HAWAIIAN MAGIC

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXVI, Issue 147, 6 June 1936, Page 15

HAWAIIAN MAGIC

SECRETS OF THE KATUNAS rjpHE kahunas of Hawaii can kill a man by magic—if we are to believe the evidence put forward by Mr. Max Freedom Long, an American who has spent 14 years in Hawaii, in "Recovering the Ancient Magic.” The word kahuna means "Keeper of the Secret," and the kahunas are the sorcerers of Hawaii. They believe that each individual has two entities within him which, after his death, make two separate ghosts. One type is called unihipill, the other uhane. The kahunas claim to be able to control certain of these unlhlpilis by using mana —hypnotic force. Mr. Long explains how the kahunas set to work if they wish to kill a man:— “The spirits are called, fed, and charged. They are then given orders which have the power of suggestion enforced by hypnotism. As the unihlpllla cannot reason, the orders are most detailed and explicit unless the spirits have long been trained to act in a certain way when the order is given’ in a ritual ‘prayer.’ “A part of the victim’s body has been procured .and is now called to the attention of the unlhlpilis. It may be a hair, some spittle, a finger-nail, or even some perspiration-soaked garment. It is called the maunu, or “bait.” After the presentation of the “bait” the spirits go at once to the original owner of the maunu and carry out their orders—this taking from one to three days to bring death.”

The kahunas are expert crystal-gazers, using a smooth black stone placed in a bowl of water, and are said to be able to follow the progress of the work: they can use their mana to recall the spirits or to keep them at their task. It is supposed that a belief in kahunalsm is necessary in the victim, but Mr. Long quotes a case of an unbelieving Irishman attacked. One day his feet suddenly “went to sleep," and the numbness began to creep upward:— “Every effort was made to discover the cause of the malady, but no cause was found and no treatment availed. In 50 hours the prickling had reached his waist. An old doctor who had practised long in the Islands was called in. He recognised the symptoms at once as those of the ‘death prayer'.” The Grandmother’s Threat.

It was discovered that the Irishman was friendly with a Hawaiian girl, and that her grandmother had threatened him with punishment if he did not leave her alone. The old doctor went to see the old woman, and she said that if tile Irishman promised to leave the island and never return he might recover.

“He became terrified and was willing to agree to any terms. That was in the early afternoon. That night he was on his feet again and able to catch a Japanese ship for the ‘Coast.’ There is another more drastic method, called kuni, or burning. The kunl is, so far as Mr. Long can discover, used only to avenge a murder:— The symptoms are a terrible burning sensation. Death is the only relief. From prayer to death only a few hours elapse.. No kahuna can undo this form of Magic, if I am rightly informed. A strange thing about kuhunatsm is that the ‘death prayer’ can be sent back, with interest to the sender! Mr. Long quotes a case told to him by Dr. Brigham, an authority on kahuna customs. During a plant-hunting expedition one of his boys fell ill. The usual 'death prayer’ symptoms—elow paralysis—set in. The doctor found out that an old kahuna in the boy’s village had commanded the inhabitants to have no dealing with the white people under pain of death. So the doctor determined to try to pray the kahuna to death and save the boy! He told Mr. Long that he argued with the spirits:—

“The trick of the thing is to put up an argument of such cunning that the spirits will be made to think that their master must be a devil to send them Io kill one so pure and innocent. Finally, he says, he commanded the spirits to return to the kahuna with ten times the punishment he had ordered for the boy:—

“I put every particle of will and concentration into that command. When I had repeated it three times. I sat down by the boy, trembling and dripping. “I continued to keep my mind fastened like a vice on the project in hand, never letting it waver from my willed determination to see that the spirits obeyed my orders. . . The longest hour in history was about gone, when I suddenly felt an odd sensation. It was as if the tension in the air had gone in a flash. I drew a deep breath. A few minutes later there came a whisper from the boy. ‘Wawae. . . maikal’ ('Legs . . . good’)." The boy soon recovered completely. And when they reached his village—yes. you are right!—the wicked kahuna was dead. The Broken Bone. But killing, Mr. Long tells us, is only a small part of the kahunas' work. He gives an example of healing that, if it is true, can only be paralleled in tire Bible. An old Hawaiian woman, known to be a powerful kahuna was receiving some visitors when one of them fell and broke a bone in his leg just above the ankle:— “Immediately she knelt beside him and took his leg in her strong old hands. Forcing the bone back into place, she commanded the man to remain quiet. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them and spoke the words of pow'er. ‘be healed' in Hawaiian. The healing was instant. The man rose to his feet and walked with the other guests to the house.” A white friend of Mr. Long was present and was convinced that the bone had been broken. Another gift, we are told, of some kahunas is the power to use apo-leo. or “voice-catching,” as a punishment. Mr. Long tells us that in Los Angeles in 1934 a young Hawaiian woman quarrelled with her husband, a singer: — She had inherited “prayers” from a grandmother and knew the art of voice catching. One day, while her husband was singing at a radio station, she “caught" his singing voice and left him a monotone. He hurried home after the programme and demanded his voice jack—suspecting !.er of having done the mischief In the end be agreed to let the wife have her way in certain matters, and she took steps to give him back his voice.