In local epic accounts of Bulusan, Aguingay is a beautiful woman betrothed to the hero Bulusan. Different versions narrate that Bulusan is killed (in one retelling by a giant Mampak bird; in another through plots involving the chieftain Casiguran and a false witness). Grief and violence culminate at the volcano: Aguingay is presented as throwing her infant (in Jamoralin’s retelling) into the volcano's crater under duress and later dying by her own hand. The communal mourning — described as villagers carrying her lifeless body and mixing their tears with those of Aguingay and Bulusan’s blood — forms the etiological explanation for two lakes on the slopes of Mt. Bulusan and for the mountain’s name.
Sources describe Aguingay simply as a "beautiful girl with fair complexion"; accounts emphasize her beauty and status as the principal female figure of the epic but provide no detailed physical attributes, dress, or distinguishing supernatural markers.
Aguingay is portrayed as a human actor rather than a supernatural agent. Her notable behaviors in the epic are social and tragic: she is betrothed and married to Bulusan, complies with an order by the chieftain Casiguran (in one version) to throw her newborn into the volcano’s crater, and later kills herself. The sources do not attribute supernatural powers, posthumous haunting, or magical agency to her.
Alan
A class of non‑human spirit-beings in Tinguian (Philipine) folklore associated with reproductive wastes and springs; said to transform discarded menstrual blood, afterbirth, or miscarried tissue into human children whom they rear, and to dwell in fine houses near springs. Key described features include wings and backward-pointing fingers and toes.
Amalanhig
Amalanhig are Visayan undead beings in Philippine folk belief, described as aswang who failed to transfer their monstrosity or power before death and who rise from graves to attack living humans. Accounts portray them as externally human in appearance with enlarged upper canines and as predators that bite, feed with a pointed tongue in some tellings, or — in an alternative variant — tickle victims to death.
Angalo
Angalo is a primordial culture-hero and giant in Ilocano mythology credited with shaping the landscape of Luzon and explaining natural phenomena; narratives present him as the first man and an ancestral figure whose bodily acts produced mountains, valleys, seas, and celestial features.
Anggitay
A Philippine folkloric female equid–human hybrid often described with the upper body of a woman and the lower body of a horse. Frequently compared to the Greek centauride and sometimes presented as a female counterpart to the tikbalang; traditionally associated with an attraction to gemstones and jewelry and with a local homeland in Santo Tomas, Batangas in some accounts.
Anito
Anito is a category of non‑human and post‑human spiritual beings in indigenous Philippine animistic worldviews, encompassing ancestor spirits, nature spirits/local deities, and sometimes carved effigies (taotao) that house or represent those spirits. They mediate relations between the living and the unseen world, functioning as household guardians, owners of places, intercessors, or occasional agents of harm when offended.
Aswang
The most feared supernatural being in Philippine folklore — a shape-shifting monster that appears human by day but transforms at night to prey on pregnant women and children.
Bakla
Bakla is a Philippine social and gender category—commonly an assigned‑male‑at‑birth person who adopts a feminine gender expression and is often treated as a third gender. Historically some bakla served as indigenous ritual specialists (babaylan, katalonan), but the term itself denotes a social identity, not a supernatural being.
Bakunawa
A dragon- or serpent-like mythic being from Philippine tradition associated with the moon and eclipses; its actions explain lunar eclipses and some natural phenomena and were integrated into ritual practice and calendrical knowledge.
Bal-Bal
A Philippine folkloric undead/monster that steals corpses from funerals and graves and feeds on them, noted for keen scent for dead bodies, sharp claws and teeth, foul breath, and reportedly leaving a banana‑tree trunk in the coffin as a substitute for the stolen corpse.
Bathalà
In pre‑colonial Tagalog religion Bathalà (also Maykapál) functions as the transcendent supreme creator-preserver — the originator and ruler of the universe. The lexeme also served as an honorific applied to lesser tutelary spirits and portentous phenomena, and was later syncretized with the Christian Dios after Spanish contact.
Batibat
The Batibat is a vengeful, tree-dwelling female spirit in Philippine (Ilocano and Tagalog) folklore associated with causing suffocative sleep afflictions, nightmares, and sleep paralysis when trees that house it are felled and used near human sleeping spaces.
Berbalang
Berbalangs are a class of corpse‑eating, astral‑projecting beings described in a late‑19th‑century ethnographic account from the island of Cagayan Sulu (Mapun). The report portrays them as a village community whose members are said to dig up graves to eat corpses and, by entering trance, liberate an astral body to possess and feed on the living; protective measures recorded include lime and a coconut pearl talisman.
Community Record
- [1]Aguingay. Wikipedia contributors, 'Aguingay,' Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.wiki
- [2]Lake Aguingay. Wikipedia contributors, 'Lake Aguingay,' Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.wiki
- [3]Lake Aguingay – Even more Astonishing in Person. Bulusan Rural Vagabond blog, 'Lake Aguingay – Even more Astonishing in Person'.folk
- [4]Lake Aguingay blows my mind. Bulusan Rural Vagabond blog, 'Lake Aguingay blows my mind.'folk
- [5]Wikidata: Aguingay. Wikidata entry Q4694558 for Aguingay.other