A Katalonan is a priest or priestess of the old Tagalog

Tagalog people

The Tagalog people are an ethnic group in the Philippines. The name Tagalog comes from either the native term tagá-ilog, meaning 'people living along the river', or another native term, tagá-alog, meaning 'people living along the ford', a ford being a shallow part of a river or stream where people,...

  animistic

Animism

Animism refers to the belief that non-human entities are spiritual beings, or at least embody some kind of life-principle....

 religion. These priestesses were either female, or male transvestites.

The term apparently springs from the Tagalog

Tagalog language

Tagalog is an Austronesian language spoken as a first language by a third of the population of the Philippines and as a second language by most of the rest. It is the first language of the Philippine region IV and of Metro Manila...

 word "katalo", which means "in good terms with," such that the Catalonan are those "in good terms with the Anito

Anito

Anito is the collective name for Pre-Hispanic belief system that exists in the Philippines. It is also the name for spirits, which may include deceased ancestors and nature-spirits or diwatas. Native Filipinos usually keep statues to represent these spirits and to ask guidance and even magical...

 spirits"

Historian and Spanish Missionary Pedro Chirino

Pedro Chirino

Pedro Chirino was a Spanish historian who spent 12 years in the Philippines as a Jesuit missionary at the beginning of the 17th century. He established a boarding school at Tigbauan in 1592, but the work he is most remembered for is his Relación de las Islas Filipinas , a record of life in 17th...

, SJ noted that their long hair is a symbol of their commitment to their religion.

Confusion with Babaylan

The Catalonan are the Tagalog equivalent of the Visayan Babaylan

Babaylan

Babaylan is a Visayan term identifying an indigenous Filipino religious leader, who functions as a healer, a shaman, a seer and a community "miracle-worker"...

.

Although the many modern Filipinos mistakenly refer to any priest or priestess of the Animistic Prehispanic Filipino religions as Babaylan, writer Nick Joaquin

Nick Joaquín

Nicomedes Márquez Joaquín was a Filipino writer, historian and journalist, best known for his short stories and novels in the English language. He also wrote using the pen name Quijano de Manila...

 and historian William Henry Scott

William Henry Scott

William Henry Scott , born in Athens, Ohio, was the seventh President of Ohio University from 1872 to 1883 and the third President of The Ohio State University from 1883 to 1895.-Further reading:*...

remind modern Filipinos that the independent cultural evolution of each Filipino ethnic group should be respected.