The ancient Filipino religion is mixed with Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Islam.

 The ancient Filipino religion is mixed with Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Islam.

The old chronicles of Jesuits and Spanish friars show that, at the arrival of the first Spaniards, the coasts of the Visayan islands and even Manila were already almost converted to Mohammedanism, especially Sulu and Mindanao, by the gacises and morabitos (holy men) coming from Borneo. Thus, the place where the Filipino religion was preserved in its purest form was in the North, in the Ilocano provinces. By distinguishing the primitive elements from the later Hindu, Muslim, and Christian influences, the original Filipino religion can still be found intact not only among the Itnegs (Tinguians), but also in the legends, tales, and superstitions of the Tagalogs, Visayans, Bikolanos, Pampangos, Sambals, Pangasinenses, and other civilized Filipino peoples. This primitive religion was the same from Mindanao to the northern tip of Luzon. It was Anitism, or the worship of the Anitos the souls of ancestors and we have discovered that it is the underlying foundation of the worship of animals, mountains, and natural forces.

The first notice about this religion is found in the account of the Lombard Antonio Pigafetta, companion of Magellan when he discovered our Archipelago in 1521. Pigafetta relates that the natives of Limasawa, an island between Surigao and Butuan, called their God Abba; that in Cebu there were wooden idols, hollow at the back, with arms and legs extended, raised feet, wide faces, and open mouths showing four long tusk-like teeth; that along the coasts of that island there were many temples, probably small huts where food was offered to the diwatas (souls of the ancestors); that in cases of serious illness they sacrificed a pig (which he mistakenly called “the consecration of the pig”); and that they feared a large black bird which, according to them, perched on rooftops at night, cawed loudly, and caused dogs to howl until dawn. This was probably the fabulous tawá, which, according to the Visayans, was an aswang transformed in prehistoric times. This bird was purely mythical, like the Ilocano kinnaw; but Quirino interpreted it as a crow, even adding that it was considered the owner of the land though there is no memory of the crow ever being worshiped by Filipinos.

According to a report by Governor Legazpi sent to the King of Spain in 1570, even before arriving in Manila, the Visayans supposedly had neither idol nor image (which is incorrect), nor temples, but only a small chapel called Olangú. The name of their god was Diwata, and their priestesses were called babaylans. In their sacrifices (maganitos) the priestesses wore long yellow wigs (over which, according to others, they displayed a golden ornament with an image of an Anito), and in their hands they held a cane. The chronicler notes that when a Visayan fell ill, the babaylan would begin to dance, making strange gestures, muttering words from time to time, pretending to see visions and speak with spirits, until she fell to the ground as if lifeless, with a diabolical pallor. After a while she would recover and recount a thousand things which she claimed the spirit had told her things the people believed with great faith, since most could not be disproven. If an animal such as a pig was to be sacrificed, it was stabbed while the priestess danced, and the onlookers collected its blood to anoint the sick person, while the meat was shared among them all.

The Relation of 1572 likewise says: “As for the sacrifices, as far as I have seen, each one of them has in his house many idols which they worship. They call God Bathala, and the main idol they have they call by this name, or sometimes Diobata (Diwata). At least among the painted Visayans, they call him thus; the natives of this island of Luzon commonly call him Bathala and consider him the God of all creation. And so, after the missionaries came to this land and began to preach the faith of Jesus Christ and to baptize, they could find no better word in the natives’ language to call God Our Lord than Bathala. These people convert easily to the faith, and in a short time the missionaries baptized many.”

When a chieftain was sick, he would gather his relatives, prepare much food, fish, meat, and wine, and set the meal on dishes upon the ground for all the guests.

And is it strange that those simple people believed the Anito spoke through the mouths of their priestesses, when even the Romans with their sibyls, the spiritualists with their mediums, the magistrate and governor Morga, and the missionaries Grijalva, Chirino, Colín, Gaspar de San Agustín, and all the friars and Jesuits of that time unanimously affirmed that, indeed, the Anito spoke through the mouths of its priestesses and even appeared to them frequently? They say those oracles had foretold, three years before the Spaniards’ arrival, that their final intentions would be different from the attractions they first offered.

— Isabelo de los Reyes

At home, they sit on the ground to eat, and in the middle of the feast which in their language they call manganito, and by another name baylan they bring out the idol they call Bathala. Certain old women, whom they regard as priestesses, and old men as well, offer to the idol some of the food they are eating and pray in their language for the health of the sick person for whom the feast is being held. The natives of these islands have neither altars nor temples. Once the manganito, or rather drunken feast, which usually lasts seven or eight days, is finished, they take the idols and place them in the corners of the house, keeping them without any reverence. (2)

According to González de Mendoza (History of the Things of China, Madrid 1586), the Filipinos kept idols of men and women. He writes: “Among these, they held in greatest veneration an idol whose name was Bathala. This reverence they had inherited by tradition, and so they could not say why it was greater than the others or why it deserved higher esteem. They also worshipped the sun and the moon, whose eclipses they celebrated with feasting and drunkenness, festivities they called Magaduras.”

The aforementioned Grijalva said: “Their ancient idolatry and superstitions were not deeply rooted, for by nature they were not very religious. Although they worshipped idols and reverenced a supreme deity, they confessed to the immortality of souls. But they believed the souls always remained in mortal bodies. Thus they held as certain the transmigration from one body to another, and only in this did they believe that the gods rewarded or punished them by imprisoning souls in beautiful or ugly bodies, in poverty or wealth, with good or bad fortune.” (This was Brahmanism.)

Morga says: “The demon ordinarily deceived them with a thousand errors and blindness; he appeared to them in different horrible and terrifying forms, often as wild animals, so that they feared and trembled before him, and most often they worshipped him, making figures of those forms, which they kept in caves and private houses, where they offered perfumes, fragrances, food, and fruits to what they called Anitos.” From Deuteronomy, XXXII, 17, we record the selfish assertion that only one’s own god is the true God, and the foreign one is the Demon even though we are all equally children of one Heavenly Father. The truth is: there is no such Demon. Scripture does not say that God created him, so who created him? It is unthinkable that the Lord created a being so perverse, destined only to ruin humankind; and if that was not his destiny, then the Creator must have erred. The idea of Satan (Shaitan) is exotic, of Arabic origin; only the Idumean Saint Job (Job I, 7) speaks of him, imitated by the prophet Zechariah (III, 1). The chapters XXVIII of Ezekiel and XIV of Isaiah, arbitrarily applied to Lucifer, refer plainly and undoubtedly to the kings of Tyre and Babylon, respectively. You may confirm this in the Bible. Vermes (Latin for “worm”). — The Two Babylons, p. 466.

All peoples depict foreign gods as imaginary evil spirits or demons, often in the shapes of fierce and terrifying animals. Thus it is not surprising that the Filipinos portrayed the gods of enemy tribes—whom they considered harmful anitos in such forms. And if even their own idols were not perfect, surely it was because they were not yet skilled artists; but they claimed, and still claim, that their Anitos were paragons of beauty.

The Bible, and especially the novenas of Romanists, bring us accounts of such apparitions.

There are no such apparitions. These are phenomena of fantasy or memory, if not of optical illusion. Just as we remember certain people, so by hallucination they appear to our imagination, as we see them in dreams. The image of a person once seen is imprinted more or less on memory, like on a cinematic reel, and when imagination stirs, that image appears again as remembrance. But sometimes, due to a mental disturbance not necessarily madness but simply hysteria, nerves, deep sadness, nostalgia, love, or even from thinking too much about that person we may seem to see them, by a mere optical or imaginary illusion.

The famous French astronomer Camille Flammarion, in an article published in 1899 in Revue des Revues, invited the public to send him accounts of apparitions seen by sane and honest people, in order to test his suspicion that such apparitions might be not hallucinations but real effects of the transmission of brain vibrations or telepathy. He cited one or two cases in which, when a person concentrated their thought on another absent person, the latter saw the one thinking of them at that very moment. But these cases common in the imagination of lovers are mere coincidences, easily explained, since passionate people think of nothing but each other, and vice versa.

The only case we know worth mentioning is that of a beautiful young woman, sister of the wealthy Manila resident Mr. Faustino Lichauco, who, being in Hong Kong and separated from her mother for the first time, thought so much about her that she believed she saw her for an instant, even though she was in Manila. Distressed, she firmly believed her mother had died, and they had to cable Manila, only to learn she was alive and well.

The other cases of apparitions we know of were tricks of nocturnal seducers or thieves.

People who fast and keep their imagination excited by the tales of apparitions told in the Romanist novenas are predisposed to see visions through hallucination. And this must also have happened, without doubt, to the babaylanes (priests and priestesses of our primitive religion) and to the friars who testified to the supposed truth of those apparitions.

From hearing too many stories of apparitions, one often becomes so fearful that one mistakes a stain on the wall, a piece of clothing, or any rag for a vision; the rustle of one’s own starched garment for the presence of a ghost; or the squealing of piglets nursing from their mothers in the dark and empty village plazas, for other noises…

The English Romanists worship Satan (Shaitan) under the name of Saint Swithin; and in Poitiers (France), they worship him in the form of a dragon, under the name of Siffin.

— Isabelo de los Reyes