Mambabarang

The mambabarang is a sorcerer in Visayan belief. People say that this person uses insects and spirits to harm someone they hate. The word comes from barang, a Visayan word for a kind of beetle. Stories say the mambabarang keeps meat-eating beetles in a bottle or a bamboo tube and feeds them ginger. The sorcerer ties a hair of the victim to the insects. The insects then enter the victim's body, and the symptoms depend on where they get in. The illness is said to resist normal treatment.

People say healers called mananambal can counter barang. They use counter-spells, called sumbalik, that send the curse back to its caster, or they try to make the caster feel pity. Related Visayan terms include usik, hilo and laga.

Siquijor is the island best known for such stories. Wikipedia says healers there need to know sorcery in order to fight it. The belief is old. Francisco Combes wrote about a boiling pot sorcery in the 17th century, and Plasencia (1589) wrote about Tagalog beliefs. These are beliefs, and no evidence supports them.