according to wikipedia* there's an ilocano belief in four kinds of souls, which i tried to research & began to doubt. i don't know how reliable is the aswang project, & this filipino soul book* doesn't really elucidate matters. does the four-soul concept even exist, or is it just something anthropologists presumed, misinterpreted, or miscounted? my older relatives say they never heard of it. soul dualism, yes, but twice/squared?

other sources offer variant spellings & overlapping definitions for the following ilocano words:

• kadkad(d)u(w)a: companion soul (literally "two companions"); reason/vigor/courage; can be lost or guided back to the body (my ilocano dictionary says kadkaddua also means afterbirth [placenta/membranes]).
  • i remember my mother muttering an incantation to restore my dog's kadkaddua after a near-accident shook him (he fell out of his bucket seat when we abruptly stopped the car from hitting traffic). he didn't seem all that bothered, it was just the principle of the soul-restoration that was important to my mom.
  • my ilocano grandfather visited an herbalist-shaman who performed rituals to guide back his kadkaddua after a nearly tragic incident troubled his mental well-being. i think it was resolved for him, but i really don't know much detail about this.
• (kar{a})karma: mind/reason/psyche/vigor; can be stolen when the body is frightened; total loss means insanity, can be lured back with sacrifices & ceremonies
• aniwaas: not exactly a ghost, but a lingering spiritual imprint that often takes the form of a small animal (bird, butterfly, insect, etc.); it's sort of like a witch's familiar, it can leave when the human body sleeps; total loss of aniwaas leads to insanity; my ilocano dictionary says it also means ghost, elf, fairy, or hobgoblin
  • none of my relatives believe in reincarnation or animal familiars, although i find the idea of animal aniwaas very attractive
• alalia/araria: ghost that makes noise related to things it did in life, soul of the dead that visits friends/relatives & asks them to pray/perform duty it failed to do in life
• kaluluwa/kararu(w)a/kararwá: christian soul/spirit that leaves the body in death

are there distinctions to be made between spanish/christian & ilocano/indigenous words/concepts of the soul/spirit? confusingly enough, some of the sources even switch details around, such as describing the kadkaddua as a form of aniwaas. (i personally think it's the other way around.) salient differences that stand out to me are courage, afterbirth, animal imprint, & ghost.

• can a winged aniwaas count as a fairy?
• are ghostly poltergeists rather elfish in their mischievous ways?
• does the holy ghost/spirit also mean holy life/courage/reason?

these terms seem to form a spectrum of synonyms rather than four kinds of spirits/souls. if there's anyone out there who knows more about ilocano soul beliefs, please enlighten me about this subject.

• update

mom & i had a late supper on halloween night, & at the stroke of midnight, when it became all saints day & the beginning of the filipino undas, we watched videos of the recent rhythmic gymnastics championship. mom mentioned that my cousin used to flatter her gym coach a lot to get into her good graces, but mom didn't know the english word for "flatter" and asked me to translate the word "manglangis" instead.

so i looked it up in the ilocano dictionary and found that the root word was actually a tagalog word, a reminder that my parents' language isn't "deep ilocano" but a mix of ilocano & tagalog & other native languages of neighboring indigenous groups, which probably accounts for my misunderstanding of the ilocano four-soul concept. i noticed that the related root word for "manglangis" also meant coconut oil, which i recalled was one of the remedies the albularyo gave my grandfather to restore the sense of his soul.

i had a dream last night in which my cousin & my brother appeared. i complimented/"flattered" my brother on the neat hat he wore in my dream, & woke up thinking i should talk to him more, & add some candles & flowers to the family's statuette of the virgin mary, which is decorated with vintage family photos that i had requested from my grandfather before the rest were lost in a typhoon in the philippines.