
RELIGION 185 
There are persons recognized as possessing religious 
power; but they hold this in virtue of personal ability, 
not as members of a caste or profession. Essentially, 
therefore, they are medicinemen or mediums rather 
than true priests, although the recitation of prayers 
and formulas is largely left to them. Any person en- 
dowed with the power of trance or ventriloquistic com- 
munication with the spirits sufficient to impress his 
listeners, is accepted as one of these mediums. Old and 
young, men and women, share indifferently in the office; 
in fact among the majority of the tribes women seem 
to have been more successful in this capacity. The 
medium frequently holds seances with the spirits, calling 
them by name, asking them questions and causing them 
to answer. Such sessions take place in the darkened 
house. With the Ifugao the medium becomes possessed 
by a god during the public and open air conduct of a 
ceremony and speaks as the god. Very often the me- 
diums learn from older ones; but the chief condition 
of their recognition seems to be inborn power, and not 
education in any school or regulated tradition. They 
have been most frequently described under their 
Tagalog name of katalonan or by the Bisayan designa- 
tion bailan. Other tribes use different terms, but the 
institution remains substantially the same. It is un- 
doubtedly a very ancient element of Filipino and general 
East Indian religion. 
The ritual features here outlined apply most directly 
to the pagans of Mindanao and Luzon and the Tagalog 
and Bisaya, although among the latter the old cults, 
except for a few survivals, have long since died out be- 
fore Christianity. The Moro too has effaced most of 
his old worship under the sway of Mohammedanism. 
The religion of the Negritos and of the primitive 
groups on outlying islands, such as the Mangyan and 
