In multiple regional tales the Bakunawa is a great bent serpent or dragon that rises from the sea or inhabits the sky/underworld and attempts to swallow the moon, producing lunar eclipses. Variants narrate different motivations and relations — for example, mourning the death of a sister turtle, vengeance for the loss of a human lover, or rivalry with other cosmic beings — and some localized accounts add punitive actions by supreme deities (e.g., Visayan narratives where gods intervene). These variants reflect regional diversity rather than a single uniform origin account.
Descriptions vary across sources and regions. Commonly depicted as a large curved serpent or dragon-like sea-serpent; some accounts mention a looped tail and occasionally a single horn, while other regional renderings add whiskers, wings, or even bird- or lion-like features. Oral variants also imagine sky-inhabiting, flying, or terrestrial forms and, in some stories, a gigantic mobile landmass-like being with inhabitants on its back.
Primary cosmological action is to eat or swallow the moon, which explains lunar eclipses. It is also credited in sources with causing earthquakes, rains, and winds in some accounts, and in certain tales it is said to consume humans. The Bakunawa's movements were historically integrated into geomantic calendrical practice and featured in rites performed by babaylan ritual specialists. Communities respond to its eclipsing activity with coordinated ritual actions.
Weaknesses
- ritualStartlement by communal noise (bells, panastanes, pots and pans)
- ritualLulling or soothing music to induce sleep (variant regional tactic)
Wards
- ritualClanging bells, striking panastanes, pots and pans (communal noise to scare the Bakunawa and protect the moon)
- ritualPlaying soothing instruments or music to lull the Bakunawa (variant accounts)
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.
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.
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]Bakunawa — Wikipedia. Wikipedia contributors, 'Bakunawa', Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopediawiki
- [2]Practica del Ministerio (1731) quoted via Estadismo (1893) — historical account cited on Wikipedia. Fr. Tomas Ortiz, Practica del Ministerio (1731), quoted in Zuniga's Estadismo (1893), cited on Wikipediaother
- [3]Archive Thingiverse description — Bakunawa. Archive Thingiverse item description for Bakunawa (archived)other
- [4]Wikidata: Bakunawa. Wikidata entry Q130610773 (Bakunawa)other