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.
9 min read · Published 28 August 2026
Straight to it
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's 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 isn't 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're dealing with before they treat it.
Pagtatawas reads alum the way tea leaves get read, and I'd value it for the comfort of the ritual, not the diagnosis.
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 counts, for local accounts, 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.
A reading, described
A typical session is quiet and short. The patient sits, often a child held by a parent. The albularyo lights a candle, sets a basin of water on the table, and says a prayer, usually a Catholic one, sometimes with an orasyon murmured under the breath. The candle is tilted and the wax falls into the water in a string of drops that harden as they land.
Then the reading. A shape like an animal or a small figure is often read as a nuno or a spirit of the place, and the question becomes where the patient was playing. A face, or a shape the healer takes to be a person, points to usog or to a human sender. A shape with no figure in it, a spread or a blot, is read as an ordinary illness, and the healer says so and sends the family to the pharmacy or the clinic. The healer talks throughout, and the family answers, and much of what ends up in the diagnosis was said by the family before the wax cooled.
The albularyo's other tools
- Hilot, the traditional massage, used for sprains, digestion and the pilay, the displaced or 'sprained' condition folk medicine finds behind many complaints.
- Herbs, several of which the Philippine Department of Health lists as approved for specific uses, including lagundi for cough and sambong for kidney stones. The albularyo's pharmacy and the state's overlap more than either side says.
- Orasyon, whispered prayers in Latin, Spanish or a mixture, held to carry power in the words themselves.
- Tawas as a physical remedy. Alum is an astringent and mild antiseptic, and it has been rubbed on wounds, used as a deodorant and dissolved as a mouthwash for centuries. The mineral that names the ritual also works in the ordinary way.
- Referral. A good albularyo sends people to the doctor, and always has. Folk medicine in the Philippines has never claimed to treat everything.
Where folk healing meets the clinic
The Philippines is unusual in having put traditional medicine into law. The Traditional and Alternative Medicine Act of 1997 created an institute to study and, where warranted, integrate folk practices, and the approved herbal list came out of that work. Pagtatawas is not on any approved list, because it is a diagnostic ritual and there is nothing in the wax to validate. But rural health workers are trained to work alongside the albularyo and not against them, because the albularyo is the person the family will consult first whatever the worker says.
The risk is the one every folk diagnosis carries: a child with a fever read as usog and treated with a counter-ritual while an infection advances. The albularyo who sends that child to the clinic is doing the tradition's own work. The one who does not is the reason health workers keep the relationship.
Wax and water elsewhere
Reading dripped wax has a name in Europe, ceromancy, and it was practised in Greece and in medieval France much as it is in a Filipino kitchen. Finland and Germany pour molten tin or lead into water on New Year's Eve and read the shape for the year ahead. Mexico and much of Latin America pass a raw egg over the body and break it into a glass, the same egg reading the albularyo sometimes uses, covered in the evil eye. The materials differ. The act of making something formless take a shape, and then reading the shape, is one of the oldest diagnostic instincts there is.
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 vary, and it's more clear 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 is 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 isn't felt to compete with going to Mass.
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.
Is tawas the same as alum?
Yes. Tawas is the Filipino word for potassium alum, which has ordinary uses as an astringent, antiseptic and deodorant. Pagtatawas, the diagnostic ritual, takes its name from the mineral.
Do albularyos send patients to doctors?
Good ones do, and always have. Philippine health workers are trained to work alongside the albularyo because families consult the healer first. The risk is a serious illness read as a spiritual cause and a clinic visit delayed.
Is wax reading unique to the Philippines?
No. Europe called it ceromancy, Finland and Germany pour molten tin into water at New Year, and Latin America reads a raw egg broken into a glass. Making a formless material take a shape and then reading the shape is one of the oldest diagnostic instincts there is.
Salimah Ibrahim