64 PRE-ANIMISM 



A prophet or soothsayer is one who habitually puts forth his 

 orendci) and has thereby learned the secrets of the future. 

 The orenda of shy birds and other animals which it is 

 difficult to ensnare or kill is said to be acute or sensitive 

 that is, in detecting the presence of the hunter, whether 

 man or beast. Anything reputed or believed to have been 

 instrumental in obtaining some good or accomplishing some 

 end is said to possess orenda. Of one who, it is believed, 

 has died from witchcraft, it is said : " An evil orenda has 

 struck him." * More familiar, from the detailed account given 

 by Dr. Codrington in his classical work, is the mana of the 

 Melanesians, the supernatural power or influence which 

 operates to effect everything which is beyond the ordinary 

 power of men, outside the common processes of nature ; 

 present in the atmosphere of life, attaching itself to persons 

 and to things, and manifested by results which can be 

 ascribed only to its operation. It is not fixed in anything, 

 and can be conveyed in almost anything. " All Melanesian 

 religion consists in obtaining mana or deriving benefit from 

 it." In ancient Maori belief the mana of the war-god was 

 manifest in the thunder; certain weapons possessing it had 

 power to foretell the result of battles ; and through the mana 

 of the tree the woman who embraced it would conceive. 3 

 Corresponding to this is the agud of the islanders of the 

 Torres Straits, and also the Jfutchioftht Australian Dieri, who 

 apply the term to everything exceptional or mysterious, and, 

 as with the shaman of North America, to their medicine men. 

 The Yao mulungu has an analogous meaning ; so has the 

 Kaffir unkulunkulu, rendered as "the old, old one," but in 

 its native form not implying personality. The late Joseph 

 Thomson, in his Through Masai Land^ says that whatever 

 struck the Masai as strange and incomprehensible was 

 en-gai; and, while addressed as a distinct personality who 

 is prayed-to and hears, Mr. Hollis is of the opinion that in 

 en-gai " we have primitive and undeveloped religious senti- 

 ment where the personality of the deity is hardly separated 

 from striking natural phenomena." 4 This has support in 

 Sir Henry Risley's comment on the impersonal elemental 

 forces which are the raw material of the lower religions. 

 "The hypothesis that the earliest beginnings of savage 

 religions are to be sought in the recognition of forces to 



1 Amer. Journal of Folk Lore, 1905, p. 183. 2 The Afelanesians, p. 118. 



3 Anderson, Maori Life in Aotea, p. 440. 4 The Masai, p. xix. 



