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.”