The Bakunawa is the great moon-devouring serpent-dragon of Philippine mythology: a colossal sea-serpent or dragon of the deep that rises to swallow the moon, causing the eclipses, and that in the ancient myth devoured the moons of the world one by one. It is the cosmic dragon of the islands, the dread of the eclipse.
The Serpent of the Deep
The Bakunawa is imagined as an enormous serpent or dragon of the sea — a being of vast size, with a mouth wide as a lake, a red tongue, whiskers, gills, and great wings (or fins), dwelling in the depths of the ocean. In the old Visayan cosmology, the Bakunawa is a creature of immense and primal power, associated with the moon, the sea, and the eclipse, one of the great beings of the Filipino mythic cosmos.
The Devourer of Moons
The central myth of the Bakunawa explains the eclipse and the single moon. In the beginning, the myth says, the supreme god [bathala] created seven (or several) moons to light the night sky. But the Bakunawa, dwelling in the sea, was enchanted by the beauty of the moons and, rising from the deep, devoured them one by one — swallowing six of the seven moons, until only one remained. To save the last moon, the people would make a great noise — banging pots, pans, drums, and gongs, shouting and clamouring — to frighten the Bakunawa and force it to spit out or release the moon it was swallowing. This is the origin of the eclipse: when the moon darkens, it is the Bakunawa trying to swallow it, and the noise of the people drives the serpent away and saves the moon. (In some tellings, Bathala planted bamboo on the last moon, its shadow being the markings we see, to make it less appealing to the dragon.)
The Cosmic Dragon
The Bakunawa embodies the Filipino vision of the cosmic forces that threaten the lights of the heavens — the great dragon that would devour the moon and plunge the world into darkness, held at bay only by the clamour of humankind. It belongs to the widespread mythic motif of the eclipse-monster that swallows sun or moon, here given a uniquely Filipino, oceanic form. A being of awesome and primal power, the Bakunawa is one of the grandest creatures of Philippine myth. In the Bakunawa, Filipino mythology gave form to the eclipse and the dragon of the deep — the colossal moon-devouring serpent that swallowed six of the seven moons and rises still to darken the last, driven back by the noise of the people, the cosmic dragon of the islands.