TE WAIORA A TANE

Te Ao Hou, June 1961, Page 39

TE WAIORA A TANE Modern civilization has marked Cape Reinga with a lighthouse, power-station and wireless masts, appropriate symbols of man's material power over sea, land and air. Only once was this European power over tangible things tested against the supernatural forces of the Maori spirit-world. That was when the lighthouse site was shifted, from inaccessible Motuopao, the island of Cape Maria van Diemen, to Cape Reinga. Bubbling came from a spring in the hillside, high above the spirit's leap. This stream was sacred. Its very name, Te Waiora-a-Tane (Waters-of-life), came from Hawaiiki. The Maoris believed that once the spirit had passed this point, there was no return from unconsciousness back to the land of the living. Here, the spirits underwent the transformation that prepared them for their long journey through the seas to Hawaiki. The waters of Waiora-a-Tane had taken the tapu of unnumbered generations of Maori dead. Moreover, a spiritual cleansing with waters called Te Waiora-a-Tane was a feature in the ceremonial of Maori death and the exhumation of bones in all parts of New Zealand. Te-Waiora-a-Tane bore much of the same relation to the ancient religion of the Maori as the waters of Jordan bear to the Christian rites of baptism. This was the stream the Europeans intended to use for their water supply. As the Maori by that time, had become possibly more Christian than the pakeha, little protest was made. A large concrete reservoir was built, set into the hill beside the track leading down to the lighthouse. It is still there to be seen, but that is all. It is empty, useless, for no sooner was the work finished than the little stream, Te Waiora-a-Tane, disappeared underground, and did not emerge until it reached the safety of the sea, where it bubbles forth in a clear spring at low-tide mark. On white, misty days when the cloud is lying

close to the land, the older Maori people say they can hear Te Reo Irirangi, a peculiar high singing, just on the edge of silence. This singing signifies the passing of the spirits. Sometimes the spirits are chattering and laughing too. Only certain people can hear this, but they swear by it, and they include several whose judgment I would not question in other, more mundane matters. The ancient people of this land were all of them aware of the spirits passing, and in this part of the island at least—even constructed their food-houses accordingly, with the entrance always facing the north, lest the tapu spirit be trapped, contaminating the food, with possibly fatal results. Such things had been known.