KARAKIA 3

III. THE WIDER PURPOSE OF THE KARAKIA

TO BE ONE WITH CREATION, WITH THE ANCESTORS, AND WITH THE SPIRITUAL POWERS IN CARRYING OUT OUR ROLE IN CREATION

The wider purpose of the karakia is to enable us to carry out our role in creation. One with the ancestors, one with the spiritual powers, our tapu enhanced, we have the mana, mana whenua, mana tangata, mana atua to take our part in bringing order into this universe as the whole of creation moves from the nothingness, into the night, into the full light of day.

When we use the karakia, therefore, we move into another world, the world of the spiritual powers, we move into their time and into their place, and we bring their tapu, their mana into operation in our world. While the karakia of the major ritual complexes have their main emphasis on binding us to the ancestors and the spiritual powers, the individual karakia enable us to carry out every part of our daily lives in union with the ancestors and the spiritual powers.

There are many individual karakia, covering every need a person might have. In the words of Te Rangikaheke already quoted:

Kaore he mea i waiho noa e oku tupuna te tini raupeka kia waimarie ai. Ko te rangi me ona riri, he karakia ano. Ko te moana me ona riri, he karakia ano. Ko te whenua me ona riri, he karakia ano.

'My ancestors left nothing undone to make sure that the very many things of uncertain or doubtful outcome should turn out favourably. There are special karakia for the sky and its ragings. There are other karakia for the sea and its ragings. There are other karakia for the land and its ragings.'

Kaore he mea i waiho noa e nga tupuna o (ou) hoa tuhituhi te whakarite. He karakia hei whakatupu, hei whakamarie, hei whakaanga mai, hei whakaranea kia tini, kia hua.

'There was nothing left undone by the ancestors of your friend, the writer of this. They used karakia to make things grow, to establish peace, to make things go their way, and to bring abundance and fertility.'

The division of the karakia shows the scope of the individual karakia. There are karakia for the weather, for sicknesses of all types, for daily work - fishing, hunting, gardening, for other daily activities and the karakia maakutu for curses and counter curses.

According to Te Rangikaheke, these individual karakia were taught to a person as that person grew up and were a major component in a person's education. In a long manuscript of some thirty-seven handwritten pages, dated 1853, Te Rangikaheke gives an account of the handing on of the traditions of the ancestors, including the handing on of the karakia. In his conclusion he compares the Maori education system to the Pakeha system:

Ko te whare akonga tera. Ko tona ingoa he whare tunga karakia. Ko ta te pakeha whare ako mo te tamariki he Kareti, He Kura.

'That was the school house. Its name was a house for imparting karakia. The Pakeha's house for teaching children is a college, a school.'

Through the Maori education system, therefore, the people who were taught the karakia grew up to live with the spiritual powers, to stride over the land with Tuu and Rongo, to move over the sea with Tane and Tangaroa and to reach up to the winds, to Taawhiri.

The 'Eternal Present' of Ritual

At this level of understanding, in the world of the spiritual powers and of ritual, time and place come together. The identifying in ritual with the people and events of the past is a moving into the time of the 'eternal present'. To quote F. Allan Hanson, events such as that recorded in the story of Rata:

... exist outside time, suspended in an eternal present, available to the experience of people from any time .... When these (archetypical events) are recalled in ritual, or when the link between one of them and a mundane event is noted ... the Maori view of the matter is not that two events are in play: the present event and the archetypical situation that it resembles. Instead there is only one event - the archetypical situation - that, not fixed in the past, is present again.

To quote Prytz Johansen: We cannot underline the literal meaning too much when we say that the Maori re-lives history. We are so apt to insert in thought a 'like' and in this way make all of it very simple according to our presuppositions. We find it quite obvious that when an event has happened, it never returns; but this is exactly what happens."

Perhaps the understanding we now have of the physical universe from quantum physics can help. We know from Einstein's theory of relativity that time and space are not absolutes, but relative and most physicists accept the 'big-bang' theory of the beginning of the universe proposed by Edwin Hubble in 1929, especially as we now have so much evidence that our universe is an expanding universe. Physicists now speak of the 'singularity' from which the material universe began and to which it appears to be returning, a point of infinite compression of both space and time. Everything is compressed to this one point and at this point there is no distance, there is neither time nor space.

In ritual, one with the atua and our ancestors we enter a 'singularity'. At this 'singularity', and I would like to add 'solidarity', we are our ancestors, the time is now and the place is Hawaiki. Hawaiki, in Maori thinking, is the place where everything began and to which we all return. When we go to Tiki for our tapu to be restored we go to Tiki who was formed in Hawaiki:

Ko Tiki i ahua mai i Hawaiki. 'Tiki who was formed in Hawaiki.'

The adze we use to cut down the tree strikes at Hawaiki: Ka pa te toki nei kei Hawaiki. 'The adze strikes in Hawaiki.'

When we welcome people onto the marae, we welcome them as people who come to us from Hawaiki:

Ko te manuhiri i ahu mai i Hawaiki, nau mai. 'To you who come from Hawaiki, we welcome your presence.'

When people die, we send them back to Hawaiki: Haere nga mate, haere ki Hawaiki. 'Go you who have have died, go to Hawaiki.'

The places we identify with in the recital of the karakia are the places in Hawaiki: Matateraa, Pikopikoiwhiti, Marerei-ao, Kuratau, and so on.

IV THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE KARAKIA.

In spite of what has been said in different books, the success or failure of the karakia does not depend on knowing and using the correct words. The karakia are not magic spells depending on the exact recitation of the words. The words can be changed and are changed.

The mana or power of the karakia came from the atua and according to Te Rangikaheke and others, the effectiveness of the karakia depended on the faith of the people using the chants, not just on the automatic recital of the right words.

The saying of the 'words of the ancestors' correctly was very important:

Ki te he te hapainga o te ari a tetahi, hei mate ano mo te hunga i he te hapai ari, ara mo te tohunga ranei, mo te kaihapai ranei i te riri.
'If one of them performs the ari rite wrongly, his party is sure to be beaten, that is, the priest who performs it wrongly suffers, or the man who instigated the quarrel.'

But the words themselves could be changed and at times were changed.

Te Rangikaheke speaks of the need to change the words. A person, having learnt the right karakia for protecting himself if he takes fish from some other people's fishing grounds, asks what are the karakia to use if somebody poaches on his fishing grounds.

The answer given is: Me pera ano, ko nga kupu me whakaputa ke. Ko te karakia ko taua tu ano.

'Do the same, only change the words. But the karakia is of the same type.'

In answer to the question what to do if a canoe is broken, the teacher replies: Me karakia i te karakia o Tane-nui-a-rangi apiti atu ki to te tangata tetahi waahi.

'Do the karakia to Taane-nui-aa-rangi with some part of the karakia of man joined to it.'

Proof that the words were in fact sometimes changed is found in the karakia themselves. In many cases we have several versions of the same karakia and we can see that at times the words have been deliberately changed. One example discussed earlier is the karakia Kotia te puu , which was used originally for cutting down a tree for a canoe, and which was adapted for the opening of a new house.

According to Te Rangikaheke, the effectiveness of the karakia depended on the faith of the people in the mana, or power, of the atua. So he writes:

I te wa i whakapononga ai te ngakau o nga tangata pupuri i enei tikanga, i te wa hoki e mahara ake ana te ngakau ko nga atua maori ano to ratou mananga ake, me a ratou karakia maori hoki hei uaua i roto i aua wa. A, ka whai kaha, ka whai toa, ka whai mananga .... Anana, ka mana kore inaianei .... Ko nga atua maori mana i mua, kua wehi kore inaianei.

'It was a time when people in their hearts believed in these customs, a time when in their hearts they held that their mana came indeed from the Maori spiritual powers, and their Maori ritual chants were their strength in those times. And, indeed, they did acquire strength, determination and power .... But look what has happened now, we are without mana ..... The Maori spiritual powers, powerful in former days, are not feared today.'

Elsdon Best also held that the Maori believed the power making the karakia effective came from the atua:

At least in connection with the more important formulae - the possession of mana is essential in order to reap advantage from a repetition of the formula employed, and the innate powers of that mana emanate from the gods.

In the Shortland manuscripts there are at least three references explicitly linking the failure of the karakia with the acceptance of Western Christianity, and so indirectly indicating that the effectiveness of the chants ceased when the people accepted the new faith, giving up their faith in the atua. The time before te taenga mai o te Rongopai, 'the coming of the Good News', is seen as ngaa waa e tapu ana te tangata, e mana ana ngaa karakia, 'the times when people were tapu, and the karakia had power':

I mua e mana tonu ana nga karakia, me nga tangata. No te taenga mai o te Rongopai ka timata te mate. Na te noanga o nga tangata ka timata te mate.

'Formerly karakia had power and so had people. From the time when the Gospel arrived here sickness commenced. It was because of people being made noa that sickness commenced.'

I kite ano ahau i te mana o ngaa karakia i mua. No te taenga mai o te Rongopai, katahi ka noa te tangata.

'I saw myself the power of the karakia in former times. From the time when the Gospel arrived, then people were made noa.'

Conclusion

To sum up, we can say that participation in the Maori ritual means identifying oneself with one's people, with the ancestors and with the atua, in their world, the ritual world of the 'eternal present'. It also means a taking part in the whole movement of creation 'from the nothingness, to the night, to full daylight'.

The major function of the karakia, as shown by the words they used and the regular structure of the ritual with its three sections, the setting up of the rods, the loosing and binding and the acknowledging of the spiritual powers and then the eating together, is to express this participation. One identifies oneself with the people, both living and dead, speaking the words of the ancestors: People do not simply resemble their ancestors; by a literal communion of kinship they are their ancestors, they share the same life.

The rituals and the karakia for these rituals are not the work of any one individual, but of a people, a people with a very strong sense of their oneness with each other. This is a oneness with the living, but also with all those who have gone before them, and a oneness which extends right back into te kore, the 'nothingness' of the beginning of creation.

Through the Maori ritual, therefore, and the karakia for the ritual, the people find their identification with all their ancestors, with their atua, and with creation itself. They truly find who they are, they become who they are. Just as Paora Tuhaere can say to Governor Grey, "I, Ngaati Whaatua", identifying himself with all the past history of his people, so, through the karakia, the girl just born is identified with Hine, the first woman. We thus find our links with Maui, with Taawhaki and with all our ancestors. Then one with the spiritual powers, with their mana, we take our part in bringing creation out of its darkness into the world of light. In this way we are not just men and women of this world as we know it, but men and women of the whole universe, of the cosmos.

A Means to be Fully Human

The karakia show an extraordinary depth of understanding of what it is to be human, both in our relationships with each other and in our relationship with the world and the whole cosmos.

We see what our relationship with each other can be in the concluding verses in an Arawa karakia said for a person who is dying. To live with this karakia is to live with what it is to be human at its deepest and richest:

Ko tou manawa, ko taku manawa. Kia homai tou manawa mate moku. Kia hoatu taku manawa ora mou. Whiti ora! Maranga mai ki runga!

'Your heart, my heart. You give me your dying heart. I give you my living heart. Cross over to life! Rise up above!'

The following Ngaapuhi karakia is said to have been used by Nukutāwhiti on his arrival in the Hokianga harbour. With its references to Marerei-ao and Taotao-rangi, places in Hawaiki, and to the spiritual powers Taane and Tangaroa, it takes on a cosmic significance. So to live with this karakia is to live as part of the cosmos.

E kau ki te tai e, e kau ki te tai e, E kau raa, e Taane. Waahia atu raa te ngaru hukahuka o Marerei-ao Pikitia atu te aurere kura o Taotao-rangi. Tapatapa ruru ana te kakau o te hoe, E auheke ana, e tara tutu ana te huka o Tangaroa I te puhi whatukura, i te puhi marei kura o taku waka.

           Swim on the sea, swim on the sea,
           Swim now, oh Tāne.
           Split the foamy waves of Marerei-ao;
           Ascend the sacred current of Taotao-rangi.
           The foam of Tangaroa is standing in crests, is descending
           On the treasured plumes of my canoe

Ka titiro iho au ki te pae o uta, ki te pae o waho. Piki tuu rangi ana te kakau o te hoe; Kumea te uru o taku waka Ki runga ki te kiri waiwai o Papa-tuu-a-nuku E takoto mai nei; Ki runga ki te uru tapu nui o Taane E tuu mai nei.

           I look down on the inner and outer rows of surf.
           The handle of the paddle is lifted to the sky,
           The head of my canoe is pulled forward
           Onto the skin of mother earth lying here,
           With the sacred head of Taane standing above.

           The paddle of Pou-poto breaks in two.
           And the paddle of Kura is taken,
           A great chief and high-priest, of very great heart.
           Your heart, oh Kura, bound to my heart,
           Lifted, lifted up in the waters of the earth
           Lifted, lifted up in the waters of the heavens
           I cross the mortal world, to the world of ligh