High

Here we have another interesting term to deal with, and which, like mauri, has different aspects of meaning. First of all, regarding man's hau, we can say that it is a quality that combines what we define by the terms personality and aura. At the same time, the concept includes characteristics that are not found in our own beliefs. Man's hau is a quality which permeates 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 confounded those who have sought to discover the meaning of man's hau, and such expressions as whangai hau. There is a global 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 base could be destroyed. 

For example, part of a person's upper body sticks to any place they have sat or walked on. Another person could, by "picking up" the invisible top of this seat, or footprint, and performing certain magical arts on it, kill the one who sat or walked on it. In some cases, if a person was suspicious of his neighbors, he would pick up the adhering hau from whatever place he had sat 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 dirt taken from a footprint serves as an excellent means of witchcraft. 

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

A native will often explain the man's hau by saying that it is his ahua, that is, 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 remark. 

It would be a serious mistake to describe the hau as a spirit, as this 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 sighted people, an auditory quality. The same word is used to designate celebrity. The top of man represents in some way his vitality or his vital essence, but not his principle of life. The word hauora carries the meanings of health, vigor, spirit of life, healthy.

JG Frazer describes a belief among some natives of New Guinea which also appears to describe the height of Maori belief. This quality, he remarks, “…permeates the body as sap permeates the tree, and…is diffused like bodily heat over everything with which the body is brought into contact. » This might have been said of the Hau Maoris, and I am very inclined to regard it as a widespread belief among barbarous peoples.

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

This material support is often called hau, but its precise name is ohonga. On this object were performed the dreaded rites of the sorcerer which 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 support, like a lock of hair from the head of a slain enemy, and is often called a mawe. This was taken to the village house and sacred place in that village, where a ceremony called whangai hau was performed over it. 

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

In an ancient account we are told that in ancient times it was a custom among the rovers of the seas to take every precaution to protect their lives and well-being when preparing to set out on a voyage, as well as to ensure the safety of their ships as far away as possible. as human foresight could effect. 

The procedure involved transmitting the ahua or appearance of a ship and its crew to a place of tapu and performing a rite there which placed the ship and crew in the custody 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 ahua would certainly serve as mauri. This performance was a form of Neolithic insurance.

In a version of myth of Maui bringing up the earth from the depths of the ocean, we are told that he carried the mauri of his "fish" to the place of rites where priestly experts could perform a much-needed ceremony upon it. It is not usual 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 has preserved the productivity of a forest, are often called hau. These mauri represent the powers of the gods who maintain such productivity and healthy vigor, that is, who protect the intangible 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 thus offered. 

This is called an offering to the hau of the forest (he whangai i te hau o te ngahere). Now there is some nested reasoning here in the minds of Māori. The mauri is responsible for the presence of birds in the forest, and the powers of a priestly expert have 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 the 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. 

Truly, the unlucky person who attempts to fathom the Maori mind and fathom its erratic ways and manifestations follows a crooked path.

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

The hau of man and forests needed protection, as both could be destroyed or damaged by the magical arts. Therefore, this intangible 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.