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Philippine (Tagalog ): Sitan The guardian of Kasamaan and the keeper of all souls therein. He was depicted by the Spanish as the counterpart of Christianity’s Satan. His real name has been lost in time. It is said that he came forth from nothing due to the evils of men, a story that symbolized the need of men to stay away from vices to not wake up the essence of Sitan. However, Sitan is not purely evil as he had aided mankind before, away from total annihilation, as he knows that a world without mankind is a world without his existence, and therefore, the destruction of Kasamaan, one of the dwellings of Tagalog anitos (ancestral spirits). He had four agents whose task was to lead man to sin and destruction, but also to aid those who are worthy of Sitan’s help. In a 1589 record, Sitan and Bathala is said to have once waged a war with each other to determine who should rule the realms intended for ancestral souls. The war took a heavy toll on both sides, and in the end, to avoid further damage on the fabric of the universe, they agreed that Sitan would rule Kasanaan (underworld for evil souls), while Maca (underworld for good souls) will be jointly ruled by Sitan and Bathala, as Bathala already rules over Kaluwalhatian (sky realms). According to another research, Sitan’s name may have been derived from Saitan or Shaitan, the Arabic word for the Devil. This data concluded that during the Islamic era of the Tagalog domains, the original name of Sitan was replaced by the Islamic name already, making it impossible to determine the true indigenous name of Sitan. In Tagalog animism, the pitch dark was Sitan’s emblem.
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