Dictionary of Philippine Mythology (Diccionario Mitológico De Filipinas) with English Translations

by Ferdinand Blumentritt, Ralph Angelo B. Reyes (Illustrator), Jordan Clark (Editor)

FROM THE PROLOGUE: Many authors, ancient and modern, native and foreign, have been preoccupied with 'primitive' religion, or even better said, the paganism of the Natives of the Philippines; however, their writings about the religion of the natives, non-Christianized or from the mountains, who until now keep their ancient practices, are always reduced to form a chapter indistinct from the other historical or ethnographic notes of their published works. There exists no work, [major] or minor, dedicated specifically and especially to the study of the religion of all the indigenous races of the Philippine Archipelago.

The purpose of this DICTIONARY is to put together the religious groups of the Philippines, and removing those of Christian or Mohammedan origins. This work will provide an opportunity to make comparative studies and give an idea of the wealth of names that are in the mythologies of this country.

FROM THE PREFACE: This effort means to create an accurate interpretation with proper translations of the original release and to convey the intent proposed by Blumentritt. My hope is that this undertaking creates a turn of the twentieth century historical benchmark and further contributes to research efforts on Philippine mythology and folklore so that people may learn more about, what I believe to be, one of the most fascinating collection of pantheons and religious traditions in the world.

Genres: Mythology

337 pages, Paperback

Published April 19, 2021

Reviews

[Cath · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three stars, I am never going to read a book written by white people for the Philippines ever again. It was good in terms of showing more obscure aspects of Philippine mythology, especially ones present in the 19th century but have since faded. My issue with this is that it was pretty vague. For example, it would say that a certain deity was “the god of x group of people” and not go into detail about a deific domain. Most of the time, it was just a bunch of names with no context. I did learn some things, but they warrant further research because this, again, was written by a white man and edited by a white man. It lost a lot of its cultural context and it didn’t always understand the language (for example, it put different tenses of the same word under separate entries, which was just confusing). Also, there was a section near the end called “Philippine Tribes and Languages” which I had to skim through because it used several slurs + even managed to sneak in a negative Chinese stereotype. Yikes, but I guess it was to be expected from the time period…

I recommend reading this book only if you already have prior experience with researching Philippine mythology and if you are fluent in Filipino.

Last note: the illustrations were PHENOMENAL.

[Richmond Uy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very great in depth look of pre-colonial Filipino cultures of different parts of the archipelago. rlly makes me read in awe in how diverse and rich PH's history is, considering the many different cultures that exist. makes me proud of my own Samar routes in Bisaya. I also appreciate the intent of keeping the original text/findings on the first side of the page.

I do wish this book was categorized a bit better to navigate words that are used differently from different regions, rather than the standardized alphabetized way of writing a dictionary. AND i wished this book used the convention of writing out the phonetic structure of certain words like other dictionaries.

overall, loved this

[Richard C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Dictionary of Philippine Mythology presents the original text in Spanish alongside the English translation. The English translation doesn't contextualize the information presented unless it was provided in the original text. Blumentritt draws from his own and the research of other contemporaries to present brief descriptions of mythological deities, lower deities & creatures, folk practices & rituals, and other superstitions. It's a good entry point to see how concepts and words relate to the ethnolinguistic groups/tribes in the pre-colonial Philippines. Then, you can explore works by other authors expanding upon the descriptions laid out in this book.

[空 · Rating 3 out of 5]

My favorite is the oák-oák.