⠀⠀⠀ According to Wikipedia * there's an Ilocano belief in a system of four kinds of souls. I tried to research this & began to doubt it. I don't know how reliable is the Aswang Project¹, & this Filipino soul book * doesn't really elucidate matters. Does the four-soul concept even exist, is it something anthropologists/observers or cultural outsiders presumed, misinterpreted, miscounted, or is it just unsourced AI-generated info-slop? My older relatives say they never heard of the four-soul system. They know of soul dualism, yes, but squared? Where was this number pulled from?

⠀⠀⠀ Here are some variant spellings & overlapping definitions of the following Ilocano words:

• kadkad(d)u(w)á: a companion soul (literally "two companions"); reason/vigor/courage; can be lost or guided back to the body² ³; my Ilocano dictionary * says it also means afterbirth (placenta/membranes)
• (kar{a})karmá: mind/reason/psyche/vigor; can be stolen when the body is frightened; total loss means insanity, can be lured back with sacrifices & ceremonies
• aniwaás: not exactly a ghost, but a lingering spiritual imprint that often takes the form of a small animal (bird, butterfly, insect, etc.)³; it can leave when the human body sleeps⁴; total loss of aniwaás leads to insanity; my Ilocano dictionary * says it also means ghost, elf, fairy, or hobgoblin
  • alternately, anioa-ás or anioaás *
• (ban)banig, (mar)marna: elf/fairy/ghost/spook
• du(w)énde: (Spanish/Tagalog) hobgoblin, elf, fairy, or ghost
• impákto: evil spook or ghost
• katataoán: invisible spirit or tree-dwelling demons
• siúkoy: (Tagalog via Chinese Hokkien) cui kui (water ghost): mermaid/merman
• alingaás, abíit, atros, gurárab, mámaw or pugót: spirit/ghost
• espíritu: (Spanish) spirit/soul
• kaluluwá, kararu(w)á, or kararwá: Christian soul/spirit that leaves the body in death
• (al)aliá or arariá: 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
• aningaás: a kind of ghost or haunting voices from the past
• aníto: spirit/ghost of one's ancestors

⠀⠀⠀ This list is to help me suss out the different categories of Ilocano soul/spirit. Confusingly enough, some sources⁵ switch around certain details, one of them even describing the kadkadduá as a form of aniwaás (which I personally think is the reverse).

• Can a winged aniwaás count as a fairy?
• Are ghostly poltergeists rather elfish in their mischievous ways?
• Does the holy ghost/spirit also mean holy life/courage/reason?
• Are there distinctions to be made between European/Spanish/Christian & Ilocano/indigenous/pagan concepts of the soul/ghost/spirit?

⠀⠀⠀ I can sorta see a thesis of the ego (the living soul composed of courage, reason, symbolic afterbirth) meeting its antithesis, the non-ego (the spiritual dead: ghosts, poltergeists, ancestral souls), which synthesized into aniwaás that permeate both living ego & the sleeping dead. These animistic beliefs went through an earlier sublation with Buddhist Hindu influences, then came into dialectical conflict with European/Spanish/American/Christianizing forces, further synthesizing into the Catholic syncretism that my family & other Filipinos continue to practice to this day.

Notes:

• ¹ Somehow it feels inauthentic & kinda gross in a "white ethnographer bestows expertise on his native subjects" kind of way. I prefer the research/info to come from inside Filipino communities.
• ² I remember my mother muttering an incantation to restore my dog's kadkadduá after a near-accident shook him from his bucket seat. He didn't seem all that bothered from falling down, but the principle of restoring his soul through a small incantation was important to my mom.
• ³ My Ilocano grandfather visited an herbalist-shaman who performed rituals to guide back his kadkadduá after a nearly tragic incident troubled his mental well-being. I think his trauma was resolved afterward, but I really don't know more details about this.
• ⁴ None of my relatives believe in reincarnation or animal-familiars, although I find the idea of animal aniwaás very witchy & attractive.
• ⁵ Yeah, I know. Very vague. Lost my notes/bookmarks. Will return to this later.

⠀⠀

ɴᴏᴠ 01 2025:

⠀⠀⠀ Mom & I had a late supper on Halloween night, & at the stroke of midnight, when it became All Souls Day & the beginning of the Filipino Undas, we were watching videos of a 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.

⠀⠀⠀ I found that its root word was actually Tagalog, a reminder that my parents' language isn't "deep Ilocano" but a mix of Ilocano & Tagalog & other neighboring indigenous languages, which probably accounts for my misunderstanding the Ilocano four-soul concept. (Yet I still can't find a primary source for that specific number.) I noticed that the related root word for manglangis also means coconut oil, which I recalled was one of the remedies the albuláryo gave to my grandfather to restore his kadkadduá.

⠀⠀⠀ I had a dream last night in which appeared both my brother & that same gymnast cousin. I complimented / "flattered" my brother on the neat hat he wore in my dream, & I woke up thinking I should talk to him more & add some candles & flowers to the family's statuette of the Virgin Mary that's decorated with some vintage family photos that I had requested from my grandfather before the other ones got destroyed by a typhoon in the Philippines.