Bakunawa is a dragon-like serpent of Philippine mythology, prominent in the Visayas and Bicol regions. Its name means "bent snake," and it is usually depicted with a coiled tail and a single horn on its nose.
In the most widespread telling there were once seven moons in the sky. Drawn by their light, Bakunawa rose from the sea and swallowed them one by one, and when a single moon was left the people saved it by making noise. An eclipse, then, is not an event but a repetition — the night it comes back for the one that remains.
The means of driving it off are humble. Bang pots and pans, beat gongs, shout until it is startled into letting go. What marks the practice is that it is not a prayer to a god but a whole village becoming loud at once. Some tellings give the serpent a motive: it loved a human woman, was refused, and swallows the moon out of that grief.
Later contact with Indian narrative folded Bakunawa together with the naga and with Rahu and Ketu, the eclipse-makers who swallow sun and moon. Where Rahu, being only a severed head, must let what he swallows fall through, Bakunawa arrives with a whole body capable of keeping it.
A thing swallowed, given back, and swallowed again the next night has the shape of an account that closes and reopens at the same place.