Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

in] Orenda and Mana 67
cigala does it by chirping, by uttering his orenda. Generally
orenda seems to be good, but if a man has died from witchcraft,
' an evil orenda has struck him.'
The mana 1 of the Melanesians is very like orenda, but seems
to be somewhat more specialized 2 . All
men do not possess
mana, though it seems mainly to originate in personal human
beings. Spirits and ghosts are apt to possess mana, but all ghosts
do not possess it, only ghosts that are specially potent, Tindalos.
The word mana is adjective as well as substantive, it is indeed
very adjectival in its nature, qualities seem almost like specialized
forms of mana 3 . A man's social position depends mainly on the
amount of mana he lias, either naturally or by virtue 4 of cere-
monies of initiation. All this sounds rather abstract, yet on the
other hand mana has a certain fluid substantiveness. It can be
communicated from stone to stone. Asked to describe mana one
savage will say it is ' heavy,' another that it is ' hot,' a third that
it is ' strange, uncommon.' A man finds a queer looking stone,
puts it near his yams or in his pig-sty, pigs and yams prosper,
clearly the stone had mana for pigs and yams. Sometimes it
seems to stand for mere vague greatness. In Mangarevan any
number over forty is mana mana mana, aptly rendered by
Mr Marett 5 as an 'awful' lot. Here we have the unknown
bordering on the supernatural, though as has been well remarked
nothing to the savage is so natural as the ' supernatural.' Perhaps
the term super-usual would be safer as having no connotation of
' natural law.'
This vague force in man and in almost everything is constantly
trembling on the verge of personality. The medicine-men of the
Australian Dieri 6 are Kutchi ; when one of the Dieri sees a circling
dust-storm near the camp great is his terror, for there is Kutchi.
He hurls his boomerang and kills Kutchi and flies for terror after-
wards. ' Kutchi growl along a me, by and by me tumble down.'
1 Codrington, The Melanesians, 1891, pp. 118—120 and p. 192.
2 Any attempt to distinguish between the mana, orenda and the like is evidently
precarious, since we are liable to be misled by the emphasis on special usages of
the word as noted by particular observers.
3 W. R. Halliday, The Force of Initiative in Magical Conflict, in Folk-Lore xxi.
(1910), p. 148.
4 Miss Hope Mirrlees calls my attention to Chaucer's use of the word vertu, with
meanings closely analogous to those of mana and almost as various.
5 Threshold of Religion, p. 122.
6 Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 446.
5—2