Magbabaya, the One Who Wills All Things

Magbabaya, fully styled Diwata na Magbabaya, is the supreme creator god of the Bukidnon (Talaandig and Higaonon) peoples of the Mount Kitanglad range and the upper Pulangi valley in north-central Mindanao. The name derives from the Binukid root baya', 'will' or 'the power of choosing', so that Magbabaya is 'the One Who Wills' or in whose charge all things rest. In the ethnographies of Fay-Cooper Cole and Vincent Cullen he stands at the head of a hierarchy of supernatural beings, most powerful of all, delegating particular spheres to subordinate divinities who must be won over with offerings. In the creation narrative collected by Carmen Ching Unabia he is the supreme planner who, seeing only emptiness, fashioned the first eight elements and from them the sea, sky, moon and stars. Folk tradition recorded in Eugenio's anthology adds that he dwells in a windowless house of coins high in the sky, since to behold him would cause all men and things to dissolve into water. Often described as neither wholly male nor female, he forms one member of the Bukidnon creative triad together with Dadanhayan ha Sugay and the mediating Agtayabun.

Domains

• creation and supreme sovereignty
• fate and destiny

Powers

• to will the world and its elements into being
• to rule over the hierarchy of lesser spirits

Epithets

• Diwata na MagbabayaCarmen Ching Unabia, The Bukidnon Batbatonon and Pamuhay: A Socio-Literary Study (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1986). (secondary)

Relations

• ally: Agtayabun, the Winged MediatorIn the creation account the winged Agtayabun holds Magbabaya and Dadanhayan ha Sugay aloft and cools their heads, mediating between the well-formed creator and his ill-formed counterpart.Francisco R. Demetrio, Gilda Cordero-Fernando, Fernando N. Zialcita and Roberto B. Feleo, The Soul Book (Quezon City: GCF Books, 1991). (secondary)
• rival: Dadanhayan ha Sugay, the Lord from Whom Permission Is AskedMagbabaya, the comely human-formed creator who wills good, stands opposed to the ten-headed drooling Dadanhayan ha Sugay; the soil and saliva of the latter become the earth only through the creative will of the former.Francisco R. Demetrio, Gilda Cordero-Fernando, Fernando N. Zialcita and Roberto B. Feleo, The Soul Book (Quezon City: GCF Books, 1991). (secondary)

Sources

• Magbabaya (Diwata na Magbabaya) is the supreme creator deity of the Bukidnon of north-central Mindanao, the one who wills all things and rules a hierarchy of lesser spirits.: Fay-Cooper Cole, The Bukidnon of Mindanao, Fieldiana: Anthropology vol. 46 (Chicago: Chicago Natural History Museum / Field Museum, 1956). (secondary); Vincent G. Cullen, S.J., 'The Spirit World of the Bukidnon,' Asian Folklore Studies (Folklore Studies) 27, no. 2 (1968). (secondary)