Engkanto

The old balete tree at the edge of the village carries a smell that does not belong to it. Not the green rot of the water pooled around its roots, not wet bark, but something sweeter underneath, the perfume of flowers that bloom nowhere nearby. People crossing its shadow at dusk lower their voices and say tabi-tabi po, excuse me, I mean no harm, and then they walk a little faster. They are not speaking to the tree. They are speaking to whoever might be living inside it.

The engkanto are the unseen tenants of the Philippine wild. They keep house in the strangling roots of the balete and the banyan, in river bends and tidal caves, in certain stones that have always felt wrong to sit on. To a stranger their homes look like ordinary stands of timber. To a human they have decided to love, the same tree opens into a palace with cool floors and tables already laid, and the food on those tables is real until the spell breaks. They tuck their belongings into the hollows of trunks. They are everywhere a forest is old enough to have secrets, which in the islands is nearly everywhere.

Seeing one is rarely the danger. Being seen by one is. When an engkanto chooses to appear in human shape it is almost too beautiful to look at straight on, and that beauty is the first warning rather than the reward. The skin is pale, paler than anyone born to the islands, the hair sometimes the color of gold or low river light, the nose high and finely cut, the eyes now and then a startling blue. A person who knows what to check looks at the upper lip. There is no philtrum, no faint vertical groove beneath the nose. The face is flawless in the way that living faces never quite are, and the wrongness of it lifts the hair on the arms before the mind can say why. They give off a different feeling from people, a coolness in the air around them, and a scent of blossom that has no season.

Where they came from depends on who is telling it. The belief runs deeper than the Spanish ships, rooted in the islands’ own animism, in the anito, the spirits of ancestors and of the restless dead who never fully left the land. When the friars arrived and heard about this crowded population of pale, powerful, capricious beings, they reached for a word of their own, encanto, enchantment, and it settled over all of them at once. One folklorist gathered eighty-seven of these stories across the Visayas and Mindanao and noticed something uncomfortable about the figures in them. The engkanto were fair, richly dressed, arriving from somewhere else, promising wealth and demanding devotion. They looked a great deal like the colonizers. The men who came to convert the islands may have walked into the older folklore and been remade there as something to fear.

Not all of them wear the same face. Among the Bagobo the spirits split by sex, the female tahamaling with a red complexion and the male mahomanay fair, each ruling their own creatures of the forest. Others go dark instead of golden. The itim na engkanto, the black engkanto, are remembered as violent and possessive, shadowing the humans they desire and refusing to be shaken off. Beauty in this folklore is never proof of kindness. It is only the bait on the hook.

On an unremarkable afternoon an engkanto does very little anyone would notice. It rests in its tree while a farmer passes below with a load of cane, and it watches him, and it decides whether it likes him. That decision is the whole of a person’s luck. Favor falls like rain on the chosen. They find money where there was none, recover from illnesses that should have killed them, gain a fluency and a charm that was not theirs the week before. The babaylan and the albularyo, the shamans and folk healers, court exactly this. An engkanto willing to become an abyan, a spirit guide, lends its human partner the power to cure and to see, and healers commune with them on holy days to learn how to outmaneuver crueler spirits.

The other side of favor is appetite. An engkanto that wants a particular human may simply take them. A young woman walks toward the trees and does not come back for days, and when she returns she is dazed and hollowed out, with no account of where she has been. In the worst tellings the spirit hosts its captive in the unseen palace and offers a meal of black or violet rice, and to eat it is to consent, to marry into the other world and stay. Those the engkanto do not abduct but merely brush against come down with what no clinic can name, sudden fevers, boils and skin that erupts, depressions that arrive without cause, fits that look like possession. The sickness is a message, and the cure is not a hospital. It is the albularyo, who reads the affliction, names the offended spirit, and negotiates a release with prayers, oils, and offerings left at the foot of the right tree.

Their power has limits, and the limits are mostly manners. Say tabi-tabi po before you cross their ground and you are usually let by. Carry an anting-anting or an agimat, a blessed charm or amulet, and the spirit that would lead you in circles through the forest cannot fix its hold on you. Leave their trees standing and their stones unturned and most engkanto have no quarrel with anyone. They are bound, too, to the places that house them, tethered to a particular balete or spring or reef, strongest on their own ground and diminished away from it. They can be lavish and they can be lethal, but the door between their world and this one swings on something very old and very simple, which is respect, freely given before it is demanded.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an engkanto in Philippine mythology?

An engkanto is an enchanted environmental spirit of Philippine folklore, an umbrella term for beautiful, humanlike nature beings who live in trees, rivers, caves, and the sea. The name comes from the Spanish encanto, meaning enchantment, and the belief descends from pre-Hispanic animist spirits called anito. Engkanto can be benevolent or dangerous depending on how humans treat them and their dwellings.

How can you tell if someone is an engkanto?

An engkanto in human form is unnaturally beautiful, typically with pale skin, a high-bridged nose, and sometimes golden hair or blue eyes. The classic giveaway is the absence of a philtrum, the small groove beneath the nose, and a general sense of wrongness or coolness about the figure. They are also said to carry the scent of flowers that bloom nowhere nearby.

What do engkanto do to humans?

Engkanto reward humans they favor with wealth, beauty, recovery from illness, and even magical or healing power through a partnership called an abyan. Those who offend or attract them suffer fevers, boils, skin diseases, madness, or abduction, sometimes vanishing for days. Such afflictions are traditionally treated not by doctors but by an albularyo, a folk healer who negotiates with the spirit.

Why do Filipinos say “tabi-tabi po”?

“Tabi-tabi po” is a respectful phrase meaning roughly “excuse me, please move aside, I mean no harm,” spoken when passing places where engkanto and other spirits are believed to dwell, such as old trees, anthills, rivers, and forests. It is meant to avoid accidentally disturbing or offending an unseen being, which could bring on sickness or misfortune.

How do you protect yourself from an engkanto?

The main protections are courtesy and charms. Saying “tabi-tabi po” before crossing a spirit’s ground signals respect, while carrying an anting-anting or agimat, a blessed amulet, wards off engkanto and prevents them from leading travelers astray or causing harm. Leaving their trees, stones, and waters undisturbed keeps most engkanto from taking any interest in a person at all.

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