I had a heated argument with a game hunter on Kauai last weekend about whether or not the ancient Hawaiian kings were honored in death by being roasted or boiled.
In the 1500 years the Hawaiian people lived on the unspoiled islands, there had probably been time to try all practices, I suggested. He said he'd visited and even discovered undisturbed caves where kings had been entombed. It was all about their bones, which they believed to contain their mana.
Mana is power of the essential variety. It's kind of like how Native Americans of all tribes refer to a person's gifts as their personal medicine. Wikipedia says this about mana: "in anthropological discourse, mana as a generalized concept ... has commonly been interpreted as "the stuff of which magic is formed," as well as the substance of which souls are made."
The substance of which souls are made. The spark of the divine.
Do you suppose mana might be the Hawaiian word for awesomeness? It's something you can feel in your bones.
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