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Tu Tangata, Issue 24, 1 June 1985, Page 47

V / akutu or witchcraft was an aspect of classic maori culture that may \ / well have been responsible for more deaths than warfare. As part v of the blood and fabric of maori society for over a thousand years, it was occultism in its most malevolent form; its practitioners, tohunga makutu, having great mana and mysterious powers in the service of Whiro, God of Evil.

The darkness of Classic occult practice contrasted strangely with its setting: the sunlit forest clearing; the solitary tohunga makutu, his arms raised suppliantly, facing the east, beside an altar or tuaahu-a roughly formed stone pillar, annointed with shark oil and sacred red ochre. Sometimes there would be more than one taahu, and sometimes fires would be lit, into which were cast the hau or spiritual life force of the tohunga’s victims. It was into the ahi tapu (sacred fire) that the hearts of battle-slain enemies were offered up to tribal gods or to the supreme god of war, Tumatauenga, by tohunga taura. And it was beside the tapu fires that the will of Tu was interpreted by niu or short divining rods, which were set up, then scattered the pattern of their falling, revealing the gods intentions. In the niu ringaringa, the niu were the hands; its karakia or invocation:

Kia mana tenei niu; Tenei te niu ka rere He niu na Mahu. Ko te he kia puta

Let this niu be strong; This is the niu, here it goes; A niu of Mahu. The bad let it be seen. Destroyed or placed under tapu at the tuaahu, were material mediums of witchcraft, such as fragments of vic-

times cloaks or small possessions belonging to them. Under protection of the sacred altar, was the tohunga makutu’s magical taonga; the beak of a hawk; a sun-dried lizard; a black, pierced stone; a fragment of human bone; and wood carved gods.

Survival into old age gave an added dimension to a tohunga makutu’s image. He took on a more alarming, malevolent aspect if he was grey-beard, infirm and half blind. Also, age conferred on him, it was believed, greater powers in witchcraft. Of solitary impulse, kaumatua or elders of sorcery searched the depths of human fear and anxiety, terror of their supernatural powers being no mere effort of imagination on the part of their victims, but unquestioned reality. As visionaries they revealed all and nothing; being astute masters in sophistry with, in the 19th century, prophet Te Kooti Rikirangi personifying the ideal in matakite. Prudently, tohunga makutu denied possession of power over Europeans; particularly missionaries, who where the earliest and most critical commentators on witchcraft. Settlers, when they envinced interest in tohunga, were concerned only in their reputed knowledge of herbal medicine which was almost unknown in Classic Maori society as all sickness was attributed to makutu or to the will of the gods.