-horse image seems to have evolved later which may or may not be influenced by Orobas of the Literature/ArsGoetia. Then again, before the Spanish or other Europeans came in contact with the archipelago, the people of the Philippines had contact with mainland Asian civilizations that also domesticated horses such as Ming Dynasty China, and some posit the image of a horse-headed humanoid figure may have been brought through Hindu influence as one of Vishnu's avatars, Hayagriva, looks like that.
35	* OurDragonsAreDifferent:
36	** The ''bakunawa'', a sea serpent with a mouth as big as a lake (in the Philippines, the biggest one is Laguna de Bay, 911.7 square kilometers, or approximately five times the size of Brooklyn), a blood-red tongue, the whiskers and gills of a catfish, and two pairs of wings: one large and gray as ash, another small and further down its body. The ''bakunawa'' is the guardian of the spirit world, but has the unfortunate vice of attempting to ''swallow the moon'' causing eclipses.
37	** A recently rediscovered Filipino dragon-type is none other than ''[[NeverSmileAtACrocodile crocodiles.]]'' The closest thing to a pan-Filipino mythos is that crocodiles--especially the gigantic saltwater crocodiles roaming the islands--were routinely seen as 1) powerful {{Nature Spirit}}s or outright {{Physical God}}s (naturally attuned to water), 2) the {{Reincarnation}} of tribal ancestors, and obviously, 3) [[DinosaursAreDragons dragons,]] to the point where the Tagalog word for crocodile (''buwaya'') was frequently used as a synonym for "dragon" in old texts. A Tagalog myth states that a huge magical crocodile/dragon literally called [[AKindOfOne the Buwaya]] acts as a {{Psychopomp}}, by ferrying recently-deceased souls to the afterlife. In a strange blend of Eastern and Western dragon-types, some tribes believed that crocodiles could become dragons... by means of HumanSacrifice, since [[SoulEating they needed a human soul.]]
38	* OurMermaidsAreDifferent: The Philippines' mermaid folklore was ''extremely'' grim before the Spanish arrived: While some Filipino merfolk are scary-looking FishPeople, others are ApparentlyHumanMerfolk, and still others are the standard "top-half-human, bottom-half-fish" variety, all of them are primarily known [[ImAHumanitarian for eating people.]] Or [[HumanSacrifice sacrificing them to the water-gods,]] which is no less unpleasant.
39	** Thanks to later Western influence, merfolk in modern Filipino media are invariably Ariel-type mermaids if female and ''Film/CreatureFromTheBlackLagoon'' types if male. Mermaids are called ''sirena'' as in Spanish (SirensAreMermaids applies) and male merfolk are called ''siokoy'', which seems to be taken from Hokkien 水鬼 (chúi-kúi).
40	* OurMonstersAreWeird: The Philippines features quite the RoguesGallery of strange and [[AlwaysChaoticEvil almost always homicidal]] mythological beasties. The most famous is probably [[AxCrazy the]] [[HumanoidAbomination Manananggal]], a vampiric creature that EatsBabies and can fly by separating its torso from its legs. Additionally, there's [[EnfantTerrible the Tiyanak]] (a vampiric baby that died before it could be baptized), [[GuardianEntity the Kapre]] (a Sasquatch-like figure that guards people but also likes to play tricks on them), [[FriendToAllChildren the Alans]] (mischievous bird-humanoids that like to take care of lost or abandoned children and have backward-facing hands and feet), [[GentleGiant the Bungisngis]] (cheerful but dimwitted cyclops-like giants), the Pugot (headless ogres that like to steal women's underwear from clotheslines) and [[VoluntaryShapeshifting the Aswang]] (a frightening, shapeshifting predator).
41	* OurVampiresAreDifferent:
42	** The Manananggal detaches its entire upper body and grows bat wings. The Tagalog people use the same word for vampires (of which there are two sorts, the other kind has a long, proboscis-like tongue), ghouls and witches: "aswang", which is closer to "monster" or "spook" than anything specific (and even those have equivalent generic terms too like "halimaw" and "multo".)
43	* ThePhoenix: The Sarimanok, a majestic, rainbow-colored rooster, is prominent in Filipino mythology. Usually appears as a companion to the gods and is said to give good luck to those who capture it. It also played a part in some versions of the Filipino creation myth by pecking open the tree that contained the first man and woman.
44	* PlanetEater: There are several beings that said to cause an eclipse by eating the Moon in different regions and mythologies of the people. Often the noise created by people make them regurgitate the Moon.
45	** The Bakonawa (see relevant tropes in the page).
46	** The Tagalogs have the giant serpent Laho (believe by some scholars that the shadow planet Rāhu, the decapitated head of the asura of solar and lunar eclipses Svarabhānu, of Myth/HinduMythology is the etymological origin).
47	** The Kapampangans have Láwú which is a bird-like dragon.
48	** The Maranoas have the lion-like Arimaonga.
49	** The Mandaya people have Tambanokano, a giant crab who is said to be the child of the Sun and Moon. The Sun basically commits spousal abuse to the Moon making the latter run from the former. Tambanokano is their second child (their first child was a giant star but the sun cut him up and scattered his remains which became the stars in the sky) who lives under the sea causing the tides when he moves and makes lightning whenever he opens it's eyes. Inherited his father's temperament and occasionally tries to eat his mother the Moon.
50	* RideTheLightning:
51	** In Manobo/Manuvu mythology, the hero Tuwaang can use lightning to quickly travel.
52	** In Subanen mythology, Sondayo as others use flying {{scar\|fofasskicking}}ves called monsala to travel in lightning.
53	* SolarAndLunar: There are many pairs of sun and moon entities.
54	** The Tagalog god and goddess of the sun and moon -- Apolaki and Mayari -- are a brother/sister pair noted for their glowing eyes. The siblings quarreled over their duties, and Apolaki [[EyeScream wounded Mayari in the eye]] before their fight ended and they eventually agreed to share duties, [[JustSoStory which is why the light of the moon is less bright than that of the sun]].
55	** The Mandaya people tell that the sun and moon are married.
56	* TakeAwayTheirName: As stated previously, Spanish colonization sometimes forces name changes of the indigenous deities to be more church friendly.
57	** One of the more obvious being affected is Maria Cacao of Mount Lantoy whose original name is basically forgotten. The word "cacao" is from the plant of the same name which was originally not native to the Philippines but rather a natural resource from the Central and South American Spanish colonies which would later come to make plantations. "Maria" is given to her to Christianize her. After a few generations, her name and her namesake crop eventually naturalized in the Philippines.
58	* TogetherInDeath: In Bikolano folklore, Magayon (meaning "beautiful") was a girl either married to or who tried to elope with a warrior named Panganoron (whose name means "clouds"). Both died in a battle with a rival suitor, and Magayon's father buried them together. A volcano grew from the grave, with the idea that Magayon became the famously perfectly symmetrical Mt. Mayon and Panganoron became the clouds around its summit. Magayon may truly have been the original name of the volcano before it was simplified to Mayon for whatever reason, or the legend may be a folk etymology to explain the name.
59	* TopGod: Depending on the region or group, there are different one. Some places and people have gods that have the same name or similar to another pantheon's top god but is considered lower in hierarchy in their own.
60	** Bathala is the supreme creator god in Tagalog mythology. He's the primordial male deity which made the whole universe. A fuller name for him is Bathalang Maykapal, meaning "Lord Creator". "Bathala" itself is from Sanskrit ''bhattara'' "lord", so some scholars have proposed that the actual native Tagalog name or rather title was "ang Maykapal", the Creator. Even today the Christian God may be addressed as Panginoong Maykapal (often shortened to Poong Maykapal), also meaning Lord Creator, in addition to Diyos (from Spanish ''Dios''... distantly but directly related to Sanskrit ''Deva'', because they're both in the Indo-European language family.)
61	* WeddingSmashers: In Manobo/Manuvu tale of ''Tuwaang attends a wedding'', the hero Tuwaang goes to a wedding of the Lady of Mo:nawon to the Young Man of Sakadna. Tuwaang unintentional showed up the groom who couldn't afford the last of the savakan (bride-wealth consisting of articles and wrapped food to be paid for by the groom’s kinsmen) by buying them for him and then further shamed the groom when the bride sat next to Tuwaang instead. [[CockFight The groom -the Young Man of Sakadna- decides to challenge Tuwaang]] and, with his 100-man entourage [[TakingTheFightOutside waits for him out in the yard]]. Before Tuwaang goes to fight, the bride -the Lady of Mo:nawon- fixed his [[IdiotHair cowlick]] while Tuwaang's gungutan bird killed 94 of the Young Man of Sakanda's entourage, leaving only six gallants. Tuwaang and his bird fought the six together until only Tuwaang and the Young Man of Sakadna remain. An epic battle ensues with KungShui such as a boulder turning to dust when Tuwaang was thrown hard against it and trees getting bent and toppled. The Young Man of Sakadna then slammed Tuwaang so hard onto the ground that he sank BeneathTheEarth all the way to {{the underworld}} where he met the god of the underworld Tuhawa who told Tuwaang how to beat his foe. Tuwaang surfaces and summons the golden flute in which the Young Man of Sakadna [[SoulJar keeps his life]]. Tuwaang asks his foe to become his vassal in exchange for his life. The groom prefers death. Tuwaang therefore destroys the golden flute, ending his life. Accompanied by the gungutan, Tuwaang takes the bride home to Kuaman, where he rules forever.

Context Myth / PhilippineMythology