Mooneater - Tumblr Posts
Moonhammer
No pretentious loretext this time. I designed this meteor-hammer belt thing a while back based on the Bakunawa, the moon-eater serpent. The look of the maw is based in part on Visayan tenegre hilts, and the moon and star are based on my uh- Idk what to call it, a brand logo I guess?
I was going to get it made for myself, then I remembered I'm not actually trained to use a meteor hammer, so-
Indeed it is!
I feel like I should add a little context for those unfamiliar.
The Bakunawa (or Bakonawa or however the spelling varies) is a giant serpent-dragon shared across several cultures in the Philippines, particularly in the Visayas area and those with whom they share close cultural ties.
It is one of several moon-eaters (alongside other giants such as the blade-feathered Minokawa of the Bagobo peoples stories), whose attempts to eat the moon have been pointed out in folklore and mythology as the cause of eclipses.
I can't say too much with confidence; I am by no means an expert on these stories, nor do I belong to the cultures that sing them. Filipino culture is anything but a monolith- it is in fact an enormous mosaic of often intersecting and overlapping cultureS (plural) that only appear to be all the same color if you're not looking closely enough. As it happens, the moon-eaters I mention here belong to cultures far away from where I can claim my own ancestry; we have stories of our own where I come from.
What I can say is that the Bakunawa tends to make an appearance on figural hilts on Philippine blades. I placed an example of a tenegre hilt in the original post, and added here some more examples of Bakunawa hilts on kampilan swords.
It may be that the figural hilts were originally meant to depict something else, or were known by other names, but blade collectors, smiths, and enthusiasts frequently refer to them as Bakunawa hilts in the present day.
Moonhammer
No pretentious loretext this time. I designed this meteor-hammer belt thing a while back based on the Bakunawa, the moon-eater serpent. The look of the maw is based in part on Visayan tenegre hilts, and the moon and star are based on my uh- Idk what to call it, a brand logo I guess?
I was going to get it made for myself, then I remembered I'm not actually trained to use a meteor hammer, so-