Five Classifications of Aswangs

A couple of days ago I went to National Bookstore to look for some interesting titles in their below 100 pesos sale display. I found out that many books in there were usually non-fictions and academic references and researches.   I am posting the classifications of Aswang by Ramos. 

1. Vampires: a blood-sucking creature, often in a guise of a beautiful young woman, who marries an unsuspecting youth so that she can have regular sips of blood at his expense. Sometimes such creature prefer to attack people in distant villages and may thus express intervillage hostility. This concept is probably derived from a European source but certain adaptations reflect its Philippine environment.

2.Viscera-Suckers (Mananangal): a creature who appears as a beautiful woman by day but discards the lower part of her body at night, hiding it under the sheets, in a closet, or in a patch of banana trees. The upper part then takes to air, propelled by by its long hair or by some magical process. Sometimes the creature takes the form of a black bird, bat or an unusual insect. In this new form the creature flies in search of human internal organs, fetuses, infants, or the phlegm and exuviae of the sick. It gains access to its victims by projecting its long tongue through crevices in the roof or between bamboo slats of the floor.

3. Weredogs: creatures who are often associated with men, and who are capable of transforming themselves into ferocious beasts in the form of outsized black dogs, pigs, or cats. They are believed to waylay solitary travelers, tearing their flesh savagely. Weredogs are also attracted by the smell of the sick.

4. Ghouls (tiyanaks et al): creature who share many of the viscera suckers food preferences but who seldom take on any definite visible shape, preferring instead to remain invisible. The smell of death attracts them irresistibly and they hover around houses where wakes are being held, waiting for suitable opportunities to devour the corpse. Ghouls often start their meals even before the dead are buried, at times substituting the real corpse with a banana tree. While thought to inhabit areas surrounding villages, their preferences is for cemeteries.

5. Witches: These are men or women, sometimes actually living within the community, who in  their very being possess supernatural powers. They are assumed to be malicious and vindictive creatures who cause illness with or without provocation. They are generally regarded as anti-social. Witches are often carefully distinguished from sorcerers: the altter, beside having knowledge and contact with supernatural powers, are otherwise normal people. One may use the services of sorcerers as healers or to cause harm to ones enemies. Witches, on the otherhand, are thought to be too unreliable, unpredictable and inherently dangerous to engage ion social relationships. Often witches are said to possess peculiar traits--the reflection in their pupils is an inverted image--indicating their non-human nature. 

Witches may, however., start life as an ordinary humans but at some stage undergo a sudden and total transformation that henceforth separate them from common humanity. In contrast, sorcerers generally gain their powers through a long and difficult period of apprenticeship involving acquisition of esoteric knowledge that only gradually enables them to exercise their craft. The training of a sorcerer is distinguished form the transformation of a witch by the presence of rite of passages for the former and the absence of such rites for the latter. Thus, the transformation of a person into a sorcerer involves a process of culture whereas a witch not only represents anti-culture but also constitutes an aberration of nature.