Goldie. — Maori Medical Lore. 21 



clairvoyant seer : these companies of spirits were called apa 

 hau by the Tuhoe people, and they were represented in the 

 living world by some living relative, who was the medium 

 {kauioaka or kaupapa) through which such spirits communi- 

 cated with, and acted as guardians of, their living relatives. 

 A single person may be the medium of the kehua of many 

 deceased relatives. Such kehua or ivairua do not abide with 

 ohe medium, but visit him when they have anything to 

 communicate. The medium may be quite a common person, 

 of no standing in the tribe until he becomes a medium. 



Ancient Greek philosophic thought ran to some extent 

 in grooves parallel with that of the Maori. Thus the Greeks 

 believed that the soul left the body and assumed animal 

 form. In particular the snake was imagined to embody a 

 soul ; but the forms of bats, birds, and butterflies were also 

 assigned to the spirits of the departed. The Greek ghosts, 

 like the Maori kehua, kept the human form, and to them were 

 ascribed all the attributes of living persons. Food was offered 

 to them ; ceremonies and rites were performed to appease 

 their wrath ; their influence was exerted only in the neigh- 

 bourhood of their abode ; they revealed future events, or the 

 proper remedies for sickness ; they avenged neglect by send- 

 ing sickness or death, and were therefore called kereo (cf. 

 Maori kehua) — in short, the Greek conception of the ancestral 

 spirit resembled almost in every particular that of the un- 

 tutored Maori. 



I have dwelt at length on the nature, modes of manifesta- 

 tion, and special characteristics of the kehua, or ancestral 

 ghosts, because they are in many ways the counterpart in 

 primitive medical systems of the pathogenic bacteria, or 

 disease-germs, of modern medicine. The Maoris, and, in 

 fact, man in all stages of evolution, from crude savagery to 

 hypercivilisation, regard ancestral souls as playing a most 

 important part in the causation of disease. At the present 

 day the followers of Blavatsky and Besant attribute disease, 

 like the Maori, to the kehua or ghost of the dead. Such 

 was also the belief of the Hebrews, Egyptians, Greeks, and 

 Romans ; and this theory still holds a prominent place in 

 the medical lore of the Polynesians, Melanesians, Australian 

 aboriginals, the Amazulu, Peruvians, and European peasants, 

 especially in Russia, Germany, Austria, and Sweden. In 

 India, China, and Japan we find similar ideas. It was not 

 until the reign of George II. that the statute of James I. 

 of England enacting that all persons invoking any evil spirit, 

 or consulting, covenanting with, entertaining, employing, 

 feeding, or rewarding any evil spirit, should be guilty of 

 felony, and suffer death. (?) 



According to Maori belief the ancestral ghosts confined 



