The soul book / Francisco R. Demetrio, Gilda Cordero-Fernando, Fernando N. Ziacita; Roberto B. Feleo, artist.

Spine subtitle: introduction to Philippine Pagan religion.

This is the first in the Philippine reader series on the traditional culture of the Filipinos. The soul book-deals with the pre-hispanic religion that believed in a skyworld, an earthworld and an underworld each of which was composed of several layers. In this " Condominium" lived Gods and God Desses, the most powerful of whom could create worlds and people, fly, fall in love with mortals, fight without end. What was the early Filipinos conchize of sin? What was their view of forgiveness? of wealth and social prestige? Ancient folk religion is the key to understanding ourselves for if we travel back to our beginnings as a people, before the coming of Islam and christianity to discover the Gods we then revered we may find very different heroes from those we have today. Our ancestral Gods may yet reveal what continues to remain to US an enigma-our national character. The soul book is a basic reader on the subject made enchanting for young adults. It is a distillation of largely inacessible material-rare books on reserve shelves, esoteric journals, anthropological field reports and graduate theses by scholars from blair and Robertson to casal. Incidentally the series not only hopes for a deepening of the intellectual dimension but also a broadening of artistic taste. The series will feature one artist per volume, each one with distinctive syle, so that these are artbooks as well.