THE SPIRIT-WORLD.
To while away idle hours, I had many conversations with the old priest
on the subject of the religion of his countrymen. The cannibal, I found
from him, as, indeed I had had many previous opportunities of observing,
was a most fanatical believer in spirits and the spirit-world. His creed
taught him that everything in nature and art was a duality in unity. In
other words, that everything had two kinds of life, physical and
spiritual. These two were but one in this visible existence, but at
death the physical nature returned to earth, while the spiritual,
retaining the form of the physical, lived on in another world. According
to this teaching, animals, plants, stones, and in brief, all things in
creation, and every work of man’s hand, had inner and spiritual selves.
And just as there were starting places and paths for human spirits bound
from this world to another, so also were there the same conveniences for
the spirits of pigs, rats, snakes, bananas, taro, yams, canoes, clubs,
spears, etc.
The Hades of the cannibal is both physical and spiritual, but its
physical character is so only in appearance. The spirit of the body goes
to the other world, retaining the likeness of the living man in an
impalpable form. This belief has sometimes proved a stumbling-block to
Fijians, particularly the older men, in their attempts to become
acquainted with one of the main doctrines of the Christian religion.
When examining candidates for baptism, missionaries have frequently been
struck with the answer to their question, “Do you believe in the
resurrection?” “Yes, I believe that my spirit will rise from the grave,
and that my body will go to ruin.” The cannibal had no notion of a
resurrection of the body until he learned it from Christianity. But he
was no materialist, for he not only held that every material thing had a
spirit of its own, but that when done with in this world, it would send
to the invisible one its spiritual counterpart.
As departed spirits approach the shores of the new land, they are not
unfrequently met by kindred spirits who have gone before. Among the
first things which these friends are anxious to learn from the fresh
arrivals, is the cause of separation between their spirits and their
bodies. Was it the weakness of old age, the diseases of childhood, an
epidemic, the wreck of a canoe, the wrath of a chief, the club of an
assassin, the spear of a foe in fight, or a wilful leap from a
precipice? The persons thus met, and greeted with earnest enquiries like
these, are generally of some standing in society. No one takes any
interest in the spirits of serfs. They have to tramp the weary road to
the hidden country all alone, and introduce themselves on reaching it.
Their liberated spirits pass into Hades to be again crushed with heavy
burdens—to be tried and persecuted in a thousand ways, to be slain over
and over again, and driven to other “states,”—but only to go through
like trials, and be for ever hammered about for the sole crime of not
being chiefs.
The spirit-world of the cannibal, as revealed to us in his mythologies,
is certainly a very wonderful one. It is a vast country in the interior
and on the outside of our earth. That it begins on the surface there is
no doubt, but how far down its boundaries reach has not been determined.
There are not fewer than six provinces or states. Dante would call these
divisions of the spirit-world, “circles.” To be nearer the Fijian’s
idea, it is better to regard them as lands or countries, which, if we
saw them, we should look upon as duplicates of the islands forming the
Fiji group. The future life of human spirits is occupied in travelling
through all these states; the last of which, in the course of ages,
admits the wandering ones to an unmistakeable immortality; or, if that
be too much for them, to a kind of half-and-half annihilation, the true
nature of which the philosophers of this religion have failed to
explain. Each of these spiritual states is inhabited by aboriginal
spirits, the real owners of the spiritual soil, who are governed by a
king or great chieftain. In poetry the aborigines are spoken of as “the
people who sprung up in Hades,” or “the people who arose out of the
taro-beds of Hades.” Immigrants from earth have to be very careful that
they respect the people and laws, and obey the chiefs of these
mysterious realms. There is in each state a class of aboriginal chiefs
called “Ambassadors to Earth.” Their duty is one of the utmost
importance. They are expected to keep open communication with mortals,
to whom they are required to make known the excellencies of the
spirit-world, and the character of its government. We will now enter the
region itself, and with the reader and our cannibal guides, pass at a
good walking-pace through each of its six divisions.
The first of these is on the earth’s surface, and in the air about us.
It is named the “Place of Dying.” It is the locality and its
neighborhood where a human spirit leaves the body at death. For the
convenience, as it would appear, of being able to think of the departed,
congregated in one or two spots instead of in many, each village in Fiji
has its one or two “Places of Dying” in or near it. Such a place may be
regarded as the spirit-village of the real and visible one. At death,
spirits go to this place and abide there for a season. It is from this
sacred and most dreaded waiting place, that they watch the movements of
the living; observe how they grieve at their bereavement, and how they
show their grief by fulfilling all funeral rites and ceremonies.
The spirit does not take its departure till after some flitting and
fluttering around old scenes,—as though, like the butterfly just burst
forth from its cocoon, and taking short flights to prepare itself for
greater efforts, he were anxious by shaking off the stiffness of his
bodily life to be ready for some grand achievement. With some spirits
the object of thus waiting about is to fall in with other spirits, whose
company will lessen the dreariness of the untravelled way. Company is a
delightful thing to the cannibal, whether his road lie on this or the
other side of the dividing line between the two worlds. When spirits
prefer remaining for kindred spirits, they must keep themselves well
employed in the meantime. The spirits of old men take great pleasure in
plaiting sinnet. The art they know so well in this world will not be
forgotten in the other. The spirits of houses, canoes, &c., must be tied
with spiritual sinnet; the demand for workmen will therefore never
cease. But the day comes, sooner or later, when there can be no more
lingering of departed spirits near the dear old village, with its groves
of cocoanut palms and bread-fruit trees. The dreadful dive must be
taken, and every spiritual shark and other enemy infesting the watery
way, be fought and overcome, or the second state of the cannibal’s Hades
will never be reached. The said dive is mostly made after rough and
smooth journeys of various distances by land, to some place on the sea
coast, or to islands and reefs near it. These places, whence the spirits
start for a new sphere, are known by different names, more or less
appropriate, as the “Leaf,” the “Bath,” the “Distant Reef,” “the Great
Passage,” &c. It was strongly asserted, and by many almost as stoutly
believed, that spirit-canoes used to arrive at these stations, to convey
the spirits of great chieftains to the spirit-shore. But whether
passengers by canoes, or brave swimmers trusting solely to the might of
their own spiritual muscles, all, or nearly all, come up in due time on
the beach leading to the grand entrance of the second state.
This may be known as the “Rocks” or “Place of Refuge.” It is on the
western end of Vanua Levu. Here is the universal gathering place—the
much talked of rendezvous of human spirits. It is from here that, after
numerous crucial tests, the spiritual immigrants are permitted to pass
on to further trials, hardships, and pleasures. That company of spirits
you see yonder, coming from the beach, is a party of warriors whose
bodies not long since licked the dust. The war-paint is still upon them,
and in their present condition they cannot be allowed to proceed much
further. No newly-arrived spirit can, until he has been exhibited four
successive days to the aboriginal dwellers. Their exhibition over, they
are removed to a place called the “Face-Washing-Water,” where they are
washed with boiling water, which removes their outward and worldly
appearance,—the very epidermis of their spirits,—after which their true
spiritual skin shines forth. But here comes a spirit who has evidently
had some attention given to his _toilette de mort_ ere he came here. He
will surely pass without the application of boiling water. Perhaps! but
he has to find a lake somewhere in this neighbourhood called
“Reflecting-Water,” which is the great looking-glass for spirits. If the
oil, turmeric, and sandalwood preparations, with other cosmetics used
upon him by his mourning friends for the purpose of improving his
make-up and rendering his personal appearance as perfect as possible,
shall be seen in this mirror to have effected that most desirable
object, well and good; he shall pass without having to submit to the
scalding trial experienced by the soldiers; but if not, why then there
is nothing for him but the “Face-Washing-Water,” which will not fail to
wash out every trace of the art known in other parts of the world as
Madame Rachel’s, and, by a virtue and process peculiar to itself, make
him “beautiful for ever.” Now there enters the spirit of a bachelor, who
is much to be pitied, not so much because of his “single blessedness”
when in the world, as for the long and intensely painful solitude that
is before him, not to speak of other miseries, which, see! are already
beginning! The officers of the place are putting him under a huge rock,
which will press him as a cheese is pressed. He has but lately shuffled
off his mortal coil, and, judging from our limited knowledge and
experience, it seems not unlikely that this process will make him
shuffle off his spiritual one. Honours are heaped upon the married, but
the unmarried are greeted from all sides with the taunting words, “Most
miserable of men!” Old maids receive no better treatment. If it could be
avoided, it should at any expense, for this is no place for spinsters
and bachelors. Let the living take timely warning, and never venture
here, if men, without their “better halves;” if, women, without the sign
of marriage, viz.: the absence in their hair of certain curls or locks,
which will exempt them from these tortures. The laws of cannibal-land
and its spirit-world are very plain on this important business. He is no
hero who has not a wife, and but a very little one who has not many. No
more is a woman a heroine who has not a husband, or who has more than
one.
Let us now seek the shade of that beautiful tree, which, of course, is a
spiritual one, for we are still in spirit-land, where things and people
of every name and character are but
“Shadows vain!
Except in outward semblance.”
A grim monster abides in the vicinity of this tree. He is an aboriginal
spirit, and the King of the state. That lake hard by is the
Face-Washing-Water; and there, coming along the narrow path by that
clump of banana trees, is a stranger with blackened face. He is making
for the lake, but there is in his way a fence well guarded by the King,
whose title of office for this particular duty is “Spirit-Smiter.” Our
friend will not be able to pass him without a challenge. But if he be a
chieftain of high rank, he may succeed in dashing bravely through the
fence in spite of its ghastly guardian. If, on the contrary, he be a man
of low degree, a turncoat or a coward, or one of the “uncircumcised,” he
will make for the woods to avoid the hurdles and their awful guard, even
as Bunyan’s pilgrim turned aside into “Bye-path Meadow,” to escape the
roughness of the right road. Woe betide the poor wretch if the “Clubber”
or any of his tribe catch him anywhere out there. He will be eaten by
the cannibal aborigines of the state as sure as he is a spirit. On, the
warrior presses, wielding his club right dexterously. The fence is
smashed, and the Smiter is vanquished. Had the dreaded Spirit-Smiter
prevailed, instead of the glorious son of Mars, the inhabitants of Fiji
would have been made aware of the melancholy event by a great calm,
which to them is always a sign that the Smiter has smitten a spirit.
The spirit of another man is busily picking up stones to throw at the
fruit of a screw-pine, standing some 40 or 50 yards from his right hand.
Count the stones as he throws them, and you will learn both the number
of his widows and how many of them are being strangled and hurried off
with the utmost despatch to follow and wait upon their lord throughout
his future career in the land of spirits. Unfortunate wretch! He has
thrown ten times, and never once hit the object of his aim. He left ten
wives behind, not one of whom is coming to alleviate the miseries of his
solitude, in whose face he discovers no charms; and he therefore sits
down to moan and howl over his lonely and pitiful lot, or to address
himself upbraidingly to his yet unstrangled wives, and their thoughtless
and hardhearted friends. “Oh, I am weary of waiting here,” he exclaims.
“Once I was weary with collecting many riches for you and your kinsfolk,
and this is their love to me for all my pains.” The state of morals
among his countrymen is growing worse and worse. The greatest and most
dearly cherished institutions of the land are falling into neglect; and
so this disconsolate spirit has nothing before him but wailing and
weeping to tramp his lonely way.
But here is another spirit of far more chiefly bearing than the last. He
is too rich to throw stones at the screw-pine, and uses whales’ teeth
instead. Out of 20 shots he has struck the mark 7 times. He has 20
wives, and 7 of them are being strangled, that they may have the
unspeakable privilege of accompanying their lord through all the
kingdoms of this mysterious world.
The love of cannibal women for their husbands was not the outcome of the
heart’s deepest and tenderest affections, but a compound made up of one
part of something akin to love, and nine parts of fear; the whole
leading to a hero-worship which enslaved both body and mind here and
spirit hereafter. While he lived, the woman was the hero’s beast of
burden, not his loving or beloved companion; and when he died the
mesmeric power of his tyrannic will, sweeping once more over and through
her spirit, like the last and fiercest gust of a hurricane, bent all her
nature to one idea, which, inspired by superstition, led her to court
death for his sake.
“But still they come!
Such a long train of spirits, I should ne’er
Have thought that death so many had despoil’d.”
Some in the crowd have never had their ears bored; their future life
will in consequence be one of much misery. An officer, whose duty it is
to punish such unprepared immigrants, will presently come along, and,
piercing every unbored ear with his ponderous spear, will thrust into
the hole thus made the heavy log of wood from 2 to 3 yards long, used by
the women of Fiji for beating native cloth or tapa on. The merciless
judge condemns each offender to carry this burden in his ear forever;
_i.e._, during the unknown period of his stay in this state. How great
must be the necessity for having one’s ears bored while in this life.
Men used to bore the lobes of their ears, and stretch them so much
afterwards, that in the course of a few years they would hang dangling
on their shoulders.
State the Third, like all the other States, has its “Spirit-Smiter,” who
is distinguished by peculiar and special characteristics of his own. He
of this State is its King. It is said that he keeps a cock which crows
without fail on the approach of a human spirit. When once the Smiter
strikes with his club, the effect is as though the very bones of the
smitten child of earth crumbled away from his less material substance.
This bone dust, the old dogmas tell us, is saved, and afterwards passed
forward to another state in the Cannibal Hades, where it serves as fuel
for the household fires of that country. The most remarkable feature of
spiritual existence here, is that each earth-born spirit carries about
with him an appropriate mark by which the work he was most distinguished
for before leaving the body is published to all who meet him. The spirit
now passing up the hill to the right was a great yam-planter, for his
forehead bears upon it the figure of a yam. On another you will see the
impress of sugar-cane, or bread-fruit, or taro, or whatever sort of
vegetable he was in the habit of cultivating most abundantly. Here and
there we shall meet some fine old men having their foreheads branded
with figures of various vegetables, and carrying fire-sticks in their
hands. They were men reported in their day as noted planters, the real
producers of their country’s wealth—men who would not let the tall reeds
grow where the yam-vine ought to creep, for want of fire to burn them
off the ground. It is one of the first duties of the chief of this state
to see that his country is well planted for the benefit of expected
arrivals from earth. He has gardens for the spirit of each inhabitant of
Fiji. The disembodied spirit on arrival hurries away to the banana
plantation. Should no ripe bananas be found, he will have to put up with
unripe ones; whence it will be known by the people of the place that he
left the earth before his time. If he committed suicide, or was drowned
or murdered, or if in any other unnatural way he met his death, his
friends will say, “He died before his bananas in Hades were ripe.”
Sounds of music strike upon the ear. We are in the Fourth State—the land
of song. The subjects of this mirthful state, sing again and again the
natural songs of the aboriginal race without weariness. It were well if
they could abide here for ever. But the spirit-world of the cannibal is
too like his old one, for that, in its countless alternations between
pleasure and pain. There are some even now, whose time being up, are
gliding away to the Fifth State.
The indescribable delights they so lately experienced are in this state
all unknown. Death comes at last to their relief, and grim King
Back-Chopper loses his prey. Spirits whom he has long tortured are
hourly escaping him and passing to the Sixth and Last State, which is
known in the old legends as “The-Place-of-Everlasting-Standing.”
Here, for ever, the spirits remain in a standing posture. They may never
walk, sit, or lie down. It is the state of upright, motionless, absolute
immortality, for every spirit that can bear it. But restless spirits who
hate so monotonous and statue-like a life, are taken in hand by the King
of the realm, and reduced to something akin to annihilation! Hence,
perhaps, the opinion that chiefs alone are heirs of immortality; all
others being unable to pass the trials which thicken around them, in the
several states through which we have hastened our tour of inspection.
If, however, they should succeed in outliving the dangers and deaths
encountered there, they can surely never survive the last and greatest
test of all, with which King Lothea never fails to try every spirit that
comes within the circle of his jurisdiction. All who cannot stand,
Fakir-like, for ever, and without any sign of unrest or discontent
whatsoever, must at last submit to have their spiritual legs taken from
under them. Every leg thus removed is forthwith converted into spiritual
mould, for the spiritual taro-beds of the great Spirit-King. The
annihilation here indicated is, to say the most, but very partial; for,
if nothing but the extremities of human spirits are destroyed, we may
safely infer that our cannibal philosopher’s doctrine of annihilation is
one of milder form than that contended for by learned “destructionists”
of other lands.
I have now gone the round of the “Circles,” having faithfully followed
my native guides into the very heart of the land of shadows and out
again. Nothing remains but to note two or three general characteristics
of the cannibals’ future home, and then to take our leave of the
Spirit-World—a world which, in whatever light we may view it, to the
Fijian is a very matter-of-fact one after all.
Spirits dwell a long time in each state unless they fail of endurance,
when they are at once removed by a process akin to, and in Cannibal-land
called, another death. The doctrine therefore that a man can die but
once, is not to be found in the cannibals’ creed. Transmigration is an
article in it, but it is only a spiritual migration from place to place,
not from one body to another, except in the case of high-class gods, who
have the power of passing from body to body when necessary, in order to
effect more readily and perfectly their deep designs, either for or
against the cannibal portion of the human race. The popular notion in
Cannibal-land and times about these future homes of departed spirits,
was that on the whole more happiness could be found in them than in
this, the first stage of man’s existence. The least pleasant thing
connected with it was the difficulty of getting there in safety; and
when there, in passing the several tests in such a manner as to be
entitled to be let alone to a full enjoyment of whatever was enjoyable.
All things considered, it is a fine country, where the spirits of chiefs
live with chiefs, and those of common men with spirits of their own
order. Youth is seldom or never renewed, for old folks are seen there in
great numbers, trusting to their walking-sticks in all their feeble
attempts to shamble along the public walks of the place. There is work
to be done, but it is always pretty easy, special trials excepted. There
is no lack of what the Fijian would call fine houses and good gardens.
There is, moreover, no scarcity of food, for the spirits feast _ad
libitum_ on the fat of the land. And there will always be enough of
sailing and fighting to satisfy the characteristic craving of
cannibal-spirits for the “spice of life.”
The cannibal was taught not to dread the thought of going to this
Spirit-World, but on the contrary to long rather for the change. It was
such beliefs as are now before us, and such teaching of them, that
doubtless nerved many a widow to follow her departed husband with
cheerful obedience to the wishes of his friends, and kept her from
shrinking at the sight of the rope which was to end her miseries in this
life. Bodily life was valued at a low price,—at no price at all in fact,
and nowhere, either in the philosophy or poetry of Cannibal-land, were
the people taught to consider
“That the dread of something after death,—
The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns,—puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of.”