Bakunawa

The Bakunawa is a giant sea serpent of Visayan folklore in the Philippines that swallows the moon, causing eclipses, and in one famous tale devoured six of the seven moons that once lit the sky.

The Seven Moons

In the version first written down by the Cebuano writer and priest Fernando Buyser in 1913, the supreme god Bathala made seven moons, one to light each night of the week. A great serpent named Bakunawa, which coiled around the world, envied their beauty and swallowed six of them. To protect the last moon, Bathala planted bamboo on it, which is why the moon looks stained or spotted from the earth. When the serpent came for the seventh moon, the people panicked and beat drums and anything that would make noise, crying for their moon to be returned. Bakunawa spat it out and fled.

The folklorist Damiana Eugenio included a retelling in her collection of Philippine myths. In that version the Bakunawa rules the sea and lives in a cavern beneath it, swallowing the moons one by one, and the last moon survives only as long as the bamboo planted on it lives.

Eclipses

The Bakunawa explains eclipses. When it rises from the sea to swallow the moon, the sky goes dark, and people bang pots, drums, and other objects to frighten it into letting go. Buyser noted that this custom still survived in mountain and coastal towns in his day. Folklorists have recorded similar eclipse customs elsewhere in the Visayas, though not always naming the Bakunawa. One report from Samar describes a "big fish" swallowing the moon.

Appearance and Powers

The old texts call the Bakunawa simply a huge serpent of the sea. Modern artists often draw it as a dragon with a gaping mouth, gills, and sometimes wings, but these details come from recent illustrations rather than recorded folklore. Its one great power is its appetite for the moon.

Origins

Moon-swallowing monsters appear across Asia. In Hindu and Buddhist lore the demon Rahu swallows the sun and moon, and similar beliefs are found in Southeast Asia, so the Bakunawa may share roots with these traditions. Its name and its place in Visayan cosmology are local, however, and much about its early history is unknown because Visayan oral traditions were written down late.

Legacy

The Bakunawa has become one of the best-known creatures of Philippine mythology, a popular subject for Filipino artists, tattoos, and fantasy fiction. See our India and Southeast Asia page for related serpents.

Related

• Nāga: Nāgas are serpent beings of Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain tradition, often cobras or half-human figures with cobra hoods, who live in underwater or underground kingdoms, guard treasure, and control rain and water.
• Phaya Naga: The Phaya Naga is the great serpent king of Thai and Lao Buddhist folklore, a crested, often many-headed serpent believed to live in the Mekong River and to guard temples, water, and the Buddhist faith.
• Apep: Apep, called Apophis by the Greeks, is the giant serpent of chaos in ancient Egyptian religion who attacks the sun god Ra's boat every night in the underworld and must be defeated again each day.
• Jörmungandr: Jörmungandr is the Midgard Serpent of Norse mythology, a child of Loki so huge that it encircles the world under the ocean and bites its own tail, and Thor's destined enemy at Ragnarök.
• Dragons Across Cultures
• Dragon Legends

Sources and Further Reading

• Damiana L. Eugenio, ed., Philippine Folk Literature: The Myths (University of the Philippines Press, 1993)
• Francisco R. Demetrio, Encyclopedia of Philippine Folk Beliefs and Customs (Xavier University, 1991)

Cite this entry: “Bakunawa,” Draconika Encyclopedia of Dragons, https://www.draconika.com/dragons/bakunawa.