Religion in pre-colonial Philippines

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Religions in pre-colonial Philippines included a variety of faiths, of which the dominant faiths were polytheist indigenous religions practiced by the more than one hundred distinct ethnic groups in the archipelago. Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam were also present in some parts of the islands. Many of the traditions and belief systems from pre-colonial Filipino religions continue to be practiced today through the Indigenous Philippine folk religions, Folk Catholicism, Folk Hinduism, among others.

The original faith of the people of the Philippines were the Indigenous Philippine folk religions. Belief systems within these distinct polytheist-animist religions were later influenced by Hinduism and Buddhism. With the arrival of Islam in the 14th century, the older religions gradually became less dominant in some small portions in the southwest. European colonial ambitions tried to influence the people through Christian ideologies via Catholicism in the 16th century. Despite the attacks initiated by Abrahamic faiths against the Philippine indigenous folk religions by way of colonization and its after-effects, many of the indigenous religious traditions survived, while many were also infused into Abrahamic religions in the form of Folk Catholicism and Folk Islam.

The earliest archaeological findings believed to have religious significance are the Angono Petroglyphs, which are mostly symbolic representations and are associated with healing and sympathetic practices from the Indigenous Philippine folk religions,^[1] of which the earliest examples are believed to have been used earlier than 2000 BC., during the Philippines' Neolithic age.^[2] The earliest written evidence comes from the Laguna Copperplate Inscription, dated to around 900 CE, which uses the Buddhist–Hindu lunar calendar.