Blogpost # 4 Philippine Mythology

Tales from the Albularyo...

In the tale of the Powers of the Philippine mind. It's important to take a backseat and peer into the mythologies of our Ancestors. Mythologies exist in EVERY single culture around the world, if our species started out as snooty know it all Atheists, then history would undoubtedly be so boring I wouldn't even bother caring about it. Mythologies served as early explanations to unanswerable questions, and without the need to be rational people used their imaginations to find an explanation to things. This phase of history shows the various richness that cultures around the world had in terms of imagination. As Albert Einstein said "Logic can take you from point A to point B but imagination can take you anywhere"

When we look into the mythology of the Philippines it's important to note that unlike most other myths, like our current government, there is no completely unified belief system. Greeks, Japanese, Norse Mythology and others had this sense of consistency with their stories but this was because most provinces had already become conscious about the existence of other provinces and now had a centralized form of leadership, this would lead to following one specific culture. However the Philippines on the other hand still lived in various tribes and would have their own standpoints about the world and its creatures, disregarding Mindanao because they were a Muslim province for a very long time, so it's safe to assume that many tribes in Mindanao already followed the Islam faith. 

That's Lam-Ang, he's our less-gay version of He-man

Philippine Myths differ from the Northern and Southern and sometimes from province to province.
As proven by the Article "Creation Myths in The Philippines" written by D.L Ashliman and readable on the website www.pitt.edu

"The water was the kingdom of the god Maguayan, and the sky was ruled by the great god Captan...

 In the beginning there were no people on the earth. Lumawig, the Great Spirit, came down from the sky and cut many reeds" 

In this Article, it shows various different tribes all with their own origin stories of how the earth was made. The first tribe is unspecified, the believed that the earth was made by a great God who came from the Sea and created the living beings of the earth. I can assume they came to this conclusion because they lived very close to the sea, or they did many activities that involved sea faring.

The story is from the Igorots, who believed that a spirit came down from the sky cut many reeds and gave to them all the gift of speaking, these reeds then became us human beings. From this I can speculate that this tribe resided close to swamp like areas since reeds are normally grow in wet and grassy terrain. It's very common for tribes to form mythologies based on their locations or any activity that they particularly specialize in. The Spartans of Greece praised the God Ares because they were a warrior breed of Greeks, while the Athenians worshiped Athena because their city specializes in everything else the Spartans never cared about.

Though the Philippines was pretty much ignored for a very long time by the Europeans until one of their explorers lost his head to a man wearing a thong and a wooden shield, we can't dodge the fact that our Myths share an interesting similarity to myths from various other cultures. I quote from the article "Ancient Philippine Creation Myth: Malakas and Maganda" Written by Frederick Alain Docdocil found on the website www.bakitwhy.com

" the bird furiously pecked at the bamboo until it split in half. Out of one section came a golden-bronze colored man, named Malakas (Strong One) and from the other half came a similarly hued woman, named Maganda (Beautiful One)."

This tale has been told to us from the very start of our Grade school lives. Most of the time, my teachers would say how similar it was to the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible. Though both stories are generally different, we can definitely agree that they do have their similarities. Mankind started with a man and a woman, both were formed from a resource of the earth, and both started a generation of legends in their respective cultures. 

Yes...we Filipinos were born white...