Ma'alea Harbor has two large sacred pohakus, or stones, located in front of Buzz's Wharf restaurant which is no longer open. The ancient Hawaiians revered pohakus as part of the sacred landscape. If you are visiting Ma'alea Harbor to take a boat cruise, or visit the aquarium, take a moment to visit these rocks and imagine their place in Hawaiian culture.
The first people of these islands carved their culture out of stone—and saw those stones as living beings.
Any discussion of pohaku is, obviously, a perfect blend of rock-solid practicality and mythic spirituality—a combination that makes Western minds suspicious but that makes perfect sense in the Polynesian universe. In his classic work Ruling Chiefs of Hawai‘i, Hawaiian historian S.M. Kamakau offers this piece of lore: “The Stone-of-Kane (Pohaku-o-Kane) consisting of a stone set upright in the shape of a pillar, every family and every countryman could erect as an altar where offerings were made to the gods as penance for sins committed by any member of the family. Here he unburdened himself to the god by repentance for sins of the flesh and by prayer offered by the family. This Stone-of-Kane was a place of rest and refuge and the height from which a man conversed with the god in the heavens.”
Thus the pohaku represents a very pragmatic poetry, and it resonates with spirit.
In pre-Christian Hawai‘i certain pohaku were themselves recognized as divine. As such, they were anointed and prayed over and named. During the widespread conversions of the early nineteenth century, these akua pohaku presented a real dilemma. Just because the people were turning away from the old gods, that didn’t mean that the gods were going away, especially not gods of native stone. It’s difficult to imagine the agony people felt as they buried these stones, or submerged them, or otherwise condemned them to muffled obscurity.
To truly “get” pohaku, one must cast away the Western assumption that rocks are inert, lifeless pieces of humdrum nothingness. Pohaku are alive and speaking with slow, slow, slow but fundamental messages.
