Bakunawa Tattoo Meaning
The moon-eater, eclipse, primal hunger, and the great serpent of the sky.
The Bakunawa is the great serpent that swallows the moon — the giant sea-dragon of Philippine myth whose hunger for the moon's beauty causes the eclipse, a being neither evil nor good but vast and driven by its own primal nature. To carry the Bakunawa is to carry the moon-eater, eclipse, primal hunger, and the great serpent of the sky — the moon-swallowing dragon of the Visayan seas, the serpent who consumes the light, the vast amoral being whose hunger the beauty of the moon attracts.
In Philippine (especially Visayan) mythology, the Bakunawa is the colossal sea-serpent or dragon that devours the moon. The Bakunawa is an enormous serpent-dragon dwelling in the deep sea, of immense size, and it is the cause of eclipses: drawn by the beauty of the moon (and in some tellings having already swallowed all but one of several original moons), the Bakunawa rises from the sea and swallows the moon, causing it to darken and vanish from the sky. The lunar eclipse is the moment of the Bakunawa devouring the moon.
To save the moon, the people would respond: traditionally they made a great noise — banging pots and pans, drums, and gongs, shouting and creating a commotion — to frighten or startle the Bakunawa into disgorging the moon and releasing it back into the sky. This communal act of noise-making to rescue the moon from the serpent was the human answer to the eclipse. The Bakunawa is thus the great moon-eater of Philippine myth — the giant sea-dragon whose swallowing of the moon causes the eclipse, against whom the people raised a clamor to win the moon back. The Bakunawa is the giant Philippine sea-dragon that swallows the moon to cause eclipses, frightened into releasing it by the people's noise. The Philippine Bakunawa is the moon-swallowing dragon — in Philippine (especially Visayan) mythology the colossal sea-serpent or dragon that devours the moon, an enormous serpent-dragon dwelling in the deep sea, the cause of eclipses; drawn by the beauty of the moon (and in some tellings having already swallowed all but one of several original moons), the Bakunawa rising from the sea and swallowing the moon so it darkens and vanishes (the lunar eclipse the moment of its devouring) — and to save the moon the people traditionally making a great noise (banging pots and pans, drums, and gongs, shouting and creating a commotion) to frighten or startle the Bakunawa into disgorging the moon and releasing it back into the sky, the communal act of noise-making the human answer to the eclipse.
The Bakunawa is one of the most distinctive creatures in Philippine mythology — a gigantic sea serpent large enough to swallow the moon whole, which it repeatedly did until the god Bathala intervened. According to tradition, there were originally seven moons in the sky, and the Bakunawa swallowed six of them; the Bakunawa retreated when the people of earth made enough noise to frighten it away. This is the mythological origin of making noise during lunar eclipses — a practice observed across the Philippines. In tattoo symbolism, the Bakunawa represents the enormous hunger that threatens what is most beautiful — and the power of collective human noise to drive it back.
Bakunawa across cultures
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