What is tawas? The Filipino divination practice explained
The folk healer's diagnostic ritual — alum, candle wax and water, read for the shape that names what is wrong.
6 min read · Published 28 August 2026
The short answer
Tawas is the Filipino word for alum, and pagtatawas is a folk-healing ritual that reads it for a diagnosis. An albularyo, the traditional healer, passes a piece of alum or drips melted candle wax into a bowl of water and studies the shapes that form. The pattern is read to identify what ails the patient and, crucially, its hidden cause — an ordinary sickness, a fright, or a supernatural source such as usog, a curse, or an offended spirit. It is a diagnostic rite as much as a divination, and it varies from healer to healer and region to region.
What tawas is
The word tawas means alum — the whitish crystalline mineral, potassium alum, long used across the Philippines as an astringent, a deodorant and a folk remedy. From that object comes the name of the ritual: pagtatawas, the act of diagnosing by tawas.
Pagtatawas is one of the central rituals of Filipino folk medicine. It is not primarily a fortune-telling of the future in the way a tarot spread or a birth chart is. Its purpose is diagnosis — to discover what is wrong with a person, and above all *why*. In a worldview where an illness may have an ordinary cause or a supernatural one, naming the cause is the first and most important step toward the cure.
Who performs it: the albularyo
Pagtatawas is the work of the albularyo — the Filipino folk healer, sometimes called a *herbolario*. The albularyo is a familiar figure in provincial life: a healer who treats with medicinal plants, prayer, massage (*hilot*) and ritual, and who is consulted for ailments both ordinary and unexplained, often when a clinic is far away or when the sickness is suspected to be more than physical.
The albularyo occupies the healing side of Filipino folk belief — the counterpart to the mangkukulam of kulam, who is said to cast harm. Where the sorcerer sends illness, the healer is called to find its source and lift it, and pagtatawas is often the healer's opening move: the reading that tells them what they are dealing with before they treat it.
How pagtatawas is done
The method varies from healer to healer, but the common forms share a shape. The materials are humble and close to hand.
- The reading with wax. A lit candle is held over a bowl or basin of water, often blessed, and the melted wax is dripped into it while the healer prays. As the wax hits the water it hardens at once into a shape, and that shape is what the healer reads.
- The reading with alum. In another form the piece of tawas itself is passed over the patient's body — the head, the chest, the aching part — sometimes while prayers are said, then set on coals or held to flame. As it heats and cracks or partly melts, the alum is believed to take on a form that reveals the ailment.
- The reading with an egg. Some healers use a raw egg, passed over the body and then broken into water, the white and yolk read for their shape and clarity much as the wax is read.
In every form the principle is the same: a formless material is made to take a shape, and the shape is interpreted. A figure resembling an animal, a person, a face or a familiar object is read as a sign — pointing to the nature of the illness and to what, or who, lies behind it.
What the shapes are read for
What sets pagtatawas apart from ordinary diagnosis is that it looks for the *cause*, and the causes it names come straight from the Filipino folk cosmos. The shape in the water might be read to point to any of these.
| Cause | What it means in folk belief |
|---|---|
| Usog | Illness in a child brought on by a greeting or a strong gaze from a visitor — the belief behind the phrase pwera usog. |
| Kulam or barang | A curse or hex sent by a mangkukulam or mambabarang. |
| Nuno or nature spirits | Sickness from having offended a nuno sa punso — the spirit of the mound — or another unseen dweller of a place. |
| Nabati or fright | Harm from being startled, or from a passing spirit; a loss of spirit that must be called back. |
| An ordinary ailment | A natural sickness with no supernatural source — a reading can point away from the uncanny as well as toward it. |
The first of these, usog, is among the most common a healer looks for, and the protective phrase pwera usog belongs to the same belief. Once the cause is named, the treatment follows from it — herbs and hilot for an ordinary ailment, a counter-ritual for a curse, an offering or an apology for an offended spirit.
Regional variation and its place in folk medicine
There is no single fixed rulebook for pagtatawas. The materials, the prayers, the way a given shape is read and even whether wax, alum or egg is used all differ from one region and one healer to the next. Much of the knowledge passes by apprenticeship and family line rather than by any written manual, so accounts genuinely vary — and it is more honest to say so than to present one version as the standard.
What holds steady is its place in the wider world of Filipino folk medicine. Pagtatawas sits alongside herbal remedy, hilot massage, orasyon (whispered prayers), and the carrying of an agimat amulet — a set of practices that together have long served communities as a first recourse in sickness. And as with much of that world, it lives comfortably beside Catholic faith: the water is blessed, the prayers are Christian, and the ritual is not felt to compete with going to Mass.
Common questions
- What is tawas?
- Tawas is the Filipino word for alum, a whitish crystalline mineral. It also names pagtatawas, a folk-healing ritual in which a healer reads shapes formed by alum or melted candle wax in water to diagnose an illness and its cause.
- Who performs pagtatawas?
- It is performed by an albularyo, the Filipino folk healer, sometimes called a herbolario. The albularyo treats with herbs, prayer, massage and ritual, and uses pagtatawas to identify what is wrong with a patient before treating it.
- How does the tawas ritual work?
- Commonly, a healer drips melted candle wax from a lit candle into a bowl of water, or passes a piece of alum over the patient's body and then heats it. The material hardens or cracks into a shape, and the healer reads that shape as a sign of the ailment and its source. Some healers use a raw egg instead.
- What can a tawas reading diagnose?
- It is read to reveal both the ailment and its cause. Causes named in folk belief include usog (illness from a greeting or gaze), kulam or barang (a curse), an offended nature spirit such as a nuno, fright, or simply an ordinary natural sickness. Interpretations vary by healer.
- Is tawas still practised today?
- Yes. Pagtatawas remains part of Filipino folk medicine, especially in provincial and rural communities, and is commonly practised alongside Catholic faith rather than in place of it. The exact method varies by region and by healer.