Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
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Mana, Tapu and Names That Recur Across an Ocean

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Mana, Tapu and Names That Recur Across an Ocean

Polynesian is a heading rather than a religion, and the atlas records that plainly. It covers peoples spread across a triangle running from Hawaii to Aotearoa New Zealand to Rapa Nui, related by descent and by language but politically separate for centuries, and no custodian could consent on behalf of the rest of them.

What recurs across the group is a vocabulary. Mana is effective power, held by persons, places and objects, and capable of being increased or lost. Tapu, the word English took as taboo, is restriction, the state of being set apart and requiring care, and its opposite is the ordinary or released state. Together they order who may touch what, who may eat with whom, and what must be done to lift a restriction once it is in place.

Names recur as well, although not always the same stories with them. Tangaroa, Tane, Tu and Rongo appear across the region, becoming Kanaloa, Kane, Ku and Lono in Hawaiian, and the trickster Maui, who fishes up islands and slows the sun, is known almost everywhere. Because the accounts belong to particular peoples and are held by them, the atlas describes the shared framework here and treats the specific traditions under the peoples who hold them, rather than merging them into a composite that belongs to nobody.

Cross-Tradition Connections

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