In Bicol, these women were known as baylan. From north to south, there were similarities in their names, which proved that we belonged to one Austronesian family. They were also called daitans by the Visayans because they befriended particular diwatas.
According to Henry Scott, an ethnographer of the ’70s, the babaylans were shamans, spirit mediums, given to seizures and even trances during which they spoke in the voice of a diwata. The voices of spirits came out of the babaylans as they acted out their orders, living out conflicts in the spirit world while in a trance. She could, while in her spirit world, unknowingly brandish spears, foam at the mouth, and often become violent enough to require restraint.
The babaylans were mostly women, but they could either be male or male transvestites called asog. These babaylans arrived at their calling through attacks of illness or insanity, which could only be cured by accepting the "call," and then by attaching themselves as alalays and apprentices to older babaylans who were frequently relatives. Their remuneration was a designated share of the people’s offerings. Consequently, after the session, choice cuts of pigs were offered or chickens were given to the babaylan after her paganito, or performance.
There were also charlatans and pretenders that Father Mateo Sanchez, an Augustinian missionary in the Visayas, wrote about in 1617. One babaylan in Bohol attracted a crowd of worshippers to make sacrifices on the seashore with the promise that their ancestors would appear in a golden boat. Nothing happened.
There were no temples built to honor the babaylan or her paganito, but small platforms or sheds were built at the entrance to the village as places of offerings and divination, also in private homes of relatives, in the fields, at the grave sites or sacred spots along beaches or streams, where little rafts could be launched to carry away disease and bad luck or pestilence, like locusts or rats, and carry them to the sea as they floated away. Some paganitos were by nature seasonal, and some sought relief from a public crisis, like drought or pestilence. All that the babaylans could achieve.
"Finally, a spear was given to the presiding babaylan. With it, she began a series of faints and mock thrusts of her spear at the hog as the tempo of her movements increased to a frenzy, and then, with a sudden thrust, ran the victim hog through the heart with unerring aim.
"The foreheads of the main beneficiaries of the ceremony were marked with the blood of the victim, whose wounds were then stanched and the mat that had been bloodied during the sacrifice carefully burned. The babaylan was then divested of her accouterments and awakened from her trance, while the hog was butchered and cooked.
"The feasting then began, everybody receiving a share, though the flesh touched by the spear was reserved for the babaylan. Some of the meat was taken down to an altar on the seashore or riverbank where, after prayers, were placed on a little raft together with the altar and all other paraphernalia and set adrift. This brought the ritual to a close though the celebration continued."
The vocabulary of the paganito was ginayaw in Cebu, which was the offering of spherical yellow rice cakes, and is similar to the Samal and Iranun offerings called pagbubuwaya. These are yellow rice cakes shaped like a crocodile and offered for animistic sessions in Maguindanao, Tawi-Tawi and Basilan, largely discouraged by Islam.
In Cebu, tinorlok was the hog reserved for sacrifice. Chicken was required of the Mindanaoans and the Talaandig of Bukidnon. Bani was the required sacred mat to be burned. Incense was burned during the Samal’s sea offering in taluksangay at Zamboanga City. Taruk was the babaylan’s dance. Santa Clara pinung-pino was the tune the Isabela-Samal’s danced, too. Bodyong was the babaylan’s bamboo trumpet. The violins in Sulu, when performed by the Tausugs, were called biyula. The banay was a fan or a fly whisk with which the babaylan kept time. Drums were used in Tawi-Tawi and Isabela.
The tabo was the wheezing sound the diwata or spirit-god made when she spoke. In the north, it was called hitad and popoi in Lanao del Sur.