He is commonly known and referred to in the modern era as Bathalà, a term or title which, in earlier times, also applied to lesser beings such as personal tutelary spirits, omen birds, comets, and other heavenly bodies which the early Tagalog people believed predicted events.

[2] Most scholars believed that Bathalà (Chirino 1595–1602), Badhala (Plasencia 1589), Batala (Loarca 1582), or Bachtala (Boxer Codex 1590) was derived from the Sanskrit word bhattara or bhattaraka[3] (noble lord) which appeared as the sixteenth-century title batara in the southern Philippines and Borneo.

This is why the first missionaries did not deprive the natives of this name when they instructed them about the existence of God and the mysteries of the Trinity, the incarnation, and redemption, as states an anonymous but very circumstantial relation written in Manila, on April 20, 1572.

They said that this god of theirs was in the atmosphere before there was heaven or earth or anything else, that he was ab eterno (from eternity) and not made or created by anybody from anything, and that he alone made and created all that we have mentioned simply by his own volition because he wanted to make something so beautiful as the heaven and earth, and that he made and created one man and one woman out of the earth, from whom have come and descended all the men and their generations that are in the world.these people feared and revered a god, maker of all things, who some call him Bathala, others Molaiari, others Dioata and, although they confess this god as the maker of all things, they do not even know nor do they know when or how he did or what for, and that his dwelling place is in heaven.Every time the chiefs eat, they put a little of everything they eat or drink in small plates on the table as an offering to the anitos and the Molayare or Batala, creator of all things.Excerpt from Relacion de las Yslas Filipinas by Miguel de Loarca (1582): According to the religion formerly observed by these Moros, they worshiped a deity called among them Batala, which properly means "God."

[66][67] The anitos—just like the loa of Haitian Vodou[68]—are not considered gods and goddesses but merely messengers, intermediaries, and advocates (abogado) of the people to the Supreme Being.

Some chroniclers, such as the anonymous author of Boxer Codex, do not call these agents of Bathala anitos, but instead have referred to them as dioses, rendered in translation by Quirino and Garcia as "gods".

[71] The American-Filipino historian William Henry Scott supports the opinion of these chroniclers (some of whom might be Crypto-Jews[72]) that the ancient Tagalogs worshipped the anitos as gods and goddesses (aniteria), arguing that "in actual prayers, they were petitioned directly, not as intermediaries".

Most chronicles (and isolated descriptions by explorers and missionaries) present one supreme deity analogous to the Christian God, evoking the impression that the Tagalog religion was monotheistic.

[79] Bathala is the subject of sacred songs such as Diona and Tulingdao, wherein performers invoke him to prevent flood, drought, and pests and to grant them plentiful harvest and a beautiful field.

According to Chirino (1595–1602) and Colin (1663), the ancient Tagalogs held the crocodiles in the greatest veneration, and when they saw one in the water, they cried out in all subjection "Nono" (Nuno), meaning "grandfather".

[96] According to Andres San Nicolas (1624), the Sambal people, an ethnic group closely related to the Tagalogs, particularly those in Tanay, Rizal, "did not doubt the fact of there having been in its time a creation of man, but they believed that the first one had emerged from a bamboo joint and his wife out of another, under very ridiculous and stupid circumstances.

"[97] According to William Marsden (1784), the ancient Tagalogs believed that the first man and woman were produced from a bamboo pole which burst in the island of Sumatra, and they quarreled about their marriage.

[25] A paper by Catalina Villaruz, written in about 1920 and now in the H. Otley Beyer manuscript collection, reports that the Southern Luzon Tagalogs believed that the first man started his life inside a bamboo pole.

A Tagalog euphemism for a child born out of wedlock is "putok sa buho" ("one who burst out of a bamboo") – an evident carryover from the times when the myth was held as gospel of truth.

According to Colin, the Tagalogs believed that the first man and woman sprang from a bamboo pole pecked by a bird they called Tigmamanokin to which they applied the name of their god Bathala.

[107] According to Father San Agustin, the Tirurays[further explanation needed] worshipped Linog, meaning "earthquake", who, as the god of marriage, advised the first man and woman to mate and populate the earth.

The true anito of childbirth is actually La Campinay (Lakang Pinay or Lakampinay) [Pardo inquisition report (1686–1688)],[111] who is said to be "the first midwife in the world" [Boxer Codex (1590)].

[115] Masalanta (devastating) comes from the root word salanta, which is listeded in the "Noceda and Sanlucar Vocabulario de la lengua Tagala (1754)" and the "San Buenaventura dictionary (1613)" as meaning "poor, needy, crippled, and blind".

[116] Professor of Anthropology Fay-Cooper Cole identified the Mandayan supreme gods—the father and son Mansilatan (The Creator) and Batla/Badla (The Preserver/Protector)—with the Tagalog deities Dian Masalanta and Bathala/Badhala, respectively.

[117][118] Mansilatan, the father of Batla, is the source of the omnipotent virtue called Busao, which takes possession of the Baylans (Priestesses) and the Baganis (Warriors) while they are in a trance, making them strong and valiant above other men.

They said that this man, in the other world, would hasten to offer the woman his hand at the passage of a very perilous stream which had no other bridge than a very narrow beam, which was traversed to reach the repose that they call Kaluwálhatian i.e. Bathala's abode.

[41] In an article written by Lorenz Lasco in Dalumat Ejournal, he cited that, in Philippine mythologies, the sky-world's own anito (deity) is the Sun which is symbolized by a bird.

As noted by Alejandro Roces, "In Alfonso, Cavite, there is a Barrio called Marahan where there lives an exclusive sect that perform a cultic ritual known as Sanghiyang.

Presently, Sanghiyang is being practiced not only as a form of ancestral worship but also as preparation for mediumistic healing and as a preliminary rite for a more colorful ritual called "Sayaw sa Apoy" (Dance on Fire).

[138]In Anting-anting—the post-colonial esoteric belief system and traditional occult practices of the Tagalogs—Bathala, also known as the Infinito Dios or Nuno, is identified with the magical power (bertud or galing) that resides in amulets and talismans.

The Infinito Dios is also referred to as Animasola (Lonely Soul), Waksim (his name as a water deity), and Atardar (reflecting his warrior or protective aspect).

[140] On the other hand, the Infinita Dios is also referred to as Gumamela Celis (Flower of Heaven), Rosa Mundi (Flower of the World), and Dios Ina (God the Mother); she is also identified with the concept of Inang Pilipinas (Mother Philippines) or Inang Bayan (Motherland) celebrated in the writings of the revolutionary Andres Bonifacio (Tapunan ng Lingap; Katapusang Hibik ng Pilipinas).

[139] Although it is widely believed that this esoteric belief system preceded Spanish colonization and Catholicism, the Tagalog term antíng-antíng (talisman) was not recorded by lexicographers until the second half of the 19th century.

Mariagub – The second person of the Santisima Trinidad, he has the fullness of Dios Anak (God the Son) and the power to fulfill all the mysteries wrought by the Lord Jesus Christ.

[150] Note: The bird Adarna is the eponymous character of a 16th-century Filipino tale in verse, "Corrido and Life Lived by the Three Princes, children of King Fernando and Queen Valeriana in the Kingdom of Berbania", which is believed by some researchers to have been based on similar European stories.