Ritual and belief

Crawford House Publishing

[2018]

xxix, 253 pю

Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-249) and index.

This book examines a living practice from arguably the last location where traditional Polynesian religion continues as an integral part of daily life. Surviving a devastating 19th-century epidemic and resisting multinational religious organisations in the 20th century, Takū continue to use ritual to manage and neutralise their isolated atoll’s many vulnerabilities, contacting the spirit world through invocations, dreams, trance, singing and gifting to marshall their benign counterforces to work for private benefit and public good. By examining the religious procedures, the artefacts, the principal actors and the many categories of spirit beings, Moyle portrays a small community strategising to preserve pride of self-identity amid the hardships of remoteness, and a determination to perpetuate the beliefs underpinning their extensive ritual life which alone, they believe, allow them to continue to exist. Takū express themselves candidly about their own understandings and ignorances, pride and fears, confidence and concerns – contextualised by the all-enveloping presence of what is believed but not seen

Английский