Te Reinga, The Maori Spirit-Land

The empty forms of men inhabit there; Impassive semblances, images of air.--_The Odyssey._
In the extreme north of the North Island of New Zealand is the Muri-whenua, the Land’s End, where the never-resting surges thunder at the feet of the bare rocky capes, and the giant sea-kelp swirls in long snaky masses round the fabled gateway to the Maori spirit-land. For here is Te Reinga, otherwise called Te Rerenga-Wairua, or the Place where the Spirits take their Flight. Te Reinga is a long craggy ridge that dips down to the ocean, ending in a rocky point whence the ghosts of the departed take their final plunge into the realms of darkness and oblivion. The souls (wairua) of the dead, the moment they are released from their earthly tenements, travel northwards until they arrive at the Land’s End of Ao-tea-roa. As they near the Reinga, crossing sand-dune and stony cliff, treading with viewless feet the wild precipices whose bases are ever licked ravenously by the wilder ocean, the spirits bethink them of their old homes. And they pause awhile on the wind-swept heights, and gaze backwards over the long and dreary way by which they came; and they wail aloud, and lacerate themselves after the fashion of the mourners of this world, with sharp splinters of volcanic glass (mata-tuhua), and in proof thereof these mata are to be seen there to this day by living man. They deck their heads with paréparé, or mourning chaplets of green leaves, and their weird, ghostly wails for the Land of Light they are leaving mingle with the melancholy voice of the ocean winds. The long flax leaves which spring from the rocky soil on these heights above the Reinga are often found knotted and twisted together in a peculiar manner. The pakeha says this is the work of the ever restless winds and eddying gales which sweep the Land’s End. But to the Maori those knotted leaves are the work of the sad spirits of their departed, tied by the ghosts as they pass along to the gates of Po, to show their sorrowing friends the way they took in leaving this world of day. And the waterfalls cease their sound as the ghosts flit by;
Trembling the spectres glide, and plaintive vent Thin hollow screams, along the steep descent.
Down along the narrow ridge to the tideway they move, until they reach the ghostly leaping-place, tapu to the _manes_ of the innumerable multitude of dead. Here grew a venerable pohutukawa tree, gnarled and knotty, with great ropy roots trailing to the tide. By these roots the spirits dropped to the sea, loosing their last grip of Ao-tea-roa to the dirge of the screaming sea-birds and the moaning waves. Below, the tossing sea-kelp opens a moment to receive the wairua, and then the dark waters close over them for ever. This is the Tatau-o-te-Po, the Door of Death, which is the entrance to the gloomy Kingdom of Miru, the Goddess of Eternal Night.
Many an Ossianic concept, many a weird and poetic fancy, is woven by the Maoris round this haunted spot. This is a fragment of an ancient lament for the dead, sung to this day at Maori tangis:
“E tomo, e Pa Ki Murimuri-te-Po, Te Tatau-o-te-Po. Ko te whare tena O Rua-Kumea, O Rua-toia, O Miru ra-e! O tuhouropunga, O kaiponu-kino. Nana koe i maka Ki te kopae o te whare i!”
(“Enter, oh sire, The gates of that last land, So dread and dark; The Gates of the Endless Night. For that is the dwelling Of Rua-kumea, Of Rua-toia, Of the grim goddess Miru, The ever-greedy one. ’Tis she who hurleth thee To the deep shadows of her gloomy house.”)
And, again, the tribal bards, lamenting over their dead, chant this centuries-old poem:
“Now like an angry gale, The cold death-wind pierceth me through. O chiefs of old, Ye have vanished from us like the moa-bird, That ne’er is seen of man. O lordly totara-tree! Thou’rt fallen to the earth, And naught but worthless shrubs remain. I hear the waves’ loud tangi On the strand of Spirit Land, Where souls, borne from this world of light, Cast one last look behind. The rolling seas surge in at Taumaha Singing their wave-song for the dead Who have forever vanished from our eyes.”