{
 "schema": 1,
 "id": "anting-anting",
 "type": "amulet",
 "names": {
  "name": "Anting-anting",
  "native": "anting-anting",
  "script": "Latin",
  "lang": "tl",
  "said": "AN-ting AN-ting",
  "aliases": [
   "agimat",
   "anting",
   "virtud",
   "galing",
   "gayuma",
   "mutya",
   "orasyon"
  ]
 },
 "etymology": {
  "root": "Tagalog anting-anting, from Javanese anting-anting, 'ear-hanging ornament'; the wider family includes Indonesian and Malay gantung, 'hanging'. Agimat is the other Filipino word for the same thing, with virtud (virtue) and galing (prowess) as general terms",
  "note": "The ornament sense carries the claim with it: in the polytheistic mythology the word comes out of, such ornaments were worn by gods in the ear hook or the earlobe, where they were held to be strongest.",
  "tier": "cited",
  "source": "s:wp-agimat"
 },
 "region": [
  "island-sea"
 ],
 "countries": [
  "PH"
 ],
 "facets": {
  "era": "early-modern",
  "status": "living",
  "portable": "worn",
  "restricted": "open",
  "hemisphere": [
   "N",
   "E"
  ]
 },
 "text": {
  "what": "Most often a flat pendant on a necklace — round, triangular or cross-shaped, in gold-coloured metal, its face crowded with figures and Latin words. But the class is wider than the pendant. An anting-anting can be a stone said to have come out of the sky, or a fulgurite fang left where lightning struck, pangil ng kidlat, or a mutya, a drop of liquid taken from the heart of a banana tree at midnight, which is swallowed rather than worn. It can be a garment with words written on it. It usually comes with a small book of incantations, orasyon, which has to be read on Good Friday or another set date for the thing to work at full strength.",
  "story": "The Philippine occult tradition matches an agimat to a department of life. The commonest kinds remove hexes and drive out spirits. A gayuma is the love charm, which makes its owner more attractive. Most of the amulets carry Latin inscriptions, and most of the dealers set up near a church — in the courtyard or in the market beside it — of which the Quiapo district in Manila is the example everyone names.\n\nThe written record starts with the colonisers. The earliest reports of anting-anting come from Spanish priests in the early colonial period, which in the Philippines begins with Miguel López de Legazpi's settlement of 1565. Trinidad Pardo de Tavera defined the thing in Spanish: amuleto que salva la vida, da poder sobre natural — an amulet of supernatural power that saves lives. As Christianity took hold, the anting-anting took on the new religion's forms, and later took in the esoteric symbols of Freemasonry as well. An Islamic version exists in the southern Muslim islands.\n\nThe charm has a political history, which is unusual in this atlas. Filipino fighters wore anting-anting against the Spanish and then against the Americans. Macario Sakay wore a vest carrying religious images and Latin phrases, to stop bullets. Ferdinand Marcos claimed that Gregorio Aglipay had given him an anting-anting — a sliver of wood inserted into his back before the Bataan campaign in 1942 — that could make him invisible. Whose claim that was, and what it was for, is left standing here as his.\n\nThe subtypes are named by what they do. Kabal, also kunat, makes the skin proof against cuts and sword slashes. Pamako nails an entity in place so it cannot move. Tagabulag turns the wearer invisible to an enemy, or blinds them. Tagaliwas turns a bullet aside.\n\nFilipino cinema took all of it and went further: on screen the wearer gains strength, invisibility, healing, flight, telekinesis, the power to stop a bullet in the air. Ramon Revilla Sr., playing Nardong Putik, carried one that made him invulnerable. The 1939 film The Real Glory shows Moro characters saying theirs will stop bullets and knives. Screen and street are not the same object and this record keeps them apart.",
  "how": "Cast or cut, then charged by reading: the orasyon that comes with the amulet has to be recited on Good Friday, or on another appointed date, for the piece to reach full power. Other routes to getting one are described and are not gentle — taking the liquid drained from an exhumed body, or setting out food and drink for the spirits in a cemetery at midnight on Holy Wednesday or Holy Thursday. A mutya is swallowed. Bought at a stall by a church, most often.",
  "today": "Still sold from stalls around Quiapo Church in Manila and at markets beside other churches, as of the accounts this project has read. Quiapo is a major Catholic shrine, which is the point: the trade stands in the churchyard rather than away from it."
 },
 "dating": {
  "period": "Spanish colonial period to the present",
  "from_year": 1565,
  "to_year": null,
  "living": true,
  "label": "from the early Spanish colonial period, 1565 onward",
  "method": "textual",
  "circa": true,
  "tier": "cited",
  "source": "s:wp-agimat",
  "note": "The source says the earliest reports come from Spanish priests in the early colonial period and gives no year. 1565 is the year Legazpi established the first Spanish settlement in the Philippines, cited to s:web-wp-spanish-east-indies, and is used as the earliest that phrase can reach. The practice itself is older than its first European report."
 },
 "object": {
  "form": "medal",
  "materials": [
   "copper",
   "brass",
   "gold",
   "paper",
   "cloth",
   "wood"
  ],
  "worn": [
   "neck",
   "sewn-in",
   "swallowed",
   "pocket"
  ],
  "made_by": "amulet dealers, who set up near churches — the Quiapo district in Manila is the best known",
  "inscription": "Latin words and figures on most examples; the esoteric symbols of Freemasonry on some",
  "script": "Latin",
  "single_use": false,
  "source": "s:wp-agimat",
  "note": "Described as typically a cross, or a flat round or triangular golden pendant on a necklace. Other forms named: a sky-stone, a fulgurite fang, a swallowed mutya, an inscribed garment, and consumable enchanted mud, putik. No published measurement was read."
 },
 "against": [
  {
   "harm": "weapons",
   "who": "Filipino fighters against Spain and the United States; Macario Sakay wore a vest of religious images and Latin phrases against bullets, and the subtypes kabal and tagaliwas are named for cuts and for turning a bullet aside",
   "source": "s:wp-agimat",
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  {
   "harm": "curse",
   "who": "the Philippine occult tradition, in which the most frequent kind of agimat removes hexes",
   "source": "s:wp-agimat",
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  {
   "harm": "spirits",
   "who": "the same tradition: the other frequent kind drives out evil spirits",
   "source": "s:wp-agimat",
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  {
   "harm": "attraction",
   "who": "owners of a gayuma, the love charm that makes its owner more attractive",
   "source": "s:wp-agimat",
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  {
   "harm": "bad-luck",
   "who": "Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, who defined it as an amulet of supernatural power that saves lives",
   "quote": "amuleto que salva la vida, da poder sobre natural",
   "source": "s:wp-agimat",
   "tier": "cited"
  }
 ],
 "kin": [
  {
   "to": "quiapo-church",
   "as": "the Manila church whose courtyard and surrounding market are where these are bought",
   "rel": "place"
  },
  {
   "to": "jimat",
   "as": "the Malay and Indonesian class the word comes from — Javanese anting-anting, the ear-hung ornament",
   "rel": "origin"
  },
  {
   "to": "keris-pusaka",
   "as": "the other charm of the islands carried into a fight, and still forged in the Muslim-inhabited south of the Philippines",
   "rel": "kin"
  },
  {
   "to": "st-christopher-medal",
   "as": "the Catholic medal this most resembles on a tray, and does not behave like: an anting-anting takes its charge from an orasyon read on Good Friday",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "to": "talismanic-shirt",
   "as": "Sakay's vest belongs with these — a written garment worn against shot",
   "rel": "parallel"
  },
  {
   "to": "latin-american-folk-catholic",
   "as": "the nearest tradition in this atlas: church forms taken up and worked by people outside the clergy, in another Spanish colony",
   "rel": "parallel"
  },
  {
   "to": "divine-name",
   "as": "the sign on most of them — Latin words and holy names carried as the working part",
   "rel": "motif"
  },
  {
   "to": "buying-in-a-market",
   "as": "how one is got: from a stall in a churchyard, with the book of incantations thrown in",
   "rel": "practice"
  },
  {
   "to": "washing-off-ink",
   "as": "the nearest practice in this atlas to swallowing a mutya — a charm taken into the body rather than hung on it",
   "rel": "parallel"
  }
 ],
 "links": [
  {
   "label": "Agimat — Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agimat"
  }
 ],
 "sources": [
  "s:wp-agimat",
  "s:wp-quiapo-church",
  "s:web-wp-spanish-east-indies",
  "s:wp-amulet"
 ],
 "provenance": {
  "default": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-agimat"
  },
  "fields": {
   "dating": {
    "tier": "inference",
    "source": "s:web-wp-spanish-east-indies",
    "note": "the 1565 start year is this project's reading of 'the early colonial period' against the cited date of Legazpi's settlement; the source on agimat gives no year at all"
   },
   "text.story": {
    "tier": "cited",
    "source": "s:wp-agimat",
    "note": "the Marcos and Sakay claims are reported as theirs; the film material is separated out in the same paragraph"
   }
  }
 },
 "images": [],
 "x_commons_files": [
  "File:Anting-anting.jpg",
  "File:Agimat amulets Quiapo.jpg"
 ],
 "confidence": "medium",
 "needs_verification": true,
 "updated": "2026-09-16",
 "blurb": "Most often a flat pendant on a necklace — round, triangular or cross-shaped, in gold-coloured metal, its face crowded with figures and Latin words. But the class is wider than the pendant.",
 "region_terms": [
  {
   "key": "island-sea",
   "name": "Island Southeast Asia",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "S",
    "E"
   ]
  }
 ],
 "hemispheres": [
  "E",
  "N",
  "S"
 ],
 "kin_out": [
  {
   "to": "quiapo-church",
   "type": "place",
   "name": "Quiapo Church",
   "as": "the Manila church whose courtyard and surrounding market are where these are bought",
   "rel": "place"
  },
  {
   "to": "jimat",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Jimat",
   "as": "the Malay and Indonesian class the word comes from — Javanese anting-anting, the ear-hung ornament",
   "rel": "origin"
  },
  {
   "to": "keris-pusaka",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Keris pusaka",
   "as": "the other charm of the islands carried into a fight, and still forged in the Muslim-inhabited south of the Philippines",
   "rel": "kin"
  },
  {
   "to": "st-christopher-medal",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "St Christopher medal",
   "as": "the Catholic medal this most resembles on a tray, and does not behave like: an anting-anting takes its charge from an orasyon read on Good Friday",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "to": "talismanic-shirt",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Talismanic shirt",
   "as": "Sakay's vest belongs with these — a written garment worn against shot",
   "rel": "parallel"
  },
  {
   "to": "latin-american-folk-catholic",
   "type": "tradition",
   "name": "Latin American folk Catholic charm practice",
   "as": "the nearest tradition in this atlas: church forms taken up and worked by people outside the clergy, in another Spanish colony",
   "rel": "parallel"
  },
  {
   "to": "divine-name",
   "type": "motif",
   "name": "The name",
   "as": "the sign on most of them — Latin words and holy names carried as the working part",
   "rel": "motif"
  },
  {
   "to": "buying-in-a-market",
   "type": "practice",
   "name": "Buying one in a market",
   "as": "how one is got: from a stall in a churchyard, with the book of incantations thrown in",
   "rel": "practice"
  },
  {
   "to": "washing-off-ink",
   "type": "practice",
   "name": "Washing off the ink",
   "as": "the nearest practice in this atlas to swallowing a mutya — a charm taken into the body rather than hung on it",
   "rel": "parallel"
  }
 ],
 "source_list": [
  {
   "id": "s:wp-agimat",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Agimat",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agimat",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-quiapo-church",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Quiapo Church",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiapo_Church",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:web-wp-spanish-east-indies",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Spanish East Indies",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_East_Indies",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-amulet",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Amulet",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amulet",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  }
 ],
 "tiers": {
  "text.what": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-agimat"
  },
  "text.story": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-agimat",
   "note": "the Marcos and Sakay claims are reported as theirs; the film material is separated out in the same paragraph"
  },
  "text.how": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-agimat"
  },
  "text.today": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-agimat"
  },
  "etymology": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-agimat"
  },
  "dating": {
   "tier": "inference",
   "source": "s:web-wp-spanish-east-indies",
   "note": "the 1565 start year is this project's reading of 'the early colonial period' against the cited date of Legazpi's settlement; the source on agimat gives no year at all"
  },
  "object": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-agimat"
  }
 },
 "primary_image": null,
 "tag_facts": [],
 "recognition_facts": [],
 "acclaim": 0,
 "against_facts": [
  {
   "key": "weapons",
   "label": "Blades and bullets",
   "gloss": "invulnerability charms; reported, never recommended",
   "who": "Filipino fighters against Spain and the United States; Macario Sakay wore a vest of religious images and Latin phrases against bullets, and the subtypes kabal and tagaliwas are named for cuts and for turning a bullet aside",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-agimat",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  },
  {
   "key": "curse",
   "label": "A curse already laid",
   "who": "the Philippine occult tradition, in which the most frequent kind of agimat removes hexes",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-agimat",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  },
  {
   "key": "spirits",
   "label": "Ghosts and hungry spirits",
   "who": "the same tradition: the other frequent kind drives out evil spirits",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-agimat",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  },
  {
   "key": "attraction",
   "label": "Attracting custom, luck or love",
   "gloss": "the charm that pulls rather than blocks",
   "who": "owners of a gayuma, the love charm that makes its owner more attractive",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-agimat",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  },
  {
   "key": "bad-luck",
   "label": "Bad luck, unspecified",
   "who": "Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, who defined it as an amulet of supernatural power that saves lives",
   "quote": "amuleto que salva la vida, da poder sobre natural",
   "source": "s:wp-agimat",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  }
 ],
 "material_facts": [
  {
   "key": "copper",
   "label": "Copper and bronze",
   "kind": "metal"
  },
  {
   "key": "brass",
   "label": "Brass",
   "kind": "metal"
  },
  {
   "key": "gold",
   "label": "Gold",
   "kind": "metal"
  },
  {
   "key": "paper",
   "label": "Paper",
   "kind": "written"
  },
  {
   "key": "cloth",
   "label": "Cloth",
   "kind": "textile"
  },
  {
   "key": "wood",
   "label": "Wood",
   "kind": "plant"
  }
 ],
 "worn_facts": [
  {
   "key": "neck",
   "label": "At the neck",
   "group": "body",
   "note": "the world's default position"
  },
  {
   "key": "sewn-in",
   "label": "Sewn into clothing",
   "group": "carried"
  },
  {
   "key": "swallowed",
   "label": "Swallowed or drunk",
   "group": "taken",
   "note": "washed-off ink, dissolved paper"
  },
  {
   "key": "pocket",
   "label": "In a pocket or a bag",
   "group": "carried"
  }
 ],
 "form_fact": {
  "key": "medal",
  "label": "Medal"
 },
 "holding_facts": [],
 "span": "1565 CE to now",
 "country_names": [
  {
   "iso": "PH",
   "name": "Philippines"
  }
 ],
 "kin_in": [
  {
   "from": "jimat",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Jimat",
   "as": "the Philippine cousin: the Javanese anting-anting, an ear-hung ornament, is where the Tagalog word comes from",
   "rel": "kin"
  },
  {
   "from": "keris-pusaka",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Keris pusaka",
   "as": "the Philippine charm carried in the same fights; kris forging continued in the Spanish East Indies while Java's was being banned",
   "rel": "kin"
  },
  {
   "from": "latin-american-folk-catholic",
   "type": "tradition",
   "name": "Latin American folk Catholic charm practice",
   "as": "the same move in another Spanish colony — church forms taken up and worked by people outside the clergy, across the Pacific by the galleon route",
   "rel": "parallel"
  },
  {
   "from": "washing-off-ink",
   "type": "practice",
   "name": "Washing off the ink",
   "as": "the Filipino charm that can be eaten, described as consumable mud or an ingested mutya",
   "rel": "carried-by"
  },
  {
   "from": "quiapo-church",
   "type": "place",
   "name": "Quiapo Church",
   "as": "the amulet sold at this address — the encyclopedia names Quiapo when it names where agimat merchants set up",
   "rel": "carries"
  }
 ]
}