A Filipino New Religion? Or an Old Religion but Filipino?: The Infinito Dios Enigma

Contemporary religion in the Philippines reveals the sticky residues of a long history of cultural mixing, multiple colonialisms, international commerce, and a global citizenry.  A nexus between empires and geographies, the 7,000+ island chain hosts the spectrum of religious and spiritual forms -- from international Roman Catholicism and Fo Guang Shan Buddhism to local village shamanism and local NRMs.  More recently, traditional beliefs and practices around magical objects (*anting-anting*) have coalesced into an NRM focused around the mythology of the Infinito Dios, a primordial deity whose identity is presumed to be a concession between the power and insistence of indigenous traditions and the imposition of Iberian Roman Catholicism.  This paper examines key aspects of the myth of the Infinito Dios and speculates on the origins of a narrative that, on the surface, appears as syncretized Indigenous beliefs in the creator god Bathala with the Roman Catholic *Dios*, but may in fact have origins in gnosticism and/or Manichaeism.