The Mythical Story of "Maria Makiling"

At the south of Lake Laguna, on the island of Luzon, in the Philippines, stands an immense and solitary mass of Mount Makiling. Like many parts of the country and around the world, mountains and volcanoes became associated with legends, myths and ancient traditions and Mount Makiling is strongly associated with a mythical female entity named Maria Makiling.

According to local experts, Maria Makiling and is considered to be a spirit or forest nymph known as a diwata or lambana in Philippine folklore. Before the Philippines were colonized she was known as Dayang Masalanta or Dian Masalanta who could be called upon to stop or prevent natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, or storms.

Those living in the area she is also identified with the amount of fish caught in Laguna de Bay which is part of her realm and appears to be a spirit of abundance influencing the functioning of the natural world. Old stories attribute her as a benign spirit of nature that poor people could approach and ask for help whenever they needed it.

Those who claimed to have seen her, Maria Makiling a tall and slender woman of superhuman beauty, with sun-browned skin, big black eyes, and long black hair that reaches almost to her feet. She is a fantastic creature, from a long lineage of nymphs and sylphs. Her vaporous white tunic is made from moon rays, and the mysterious mists of the woods and the lake.

There was one old woman who claimed to have seen her a long time ago, when she was a child, crossing the meadows in the distance with such lightness that the grass did not even bend under her feet. Some deer hunters swore to have recognized her figure on the edge of a cliff, with her hair blowing in the wind under the moon light. They said that she had once passed in front of them, greeting them ceremoniously, before disappearing into the shadows of the forest. No one dared to follow her or spy on her, and everyone worshipped her.

It is believed that it is Maria who goes through the forest after a storm fixing broken branches and trees and repairing the nests of birds that have been damaged. She walks through the forest healing the broken wings of butterflies and clearing away debris from the forest floor and streams. Wherever she walks the sun shines and the birds sing and the flowers bloom and the animals frisk and play as she tidies up the forest after the storm.

It is not known whether Maria Makiling was named after the mountain, or whether the mountain was named after her. However, some people think that when seen from a certain angle and location Mount Makiling looks like the profile of a sleeping woman and this is said to be Maria. In Philippine mythology, there are other similar supernatural entities who are also mountain goddesses or spirits such as Maria Sinukuan who are found on Mount Arayat, Pampanga and Maria Cacao of Mount Lantoy, Cebu.

One of the best known stories about Maria Makiling is that she can transform ginger into gold which she does usually to help someone. In these stories, she often lives in a village as one of the community and is called upon to help one of the community in some way. Sometimes it is a mother with a sick child, or perhaps a husband may be seeking a cure for his sick wife.

However, when diagnosing the problem Maria recognizes the signs of malnutrition and poor diet rather than a disease or sickness and gives them ginger to take home. Invariably, by the time they get home the ginger has turned to gold which they can then sell or exchange for food and other needs. One foolish villager finding the ginger becoming heavy threw it away rather than carry it home.

In many local legends, Maria Makiling is cast as a rejected lover. One story tells how she had fallen in love with a hunter who had wandered into her territory. The two soon formed a relationship and became lovers and the hunter would climb up the mountain everyday to see her and they promised eternal love to each other. However, Maria was shocked to discover that her lover was being unfaithful and had married a mortal woman.

Naturally, Maria was devastated and concluded she could never trust the local people again realizing she was so very different to them and came to believe that they were just taking advantage of her good nature. Therefore, she withdrew her consent which allowed the trees and bushes to bear fruit and she stopped the animals and birds roaming the forest for the hunters to catch and stopped the fish from breeding in the lake. From then on she withdrew to the mountain and was seldom seen except occasionally by the light of the pale moon as she wandered through the forest alone.

Most stories about Maria have one common ending, she has distanced herself from humans because of betrayal, excessive hunting and indiscriminate felling of trees. What is evident in all of these stories is that human beings, for one reason or another, have disappointed her, and she has stopped showing her beneficent, mysterious and beautiful presence to them.