BENEDICT, BAGOBO CEREMONIAL, MAGIC AND MYTH 11 



one of these official religious classes, (d) Mediums, by whose 

 instrumentality alone messages from the unseen beings can be 

 regularly transmitted. A medium may also have ceremonial offices 

 of a more formal character to perform, such as effusing candidates 

 with water shaken from medicinal twigs in the rite of pamalugu. 12 

 If all the intermediaries with the spirits were old people, we might 

 simply call them a specialized variety of priest-doctors ; but the 

 fact is that some young men give oracles at the seances, and young 

 men are not ordinarily called upon to perforin priestly offices. 



Formal worship of the gods is carried on at fixed altars or at 

 temporary shrines of recognized types, where fruits of the field and 

 manufactured products are placed, or the slain victim is ceremo- 

 nially offered up. But acceptable devotions may be performed by the 

 wayside or in the forest, merely by laying on the ground an areca- 

 nut 13 and a betel-leaf, 14 with a word of prayer to some divinity. 



The gods 15 of the Bagobo may be roughly grouped, in part, 

 with reference to traditional concepts associated with them and, 

 in part, as touching those human interests to which their charac- 

 teristics make appeal, namely: (1) Gods of exalted rank who are 

 felt to be remote from human affairs, from whom neither help nor 

 harm is to be looked for, and to whom, therefore, no devotions are 

 addressed ; (2) Divine beings closely associated with man's interests 

 and the objects of his worship, among whom are nature spirits and 

 war-gods and protectors of home and field and industry. At this 

 point, it will suffice to mention briefly the names of Pamulak Manobo, 

 creator of the earth ; Tigyama, guardian of the home ; Tarabume, 

 god of the crops ; the Tolus, a class of omniscient beings who are 

 in charge of special forms of worship and of particular industries ; 

 the Malaki t'Olu k'Waig, 1G a divine man whose home is at the 

 mythical source of all the mountain streams, and to whom the 

 Bagobo may freely turn in sickness and in perplexity ; and the 

 Mandarangan, who inspire men with fierce courage and who love 

 to drink the blood of the slain. 



Yet less concerned is the Bagobo with gods than with demons, 

 so far as the routine of daily life is involved. Countless pains and 



" For an account of the ceremony of Pamalugu, see Part II, p. 117 — 123. 



13 Areca catechu. See footnote 165. 



1 * Piper betel. See footnote 166. 



15 For a characterization of the various classes of divine beings, see pp. 15 — 29. 



10 For the etymology of this name, see footnote 41. 



