Lets Talk Old
If you can't deal with listening to these then don't plague yourselves
I don't mind,
skip over it.
Mana (Oceanian mythology), the spiritual life force energy or healing power that permeates the universe in Melanesian and Polynesian mythology.
In Melanesian and Polynesian cultures, mana is a supernatural force that permeates the universe. Anyone or anything can have mana. They believed it to be a cultivation or possession of energy and power, rather than being a source of power. It is an intentional force. Mana has been discussed mostly in relation to cultures of Polynesia, but also of Melanesia, notably the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.
In the 19th century, scholars compared mana to similar concepts such as the orenda of the Iroquois Indians and theorized that mana was a universal phenomenon that explained the origin of religions.
(Melanesian mythology refers to the folklore, myths, and religions of Melanesia, a region in Southwest Oceania that encompasses the archipelagos of New Guinea)
So, remember, Mana does Not equal magic.
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ETYMOLOGY
The reconstructed Proto-Oceanic word *mana is thought to have referred to "powerful forces of nature such as thunder and storm winds" rather than supernatural power. As the Oceanic-speaking peoples spread eastward, the word started to refer instead to unseen supernatural powers.
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[POLYNESIAN CULTURE-Mana]
Mana is a foundation of Polynesian theology, a spiritual quality with a supernatural origin and a sacred, impersonal force. To have mana implies influence, authority, and efficacy: the ability to perform in a given situation. The quality of mana is not limited to individuals; peoples, governments, places and inanimate objects may also possess mana, and its possessors are accorded respect. Mana protects its protector, and they depend on each other for growth both positive and negative.
[POLYNESIAN CULTURE]
Polynesian culture is the culture of the indigenous peoples of Polynesia who share common traits in language, customs and society. The development of Polynesian culture is typically divided into four different historical eras:
-Exploration and settlement (c. 1800 BC – c. AD 700)
-Development in isolation (c. 700 – 1595)
-European encounter and colonization until World War II (1595–1946)
-Post-World War II period
Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of more than 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are called Polynesians. They have many things in common, including language relatedness, cultural practices, and traditional beliefs.
In centuries past, they had a strong shared tradition of sailing and using stars to navigate at night.
[POLYNESIAN NAVIGATION]
Polynesian navigation or Polynesian wayfinding was used for thousands of years to enable long voyages across thousands of kilometers of the open Pacific Ocean.
Polynesians made contact with nearly every island within the vast Polynesian Triangle, using outrigger canoes or double-hulled canoes. The double-hulled canoes were two large hulls, equal in length, and lashed side by side. The space between the paralleled canoes allowed for storage of food, hunting materials, and nets when embarking on long voyages.
Polynesian navigators used wayfinding techniques such as the navigation by the stars, and observations of birds, ocean swells, and wind patterns, and relied on a large body of knowledge from oral tradition.
Navigators travelled to small, inhabited islands using wayfinding techniques and knowledge passed by oral tradition from master to apprentice, often in the form of song. Generally, each island maintained a guild of navigators who had very high status; in times of famine or difficulty, they could trade for aid or evacuate people to neighboring islands.
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HAWAIIAN VOYAGING TRADITIONS
(The Hawaiian Islands are part of the Polynesian triangle)
- On Wayfinding -
- Nainoa Thompson -
[This is more of a small book than a journal, although not official, since they wrote this after their voyage,]
Estimated time of creation-1980s, If I had to guess.
I'm sure they wrote down on a journal when they were on their voyage firsthand, but this information is like an add-on; sort of like a new "journal" but more detailed.)
[Start]-
The star compass is the basic mental construct for navigation. We have Hawaiian names for the houses of the stars – the place where they come out of the ocean and go back into the ocean. If you can identify the stars as they rise and set, and if you have memorized where they rise and set, you can find your direction.
The star compass also reads the flight path of birds and the direction of waves. It does everything. It is a mental construct to help you memorize what you need to know to navigate.
You cannot look up at the stars and tell where you are. You only know where you are in this kind of navigation by memorizing where you sailed from. That means constant observation. You have to constantly remember your speed, your direction and time. You don't have a speedometer. You don't have a compass. You don't have a watch. It all has to be done in your head. It is easy-in principle-but it's hard to do.
The memorization process is very difficult. Consider that you have to remember those three things for a month-every time you change course, every time you slow down. This mental construct of the star compass with its Hawaiian names is from Mau. The genius of this construct is that it compacts a lot of information and enables you to make decisions based on that information.
[Sense of direction.] -
How do we tell direction? We use the best clues that we have. We use the sun when it is low down on the horizon. Mau has names for the different widths and the different colors of the sun's path on the water. When the sun is low, the path is narrow, and as the sun rises the path gets wider and wider. When the sun gets too high you cannot tell where it has risen. You have to use other clues.
Sunrise is the most important part of the day. At sunrise you start to look at the shape of the ocean-the character of the sea. You memorize where the wind is coming from. The wind generates the waves. You analyze the character of the waves. When the sun gets too high, you steer by the waves. And then at sunset you repeat the process. The sun goes down-you look at the shape of the waves. Did the wind direction change? Did the swell pattern change? At night we use the stars. We use about 220, memorizing where they come up, where they go down.
When it gets cloudy, and you can't use the sun or the stars all you can do is rely on the ocean waves. That's why Mau told me once, "If you can read the ocean you will never be lost." One of the problems is that when the sky gets black at night under heavy clouds you cannot see the waves. You cannot even see the bow of the canoe. This is where traditional navigators like Mau are so skilled. Lying inside the hull of the canoe, he can feel the different wave patterns as they come to the canoe, and from them tell the canoe's direction. I can't do that. I think that's what he started learning when he was a child with his grandfather, when he was placed in tide pools to feel the ocean.
Little story-
In 1979, when Mau was confident that I could guide the canoe by myself, he said, "Now I am going to go to sleep; you follow this star path." And like an overly eager student, I wanted to try sailing in a different direction to experience what the wave patterns felt like when I changed directions. I thought he wouldn't notice because he was sleeping inside the hull. When morning dawned, he came up and said, "Okay, what course did you sail last night? What star bearing did you hold?" He knew I had changed course. Lying in the hull, he actually knew the course I had steered; he challenged me to tell him in order to make sure that I knew where we had gone.
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{How to be pirate}ha.
[Finding Islands]-
(This whole thing is pretty long so I've been somewhat separating them)
(Hope it helps.) yes, me, all grand author-///-///--
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Tahiti is smaller than Maui and it is a hard target to hit from 2500 miles away. Even hitting a target as large as the Big Island from that distance is outside of the accuracy of our navigation. When we go down to Tahiti, we have a mental image of our course line plotted for the trip. We try to stay on this course and end up in what I call a box. This box is large enough to compensate for any errors in our navigation. In this box there are many islands. All we have to do is to find one of them, and from that island we can find the others. For example, the target when we sail to Tahiti is a box four hundred miles wide, from Manihi in the Tuamotu islands to Maupiti in the leeward Tahitian islands. The first part of the journey to Tahiti is not trying to get to Tahiti but to make sure that we sail into this box and find an island. On different voyages, we have found Matahiva, Tikehau, and Rangiroa-all islands in the box. Since these are coral atolls it is very difficult to tell one from the other, so sometimes we have to land and ask the people what island it is that we've found. From any of these islands, we know Tahiti is only about 170-180 miles away and our navigation system is accurate enough to find it from that distance.
The Southern Cross is really important to us in determining latitude. It looks like a kite. The top and bottom stars in the kite always point south-Gacrux on top and Acrux on the bottom. If you are traveling in a canoe and going south, these southern stars are going to appear to be moving higher and higher in the sky. If you went down to the South Pole, these stars are going to be way overhead. If you are sailing from Tahiti north to Hawai'i, the Southern Cross gets lower and lower the farther north you go. At the latitude of Hawai'i, the distance from the top star to the bottom star is the same distance from that bottom star to the horizon about 6 degrees. This configuration only occurs at the latitude of Hawai'i.
Finding atolls, which are very low, is extremely difficult, but there are a lot of clues to the presence of islands. The wave patterns change when an island is near. The behavior of animals in the sea, such as dolphins, will change. Mau can read these clues. The main guide is sea birds. There are two general types of seabirds that Mau taught us about. There are the pelagic seabirds-after the young are hatched and learn to fly, they go to sea and stay there, normally sleeping on the water or in the air and fishing until they become adults; then they come back to land to nest. The 'iwa bird is pelagic and we see it all the way across the ocean. Following these birds will not help you find land. The other type of birds are those that sleep on islands at night and at dawn go out to sea to fish. These land-based birds include the manu o ku (white tern) and noio (brown tern). Noio go about 40 miles out; the manu o ku go about 120 miles out. The Tuamotus are filled with these birds.
After we sail about 29 days down from Hawai'i and staring seeing these birds, we know the islands are close even though we can't see them. When the manu o ku is fishing, it flutters above the ocean surface, but when the sun starts to go down, it will rise up from the water so it can see farther, and it will head straight back to land. When we see these birds in the day we keep track of them and wait for the sun to get low and watch the bird; the flight path of the bird is the bearing of the island. Then we turn on that bearing, sail as fast as we can, and at sunset we climb the mast to see if we can find the island. And if we can't see it, we heave to until the morning.
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[Lost in the Park?] -
(Though a small story it's just as important as the other information)
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On my first voyage in 1980, we saw two birds after the 29th day and I was extremely relieved. At least we were in the ballpark. I did everything that I was taught to do, and the birds did everything that they were supposed to do. They went up high and they flew away, and we sailed in that direction. We couldn't see the island at sunset, so we took the sails down at night and we waited. The next morning, we looked for the birds to see what direction they were coming from. In the morning they go back out to the fishing ground, so the direction they are coming from is the direction to the island. We had a great crew of 14 and we made a ring around the canoe before dawn. We waited for the first bird. All hands-on deck. Not a single bird. I was in near trauma-my first voyage, in my early twenties. Mau was very calm and didn't say anything. We waited and waited. The canoe was just sitting dead in the water, facing south.
One of the canoe members was in the back of the canoe and a bird flew right over his head. The night before we saw the birds flying south so how could it be that late in the morning with the sun very high, this bird was also flying south? That would suggest that we passed the island during the night and now the island was back to the north. In my panic, I told the crew we should turn the canoe around and go north-to look for the island the bird was coming from. They turned the canoe around-and now we are sailing north, back toward Hawai'i. Now Mau has always said that his greatest honor would not be as a navigator but as a teacher-that he would come with us to make sure that the voyage to Tahiti would be safe, but if he didn't have to tell me anything, the honor as a teacher would be his. But after I started to sail north, he came to me and said, "No." It was the first time that he interrupted the trip. He said, "Turn the canoe around and follow the bird." I was really puzzled. I didn't know why. He didn't tell me why, but we turned the canoe around and now we saw other birds flying south. Mau said, "You wait one hour and you will find an island."
After about an hour, Mau, who is about twenty years older than me-my eyes are physically much more powerful than his-got up on the rail of the canoe and said, "The island is right there." We all started looking, and we couldn't see it. Vision is not so much about just looking, but knowing what to look for. It's experience. Mau had seen in the beak of the bird a little fish, and he knew that the birds were nesting, so they had flown out earlier that morning and were taking food back to their young before they fed themselves. He just did not tell me that in our training program.
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[Final rest]-
Not everybody can navigate. We have some great navigators in Hawai'i – Shorty Bertelmann from the Big Island; my brother-in-law, Bruce Blankenfeld from O'ahu; and Chad Baybayan from Maui. We base our projected course line before the voyage on average winds and sea conditions for 24 hours, but these are never average. The majority of navigation is observation and adjusting to the natural environment. The rougher the weather, the more the navigator needs to be awake and the less he can leave the crew on their own. We estimate that our navigators stay up between 21 and 22 hours a day, sleeping in a series of catnaps.
Mau says the mind doesn't need much rest. But the physical body does. When the navigator is on the canoe, the crew does the physical work. When he is tired, he closes his eyes. Mau told me that for him maybe his eyes are closed but inside here, inside his heart, he is always awake.
The navigator sleeps whenever his mind needs to rest. You work until you can't think, basically, then you lie down. I close my eyes and go to sleep. I have no dreams in the beginning. My first dreams are fire. I see reds and oranges. Then I get up when my mind is awake again. I do a series of those catnaps. The main thing is to make sure that your physical body doesn't do any work because then you get sick.
Initially, I depended on geometry and analytic mathematics to help me in my quest to navigate the ancient way. However as my ocean time and my time with Mau have grown, I have internalized this knowledge. I rely less on mathematics and come closer and closer to navigating the way the ancients did. (End of Passage)
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[Another compilation]- Same subject
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- Traditional Tahitian Navigation -
{Andia Y Varela}
The following account of traditional Tahitian navigation is from the journal of Andia Y Varela, who visited in Tahiti in 1774. The account was published in The Quest and Occupation of Tahiti by Emissaries of Spain during the Years 1772-6 (3 vols.), B.G. Corney (ed.), London: Hakluyt Society, 1913-1919, Vol. II, 284-287).
There are many sailing-masters among the people, the term for whom is in their language fatere [faatere; Hawaiian: ho'okele]. They are competent to make long voyages like that from Otahiti [Tahiti] to Oriayatea [Ra'iatea], which counts forty or fifty leagues [one league equals 30 nautical miles, so 120-150 miles], and others farther afield. One of them named Puhoro came to Lima on this occasion in the frigate; and from him and others I was able to find out the method by which they navigate on the high seas. They have no mariner's compass, but divide the horizon into sixteen parts, taking for the cardinal points those at which the sun rises and sets. Their names, with the corresponding ones in our own language, are as follows:
East--E maoae
East-north-east--E apiti
Northeast--E tauguaru
North-north-east--E faarua
North--Paofaeti
North-north-west--Moehio
Northwest--Arueroa
West-north-west--Etaparay
West--E toerau
West-south-west--E rapatia
Southwest--E rayu
South-south-west--E tuitipapa
South--Tuamuri
South-south-east--Erahenua
Southeast--Maray
East-south-east--Tuauru
[Footnote in Corney's Text: "About half the terms here quoted are recognizable, allowing for differences in the spelling of some. Maoae, faarua, arueroa, toerau are correct; apiti is haapiti; maray is maraai, erahenua is arafenua, and tuauru may be uru. They are the names of winds, according to the direction from which they blow, and their force. But the directions given in this list do not all quite accord with the names. There are slight variants in the different manuscripts, but none of moment."]
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When setting out from port, the helmsman reckons with the horizon. Thus partitioned counting from E, or the point where the sun rises; he knows the direction in which his destination bears: he sees, also, whether he has the wind aft, or on one or other beam, or on the quarter, or is close-hauled: he knows, further, whether there is a following sea, a head sea, a beam sea, or if it is on the bow or the quarter. He proceeds out of port with a knowledge of these [conditions], heads his vessel according to his calculation, and aided by the signs the sea and wind afford him, does his best to keep steadily on his course. This task becomes more difficult if the day be cloudy, because of having no mark to count from for dividing out the horizon. Should the night be cloudy as well, they regulate their course by the same signs; and, since the wind is apt to vary in direction more than the swell does, they have their pennants, made of feathers and palmetto bark, to watch its changes by and trim sail, always taking their cue for a knowledge of the course from the indication the sea affords them. When the night is a clear one they steer by the stars; and this is the easiest navigation for them because, there being many stars not only do they note by them the bearings on which the several islands with which they are in touch lie, but also the harbours in them, so that they make straight for the entrance by following the rhumb of the particular star that rises or sets over it; and they hit it off with as much precision as the most expert navigator of civilized nations could achieve.
They distinguish the planets from the fixed stars, by their movements; and give them separate names. To the stars they make use of in going from one island to another, they attach the name of the island, so that the one which serves for sailing from Otahiti to Oriayatea has those same names, and the same occurs with those that serve them for making the harbours in those islands.
What took me most in two Indians whom I carried from Otahiti to Oriayatea was that every evening or night, they told me, or prognosticated, the weather we should experience on the following day, as to wind, calms, rainfall, sunshine, sea, and other points , about which they never turned out to be wrong: a foreknowledge worthy to be envied, for, in spite of all that our navigators and cosmographers have observed and written about the subject, they have not mastered this accomplishment. (End of journal)
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I think it's almost like a universal history that every time they called themselves superior from these, 'people.' and I would be putting that lightly; almost every time these cultural people had more advanced ways of doing things than they could ever hope.
HAHA. Pair of Idiots they all are.