The Shaman's Mind. Jonathan Hammond

and reverse the laws of the physical.”

      The magical practices of “the laws of the other side” to which Bishop alludes, and which Long and so many others were to study in depth, send the imagination reeling. There were stories of Pele-worshiping Kahunas who ritualistically walked on lava that had only just cooled and hardened, and was still well above the temperature that could incinerate a man. There was the Love Prayer, hana aloha, which could cause romantic infatuation, and the dark sorcery of the Death Prayer, ana‘ana, which could kill another person just by thought—a widely disdained practice considered dangerous for the practitioner. Trafficking in negative energy that extreme could cause illness or misfortune to the practitioner, and there were kahunas who specialized in reversing the ana‘ana prayer, sending it back to the very source from which it was sent.

      There were also miraculous healings of physical illness through the use of massage (lomi lomi), herbs (pala‘au), and prayer (pule), as well as intricate divination systems (hailona) involving casting shells or stones to predict and change the future. It was commonplace for the Hawaiians to have spontaneous visions (akaku) of spiritual beings and to hear supernatural voices (ulaleo). And there were magical practices for fertility, spiritual protection, and harvesting crops, many of which are still in use today.

      The Kahunas read omens (ho‘ailona) from plants and trees, animal behavior, the stars, and weather systems. Many of them could influence the weather to suit their needs. Certain aspects of the islands are still affiliated with the gods and goddesses traditionally worshipped by the islanders, and these are not symbolic; rather, they are considered to be a direct communion with the gods and goddesses themselves. So to look at the clouds is to behold Lono, the god of agriculture and rain, himself; Pele, the volcano goddess, is the lava; Kane, the god of procreation, makes a visitation in manifest form through the rainbow; and the moon isn’t a representation of the moon goddess Hina—rather, when we see the moon, we are actually in Hina’s presence.

      This immediacy with the metaphysical opened the Hawaiians to messages from the gods (akua) or from the ancestors (aumakua) that offered insights into what time of the day the fish may be at their most plentiful for catching, or from what direction an enemy might attack. If the land and its spirits were able to communicate so effectively, it stood to reason that humans held the same propensity for influencing the outside world. Animism, the idea that everything is alive and conscious, is a cornerstone of shamanic thought. Huna takes it a step further by postulating that everything also wants to connect.

      In Hawaiian thought, Mana is the power that can make these connections: aka is the substance through which Mana’s powerful influence makes things manifest, and our focused attention, Makia, fuels the process. These were the three factors that Bishop and Long, in their observations of the Kahunas, identified as the building blocks of Hawaiian magic. While Long’s work creatively elaborated on what he personally learned from studying the Kahunas, Mana, Aka, and Makia are universally accepted tenets of Hawaiian cosmology.

Mana, Aka, and Makia