Max Freedom Long - The Teachings of Huna

"Always keep watch for three things in the study of this magic. There must be some form of consciousness back of, and directing, the processes of magic. Controlling the heat in fire-walking, for example. There must also be some form of force used in exerting this control, if we can but recognize it. And last, there must be some form of substance, visible or invisible, through which the force can act. Watch always for these, and if you can find any one, it may lead to the others."

And so, gradually, I took over the materials which he had collected in this strange new field. I became thoroughly familiar with all the negations, all the speculations and all the verifications. I began the slow work of trying to find remaining kahunas and do what I could to learn from them the Secret. Upon hearing a story of what some kahuna had done, my invariable question would be, "Who told you that?" I would begin tracing back, and sometimes I would be able to find the person who had been the subject of the tale and get from him all the smallest details of what had been done. The greatest difficulty was to get an introduction to the kahuna who had exerted the magic. Usually this was utterly impossible. The kahunas had learned by hard knocks to shun the whites, and no Hawaiian dared to bring a white friend to them without their permission—and that was almost never given.

Four years after I met Dr. Brigham, he died, leaving me with a weight on my heart and with the frightened realization that I was perhaps the only white man in the world who knew enough to continue the investigation of the native magic which was vanishing so rapidly. And if I failed, the world might lose for all time a workable system that would be endlessly valuable to humanity if it could be recovered.

With Dr. Brigham I had been watching hopefully for some new discovery in Psychology or in the field of Psychic Science, and, discouraging as it was, had been forced to admit that both sciences showed signs of becoming stalemate.

With over a hundred recognized scientists engaged over a period of half a century in Psychical Research, not a single theory had been evolved which would explain even such simple things as telepathy or suggestion, to say nothing of ectoplasm, apports and materialization. More years passed. I ceased to make progress and, in 1931, admitted defeat. It was then that I left the Islands.

In California I continued half-heartedly to watch for any new psychological discovery that might again open up the problem. None came. Then, in 1935, quite unexpectedly, I awakened in the middle of the night with an idea that led directly to the clue which was eventually to give the answer.

If Dr. Brigham had been alive he certainly would have joined me in a scarlet flush of embarrassment. Both of us had overlooked a clue so simple and so obvious that it had continually passed unnoticed. It was the pair of spectacles pushed up on the forehead while we hunted for hours unable to find them.

The idea that had struck me in the middle of the night was that the kahunas must have had names for the elements in their magic. Without such names they could not have handed down their lore from one generation to the next. As the language they used was Hawaiian, the words must have appeared in that language. And, as the missionaries began making the Hawaiian-English dictionary as early as 1820—the one still in use—and as they certainly had not known enough about the native magic to translate correctly any names used to describe that magic, it was obvious that any attempted translations would have been either faulty or entirely wrong.

The Hawaiian language is made up of words which have been built from short root words. A translation of the roots will usually give the original meaning of a word. Presto! I would find the words used by the kahunas in recorded chants and prayers, and make a fresh translation of them from the roots.

On the following morning I recalled the fact that everyone agreed in Hawaii that the kahunas had taught that man had two spirits or souls. No one paid the slightest attention to this patently erroneous belief. How could a man have two souls? What absurdity! What dark superstition! … So I hunted up the two words naming the two souls. As I suspected, they were both there in my copy of the old dictionary which had come off the presses in 1865, some years after the discovery of mesmerism, during the early days of Psychical Research, and a full two decades before the birth of our infant science of Psychology.

The dictionary said:

"U-ni-hi-pi-li, The leg and arm bones of a person. Unihipili was the name of one class of gods called akuanoho; aumakua was another; they were the departed spirits of deceased persons.

"U-ha-ne, The soul, the spirit of a person. The ghost or spirit of a deceased person. Note: The Hawaiians supposed that men had two souls each; that one died with the body, the other lived on, either visible or invisible as might be, but had no more connection with the person deceased than his shadow. These ghosts could talk, cry, complain, etc. There were those supposed to be skillful in entrapping or catching them." 1

It was apparent that the earnest missionaries had consulted the Hawaiians to ascertain the meanings of these two words, and had been given conflicting information which they had done their best to order and include in the translations.

The outstanding feature of the unihipili was that it seemed to be connected with the arms and legs very definitely, and besides that it was a spirit . The uhane was also a spirit, but it was a ghost who could talk even if it were hardly more than a shadow in connection with the "person of the deceased."

As the first word was longer and had the most roots, I began work on it to get a root translation. There were seven roots in the word, counting overlaps of letters, and some of these roots had as many as ten meanings. My task was to sort meanings to see if I could find any that would apply to the magic used by the kahunas.

Here was my haystack before me, and all I needed to find was the needle. It seemed rather promising. I remembered Dr. Brigham's injunction to watch always for the consciousness involved in fire-walking and other magic, for the force used to produce the magical result, and for the visible or invisible physical substance through which the force might act. Yes, I would try to find three needles. (And I did find them eventually, the first two before the year was out, and the last one six years later.)

What I found immediately, and almost before lunch time, was the subconscious , but not as we know it. The subconscious of the magicians was twice as large and three times as natural. I was so surprised by the discovery that I went down for the full count of ten. It was incredible that the kahunas could have known the subconscious, but the evidence was undeniable.

Here is how the roots described the spirits named in the words unihipili and uhane: Both are spirits (root u), and this root means to grieve, so both spirits were able to grieve.

But the root hane in uhane means to talk, so the spirit named in this word could talk. As only human beings talk, this spirit must be a human one. That raises the question as to the nature of the other spirit. It can grieve, and so can animals. It may not be a man who can talk, but at least it is an animal-like spirit that can grieve. The uhane cried and talked weakly. In the dictionary note it was said to be considered nothing more than a shadow connected with the deceased person. Evidently it was a weak and not very substantial talking spirit.

Unihipili , with an alternate spelling of "uhinipili," gives more roots to translate. Combined we get: A spirit which can grieve but may not be able to talk (u); it is something that covers up something else and hides it, or is itself hidden as by a cover or veil (uhi); it is a spirit which accompanies another, is joined to it, is sticky, and sticks or adheres to it. It attaches itself to another and acts as its servant (pili); it is a spirit which does things secretly, silently and very carefully, but does not do certain things because it is afraid of offending the gods (nihi); it is a spirit that can protrude from something, can rise up from that something, and which can also draw something out of something, as a coin from a pocket. It desires certain things most earnestly. It is stubborn and unwilling, disposed to refuse to do as told. It tinctures or impregnates or mixes completely with something else. It is connected with the slow dripping of water or with the manufacture and exudation of nourishing water, as the "breast water" or milk of the mother (u in its several meanings). (Note: Later on I was to learn that water is the symbol of the human electro-vital force, so there was one needle. The two conscious spirits of man are two-thirds of the other needle. But the third is only hinted at in the meaning of "sticky" or "to adhere.")