Mafola
Tokelauan · deity · Tokelauan traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Mafola was one of the lesser nature-gods of Tokelau, a god of the sea who resided in the world rather than in the sky. Macgregor records of him chiefly that requests addressed to him through his priest were always fulfilled, marking him out among the minor gods as a reliably answering power. Like the other minor gods, little else of his character survived the loss of traditional religious knowledge after Christian conversion.
Domains
- sea
Powers
- to grant without fail the requests made through his priest
Sources
- Mafola is one of the Tokelauan nature-gods of the sea, distinguished in Macgregor's account by the belief that requests addressed to him through his priest were always fulfilled.: Gordon Macgregor, Ethnology of Tokelau Islands, Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin 146 (Honolulu, 1937), pp. 62-63. (secondary); Judith Huntsman and Antony Hooper, Tokelau: A Historical Ethnography (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1996), pp. 141-144. (secondary)