Half-divine daughter of Bathala by an unnamed mortal woman who died at her birth. Goddess of the stars and the evening and morning star (the planet Venus) in the Tagalog tradition. Possibly identified with the Hindu goddess Tara via Indianized influence — the Golden Tara Majapahit-era statue found in Agusan attests the iconographic Tara-Tala identification. The light-orbs Tala used to ferry night-travelers were inverted into the Spanish-Catholic santelmo (St. Elmo's fire) tradition under colonization — the dangerous-spirit reinterpretation that Spanish catechesis imposed. The Kapampangan tradition adds the wet-rice-cultivation introduction role distinct from the dominant Tagalog star-goddess function.