The modern label engkanto derives from the Spanish encanto ('enchantment'); Spanish colonial observers applied the term to a wide variety of local supernatural races. Indigenous categories such as anito (ancestor spirits) overlap with engkanto in Philippine cosmologies. Scholarly discussion records both indigenous strata (place‑linked and ancestor‑related beings) and colonial influence on the category; Francisco Demetrio collected and analyzed engkanto stories and argued for layered influences in the tradition (including contact with Europeans) rather than a single origin.
Descriptions are highly variable: engkanto often resemble humans in sex, age, and susceptibility to illness, yet give off a distinctive otherness. Some accounts depict them as unusually beautiful—blue eyes, fair complexion, golden hair—while other groups are described with different traits (e.g., high‑bridged noses, absent philtrums, or dark‑skinned 'itim na engkanto'). Sexual dimorphism is reported in ethnographic examples. Their dwellings are typically natural features such as large rocks and trees (notably balete), shadows, or other conspicuous landscape markers; to favored humans they may appear as magnificent palaces.
Engkanto display a dual and variable repertoire: they may be beneficent—bringing luck, wealth, power, or serving as spirit‑guides (abyan) to shamans/babaylan—or malevolent—causing depression, madness, fevers, skin diseases (boils), leading travelers astray, disappearances, kidnapping, or enchantment. They can appear in human or animal (often bird) form, mate with humans in folk narratives, and possess or induce trance‑like states; shamans commune with engkanto to obtain healing power and to negotiate or counteract malign influence.
Weaknesses
- othersocial/ritual mediation by babaylan (shamanic negotiation)
- substanceanting-anting / agimat (protective amulet or charm)
Wards
- substanceanting-anting / agimat (magical charm or amulet used to ward away engkanto)
- ritualBabaylan mediation (shamanic intervention and communion with engkanto)
Anansi
The spider trickster god of Akan folklore — cunning, mischievous, and wise. Keeper of stories and teacher of human beings, brought through the slave trade into Caribbean and African-American tradition.
Duwende
A Filipino folkloric small humanoid being described in source materials as 'smaller people'—normal-looking humans of miniature stature—often compared in English-language descriptions to elves or leprechauns.
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.
Duwende
A Filipino folkloric small humanoid being described in source materials as 'smaller people'—normal-looking humans of miniature stature—often compared in English-language descriptions to elves or leprechauns.
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.
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.
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.
Community Record
- [1]Engkanto. Wikipedia contributors. 'Engkanto.' Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.wiki
- [2]The Engkanto Belief: An Essay in Interpretation. Demetrio, Francisco. 'The Engkanto Belief: An Essay in Interpretation.' Asian Ethnology.academic
- [3]Philippino Folklore: Pagtatawas, Mantanda sa Punso and Engkantos | USC Digital Folklore Archives. USC Digital Folklore Archives. 'Philippino Folklore: Pagtatawas, Mantanda sa Punso and Engkantos.'folk
- [4]S02Ep05. Probinsya Supernaturals (archive listing). Probinsya Supernaturals. 'S02Ep05.' Archive.org listing.other