Though they have a pantheon of gods and goddesses (for most of their divinities have wives), they have no temples, and no rites of public worship. They consult soothsayers (usually old women) in their diseases and difficulties; and there are sacrifices, outpouring and mingling of blood, libations of fermented liquors, violent gesticulations, and invocations to Cambunian (God), the moon, and the stars, and the ceremonials end with eating and drinking to excess. They sacrifice a pig to pacify the Deity when it thunders, and adore the rainbow after the storm. Before a journey they kindle a fire, and if the smoke do not blow in the direction they intend to take they delay their project. The flight of birds is watched as an important augury, and the appearance of a snake as a warning against some approaching calamity.
The mountain tribes are subject to no common ruler, but have their separate chieftains, called barnaas, to whom a certain number of dependants is assigned. On the death of a barnaas, the intestines are extracted, examined and burnt, for the purpose of ascertaining by the arts of divination the future destiny of the tribe. The body is placed in a chair, relations and friends are invited, and a great festivity of eating and drinking provided from the flocks and rice-fields of the deceased, with shouts and songs celebrating the virtues of departed barnaas. The banquet closes with all species of excesses, and both sexes remain drunk, exhausted or asleep on the ground about the corpse. It is said that the flesh of the departed is distributed among the guests, and Buzeta avers that such a case lately occurred at Tagudin (Ilocos South); but as he attributes it to the poverty of the deceased who had not left behind wherewithal to provide for the festival, the carnal distribution could hardly have been deemed an honour. The stories of the cannibalism of the natives must be received with distrust, there being a great disposition to represent them as worse savages than they really are. The arms of a warrior are gathered together after his death, and his family will not part with them. A vessel into which wine has been poured is placed at the foot of the trophies, in order that it may imbibe the virtue and valour of the departed, and obtain his auspices.