Indigenous religious beliefs of the Tagalog people

The indigenous religious beliefs of the Tagalog people (sometimes referred to as Anitism, or, less accurately, using the general term "animism") were well documented by Spanish missionaries, mostly in the form of epistolary accounts (relaciones) and as entries in the various dictionaries put together by missionary friars.

Archeological and linguistic evidence indicates that these beliefs date back to the arrival of Austronesian peoples, although elements were later syncretistically adapted from Hinduism, Mahayana Buddhism, and Islam. Many of these indigenous beliefs persist to this day, in sycretistic forms discussed by scholars as Philippine variations of Folk Islam and Folk Catholicism.

These beliefs were distinct from those of the indigenous Visayan beliefs, which the Spanish encountered in Cebu and Panay, showing less influences from the Majapahit languages and worldviews than did the Visayan religions.

These beliefs were not necessarily held universally held among the Tagalogs, however. According to the Spanish missionary accounts, these beliefs were subscribed to by ordinary Tagalog people, while the Maginoo ruling class considered themselves followers of Islam.

Unlike early western religions, with their great emphasis on pantheons of deities. Religion among Tagalogs was intimately intertwined with their day to day lives, as Almocera points out:

Aside from their own social structure, they believed in an invisible society coexisting with their own. This society, they believed, was inhabited by spirits that included dead ancestors, deities, and lesser gods. Pre-Hispanic Filipinos honored these spirits with rituals and feast days because these supernatural beings were considered able to preside over the whole gamut of life, including birth, sickness, death, courtship, marriage, planting, harvesting, and death. Some of these spirits were considered friendly; others were viewed as tyrannical enemies.

Because of the limitations of language and of personal religious biases, Spanish chroniclers often recorded different interpretations of Tagalog words relating to worship. The word "anito" is one of these words which had differing interpreters. Scott notes that missionaries eventually reinterpreted the word to mean "all idols", including the middle eastern gods mentioned in the bible, whenever they were included in their homilies. As a result, in modern times, the word "anito" has come to mean the various figurines or "idols" which represent Filipino deities. However, the Tagalog words for such representations was "larauan".

In his 1613 Dictionary Vocabulario de la Lengua Tagala, Fray Pedro de San Buenaventura explains:

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