Note 9.3 — PSYCHE’S TASK

Superstitious fear of contact with Maori chiefs. Not only the person of a Maori chief but everything that had come into contact with it was sacred and would kill, so the Maoris thought, any sacrilegious person who dared to meddle with it. Cases have been known of Maoris dying of sheer fright on learning that they had unwittingly eaten the remains of a chief’s dinner or handled something that belonged to him. For example, a woman, having partaken of some fine peaches from a basket, was told that they had come from a tabooed place. Immediately the basket dropped from her hands and she cried out in agony that the atua or godhead of the chief, whose divinity had been thus profaned, would kill her. That happened in the afternoon, and next day by twelve o’clock she was dead.9.3 Similarly a chief’s tinder-box has proved fatal to several men; for having found it and lighted their pipes with it they actually expired of terror on learning to whom it belonged.10.1 Hence a considerate chief would throw away where it could not be found any garment or mat for which he had no further use, lest one of his subjects should find it and be struck dead by the shock of its inherent divinity. For the same reason he would never blow a fire with his mouth; for his sacred breath would communicate its sanctity to the fire, and the fire would pass it on to the meat that might be cooked on it, and the meat would carry it into the stomach of the eater, and he would die.10.2 Thus the divinity which hedged a Maori chief was a devouring flame which shrivelled up and consumed whatever it touched. No wonder that such men were implicitly obeyed.