Sidestep: The Spirit Tree

For Māori, Cape Reinga is the most spiritually significant place in New Zealand. very old pohutukawa tree marks this special place. There has been a pohutukawa tree at Reinga, clinging precariously to the edge of the cliff, for many hundreds of years. It is said to have never bloomed - at least no one can produce a photo to support that is has. It is here that after death, all Māori spirits travel up the coast and over the wind-swept vista to the pohutukawa tree on the headland of Te Rerenga Wairua. They descend into the underworld (reinga) by sliding down a root into the sea below. The spirits then travel underwater to the Three Kings Islands where they climb out onto Ohaua, the highest point of the islands and bid their last farewell before returning to the land of their ancestors, Hawaiiki-A-Nui. For this tree is said to be the jumping point for the spirits departing Aotearoa for Hawaiki.

According to mythology, the spirits of the dead travel to Cape Reinga / Te Rerenga Wairua on their journey to the afterlife to leap off the headland and climb the roots of the 800-year-old pohutukawa tree and descend to the underworld to return to their traditional homeland of Hawaiki, using the Te Ara Wairua, the 'Spirits' pathway'. At Cape Reinga / Te Rerenga Wairua they depart the mainland. They turn briefly at the Three Kings Islands for one last look back towards the land, then continue on their journey.

A spring in the hillside, Te Waiora-a-Tāne (the 'Living waters of Tāne'), also played an important role in Māori ceremonial burials, representing a spiritual cleansing of the spirits, with water of the same name used in burial rites all over New Zealand. This significance lasted until the local population mostly converted to Christianity, and the spring was capped with a reservoir, with little protest from the mostly converted population of the area. However, the spring soon disappeared and only reappeared at the bottom of the cliff, making the reservoir useless.

Click pictures to enlarge

Below is an observational story by Barry Mitcalfe from 1961, called 'Leaping place of the Spirits'.

I had seen tidal-rips before. But here at Cape Reinga, where Te Moana-a-Rehua, the man-sea of the Maori, meets the woman-sea, Te Tai-o-Whitirea, there is a frenzy even rock cannot withstand. Only Te Reinga, last jagged extremity of the island, remains.To the ancient Maori, Cape Reinga was known as Te Rerenga Wairua, leaping-place of the spirits. Here, the Maori believed, the spirits of his dead departed the island to return to Hawaiki.

There is no more appropriate point of departure for the journey between the living and the dead than Te Rerenga Wairua, not only for its desolate appearance, but also for its situation, at the northwestern extremity of the island, angling into the Pacific, towards the islands of origin. Most Polynesian islands have a Rerenga Wairua but as we move Northwards through the Pacific the Rerenga of each island swings Westward, homing towards mysterious and enigmatic Hawaiiki.

In this barren landscape where the spirits of the dead gathered, every stream, hill and tree had a special significance for the Maori-and still has for certain elders, such as Hohepa Kanara (Joseph Conrads) of Te Kao, who guided us on our first trip to Te Rerenga Wairua.

Bubbling came from a spring in the hillside, high above the spirit's leap. This stream was sacred. Its very name, Te Waiora-a-Tane (Waters-of-life), came from Hawaiiki. The Maoris believed that once the spirit had passed this point, there was no return from unconsciousness back to the land of the living. Here, the spirits underwent the transformation that prepared them for their long journey through the seas to Hawaiki. The waters of Waiora-a-Tane had taken the tapu of unnumbered generations of Maori dead.

Moreover, a spiritual cleansing with waters called Te Waiora-a-Tane was a feature in the ceremonial of Maori death and the exhumation of bones in all parts of New Zealand. Te-Waiora-a-Tane bore much of the same relation to the ancient religion of the Maori as the waters of Jordan bear to the Christian rites of baptism. This was the stream the Europeans intended to use for their water supply. As the Maori by that time, had become possibly more Christian than the pakeha, little protest was made. A large concrete reservoir was built, set into the hill beside the track leading down to the lighthouse.

It is still there to be seen, but that is all. It is empty, useless, for no sooner was the work finished than the little stream, Te Waiora-a-Tane, disappeared underground, and did not emerge until it reached the safety of the sea, where it bubbles forth in a clear spring at low-tide mark.

On white, misty days when the cloud is lying close to the land, the older Maori people say they can hear Te Reo Irirangi, a peculiar high singing, just on the edge of silence. This singing signifies the passing of the spirits. Sometimes the spirits are chattering and laughing too. Only certain people can hear this, but they swear by it, and they include several whose judgment I would not question in other, more mundane matters.

The ancient people of this land were all of them aware of the spirits passing, and in this part of the island at least—even constructed their food-houses accordingly, with the entrance always facing the north, lest the tapu spirit be trapped, contaminating the food, with possibly fatal results. Such things had been known.

The spirits paused and wept on the hill called Haumu, as they gazed for the last time back the way they had come. It is from Maringinoa, not Haumu, that one has the last view of Ninety-Mile Beach and the sweep of country southward. The very name Maringinoa comes from the weeping of the spirits. “Maringinoa,” said Hohepa Kanara, “is where the spirits farewelled their people,” From almost direct from Haumu to the high point overlooking the aka, the root by which the spirits descended into the ocean.

“After Maringinoa,” said Hohepa Kanara, “the spirits descend into the valley of Waingurunguru. In that valley you can hear the water tangiing for the dead.” below Maringinoa is a valley, very still and swampy, where a stream flows sluggishly, if at all, and at the water's edge you could hear faint droning, coming from everywhere and nowhere. Thus was Waingurunguru, murmuring-waters. It was more an eerie quivering of the air than an actual sound, and it persisted for the length of the stream.

The beach stretching from Cape Maria van Diemen to Te Pae-o-Rehua, the high western edge of Te Rerenga Wairua. From the top of Te Pae-o-Rehua, where the wireless masts stand today, the spirits took the plunge, down Te Waiora-a-Tane to the final jagged scarp of Te Reinga itself, almost a thousand feet below. Here there is a hole through a rock, into which the spirits are said to go: after this, they ascend again, and thence descend by the aka (root) to the Reinga, which is a branch of a tree, projecting out of the rock, inclining downwards, with part of it broken off by the violence of the wind but said to have been broken off by the number of spirits which went down by the aka some years ago, when great numbers were killed in a fight.

The same pohutukawa tree is still there today, an insignificant thing growing in a cleft in the rock, but its endurance over the centuries on this barren place where nothing else grows is almost beyond nature, supernatural.

Below Te Aka, the long dry root of the pohutukawa which does not quite reach the sea, is Maurianuku, the entrance to the underworld. here the Maori spirits go down to their hell. Kelp used to slide back and forth over the entrance, and now the rocks are reddened with Kokowai or red-ochre, with which the Maoris used to daub themselves. Even the fish caught at this place were red. But there is no sign of Kokowai today, only coralline, the reddish sea-algae. Although the coast, a hundred yards away, is thick with paua and crayfish, here the underwater walls of the Reinga were almost bare of any growth. One could put this down to the force of the perpetual surge, the backwash of the tidal-rip. I found no sign of any great depth, but there was an eerieness in this water that made me stay close to the rock and not look too far.

The legend is that this tree has never blossomed in 800 years. However, the legend is wrong as it blossomed this last Christmas when Andy Paul saw it from the water while fishing. We are not sure where that legend came from.