MOBY-DICK – Revenge and Redemption – A Filmscript - 9. Appendix 4 - Polynesian Cosmology

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Appendix 4 –

A Peep into Traditional Polynesian Beliefs

Notes on Polynesian Cosmology

And Mythology

The following brief has been abstracted from various articles appearing in Man, Myth and Magic, An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Supernatural, Richard Cavendish, editor (New York 1970). Page numbers appear in parentheses.

1) Melville’s Polynesian Pantheon:

■ Oro = King of the gods; a usurper god and bringer of natural order upon time, thus equivalent to Zeus in the Greek tradition. God the Father.

■ Alma = Oro’s son and sacrifice to mankind to restore / bring on agricultural bounty. As a Christ figure, he is matched in traditions from around the world: the AΩ, Helios, Osiris, Quetzalcoatl, et al. (Agriculture / cycle or planting, growth, reaping, death and rebirth in the next season / next life).

2) Lizards as Symbol (p.1638):

■ Sun-loving, thus titular animal to sun incarnates: seen as Hermes-like messenger of the sun god, or the king of the gods. On Samoa, lizards are the manifestation and symbol of Tangaroa (the equivalent of the Greek Titan, Chronos, or Time Itself). Spotted lizards represent nighttime, or the goddess, Tongaiti.

3) The (male) Human Head (p.2769):

■ The seat of both mana (the life-force / grace / chi), and the soul / status of ritual significance. Thus the consuming of a high-status brain transfers this status / life-force to the eater. The head of a chief contains the most concentrated source of mana; even an empty shell still offers power to be tapped into. From a living head, taboo proscribes how to treat spit, earwax, hair clippings, et al as aspects of mana, which could be deadly if handled incorrectly, and handled by females in any form.

4) Mana (p.1713):

■ All taboo proscriptions deal with the preservation of mana (via a sort of spiritual 1st law of thermodynamics) from transferring from a stronger source to a weaker one, i.e. a commoner’s hand will sap the force from a kingly one. Mana in the broadest and purest sense is like ‘The Force’ from Star Wars. The closer one is spiritually to the primordial force physically, and time-wise back to the moment the universe was incepted, the more able one is to influence all subsequent outcomes in the universe.

■ As in Daoism, women are seen as caustic to the life-force – sex with them equals spiritual power going into the lifeless ground, or into the Earth herself. If semen is lost to a female before battle or hunting, the mana will be weakened and unable to influence a favorable outcome. Sex between men only strengthens mana through consolidation, and increases power for both. If a boy had been sequestered and raised to puberty as a sacrificial victim, and a female takes him to coital orgasm, he will be released. It is assumed that the forces of the Earth and moon have called him and contaminated him by draining his mana, thus making him useless to the heavenly forces to whom his life was indented.

■ Ritual can increase mana in a high-status male to dangerous levels. During tattooing, an artist is protected, but must never accidentally touch his own head – the result would be something like the bolt that killed the attendants of the Ark of the Covenant.

5) Creation Myths (ps.2229-2230):

■ Variance: some focus on a creator father (a big-bang approach), others on a slow accretion (an evolutionary concept).

■ Samoa = “Tangaloa” (time) was alone on the face of the waters. He cast down a rock. Then gave a vine to plant to his messenger bird. The vine withered and festered. The maggots feeding on this decay is mankind.

■ Society Islands = “Ta’aroa” (time) was isolated in a celestial void referred to as an egg. His breaking free (as in a big bang) was the creation of the universe.

■ Evolutionary concepts take over from the birth scenarios. The Chronos figure lies still and dormant with the Earth (or, time works on matter to transform it), and this action produces offspring. One rebel is needed to bring order to this inertia (oftentimes he is called “Tane”). Once he is created out of this action of time on matter, he raises heaven from earth and introduces light to the world. From this point forward, pairs of personified abstractions give rise to offspring unlike themselves.

■ “Io” in New Zealand, and “Ihoiho” in Tahiti are the same Chronos figure.

■ Io / Tangaloa is associated with the primordial and shapeless, like the sea and outer space; his son, Tane, with the sky and air, but also with settled things, like the forest growing on the face of his mother, Earth, or the fish swimming through the void of his father, the sea. This association with wood meant an axe could hold his essence or spirit and be venerated as his vessel. In similar fashion, fish and sea life of all kind, are a representation of his life-force among us. Some also attribute the creation of women to Tane.

■ Tane fashioned a woman for himself out of wet sand. He impregnated this mound, giving it life, and producing a female offspring. The mound (a stand-in for all of the Earth), “Hina” or “Hine,” discovered Tane copulating with their daughter “Titama,” and dissolved like the sand she was into the afterlife. This place, that her presence in it created, was named “Po,” and Hina’s grief and despair brought death into the world.

■ Hina is like the Kabalistic tradition of “Lilith,” or the first first woman. Scorned, she becomes the force of destruction on life in general, and on womankind specifically (thus the notion that her revenge is tied up with the pain and possible complications of childbirth). Like the Mesopotamian origins of the Jewish Lilith, Hina rules the underworld and is simultaneously the source of all feminine fertility. She also is the goddess of the forces of the night, governs the phases of the moon, the tides, women’s menstruation, and all of the arts associated with women’s handicrafts.

■ Another of Time’s sons was “Tu,” or “Ku,” or “Oro.” This is the god of struggle; the will to fight off the passive nihilism of time and inert matter. He is like Zeus in that he needed to overthrow his father to begin “action” on earth, and become king of the gods. He is thus the god of war, and governs most of men’s handicrafts.

■ A Christ-like agricultural son was “Rongo” or “Ono” on the Marquesas, or “Lono” in Hawaii. In Apollo aspects, he is the god of singing, dance and art in general. He ‘died’ like Quetzalcoatl and Osiris by being exiled at sea / on water so that his body could itself become the staff of life for humanity, body and soul (like the host and wine at the Mass). Like them, a second coming will usher in an age of perfect bliss. The Hawaiian elite thought Captain Cook was the returned Lono, just as Montezuma thought Cortez was the returned Quetzalcoatl. (Melville named this god “Alma.”)

■ On the evolutionary scale, the gods mentioned above constitute the “Great Gods,” and are thusly remote from day-to-day human affairs. The second tier of gods created themselves from the scraps of creation just laying around, so to speak. These gods are everywhere, and not being in heaven, they are drawn to human affairs out of curiosity or boredom.

■ They in turn mated with the sons and daughters of Man, and produced the chiefly and priestly classes, thus their offspring are all demigods.

6) Religion/Ritual

■ The purpose of religion is to purposefully direct the raw force of mana the demigods inherited to useful objectives through ritual.

■ A chief could direct his mana to consecrate others, or objects, as taboo, or sacred.

■ Rituals exist to return borrowed mana to its originators – mana mustered to build the sacred – a house, a canoe, etc., must be exorcised from the objects or place to make it generally usable. This state of sacred neutrality is “Noa.” If a man is sapped by a woman’s vagina, he too needs noa restored (and as quickly as possible!)

■ All creation is in harmony, thus human singing and dancing bring this harmony closer to human perfection.

■ Some harvest festivals ‘climax’ in a frenzy of increasing song and dance that leads to orgiastic expressions of love. At such times, the gods smile, for all is well, and evolution continues.

■ Priests are of three classes: 1) demigod. Like the sons of Aaron, they maintain a scholarly adherence to the temple compounds and rituals. They are, via ritual, the controllers of mana and restorers of nao. Also, they can establish seminaries, or father many acolytes. 2) Evangelical / Inspirational / Teaching priests. Often moved by spirit to preach, they too are mediums who can channel the voices of the gods and provide oracles. 3) Shamans. They are quiet tappers of mana, not to direct it, but to ‘read’ the cause and effect of it in daily life. They are consulted on disease, bad luck, etc. In a drug-induced trance, they can be shown what to do.

7) Idols as temporary vessels of spirit

■ Idols are not sacred objects in their own right, but they are venerated as being capable of that status when and for the duration of a spirit occupying it. Thus, objects, most objects, are eligible, especially powerful ones like axes, war clubs, paddles, etc.

■ People expect the gods to produce results, and if disappointed, they could be easily overturned with little ceremony. This is what happened to Cook and his men.

8 ) Souls

■ Souls can wander from the body for a time. In dreams, as a good thing; in illness, as a bad thing. Shaman priests look for a person’s wandering soul when drugged.

■ Unfortunately, the all-pervasive human superstition and notion of witchcraft is also at work. Nail clippings, etc., can be used to ‘hurt’ an enemy. After death, a priest could ‘capture’ a soul and enslave it by possessing its bones. By feeding it mana via ritual, the priest could force the trapped spirit to work in the intermediate space between this world and heaven to harm the living.

■ All souls can go into the afterlife, which is in the west. However, ‘common’ souls cannot be expected to have enough mana to long resist the pull of annihilation as it takes the perilous trip back through space and time to the moment the universe was created. Sometimes these souls hang around the living instead of trying to make the journey.

■ After a soul expires from lack of mana, it goes to Po. There Hina’s grief manifested itself into a self-feeding entity (like a black hole) named “Miru.” Miru is a crucible, drawing in and crushing life and spirit until it is converted back into inert matter; into the uber-caustic earth soil itself (a fertility wheel of dharma symbol).

■ Elite souls instantly, to their degree of connectedness to it through mana, shoot back into the heart of the All.

9) The Age of Heroes: All Demigods (p.2232)

■ Polynesian folklore is remarkably like ancient Greek and Middle Eastern tales where flawed heroes are called into duty and struggle to suppress their own natures as rebels in order to complete their heroic tasks.

■ “Tahaki” is like Hercules or Gilgamesh – a great natural leader, with a superman body, or a man’s man, he was brave, strong, beautiful, gracious and self-possessed. Almost laughably stoic, comedy is brought into his tales in the form of lovers falling over themselves to get at him, and the occasional foolishness these troubles lead him.

■ “Rata,” as Tahaki’s grandson, manifests many aspects of Dionysus. He is not like the great man’s-man hero, but is slender, diaphanous, and a sexually alluring youth whose mother was abused by the gods. As a sailor and adventurer, he quests to find her soul and restore her to life. He was aided by wood spirits to find her (just as Dionysus was reared by Silenus) – because he built his canoe from a sacred grove. After many setbacks, Rata fights his way and the odds to get to Po and retrieve his mother (“Tahiti”), but after a brief meeting, he cannot restore her to the world, but he does facilitate her release, and she is drawn back into the center of time and universe.

■ Other aspects of Dionysus are manifest in arguably the most popular of all Polynesian heroes, “Maui.” As an infant he was abandoned by his raped human mother, and taken to heaven to be reared. He learned all the ways of the Great Gods as a matter of course, and looked down on humanity as backwards and brutish. Grown too big for his breeches, he was booted back down to Earth where his reign of pranks continued. In startling alignment with the Japanese god who wrestled a serpent (“Susanoh,” among many other names), Maui lassoed the sun so men could have regular hours or light and dark, stole fire from the gods (in the form of lightning), and taught man to cook with it, and he fished up more land as needed by man with the jawbone of “Tahiti,” thus imbuing the islands of Polynesia with tremendous mana. Otherwise he thumbed his nose at convention, japed his way around authority, and made the pompous appear ridiculous. Bored with mankind, he attempted to kill Hina by crawling into her vagina and out of her mouth. When he was up to his knees, his companions could not suppress laughter anymore. She awoke and crushed him in her womb. After his mortal death, he becomes the messenger of the Great Gods: the Hermes, the Inari, the trickster.

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