The Buguias Pantheon

Religious ideology was open to personal exegesis. While the Buguias people generally shared the complex Cordilleran hierarchies and genealogies of heavenly, earthbound, and underworld deities and spirits, their interpretations seem to have been heterodox. At least in the modern period, even the relationship between the two chief gods, Kabigat and his brother Balitok, and the secondary members of the pantheon, such as Wigan and Bangan, are uncertain. To some, Bangan and Kabigat are siblings, to others, husband and wife.^[1] Above all reigns Kabunian, but again the nature of this ultimate godhead, as well as his connections with the more active heavenly beings, was fluid (see W. H. Scott 19360 [1969]). In one perhaps idiosyncratic conception, all deities are said to occupy dual incarnations: a primary being that remains in the sky-world, and a secondary shadow—intermediary to humankind—dwelling underground.

Gods were considered generally benevolent, and they received numerous petitions for succor. Each deity had his or her specialty. Balitok, for example, offered help in the curing of wounds. To invoke a god's intervention, a priest, or manbunung , had to recite the correct prayers and direct the proper offerings. Chickens were commonly sacrificed; after the gods had feasted on the spiritual essences, the participants consumed the flesh.