Fun facts about Bulan, Libulan, Sidapa, Haliya and Mayari in Filipino myths

Fiction inspired by or based from precolonial Filipino mythologies, in a way, help preserve our ancestors' myths. Unfortunately, there are people out there who are spreading Filipino mythology-inspired stories reeking of modern concepts as actual precolonial myths either due to ignorance or a deliberate act to further personal biases or self-inserts influenced by the folly of identity representation - to make it look as if the very modern sociopolitical movement they are forcing into society was already a thing during our ancestors' time; take modern gender sensibilities, for example. Even worse are those who fetishize the myths. It's also lamentable that there are artists who spread poorly researched artwork on precolonial Filipino mythology and beliefs. These only confuse and misinform those who are new to Filipino mythology, doing further damage to what remains of our ancestors' myths. Centuries of colonization almost wiped out these myths and, sadly, today some of our own people are finishing what the colonizers started. With that in mind, let me present some facts to debunk the misconceptions some people are insinuating about the myths on Sidapa, Bulan, Libulan, Haliya and Mayari.

The Bulan/Libulan and Sidapa love story

The love story of Sidapa and Bulan or Libulan, that resulted to insinuations that they are "queer" deities with Bulan or Libulan being tagged as “patron god of homosexuality” is nothing but a modern fabrication. The tale is a hoax peddled online as actual precolonial Philippine mythology and belief. There aren't any old documents to prove that such a narrative is part of precolonial myths nor is the story featured in any oral tradition. The story is also borderline pedophilia. There are people who justify the narrative as a result of "evolving myths" or that it could be considered as a modern myth when in fact it is nothing but a certain group of people forcing their modern identity politics into our ancestors' myths. These people don't really give a damn about the culture behind our ancestors' myths. What matters to them is their own "culture" which they are projecting into the myths. They're warping indigenous myths to conform with their own agenda, with their own culture just like what the colonizers did. I guess facts are irrelevant when a narrative is being pushed.

Sidapa

Sidapa was first recorded in Miguel Loarca’s Relacion de las Islas Filipinas (1582), a report about the archipelago and it’s people. During Loarca’s time the people of what is now Arevalo District, Iloilo City and neighboring villages believed that Sidapa was responsible for the length of an individual’s lifespan and that he had a huge tree up Mt. Madiaas in Antique Province. On the said tree he carved a notch every time a person was born to set the length of the said person's life. According to Loarca he got such info through the natives' songs about their deities and ancestors, which they sang during communal gatherings, communal work and even during mundane tasks. There is no mention of Sidapa having an affair with a fellow deity. Also, he doesn’t mention Sidapa being revered in neighboring Visayan islands.

In the Diccionario Mitologico de Filipinas, there is a theory that Sidapa (the name particularly) must have been originally Sri Pada, a name identified with the Hindu god Vishnu. It’s not that far fetched considering that belief in Sidapa was only among the coastal people of precolonial Iloilo and some parts of Antique who were mostly descendants of Hindu Srivijayan migrants. There’s no mention of Sidapa in the Hinilawod or Sugidanon, epics of the inland and mountain people, the Sulod or Panay Bukidnon of Panay Island in Western Visayas. Blumentritt doesn’t mention Sidapa having any affair.

Sidapa appears in the Tagalog tale “Why the Cock Crows at Dawn” in Damiana Eugenio’s The Myths where said deity is portrayed as a war god who turns a servant into a rooster after failing to wake him early in the morning many times. There's no mention of Sidapa having an affair with another deity.

In Jocano’s Outline of Philippine Mythology (1969), Sidapa is a female deity with a husband and lives in a place called Kamariitan. Again, no mention of Sidapa having an affair with a moon deity.

Bulan & Libulan aren't deities

There aren't any evidence that explicitly cite Bulan and Libulan as lunar deities revered by the natives back then. Even the title "patron god of homosexuality" is nothing but a modern embellishment resulting from the Sidapa and Bulan/Libulan love story hoax.

There’s no such thing as a Bulan deity in precolonial Bicolano myths. In 1754, Fr. Marcos de Lisboa published the Vocabulario dela lengua Bicol, a dictionary of Bicolano words, terms. It contains entries on Gugurang, Aswang & other supernatural and mythical entities but no entry on a youthful male moon deity. It has an entry about the moon, just the moon as it is.

Bulan as a deity is even absent in Fr. Jose Castaño’s Breve Noticias acerca del origin, religion, creencias y supersticiones de los antiguos Indios del Bicol, a cultural monograph on ancient Bicolanos published in late 19th century.

In the original written record of the Bicolano epic Ibalon – included in Castaño’s Breve Noticia – there is also no mention of Bulan as a deity.

In Ferdinand Blumentritt’s Diccionario Mitologico de Filipinas (1895), there is no mention of a Bicolano deity named Bulan.

The only mention of Bulan - as a primordial entity representative of the moon - is in the Bicolano creation myth included in H. Otley Beyer’s Ethnography of the Bikol People (1923).

Libulan, on the other hand, is from an old Visayan creation myth titled "How the World was Made" from John Maurice Miller's Philippine Folklore Stories (1904).

Libulan as a deity having some sort of an affair with Sidapa was shown in the television series Indio where Sidapa expressed admiration to Libulan (a female character in the series).

Thus, claims of Bulan, Libulan and Sidapa as queer deities from precolonial Filipino myths are nothing but the result of a hoax fooling a lot of people who are new to Philippine mythology and folklore or the deliberate act of a group of people to further their own agenda.

The misconception with Haliya

Unfortunately, the so-called masked goddess of the moon who battled the moon-eating bakunawa in Bicolano mythology is not really a moon goddess nor a lunar entity. Haliya was originally halea (pronounced as hali-a or halya), an ancient Bicolano women’s game, which involved singing to the moon as described by Fr. Lisboa in his Vocabulario dela lengua Bicol (1754). Unfortunately, years later, scholars misinterpreted Lisboa’s description and wrote it down as a song-dance ritual to drive away the eclipse-causing bakunawa. This misinterpretation was adapted and further embellished by later works particularly in Bikol Literary History where halea is portrayed as a moon goddess battling the bakunawa.

There is no mention of a goddess called Haliya from the various writings of Spanish missionaries who documented the culture, ways of the natives of Bicol nor is there a documented oral tradition about such a goddess in various ethnographic works from later scholars. Why are there numerous mentions of the bakunawa - the creature the goddess Haliya supposedly battles with - from old writings and oral lore but never a mention of a Haliya moon goddess? Well, that's because there never was a Bicolano moon goddess named Haliya.

Mayari or Kulalaying?

Contrary to popular belief, Mayari is not the actual Tagalog goddess of the moon, it's Kulalaying (Colalaiyng in Spanish) a.k.a. Dalaga nasa Buwan; as documented in the Noceda-Sanlucar Vocabulario de la Lengua Tagala (1754) and the letters of Felipe Pardo, former archbishop of Manila (1686-1688). So, yeah, some anito/diwata worship revivalists today have been paying reverence to the wrong Tagalog lunar goddess, no thanks to those flowery, poorly-researched posts about Mayari online. Imagine Kulalaying rolling her eyes every time someone posts about Mayari with the following modern embellishments "Goddess of Combat, War, Revolution, Hunt, Weaponry, Strength" with her being reduced to just another name for Mayari.

Mayari is from F. Landa Jocano's Notes on Philippines Divinities (1968). Unfortunately, on some of his entries on Tagalog deities including Mayari, Jocano forgot cite any source for them nor did he mention if he got their myths from oral tradition. Even after the entries were incorporated into his book, Outline of Philippine Mythology (1969), sources for some of the Tagalog deities including Mayari were not cited. Mayari is probably derived from Apo Namalyari or Malayari, the supreme deity of precolonial Sambal, Aeta and Kapampangans on the Zambales range. Some Aeta communities in Zambales still revere Apo Namalyari to this day. Even the story of Mayari and Apolaki (Tagalog god of the sun and war) fighting over who should rule may have been derived from the battle for supremacy between Apo Namalyari, also known as a moon god and Sinukwan or Aring Sinukuan, the Kapampangan god of the sun, war and death.

Myths and legends were essential to our ancestors' indigenous culture. Unfortunately, many people today even modern media are treating indigenous pre-colonial culture as a mere pool from which they could fish out characters and ideas for them to appropriate to fit their biases and modern sensibilities.

Hello. My post is out of concern for those who are new to Filipino myths and legends, who are being misled or misinformed by people who are spreading the Bulan/Libulan & Sidapa love story including them being tagged as queer deities as part of pre-colonial myths & beliefs. I have no issue with queer narrative in our myths and legends if there are any; my issue is pre-colonial culture of our ancestors being appropriated to push a modern narrative which only further dilutes their myths and legends.

As for deities with possible queer traits, the only one I could think of is Lakapati from pre-colonial Tagalog myths, who was tagged as a hermaphrodite because the statue/figure representing the said deity had male and female features. For other old beliefs involving LGBTQ, among the Tausug it is believed that homosexuals (called bantut) turn into lutaw (a zombie-like entity) when they die for being "social deviants" or for "violating" Islamic norms (Sources: Transgender men and homosexuality in the Southern Philippines: ethnicity, political violence and the protocols of engendered sexualities amongst the Muslim Tausug and Sama by Mark Johnson; Philippine Gay Culture: Binabae to Bakla, Silahis to MSM by J. Neil Garcia).

Btw, there were indigenous groups in Mindanao that had no issue with transgenders. For example, among the Teduray, a person's gender wasn't determined by biological traits but by what people identified and according to their social role. Not sure if this is still prevalent today. For further reading on this, please refer to Wisdom from a Rainforest: The Spiritual Journey of an Anthropologist by Stuart Schlegel.

'Pisting Yawa' and Nagmalitong Yawa

NOTE: This is a reaction to an article by GMA Network claiming that Nagmalitong Yawa Sinagmaling Diwata and the yawa were demonized by the Spaniards, thus giving birth to the curse expression "pisting yawa!" Article here: https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/specials/content/206/our-progressive-past/

Does the Bisayan curse "pisting yawa" refer to Nagmalitong Yawa Sinagmaling Diwata (a character from the Panay Bukidnon or Sulod epics and mythology)? Did the Spaniards demonize the yawa? Let's see...

The term "yawa" in old Ilonggo beliefs refers to an otherworldly or a supernatural being while the yawa among Bisayans refers to malevolent beings in general. That's why we Ilonggos have the term "yawan-on" which equates to something evil or non-human. This doesn't refer to Nagmalitong Yawa Sinagmaling Diwata but rather to the kind of beings she belongs. Also, there are lines in the epics that indicate Nagmalitong Yawa Sinagmaling Diwata and yawa are two different entities. Among the Bisayans, specifically in Eastern Samar, the Spanish Fr. Ignacio Alcina mentioned in his Historia de Las Islas E Indios de Bisayas (1668) that the yawa was a malevolent male forest diwata who abducted women. In other accounts, the yawa strangled people according to the deity Maka-ubus's whim.

Is the yawa a demon? Not really but based on the accounts of natives during Alcina's time, them being viewed as demons or evil spirits has basis and not just the sole machination of the Spaniards in their effort to convert our ancestors to Catholicism as some would have you believe.

Before the arrival of Catholicism our ancestors already feared or dreaded such beings as the yawa, which they preferred to avoid since these beings were not like them - not human - and were unpredictable (sometimes good, mostly malevolent). The Cebuanos have the "dili ingon nato" which refers to "beings not like us" whom they prefer to steer clear of. Were the yawa revered back then? Probably but they were mostly feared by our ancestors even before the Spaniards set foot on our shores. Our ancestors already had a stereotypical view on these beings: yes, some are good but they can make you sick on a whim so it is best to avoid them.

This violent aspect of these beings only made them look evil compared to the Christian god and that was one of the things the Spanish missionaries capitalized on when they were converting the natives. God won't give them boils or sores if they cut the crooked tree in their backyard and God won't spirit away their women and children into the woods like the yawa do. God will protect them from these mischievous beings.

So, it's natural that when most of our ancestors converted to Catholicism, the yawa - for their mischief - were cast out, relegated as a demonio or Satan himself in favor of the generally benevolent God similar to how Zoroastrian deities and entities were shunned by those who converted to Abrahamic religion - Baal bad, God is good. Thus, the Bisayans came up with "pisting yawa" as an expression or to curse someone or something while the "yawan-on" among us Ilonggos is presently used to refer to something demonic or an evil person.

For further reading on this matter, please refer the excellent work of Christian Jeo Talaguit here: https://www.academia.edu/49594833/Pisting_Yawa_The_Devil_who_was_once_a_Bisayan_Deity_The_14th_DLSU_Arts_Congress_Pandemic_Resilience_and_the_Arts_

Stevie Wonder - Part-Time Lover

Looking for inspiration. A ballpoint pen drawing I did years ago.

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The recent Apo Whang-Od and Nas Daily issue remains debatable but one thing is for sure - it's disgusting when foreigners milk Filipino culture for personal gain.

According to old beliefs of the Subanon people (a tribe indigenous to the Zamboanga peninsula area of the Philippines), the tekma are tall and hideous forest creatures with feet turned backwards. They are so frightening that to see one could turn a person permanently cross-eyed.

In Sambal (Filipino ethnolinguistic group living primarily in the province of Zambales and the Pangasinense municipalities of Bolinao and Anda) folklore, the ani-ani is a bearded giant eighteen or twenty feet tall. It can transform into a carabao, a goat or a dog. Like the kapre it hangs out in huge trees and smokes a large cigar. The ani-ani is distinguished by its flat nose, thick lips, big clawed fingers, legs as thick as medium-sized tree trunks and a smell described as goat stench. It likes to block paths in the forest.

The ikki or iqui (also spelled ike) is a manananggal-like creature from Filipino folklore, particularly from Luzon. By day, the ikki is an ordinary person but come nightfall it transforms into a winged creature. Unlike the manananggal that separates from the lower half of its body at the waist, the ikki separates at the knees, leaving its lower legs and feet when it flies off. In Quezon province, the ikki raids homes, feeding on the sleeping residents or attacks travelers, slashing their bodies open and taking home the heart and the liver. While in flight it often lets out a frightful shriek which sounds like “krrrr krrrr.” Some say the ikki is the male counterpart of the manananggal.

According to Itneg or Tinguian (ethnic group from the upland province of Abra in northwestern Luzon, Philippines) myths, Giambolan was a giant headhunter who had ten heads. He had a huge shield and was armed with a head-axe and a spear. A giant boar’s tusk adorned his armlet. Giambolan was the lord of a place called Kaboyboyan where a beautiful spring flowed. One day he was challenged to a fight by two little boys, Ilwisan and Dondonyan who were both created by alans from menstrual blood. With the help of their magical weapons, the boys were able to slay Giambolan.

Monkeys chattering. Tontos del culo. Mga langaw nga nakatungtong lang sa ipot sang karbaw matyagan nila mas dako pa sila sa karbaw.

My thoughts on the rabble cancelling the owner of The Aswang Project (a website on Philippine folklore and mythology research) for being a white man. Some of the self-righteous, gatekeeping rabble are even going personal against the poor guy - tagging him transphobic for debunking with well-researched facts gender-related misconceptions on some precolonial Filipino myths.

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