The World of the Spirits
by Gabriel S Casal
THE WORLD of Ma-i includes a counter-population of spirits who are called anito. They are the spirits of things and the spirits of the dead. They mingle with people, they are wherever there are people, they are also wherever there are no people, as in isolated forests or distant seas;
they are where things are.
The people of Ma-i believe that long ago the anito spirits were visible. Dressed like everyone else, they moved about in the mundane world. One could distinguish an anito from ordinary people because of his red face, because he ate only water weed and because he was notoriously playful. An anito loved to play practical jokes. If he wished, he could spirit a person who was asleep on the top of a tree and had a great laugh when the man woke up not knowing where he was or why he was up there. Eventually -- Ma-i legends say -- people got fed up with the practical jokes of the anito. They declared war on the naughty spirits and threw hot stones at them. The anito fled. People thought they were rid of them for good. It was not so. The anito simply became invisible. According to Ma-i belief, the anito spirits are still very much around and are, in fact, more pesky because they cannot be seen.
The Northern Luzon highlanders believe that such spirits affect their lives. The anito of their ancestors must have regular offerings of food and wine; they can communicate with their descendants through mediums. The anito dwelling near a village are its guardians who protect it from peril. Good people may become tree spirits when they die, like the righteous man of Sagada who turned into a sacred tree and is venerated with a feast. A tree which is believed to be animated with the spirit of a hero is hallowed as an expression of animism and ancestor worship. Many anito spirits are considered harmful, especially when they live far from villages. People buried in caves become cave-dwelling anito. River anito are the souls of drowned people. Suicides and accident victims lurk as ghosts
in the shadows of trees. In the Ma’i world, the propitiation of anito spirits has more urgency than worship. The anito spirits are here on earth while the gods live far away in heaven.
The Tinggian have two almighty gods: Kadaklan and Kaboniyan. Kadaklan created the universe and dwells in the sky. Kaboniyan is the savior god who came down to earth to teach man religion, agriculture and headhunting. He is so huge that his spear is as tall as a tree and his head-ax as large as a house roof. Closer to Tinggian daily life are the earthly spirits, like the apdel, who guards the village gate; the kaiba-an, who watches over the crops; the sanadan, who tends the forests and protects both game and hunters; and the bisangolan, who keeps the rivers flowing. Malevolent spirits are the higalit, abat and ibal, who bring on pain and sickness and have to be appeased with blood-offerings.
For the Kalinga, Kaboniyan is the supreme god--but it is the minor deities that are honored with sacrifices, because such spirits as Silit the Thunderer, Bolalayas the Field-Wrecker and Sangasang the Pestilent must be flattered and appeased lest they cause havoc.
There are no gods in Isneg culture, only an array of good and bad spirits. They are An-labban, a protector of headhunters; Bago, the spirit of the bush; and Sirinan, the river sprite. A potential father god was Iwaxan, who tried to create an immortal human being but got frightened by a tattooed man.
The Ifugao divide the cosmos into a Sky-world (Daya) and an Underworld (Lagud) that includes the earth. Though the Ifugao pantheon contains some 1,500 gods, worship centers on such practical deities as Bulul, the genius of the rice plant, and Wigan, the Ifugao culture hero turned demi-god who is part of the ancestor worship basic to Ifugao piety.
A similar filial piety informs the Ibaloy reverence for ancestral spirits now dwelling on Mount Pulog, in a paradise created for them by Kaboniyan the almighty.
Among the Bukidnon, the father god, Magbabaya, is not as often invoked as are the migbaya, the spirits in charge of fields, forests, mountains and rivers, and the occupations connected with them. Every house, and even every part of a house, has its own migbaya; so does every ingredient of the betelnut quid. Every person has six spirits: one to teach him, one to lead him, one for action, one for identity, one to guard him, and one, sent by the god Magbabaya, to inspire him. Evil spirits, called bal-bal, haunt perilous rocks, cliffs, waterfalls, rapids and the balite tree.
The Palawan believe that every man has eight souls. The five minor souls are his senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell. The three major souls are the good in him, the bad in him, and the human in him. When he dies, his human soul decays with his mortal body, his evil soul descends to be punished in the underworld, and his good soul ascends to guna, the sky. There are thus three worlds: sky, earth and underworld.
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