High

Here we have another interesting term to deal with, and which, like mauri, has different aspects as to meaning. In the first place, with regard to the hau of man, we can say that it is a quality which combines what we define by the terms personality and aura. At the same time, the concept includes features that are not found in our own beliefs. The hau of man is a quality that pervades his whole being, but it, or part of it, is apparently detachable; it is not located in any organ.

The ordinary meanings of the word hau are 'wind' and 'air', and this fact has confused those who have sought to discover the meaning of man's hau, and expressions such as whangai hau. There is a worldwide connection between the terms for wind, air, breath and spirit. This Maori concept of hau is interesting because by using it as a medium, the life of its physical basis could be destroyed. 

For example, part of a person's hau adheres to any place they have sat or walked on. Another person could, by "picking up" the invisible hau from that seat, or footprint, and performing certain magical arts on it, kill whoever sat on it or stepped on it. In some cases, if a person was suspicious of his neighbors, he would pick up the clinging hau from whatever spot it had been sitting on, before leaving it, and thus take it with him. The hau of the human footprint is called manea by the Tuhoe people, and a little soil taken from a footprint serves as an excellent means of sorcery. 

People are known to avoid paths and walk through water as much as possible, to avoid leaving footprints from which their hau could be taken by enemies.

A native will often explain a man's hau by saying that it is his ahua, i.e. his appearance ("form, as opposed to substance" is the definition of this word in Williams's Maori Dictionary , p. 4). This word ahua is also used to designate the character. The term hau seems to be often used in an anagogical sense and is used in relation to immaterial things. Thus I have heard natives speak of the hau of a speech or a remark. 

It would be a serious mistake to describe the hau as a spirit, because it would give the wrong impression, and the reader would confuse it with the wairua. Hau is an intangible quality and always invisible, even to gifted seers, an auditory quality. The same word is used to designate celebrity. Man's hau somehow represents his vitality or vital essence, but not his life principle. The word hauora carries the meanings of health, vigor, spirit of life, healthy.

J. G. Frazer describes a belief among some New Guinea natives that also seems to describe the hau of Maori belief. This quality, he remarks, “… permeates the body as the sap permeates the tree, and… spreads like bodily heat to whatever the body comes into contact with. That is what might have been said of the hau Maori, and I am very much inclined to regard it as a common belief among barbarian peoples.

When a native wished to use a person's hau as a means for his magical arts by which he could kill him or otherwise affect him, he strove to obtain a material object which was as it were imbued by his height. It could be dirt on which his imprint had been imprinted, a strand of his hair, a shred of his clothing, a bit of his spit, anything to which a bit of his hau adheres. 

This material medium is often called hau, but its specific name is ohonga. On this object were performed the fearsome rites of the sorcerer that affected the original, the physical basis of the immaterial hau.

The same term is applied to various forms of mediums. When a victory had been won over an enemy, one of the first acts of the victorious party was to take the hau or ahua of that victory. It was a material medium, like a lock of hair from the head of a slain enemy, and it is often called a mawe. This was brought to the house in the village and to the sacred place of this village, where a ceremony called whangai hau was performed on it. 

This rite seems to have been in honor of the gods, an offering of the hau of victory to these gods. The lock of hair is the ahua of victory, as the ohonga described above is the ahua of the human hau.

In an ancient account we are told that in ancient times it was a custom among the sea rovers to take every precaution to protect their lives and well-being when about to set out on a journey, as well as to keep their ships safe as far as possible. as human forethought might effect. 

The procedure was to convey the ahua or appearance of a ship and its crew to a tapu location and perform a rite there that placed the ship and crew under the care of the gods. The ahua could be represented by something material, no matter how small. In one of these accounts, the term mauri is applied to it, and the ahua would certainly serve as a mauri. This performance was a form of Neolithic insurance.

In a version of myth of Maui ascending the land from the depths of the ocean, we are told that he carried the mauri from his "fish" to the place of rites where priestly experts could perform a much needed ceremony upon it. It is not customary to use the word mauri in this regard, but rather the term ahua or mawe. It is usually a material object used as a medium to represent the original, as mediumistic objects are used in black magic.

Mauri materials, such as the talismanic stone that kept a forest productive, are often called hau. These mauri represent the powers of the gods who maintain such productivity and healthy vigour, that is, who protect the immaterial hau of the forest. Offerings were made to the mauri of a forest, strictly speaking to the gods inherent in the mauri. The first bird caught of the season was offered. 

This is called an offering to the hau of the forest (he whangai i te hau o te ngahere). Now, there is some interwoven reasoning here in the minds of the Maori. The mauri is responsible for the presence of the birds in the forest, and the powers of a priestly expert endowed the mauri with his powers, hence the birds are said to belong to such gods. Some birds from the first capture are cooked over tapu fire and eaten by the priestly experts so that the hau or life essence or appearance of the killed birds can return to the forest and its mauri. 

In truth, the unlucky person who tries to fathom the Maori spirit and fathom its erratic ways and manifestations is following a tortuous path.

The ohonga or material medium who represents the human hau in magical rites seems to be known as maunu in the Hawaiian Islands. Unfortunately, no collector seems to have inquired deeply into the spiritual ideas of the natives of Polynesia; the recorded material is extremely thin.

The hau of man and forest needed protection, as both could be destroyed or damaged by magical arts. Therefore, this immaterial quality was protected, often by means of material mauri, against such dangers. All these protective measures, mauri or charms, drew their virtue from the gods.