Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
There was widespread belief in ghosts in Polynesian culture, some of which persists today. After death, a person's ghost would normally travel to the sky world or the underworld, but some could stay on earth. In many Polynesian legends, ghosts were often involved in the affairs of the living. Ghosts might also cause sickness or even invade the ...
The origin of Rarohenga, like many other Māori rituals and beliefs, is derivative of Polynesian mythology. [17] According to such mythology, Hawaiki represents the origin of all Polynesian people and where they return after death. [17]
Before European contact, tapu was one of the strongest forces in Māori life. A violation of tapu could have dire consequences, including the death of the offender through sickness or at the hands of someone affected by the offence. In earlier times food cooked for a person of high rank was tapu, and could not be eaten by an inferior.
Tiki Makiʻi Tauʻa Pepe (foreground) and Tiki Manuiotaa (background) from the meʻae Iʻipona on Hiva Oa in the Marquesas Islands. Polynesian mythology encompasses the oral traditions of the people of Polynesia (a grouping of Central and South Pacific Ocean island archipelagos in the Polynesian Triangle) together with those of the scattered cultures known as the Polynesian outliers.
The kapu system was universal in lifestyle, gender roles, politics and religion. An offense that was kapu was often a capital offense, but also often denoted a threat to spiritual power, or theft of mana. Kapus were strictly enforced. Breaking one, even unintentionally, often meant immediate death, [1] Koʻo kapu.
In time, he led them in a rebellion in which the spirits were defeated by the gods and as punishment were thrown in the Underworld. In traditional, pre-contact Hawaiʻi, it was Milu who was the god of the Underworld and death, not Kanaloa; the related Miru traditions of other Polynesian cultures support this. [citation needed]
Miru is a goddess in the Polynesian mythology of the Cook Islands who lives in Avaiki beneath Mangaia. She is known to feast on the souls of dead people. One way she eats the souls is by putting them into a bowl of live centipedes, causing them to writhe in agony. Miru then encourages them to seek relief by diving into a lake, where they drown.
It is considered a variant of a more general Polynesian mythology, developing its own unique character for several centuries. The religion was officially suppressed in the 19th century, and ultimately abandoned by the natives in favor of Christianity.