Note 12 — Chapter VI

The customs and ceremonies of those people must be touched upon briefly, not so much for the diversion that they may afford as that we may certify to the labor of Ours in changing them according to law and reason, and putting them into a suitable condition. The worship with which they then reverenced their false deities they were wont to perform not in the villages, but outside them in the mountains, or the part nearest to their fields. They had certain little houses there like chapels, in which they all assembled. But that did not prevent them from having gods—penates, or idols, which they called anìtos. The priesthood was exercised by certain old men, ceremonious in the extreme, and not less by old women called catalònas—witches, superstitious creatures, diviners, and casters of lots—who were esteemed and so thoroughly believed that whatever they said, although lies, was taken as an infallible oracle. The manner of their sacrifices (which they called by the name maganìtos), on meeting to make them in the place that we have spoken of above, was none other than that, having prepared an unclean animal, very well grown—or for lack of it, a large cock—they offered it to the devil by means of one of those witches, with peculiar and curious ceremonies. For, dancing to the sound of a bell, she took in her hands a small idol, made to imitate the form in which the father of deceit was wont to appear to them at times; it was of human form, with [128] very ugly features, and a long beard. She spoke certain words to it, invoking its presence, whereupon the iniquitous spirit came, and entered into her miserable body in order to dictate to her the deceits that are its custom in such acts. After having declared their false notions to those present, they ate the animal or bird, and they drank to intoxication, whereupon the wicked sacrifice was brought to an end. Besides that adoration which they gave to the devil, they revered several false gods—one, in especial, called bathala mey capal, whose false genealogies and fabulous deeds they celebrated in certain tunes and verses like hymns. Their whole religion was based on those songs, and they were passed on from generation to generation, and were sung in their feasts and most solemn assemblies. Those who were ignorant of the teachings of Mahomet adored not less the sun, the moon, the rainbow, birds, and animals—but especially the cayman or crocodile; a blue bird closely resembling the thrush; the crow; rocks placed on the shores of the sea, and those that they see in the sea, such as sunken rocks and shoals.12