Fun facts about Bulan/Libulan, Sidapa, and Haliya in Philippine Mythologies
1. The love story of Sidapa and Bulan/Libulan being proliferated online is modern fan fiction and not from precolonial Philippine mythology and beliefs. Even the “patron god of homosexuals” title for Bulan/Libulan is a modern embellishment and not from old beliefs.
2. There’s no such thing as a Bulan deity among precolonial Bicolanos. In 1754, Fr. Marcos de Lisboa published the Vocabulario dela lengua Bicol, a dictionary of Bicolano words, terms. It contains entries on Gugurang, Aswang & other supernatural and mythical entities but no entry on a youthful male moon deity. It has an entry about the moon, just the moon as it is.
3. There’s no mention of a Bulan deity in Fr. Jose Castaño’s “Breve Noticias acerca del origin, religion, creencias y supersticiones de los antiguos Indios del Bicol”, a cultural monograph on ancient Bicolanos published in late 19th century.
4. In the original written record of the Bicolano epic Ibalon – included in Castaño’s Breve Noticia – there is also no mention of Bulan as a deity.
5. The only mention of Bulan as a primordial entity representative of the moon is in the Bicolano creation myth included in H. Otley Beyer’s “Ethnography of the Bikol People” (1923).
6. In Ferdinand Blumentritt’s Diccionario Mitologico de Filipinas (1895), there is no mention of a Bicolano deity named Bulan.
7. Bulan as a deity having some sort of an affair with Sidapa was shown in the teleserye Indio where Sidapa expressed admiration to Bulan (a female character in the teleserye) & most likely furthered the the Sidapa-Bulan narrative being proliferated online.
Sidapa, on the other hand is somewhat well documented. Said deity is first mentioned in Miguel Loarca’s Relacion de las Islas Filipinas (1582), a report about the archipelago & it’s people. During Loarca’s time the people of what is now Arevalo District, Iloilo City & neighboring villages believed that Sidapa was responsible for the length of an individual’s lifespan & that he had a huge tree up Mt. Madiaas in Antique Province, on which he carved a notch every time a person was born. According to Loarca he got such info through the native’s songs about their deities and ancestors, which they sang during communal gatherings, communal work & even during mundane tasks. There is no mention of Sidapa having an affair with a fellow deity. Also, he doesn’t mention Sidapa being revered in neighboring Visayan islands.
In the Diccionario Mitologico de Filipinas, there is a theory that Sidapa (the name particularly) must have been originally Sri Pada, a name identified with the Hindu god Vishnu. It’s not that far fetched considering that belief in Sidapa was only among the coastal people of precolonial Iloilo & some parts of Antique who were mostly descendants of Hindu Sri Vijayan migrants. There’s no mention of Sidapa in the Hinilawod, epic of the inland & mountain people, the Sulod or Panay Bukidnon of Panay Island. Blumentritt doesn’t mention Sidapa having any affair.
Sidapa appears in the Tagalog tale “Why the Cock Crows at Dawn” in Damiana Eugenio’s The Myths where said deity is portrayed as a war god who turns a servant into a rooster after failing to wake him early in the morning many times. There’s no mention of Sidapa having an affair with another deity.
In Jocano’s Outline of Philippine Mythology, Sidapa is a female deity with a husband and lives in a place called Kamariitan. Again, no mention of Sidapa having an affair with a moon deity.
8. Concerning Haliya - the so-called masked moon goddess who battled the moon-eating Bakunawa in Bicolano mythology - she is not a moon goddess nor a lunar entity. Haliya was originally Halea (pronounced as hali-a), an ancient Bicolano women’s game, which involved singing to the moon as described by Fr. Lisboa in his Vocabulario dela lengua Bicol (1754). Unfortunately, years later, scholars misinterpreted Lisboa’s description & wrote it down as a song-dance ritual to drive away the eclipse-causing Bakunawa. This misinterpretation was adapted and further embellished by later works particularly in “Bikol Literary History” where Halea became a goddess battling the Bakunawa. In short, there’s no such thing as a Bicolano goddess named Haliya.
turnnoffyourmind
snowghoul
izzy806
gummygunk
vaporwave
areudirty
jbbartram-illu
