Philippine Mythology

Philippine mythology include a collection of tales and superstitions about magical creatures and entities. Many Filipinos, even though heavily Christianized, still believe in these tales. The prevalence of belief in the figures of Filipino mythology is strong in the provinces.

Because the country has many islands and is inhabited by different ethnic groups, Philippine mythology and superstitions are very diverse. However, certain similarities exist among these groups, such as the belief in Heaven (kaluwalhatian, kalangitan, kamurawayan), Hell (impiyerno, kasamaan), and the human soul (kaluluwa).

Philippine mythology is derived from Philippine folk literature, which is the traditional oral literature of the Filipino people. This refers to a wide range of material due to the ethnic mix of the Philippines. Each unique ethnic group has its own stories and myths to tell.

While the oral and thus changeable aspect of folk literature is an important defining characteristic, much of this oral tradition has been written into a print format. It should be noted that all the examples of folk literature cited in this article are taken from print rather than oral sources.

University of the Philippines professor Damiana Eugenio classified Philippine Folk Literature into three major groups: folk narratives, folk speech, and folk songs. Folk narratives can either be in prose: the myth, the alamat (legend), and the kuwentong bayan (folktale), or in verse, as in the case of the folk epic. Folk speech includes the bugtong (riddle) and the salawikain (proverb). Folk songs that can be sub-classified into those that tell a story (folk ballads) are a relative rarity in Philippine folk literature. These form the bulk of the Philippines' rich heritage of folk songs.

The stories of ancient Philippine mythology include deities, creation stories, mythical creatures, and beliefs. Ancient Philippine mythology varies among the many indigenous tribes of the Philippines. Some groups during the pre-Spanish conquest era believed in a single Supreme Being who created the world and everything in it, while others chose to worship a multitude of tree and forest deities (diwatas). Diwatas came from the Sanskrit word devata which means "deity", one of the several significant Hindu influences in the Pre-Hispanic religion of the ancient Filipinos. Below are some of the gods and goddesses of the ancient Philippines:

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