Sources describe Angalo as a legendary creation giant with pre‑Hispanic origins in the Ilocos region and as the first man; one English-language source states he was "son of the god of building." Myths cast him as an etiological ancestor whose actions—often narrated as family episodes—produce geographic features and natural conditions and whose daughters are named as progenitors of local peoples (the Ilocano, Aeta, and Igorot are mentioned in the available account).
Accounts emphasize Angalo's immense size: his head "touched the sky" and he could "easily walk from the Ilocos Region to Manila in one step." He is accompanied by a giant wife, Aran, and three giant daughters. Few other physical details are provided in the cited material beyond references to his scale and a loincloth (baag) mentioned in an anecdote.
Myths attribute world-forming acts to Angalo: through his actions he "shaped the hills and mountains of Luzon, formed the oceans, and put up the sky, sun, moon and stars." Natural phenomena are read as manifestations of his body and behavior—for example, thunder is described as Angalo's voice, earthquakes as his movements, and a rainbow as his hanging G‑string. Narrative episodes attribute specific landscape features to discrete acts (e.g., footprints as small valleys, caves as former shelters, depressions at Pinsal Falls formed when he knelt to drink, and the Banaoang Gap created when he kicked the range in sleep).
Aguingay
Aguingay (also Agingay) is a legendary woman from the Bulusan epic of Sorsogon, Philippines. Presented as a mortal of exceptional beauty and tragic fate, her life and death are etiologically linked to local landscape features (Mt. Bulusan and two lakes) and commemorated in an annual festival.
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.
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]Angalo (Wikipedia). Wikipedia contributors, 'Angalo,' Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angalowiki
- [2]Angalo (Wikidata). Wikidata entry Q48816839, http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q48816839wiki
- [3]Archive items referencing contemporary uses of the name 'Angalo' (not mythological sources). Archive.org item: Bibash JK Angalo Official Music Video, https://archive.org/details/bibash-jk-angalo-official-music-video-prod.by-g-beatsstudio-360p (contemporary cultural use; not a traditional source)other