Oyatabu
Goodenough (Kalauna) · numen · Goodenough (Kalauna) traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Oyatabu, 'the sacred mountain' (oya, mountain or stone; tabu, sacred or forbidden), names the tabooed heights of the Kalauna landscape, regarded as an animate ancestral presence rather than mere terrain. In Kalauna thought the mountains hold the island's fertility and are addressed in the food magic that keeps gardens bearing, so the sacred peak stands at the centre of a moral geography linking ancestors, land and the perennial fear of hunger. Michael Young's ethnography documents the ritual and mythic weight carried by such sacred heights on Nidula.
Domains
- sacred geography
- land fertility
Powers
- holds the island's fertility as an ancestral presence
Sources
- The tabooed sacred mountain of the Kalauna landscape is treated as an animate ancestral presence central to food-fertility ritual: Michael W. Young, Magicians of Manumanua: Living Myth in Kalauna (1983) (secondary)