Minokawa

Region/Culture: Southeast Asia
Mythos: Philippine Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: An island-sized bird with a steel beak and sword-edged feathers that hunts the moon and sun across the sky and swallows them whole.
Role in Mythos: It is the devourer whose attempts to catch the moon and sun explain eclipses, and whose success would mean the end of the world.
Relation to Humans: It does not hunt people directly, but if it ever swallowed both the moon and the sun it would come down to earth and eat them next. During an eclipse the Bagobo drive it off with screaming and the beating of agongs until it opens its mouth and the moon escapes.

Somewhere past the eastern edge of the sky, where the light has to climb up out of the ground each morning, a bird the size of an island is waiting for the moon. It has been waiting a long time. Its feathers are drawn swords, its eyes throw the light back like two mirrors, and its beak and legs are steel. When the moon lifts over the rim of the world, the bird lunges.

This is the Minokawa, and among the Bagobo of Mindanao it is the reason the sky sometimes goes out.

The moon knows she is hunted, which is why she never rises in the same place twice. She has cut eight holes along the eastern horizon to climb out of and eight more in the west to slip down into, and she moves among them so the bird can never be certain where to aim. The most dangerous instant is the one just before she reappears in the east to shine on the world again, because the Minokawa has learned the holes too, and it is there, at the lip of one of them, that the steel beak comes down. Most mornings she is fast enough. Some mornings she is not.

When the jaws close on her, the light drains out of the sky and the world goes to shadow in the middle of the night. The moon sits in the belly of the bird, and for the Bagobo watching from below this is not a wonder but an emergency. They pour out of their houses and they make noise. They scream and they weep and they beat the agongs, the heavy bronze gongs, until the racket climbs all the way up to the eastern edge of everything. And the noise does what no spear could. The Minokawa, unable to help itself, looks down to find the source of the din and opens its mouth to hear it better, and in that moment the moon leaps out and runs. The sky fills back in. The bird goes hungry for another night.

Its size is the first thing every account insists on. The Minokawa is as large as an island, as large as Negros or Bohol, a creature you could not take in with a single glance even if you were mad enough to try. The feathers are not soft. Each one is a blade, so that the whole body is edged like a wall of knives. The eyes are bright and hard and reflective, mirrors set in a head of metal, and the beak and the legs are steel that no weapon of the ground could hope to dent. It is less an animal than a weather system with a will, roosting outside the sky at the eastern horizon and coming out only to feed.

Where it came from, the stories do not say. The Minokawa simply is, and has been, out past the place where the sky ends. Most of what survives of it was set down early in the last century, remembered by Bagobo tellers for the outsiders who came to listen, and it belongs to a wider family of Philippine things that eat the sky. The Visayans blame a sea serpent, the Bakunawa, that climbs out of the ocean for the same meal. The Bagobo blame a bird. What they share is the certainty that the darkness has an appetite, and that it can be frightened off.

The eclipse, then, is not the disaster. It is the rehearsal for one. If the Minokawa should ever swallow the moon and then manage to swallow the sun as well, it would not stop there. It would come down out of the sky and land on the earth and eat the people too. Every eclipse is the bird getting close and being driven back at the last moment by a village that refuses to be quiet. So far it has always failed.

Its powers are enormous and few. It can catch and swallow the great lights of the sky, a thing nothing else in the world can do, and its body of steel and swords puts it beyond the reach of any hunter who might think to bring it down. It never tires of the chase. But for all that armor it has one flaw, and the flaw is fatal to its purpose. It cannot resist a sound. The same curiosity that turns its head toward a noise is the thing that empties its mouth at the worst possible moment, and so the meal it has spent the whole of time pursuing keeps slipping between the holes in the horizon and getting away. A bird built to end the world, undone every time by the urge to listen.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Minokawa?

The Minokawa is a colossal, dragon-like bird from Philippine mythology, told among the Bagobo people of Mindanao. It is said to be as large as an island, with feathers like swords and a beak and legs of steel, and it lives beyond the eastern edge of the sky, where it hunts and swallows the moon and the sun.

How does the Minokawa cause eclipses?

The Minokawa causes eclipses by catching and swallowing the moon or the sun as it crosses the sky. While the moon sits inside the bird’s belly, the world falls dark, which is how the Bagobo explained the sudden darkness of a lunar eclipse.

How do people drive the Minokawa away?

The Bagobo drive the Minokawa off by making as much noise as possible during an eclipse, screaming, crying, and beating bronze gongs called agongs. The din makes the giant bird look down and open its mouth to hear it, and in that moment the moon escapes and light returns to the sky.

What would happen if the Minokawa succeeded?

If the Minokawa ever managed to swallow both the moon and the sun, it would not stop there. According to the Bagobo, it would then descend from the sky to the earth and devour human beings as well, making every eclipse a narrow escape from the end of the world.

Is the Minokawa the same as the Bakunawa?

No, though they play the same role. The Minokawa is the giant sky-bird of the Bagobo of Mindanao, while the Bakunawa is a sea serpent blamed for eclipses in Visayan and Bicolano tradition. Both swallow the moon and both are driven away by loud noise, but one is a bird and the other a serpent from the sea.