# Te Tohunga/Introduction

Layout 2
Maori-mask and God-stick
SMALL fire had been kindled, and over it burned the billy, boiling for the last time in Maoriland.
Through the misty atmosphere the sun was sinking, powerless and glowing red: and night came.
A grand night!
Beautifully illuminated, grand clouds of smoke ascended from the burning primeval forest—a first mighty sign of the work of man, and the will of man, for the fire has to finish the work of the axe, and to consume the forest.
Stars in silvery brilliance bespatter the East; the West is all aglow with crimson, gold, and creamy white; but to-morrow work and care will follow the great destruction, for endless is the beauty of this ever green country, but its liberty and its fruitfulness are labour.
He who wishes for liberty must till the soil, and the fruit of liberty shall be art, for art is not an image, but a fruit.
A strange fruit is once gathered by the Maori children of Nature, a fruit grown out of the darknesses of the ocean-encircled forests—an art, hopeless and sad. A fruit without seed.
Was not Darkness the mother of All? Does not the everlasting ocean encircle all? And in the end must not Darkness again swallow all? This art followed the ways of untiring Nature: unseeming tools, unmeasured time, and endless labour, shaped to perfection the hardest stone into the “mere pounamu,” the beautifully formed and polished greenstone-weapon—the giant of the forest into the wonderful war-canoe.
Sharp-edged stones and shells have to shape the tree into the centre-post of the house, into the mighty figure of the god and ancestor; and such labour stands in grim need of incantations to the atuas (gods) who dwell in the darknesses of the Lower World and who dwell in the spaces of light above the earth, that they may strengthen and enliven the unseeming tools with their god-power.
The sages and dreamers of many generations had spent their lives bending over the smoke of their little fires, and forming into wisdom what their eyes perceived of the wonders ​of the world; and their wisdom has resulted in incantations and Karakias powerful enough to overcome the gods.
These incantations and Karakias are tapu, that is, sacred. The possessor of them is a Tohunga; a Tohunga is sacred. The tapu of the Tobunga is descended from the gods, and so is his wisdom. The gods are all descended from the Great Mother Darkness, the goddess Hine-nui-te-po; and they are the ancestors of mankind, which with every generation moves farther and farther away from the gods.
Once a great inspiration must have fallen upon the Maori world; but since then generation followed generation, framing incantations, speculating, shaping—never renewing, never widening, this inspiration, but working out form and expression to perfection.
The life of man became like the life of ever-renewing Nature, producing and again destroying, giving birth, and again killing, to enable life to be sustained: the souls of man grew into the rigid wisdom of incantations; the food of man became man.
He who wishes for art must till the soil, but he who tills the soil must have faith; for art, though a fruit of Nature, is a child of god.
With the rising Sun came the old friend, and placed fresh wood on the camp-fire, a work of love; for be is a Rangatira-Tohunga (chief priest) of great mana in his tribe, and his tapu forbids menial labour. With Sorrow in his face, he sat down, quietly laying a parting present at our feet .
On the water of the river sways the reflected canoe loaded for the journey, and the sun plays among the leaves of the trees, the children of the God Tane-Mahuta.
“Take with you the wisdom of the old people, my wanderer, the wisdom which will be soon forgotten among my children, who follow now the ways of the pakeha (the new friends) who came to us bringing the truth of their God; and we are now all children of the great Queen over the seas, who promised to be our mother. Go in peace, my friend!”
Deeply thinking, he looked in the glowing embers. Each followed his own thoughts.
Far away at Hawaiki was the world created, and there is the home of the Maoris. It is the birthplace of their race; it was the dwelling-place of their ancestors, who are gods now, and live in the heavens; it is their Spirit Land.
Their ancestors built the whare-kura, the sacred Temple, at Hawaiki, and it stood facing the East, at the place of Mua. In the whare-kura assembled the highest chiefs and the Tohungas of all the tribes to communicate with the spirits of the gods, and to repeat and rehearse the names and heroic deeds of their ancestors, that they might take deep root in the hearts of the living, and that they might never forget their descent from the most ancient gods, who dwelled in the Darkness, the Nothing, and the Beginning of All Things! They assembled to acquire and repeat the sacred wisdom of the incantations, the ceremonies, and the traditions, from Te-Kore, the Nothing to Te-Po, the Lower World, to Te-Ao, the Light, to Rangi-nui, the Great Heaven, and to Papa-nui, the Great Earth; the incantations and Karakias to the Gods of War and of Witchcraft, and the food; and all those to the multitude of spirits who govern, help, or hinder, the living.
From Hawaiki the heroes and their tribes wandered over the seas, and the Tohungas took with them the wisdom of the whare-kura, guarding it sacredly, and repeating it only to the ears of their descendants or to those of high rank and ambition; and nothing of the sacred knowledge was lost from the days of Te-Kore to the present time; but now it is dying with the last Tohungas.
Little only is known of the sacred wisdom of the Maoris. The dread of the old gods is still living in the hearts of the Maoris, but the last hour has come for them as they now bend their tattoed heads over the fire and murmur regretfully of the great Past.
​ Thoughtfully looked the old friend at me, and I spoke:
“Farewell, friend. Wide you opened your heart, and far away will I take your lore with me; far away into the Great Distance, to my Hawaiki; and always will I think of the Tohunga of the Maoris, the Rangatira, my friend.
Small was my little knowledge, and bad were my tools to form it into pictures; and I was in need of the incantations to the atuas, who have the art in their keeping; the gods who have the happiness and hope, the comprehension and confidence in their keeping. In the whare-puni of my friends, the Maoris, I found these atuas, and more, a friendship which made the loneliness fly away like a dark feather before the morning wind. Farewell!”
“Haere, e tama taku—farewell, my son. This song out of ancient time I give you, for your eyes can look back into the past; but my eyes are dim like my wisdom.
Look often at the sign which I have put to it, that you may remember me. Farewell,
Kia-ora.———
Kia-ora.’
HIS SONG