Rooted in Ancestry: A Gentle Guide to Filipino Psychic, Healing, and Shamanic Traditions
When people meet me through a Reiki session, a tarot reading, or a space clearing, they often sense something familiar, ancient, and grounded. That feeling has a name in my bones: I am of Visayan and Kinaray‑a lineage from the Philippines. My work is not an imitation of trend or trope. It is a remembrance. It is the way my lineage whispers guidance in all my work.
This guide is a loving primer on some of the terms you’ll see when exploring Filipino spiritual healing. The Philippines is an archipelago with hundreds of languages and traditions; no single list can hold everything. Think of this as a respectful map for orientation, offered with gratitude to the elders and culture‑bearers who keep these ways alive.
Core Lineages and Living Practices
Babaylan
In many Visayan communities, the babaylan has historically been a ritual leader, healer, and culture keeper. Babaylan work includes tending community wellbeing, guiding rites of passage, mediating with spirit and nature, and stewarding harmony. Today, “babaylan” also names a reclamation movement among the diaspora—an invitation to remember relational ways of knowing. [1][2]
Mananambal / Tambalan (Visayas)
Community healers who draw from prayer, herbal knowledge, massage, ritual, and folk Catholicism. “Hilot” or “hilot‑healers” often fall within this sphere, integrating bodywork with spiritual care. [3]
Albularyo
A widely known folk healer who may use orasyon (prayer), herbal remedies, tawas divination, and ritual to diagnose and support healing. [4][5]
Manghihilot / Hilot
Hilot is both the traditional art of healing and the practice of intuitive bodywork and alignment, addressing flow, heat, cold, wind, and balance in the body. A manghihilot is a practitioner of hilot. [3]
Manggagamot / Herbalista
Healers skilled in plant medicine, poultices, teas, smoke, and baths. Knowledge is often apprenticed within families and communities. [6]
Mangkukulam / Mambabarang
Terms often associated with sorcery or baneful workings. In popular media these are sensationalized, but in traditional contexts they point to the moral landscape of power and responsibility. True healing lineages emphasize consent, harmony, and the restoration of balance rather than harm. [7]
Manggagamot sa Tawas / Manggagamot sa Usok
Healers who read signs through alum (tawas) or smoke for diagnosis and guidance. Divination here is diagnostic, not entertainment—it’s a way of listening. [8]
Note: Names and roles vary by island, language, and family. In Kinaray‑a and broader Panay traditions, many of these functions interweave under local terms and practices. What matters is relationship: with place, with elders, with the living world. [8]
Shared Threads Across Traditions
Relationality over “performance”
Healing is community care. The goal is right relationship with self, nature, ancestors, and Spirit.
Many medicines, one heart
Prayer, song, massage, herbs, baths, smoke, touch, and divination coexist without hierarchy.
Ethical reciprocity
Consent, humility, and exchange—offerings, gratitude, service—keep the work clean.
Embodiment and rhythm
Breath, pulse, warmth, and flow with inner knowing, not just a script or tool.
How My Work Carries These Lineages Forward
I am a certified Usui Reiki Master and Animal Reiki Master Teacher, an intuitive healer, and a tarot reader. While Reiki is Japanese in origin, my approach weaves ancestral remembrance in its relational, rhythmic, and intuitive nature.
Intuitive Wellness Sessions
Like hilot and mananambal traditions, I listen through hands, breath, and subtle rhythm. Sessions blend energy work, guided grounding, and simple rituals to help your nervous system settle and your energy flow.
Animal Reiki
In many Filipino homes, animals are family. I honor that bond by supporting animal companions with gentle, consent‑based energy work. We invite calm, resilience, and deeper connection between you and your pet.
Distance Reiki
Old ways have always traveled through prayer and intention. Distance work is a modern vessel for an ancient truth: spirit is not limited by miles. Sessions occur via Google Meet with clear grounding, intention setting, and aftercare.
Energetic House Cleansing
In the Visayan ethos, place is kin. I offer smoke‑free or smoke‑based cleansings, prayer, sound, and energy clearing to restore ease at home or in the workplace. Think of it as resetting the room’s pulse.
Tarot as Listening
Divination, like tawas, is a way of reading pattern and symbol to illuminate the next kind step. My readings focus on clarity, consent, and practical decision‑making—not fear, not fate.
This is how I braid my Visayan and Kinaray‑a inheritance with the trainings I’ve pursued: by centering relationship, consent, reciprocity, and the measurable outcomes you feel in your body and life—less stress, better sleep, clearer choices, softer breath.
Language Matters: Using Terms with Care
Say the name with respect
Words like babaylan carry weight. Use them to honor, not to market.
Context first, titles later
Let your practice reflect ethics and relationship before adopting a title.
Credit the source
Acknowledge teachers, elders, and communities. Reciprocity keeps the medicine clean.
Avoid sensationalizing
Skip the shock value around sorcery. Center healing and responsibility.
Beginning Your Own Remembering
Start with your breath and land where your feet are
Simple grounding is an ancestral practice.
Learn locally
If you have Filipino roots, ask family what they remember. If you don’t, support culture‑bearers and educators. Approach as a guest, not a consumer.
Build reciprocity
Give thanks. Pay fairly. Volunteer. Offer service where you receive learning.
Work With Me
If you’re seeking healing that honors tradition and meets you where you are, I’m here. Whether for you, your animal companion, or your space, we’ll choose a path that is ethical, gentle, and effective.
Intuitive Wellness Sessions
Animal Reiki
Distance Reiki
Energetic House Cleansing
Tarot Readings
Book a session, bring your breath, and let’s listen for what wants to flourish next.
A Closing Blessing
May this remembering carry respect for all our elders and the lands that hold us. May the medicine we move be honest, kind, and rooted in reciprocity. Padayon—keep going.
Sources and Footnotes
Center for Babaylan Studies. “What is a Babaylan?” Link
Grace Nono. Babaylan Sing Back: Philippine Shamans and Voice, Gender, and Place. Open‑access overview and publication info. Link
Babaylan Sing Back (book info/download listing). Link
Virgil Mayor Apostol. Way of the Ancient Healer: Sacred Teachings from the Philippine Ancestral Traditions. Link
“Power and Spiritual Discipline Among Philippine Folk Healers.” Brill journal page. Link
Christina Verano Carter. Haunted Legacies: Healing and Sorcery in a Visayan Community (Iloilo). Link
Folk Healing Practices: Reflecting an Inculturation of Catholic Faith. Link
The Power to Influence and to Protect: Interconnectedness of the Human Bodies among the Visayans and the Indigenous People. Link
The Many Names of Philippine Shamans & Healers (Aswang Project). Link
POWER AND SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINE AMONG PHILIPPINE FOLK HEALERS (Academia.edu listing). Link
