Guardian of the Land of the Dead

Topileta is the most nearly god-like being in Trobriand eschatology. When a person dies, the baloma, the main form of the spirit, travels to the island of Tuma, some ten miles north-west of the Trobriands, where Topileta presides as master of the villages of the dead. Malinowski's informants compared him to a ferryman or gatekeeper: he meets the newcomer, receives a fee from the valuables with which the corpse was adorned at burial, and shows the spirit the road to the netherworld, with separate roads for the dead of different districts. His admission of a spirit does not depend on moral considerations but simply on his satisfaction with the payment. A female counterpart is said to perform the same office for women. Topileta was already noted in C. G. Seligman's 1910 survey of the Massim and was described in detail in Malinowski's 1916 essay on the baloma.

Domains

• afterlife

Powers

• to admit or refuse the spirits of the dead entry into the netherworld

Sources

• Malinowski, Bronislaw. 'Baloma; the Spirits of the Dead in the Trobriand Islands.' Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 46 (1916): 353-430.
• Seligman, C. G. The Melanesians of British New Guinea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910.
• Malinowski, Bronislaw. Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1948.