The Aswang ~ Part 1

What is an Aswang?

The word aswang is an ambiguous term for a humanoid creature that preys on other people using supernatural means. The actual origin of the word is unclear since almost every culture in the Philippines has some sort of aswang variant in their folklore. The word “aswang” is believed to have roots in the Sanskrit word "Asura," meaning demon. It is also said that the word aswang is a combination of the words asin (salt) and bawang (garlic), items used to fend off the dreaded creatures. Others contest that aswang was derived from asu-asuhan or aso ang wangis, which means “dog-like,” as most can transform into dogs or hog-like creatures. A myth in Bicol also suggests that aswang takes root from the god of evil, Asuan or Asuang.

Though having been heavily documented by the Spanish since the 16th century, the aswang has been a part of ancient Filipinos’ nightmares far longer than that. According to lore, most appear as normal people by day, but at night they turn into terrifying creatures.

Some don’t attack people but prefer to steal and eat corpses. Others can sever their upper bodies at the waist and leave the lower half hidden and kept safe as they fly in the night sky to hunt for prey. Some don’t prey on people at all but use sorcery or witchcraft to harm their enemies. Most aswang possess superhuman strength, swiftness, and longevity. Some accounts allege that an aswang, when in its human form, has rotten middle toenails.

The act of an aswang turning into an animal or other creatures is called balondo or dalin in Visayas. When an aswang takes the liver of a person, that act is called the kabkab. When a flying aswang roosts somewhere to observe its victims, it's called the togpa. If it flies into the air without wings, such an act is called the haway in old Visayan. Otapil refers to an aswang going to a secluded area either to perform a ritual or to prepare for its nocturnal activity. During ancient times, the aswang were also known as alok in some parts of Visayas.

Aswang Classifications

Since almost every tribe, people, and culture in the Philippines has some version of an aswang, there are literally dozens of aswang variants that exist in Filipino folklore. Far too many to discuss individually in one blog post. So instead of going through each one individually, I’ll focus more on their classifications based on the book “The Creatures of Midnight” by the renowned professor, editor, and writer, as well as the unofficial “Dean of Philippine Lower Mythology”, Maximo D. Ramos.

According to Maximo Ramos, the aswang in general can be classified into five different categories. The ghoul, the vampire, the viscera sucker, the weredog, and the witch.

• The Ghoul or the Corpse-Eating Aswang – These types of aswang are common amongst the folklore of the Tagalog, Bicolano, and Visayan people. They appear as regular people by day, live in ordinary homes, and are part of the community. But by night, the aswang listen for the sounds of death or catch the scent of death in the air.

  As soon as everyone is asleep, they would sneak out, steal the corpse from their grieving relatives, transform it into a pig, and feed on it together with their children and other family members. They would even go so far as to share it with their neighbors, who, upon ingesting it, will also transform into an aswang.

  These aswang variants are said to be afraid of fire, spices, knives, and vinegar, which are telltale signs that identify them as something other than human to their neighbors. The missing philtrum above their upper lips is also an indicator that a person is an aswang.

• The Vampire or the Blood-Sucking Aswang – The vampire aswang, or the mandurugo, is the aswang equivalent of the better-known night creature called the vampire. Unlike its western counterpart, this aswang variant is only female.

  She appears as a beautiful maiden by day, but transforms into a hideous creature by night. She has a long, snake-like tongue that comes to a needle-sharp point at the tip. She prowls the thatched rooftops as people sleep and silently slides her tongue down to her unsuspecting victim. She uses her tongue like a syringe and feeds on her victim’s blood by stealthily piercing their skin.

  She doesn’t take enough to kill her victims as she moves from house to house, victim to victim, until her belly is so bloated that she resembles an expecting mother. It was believed that when a mandurugo is on your rooftop, you can hear her making the bird-like sound, “Kakak...”. It was also believed that a black night bird shows her the way to her next victim.

• The Viscera-Sucker or the Manananggal – Also known as the abat in Eastern Visayas, the boroka in the Ilocos Region, the mangalok in Palawan, or the balbalan among the Tausugs, this half-segmented woman with bat-like wings is the most recognizable and well-known variant of the aswang. Generally, these aswang variants appear as normal people during the day. Still, at night, they rub a special oil all over their bodies while chanting an incantation until they grow a pair of large, membranous wings and long, sharp claws. Their body then separates at the waist, and the upper part flies off to hunt.

  The lower part is usually hidden in a banana grove or deep in the woods if the manananggal did its ritual outdoors. On a full moonlit night, some manananggal stare at the moon until gooey tears come out of their eyes while their upper body starts to glide off.

  One of a manananggal’s favorite prey is the fetus inside an expectant woman’s womb. It extracts the fetus by extending its long proboscis-like tongue, its pointed tip piercing into the bloated belly of the mother through the navel, and goes straight for the unborn child. It will then start to digest the fetus with enzymes and later suck it out, killing the mother in the process.

  A manananggal will die if certain spices, ash, or salt are sprinkled on the exposed stump of its discarded lower half. The lower half can also be hidden, preventing the manananggal from reuniting with it until the creature dies by sunrise. Some folklore suggests that spearing a manananggal with a sharpened bamboo spear or a whip made from the tail of a manta ray can also be used as a weapon.

  Other versions of the manananggal, like the abat, don’t grow wings on their back; instead, their arms are the ones that turn into leathery bat-like wings. Its big, fiery eyes almost bulged out of their sockets. The boroka can retain her beauty even after transforming into an eagle-winged manananggal-like creature at night, while the mangalok can become invisible.

• The Weredog or the Kiwig – These aswang variants are akin to the werewolf from various western mythologies. But unlike werewolves, the weredogs transform into their dog-like, and sometimes, boar-like forms every night. They are known as the kiwig in Aklan, the malakat by some Visayans, or the segben in Samar.

  According to some legends, a person can become one of these shape-shifting aswangs if a weredog breathes on them and they somehow live through the encounter. Accidentally eating a weredog’s food or drinking from its cup can also cause a person to change into one. It was said that a black, chick-like creature would enter their stomach and stay there, causing them to transform. Once they transform into an aswang, they become carnivorous and bloodthirsty. They stalk and attack people travelling alone and would eviscerate their bodies as they fed on them.

  Creatures like the malakat have the uncanny ability to move their long, hair-like fur to enter their victim’s eyes and ears, as well as cover their mouths and noses to suffocate them before ripping them apart and eating them. The segben has a long, flickering tongue that is so poisonous that it can kill with a mere touch.

  But whatever type of weredog aswang it may be, they all share a common aversion to spices, sour foods, fire, smoke, and knives.

• The Witch Aswang – Unlike the first four aswangs on this list, the witch-like aswang doesn’t undergo any form of transformation. They resemble unassuming elderly men or women who look sick and tired, with bloodshot eyes. They are usually isolationists and live like a hermit, away from other people. During the times that they do run into other people, the witch-aswang will avoid eye contact to avoid detection. Their eyes are dead giveaways, not just because they are usually bloodshot, but because their pupils are somewhat elongated and are sometimes nothing more than slits, similar to a cat’s eye.

  Unlike the other aswang variants, the witch-aswang does not consume human flesh. If anything, they are the most human amongst their kind and by all accounts, are more comparable to witches from Western folklore. This is even more evident given that the witch-aswang does practice witchcraft and other dark magics.

  There are three basic types of witch-aswangs. The first is the mambabarang or the barangan, a witch who uses insects to hurt and kill those whom they dislike. They send out insects at night to enter their victims’ bodies, causing them to fall ill or die. It was believed that should their victim survived the witch’s curse, they too would become a mambabarang.

  The second is the mamumuyag, or the potion maker. This is a type of witch-aswang that concocts and brews potions disguised as medicines that she administers to her unwitting victims. Upon ingesting her witch’s brew, her victim undergoes agonizing pain and will most likely die because of it.

  The third witch-aswang goes by many, many names. The Ilocanos call them the manggagamod, the Pangasinese call them the manananem, the Sambals call them the maniniblót, but they are more popularly known as the mangkukulam.

  The mangkukulam is a powerful witch who can utilize a wide assortment of witchcraft, spells, and dark magic. They can use the very ground you stepped on to give you a fever, make potions, cursed objects, but what they are really well known for is their use of dolls. Quite similar to voodoo dolls as effigies of their victims, the mangkukulam prick these dolls with needles, causing excruciating pain to their victims.

  The mangkukulam fears most things that other aswang variants are afraid of. They stay away from other people and can pass on their curse to their offspring. It is believed that one can identify a mangkukulam when they see an inverted reflection in their eyes.

The Aswang in the Alamat Book Series

In the Alamat Book Series, the aswang is as terrifying and varied as they are in folklore. In my books, the aswang is generally classified as a night creature, a physical being born of darkness by having a hapless human victim ingest a black chick called the bo’ngit. These bo’ngit chicks are hatched from an ominous, dark, bird-like creature called the tigmamanukan, a beast specifically created by Gat Yawà Asuang to create night creatures.

Upon ingesting a bo’ngit chick, the victim first turns into an alasip or an aswang in transition. They retain most of their human features but have lost nearly all their memory and sense of having been human. The alasip at this point is already blood thirsty and has a craving for human flesh. Upon feeding for the first time, they will be well on their way to becoming an aswang.

The type of aswang that the alasip turns into depends upon what kind of human they were when they ingested the bo’ngit. People in general, usually somewhere between their late adolescence to their late thirties, tune into the generic terrestrial aswang. I describe my typical aswang as a creature with grayish skin, red, bloodshot eyes, pointed ears, and a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. They can unhinge their jaws at the base of their chin much like a snake, so they can devour large chunks of flesh with a single bite. They also have long, hollow, whip-like tongues, which they can use to feed on pregnant women or as a weapon to cut and bleed their prey or attackers.

They have large hands with long fingers tipped with sharp, talon-like fingernails. Their legs appear somewhat misshapen at first glance. The length of their feet extends to almost three to four times their previous length creating a visage that they have two knees. The reason behind this deformity is that it makes the terrestrial aswang fast and powerful runners as they run using only the tips of their feet, much like how a dog’s rear legs work.

A young female virgin, somewhere between the ages of thirteen to twenty will usually transform into a manananggal or sometimes a boroka. But unlike in the traditional Filipino folklore, my manananggals will only separate from their lower halves once and discard it by feeding on it. They share similar physical traits to their terrestrial cousins in terms of their hands and heads, but that’s where their similarities end.

A manananggal will sprout large bat-like wings on her back while the boroka will grow leathery wings underneath the length of her arms that connect down to the side of her torso. These attributes allow these winged aswangs to fly as they swoop down on their unsuspecting victims or travel from rooftop to rooftop to feed on the fetus of an expectant mother as she sleeps.

My aswangs, just like the western vampire, will burn and perish under direct sunlight. They do not change back to their human form during the day but instead opt to hide and shy away from the sun. They were created by the Yawàs (dark gods) to serve as their soldiers in their war against the Poons of Kaluwalhatian and the Lakandians. Though all night creatures were fed the bo’ngit chicks in the mortal realm of Kalupaan, the ones who completed their transformation in the dark realm of Kasanaan are far stronger, but take longer to reach their full transformation.

Other versions of the aswang exist in the Alamat Book Series. Some I have already written about in my current books, while others I have not. Some examples of these are the rare tigabulak, an aswang made from an old man, while the shape-shifting kiwig are made from the deranged or the mentally unstable. While I do have more versions of the aswang in my book series, I will stop here for now as this post is already exceedingly long. However, I do promise to continue blogging about this fabled monster in a future post or two.