Bakunawa

The old way to fight it was to make noise. When the moon began to vanish, whole villages spilled into the dark with bronze gongs and cooking pots and anything that would ring, beating them until their arms ached and the sound carried out over the water. Somewhere beneath that water, or already coiled across the sky, the Bakunawa held the moon in its jaws, and the only thing known to loosen that grip was a din loud enough to startle a thing the size of an island.

It came out of the sea looking like nothing that belonged there. The Cebuano descriptions give it the body of a shark, sleek and muscled for the open ocean, but fitted with gills and a mouth that could open the width of a lake. The tongue inside was forked and red. Two pairs of wings ran along its length, useless-looking on a creature so heavy, and behind it trailed a tail that doubled back on itself in a great loop. People who tried to picture the whole thing tended to land on the same word their neighbors used for the serpent-dragons of the Asian mainland, and the Bakunawa was sometimes simply called Naga, after the coiled water-spirits that had drifted east with Hindu and Buddhist trade.

The name itself is a description. It comes from roots meaning the bent or curved one, the bender, and it fits a body built entirely out of curves. The serpent was understood as the cause behind things that arrived without warning and could not be argued with: the sudden swallowing of the moon, the ground shuddering, weather turning violent over the islands. When the sky went dark in the middle of the night, that was the Bakunawa feeding.

The reason it fed runs back to the beginning, when the sky was brighter than it is now. Bathala, the supreme god, had hung seven moons in the dark, one for each night, and they lit the world with a soft and constant glow. The Bakunawa saw them from the water and wanted them. It rose, and it ate. One after another the moons went down its throat, six of them gone, until a single moon was left turning above an ocean that now held the light of all the others. Bathala moved to save the last one. In the most repeated version he planted bamboo on its surface, and the dark shape of those stalks is what people still see as the shadows and stains on the face of the moon. The serpent was left circling, hungry, forbidden the final prize but never quite giving up the hunt. That is why eclipses happen. The Bakunawa catches the moon again, holds it, and the noise of the world below makes it let go.

The story was old before anyone wrote it down. A Cebuano poet and priest named Fernando Buyser set a version of the seven moons in print in 1913, and the folklorist Damiana Eugenio later gathered the tellings that most modern retellings draw from. The accounts do not all agree. Some give Bathala seven moons, some fewer; some say the serpent swallows whole, others that it bites and the moon slips free. The shape underneath stays the same. A creature wants the light, takes it, and is stopped just short of taking all of it.

For the people who lived under that sky, the Bakunawa was not only a threat. Its comings and goings were tracked closely enough to serve as a calendar, a geomantic reckoning of months and seasons that the babaylan, the priestess-shamans of the pre-colonial Visayas, folded into ritual. A monster you can schedule by is a monster you can live beside. Its power was vast and specific at once: it governed the eclipse, the earthquake, the storm, the disappearance of the moon, but it answered to a remedy a child could perform, which was to bang on something metal and shout. Soothing music worked too, by another account, lulling the serpent toward sleep until it loosened its hold.

That is the strange balance the myth keeps. The Bakunawa is enormous and the human response to it is almost absurdly small, a kitchen pot against a beast that eats moons. Its appetite is its undoing as much as its menace, because a creature that can be drawn upward by light can be driven back down by sound, and the same envy that sent it after the heavens left it exposed to anyone willing to make a racket at the right hour. The serpent never wins outright. It never quite loses either. It is still up there, by the logic of the story, waiting for the next dark night when the drums fall silent and the moon hangs unguarded.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Bakunawa?

The Bakunawa is a giant sea serpent or dragon in Philippine mythology, especially the folklore of the Visayas and Bicol regions. It is blamed for eclipses, which were explained as the Bakunawa rising from the ocean to swallow the moon. It was also held responsible for earthquakes, heavy rain, and strong winds.

Why does the Bakunawa eat the moon?

According to the most widely told version, the supreme god Bathala created seven moons to light the night, and the Bakunawa was so taken with them that it rose from the sea and devoured them one by one until only one was left. Bathala saved the final moon, in many tellings by planting bamboo on it, whose shadow is seen as the dark marks on the lunar surface. The serpent was left forever chasing the last moon, which is why eclipses still occur.

How did people stop the Bakunawa from swallowing the moon?

People drove the Bakunawa away by making loud noise, going outside during an eclipse to bang on pots, pans, gongs, and drums until the startled serpent released the moon. Some accounts say villagers also played soothing music in hopes of lulling the creature to sleep. The tradition of making noise during a lunar eclipse survived in some communities long after the myth itself faded.

What does the Bakunawa look like?

In Cebuano folklore the Bakunawa is described as a colossal serpent with a shark-like body and gills, a mouth as wide as a lake, and a forked red tongue. It has two pairs of wings and a long tail that loops back on itself. Because of this serpentine form it was sometimes called Naga, after the dragon-serpents of mainland Asian myth.

Is the Bakunawa connected to other mythologies?

Yes. The Bakunawa’s role as an eclipse-causing serpent closely parallels Rahu and Ketu from Hindu mythology, the celestial entities blamed for swallowing the sun and moon, and the name Naga ties it to the serpent deities carried into Southeast Asia through Hindu and Buddhist influence. Within Philippine myth it stands alongside the Minokawa, a giant bird from Bagobo lore that was likewise said to eat the moon.

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Bathala, Minokawa, Mayari, Apolaki, Aswang, Diwata, Engkanto, Tikbalang, Amalanhig, Ibong Adarna, Naga