Lono: Hawaiian High God of Peace, Agriculture and the Makahiki

Lono belongs to the four high gods of Hawai’i, together with Ku, Kane and Kanaloa. He is the Atua of peace and thus stands in functional opposition to Ku, the war god.

In the annual ritual calendar, the worship of Ku and Lono alternated: during wartime Ku dominated, during the four Makahiki months Lono dominated.

In Kingship and Sacrifice, Valeri shows how the Hawaiian religious system institutionalized this two-season structure. The alternation between wartime and time of peace is not only calendrical but theologically and politically fundamental.

Although Lono is counted among the four high gods of Hawai’i and his cult was firmly anchored in the ritual calendar, the underlying theology, like the related Maori tradition, has no systematic doctrine and no closed body of teaching.

Whatever reality the Atua possess, they gain in the performance: in the karakia, in the gatherings at the marae, in the whakapapa recitations. From a religious-studies perspective, this practice-based theology counts as an independent contribution to the field; Mary Ann Boord and Edward Tregear worked it out systematically in their religious-ethnographic studies of Polynesia.

Anyone who researches Lono encounters a fundamental difficulty of Polynesian religious studies: many sources come from the colonial 19th century and are colored by the perceptions of missionaries and ethnologists.

This is particularly true of the Lono cult, which was closely tied to the Cook episode. Recent research therefore works continually on a decolonization of these holdings by placing Polynesian voices at the center and critically questioning Western categories.

If one places Polynesian religion alongside other indigenous religions of Oceania, Australia and Southeast Asia, a double characteristic emerges: in its basic motifs it remains remarkably constant, yet at the same time it adapts locally.

That Lono corresponds to the Maori Rongo and yet has taken on a distinctive Hawaiian form is one example of this. This tension between universality and locality forms an important object of study in Pacific religious ethnology.

The name Lono corresponds etymologically to the Maori Rongo. The proto-Polynesian root *Rongo means ‘sound’, ‘message’, ‘rumor’. In Hawai’i the sound shift from r to l takes place. The semantic connection between ‘message’ and ‘peace’ is as recognizable in Hawai’i as among the Maori.

Epithets of Lono are Lono-i-ka-makahiki (‘Lono of the Makahiki’), Lono-nui-akea (‘great, wide Lono’), Lono-makua (‘Father Lono’). This diversity shows the different functional emphases.

That Lono is invoked under several epithets has a linguistic-historical background: such an abundance of names testifies to an oral tradition that has differentiated itself richly on a regional level.

The linguistic depth of the Maori and Hawaiian theonyms is documented in the lexicographical works of Bruce Biggs and Hugh Clarke. Anyone who wants to understand the kinship of the Polynesian languages cannot bypass this research.

In many cases Lono’s epithets are more than mere ornament. They encode particular ritual functions and are fixed in the karakia formulas. The tohunga, the ritual specialists, knew exactly which epithet was to be invoked in which situation. Charles Royal and Pou Temara study this precisely regulated liturgical practice.

What original meaning underlies the epithets is often disputed. In many cases competing etymological proposals stand side by side, without secured sources allowing a decision. Modern religious studies values this diversity as a richness rather than as a deficiency.

Lono’s central iconographic symbol is the Lono banner: a long wooden staff with a crosspiece and a white cloth (tapa), often decorated with bundles of feathers. This banner was carried from island to island during the Makahiki festival. Its cross section resembles a cross, which in 1779 led to a notorious confusion.

Pigs, gourds and certain plants are also associated with Lono. Beckwith and Valeri document the iconography in detail. Today the Lono banner is a symbol of Hawaiian cultural self-assertion.

Over the last five decades, Maori and Hawaiian carving art has undergone an impressive renaissance. Cliff Whiting, Robyn Kahukiwa, Wright Bowman and Sam Ka’ai are among the artists who have developed both traditional forms and modern adaptations.

The Atua, among them Lono, appear in their works in many forms; their iconographic presence thus reaches into present-day art.

Polynesian art cannot be separated from its cosmological meaning. Every spiral (koru), every ornament and every line carries a religious-phenomenological sense, including the Lono banner with its crosspiece and its bundles of feathers. Roger Neich, Damian Skinner and other art historians have systematically opened up these layers of meaning.

The Makahiki was the most important annual festival of Hawaiian religion. It lasted roughly four months, from November to February (according to the Hawaiian lunar calendar).

During this time war was forbidden, the Ku cult rested, Lono dominated. On the islands the Lono banner was carried around, each ahupua’a (land district) brought offerings, sporting contests and dance performances were held.

From a religious-studies perspective, the Makahiki is a classic harvest thanksgiving festival, comparable to the Roman Saturnalia or the Mesopotamian Akitu. Valerie Valeri analyzes the structure as ‘ritual inversion’: during the festival the normal social hierarchies are partly reversed, peace dominates, the people are fed with offerings.

The narrative material surrounding the Makahiki festival is, from a religious-studies perspective, not to be read as a closed narrative either, but as a web of stories that explain one another and are accented differently in the individual tribal traditions.

This rhizomatic, net-like structure poses methodical tasks for the research, but opens up hermeneutic depth to it. Differing versions of a story are not regarded as ‘false’ or ‘falsified’, but as regional expressions of equal rank.

The traditions around the Makahiki are not merely remembered but actively passed on, in karakia, in the speeches at the marae and in teaching. They are thus a living practice and not a shut-down archive. The language programs for Te Reo Maori and Olelo Hawai’i have considerably strengthened this vitality over the past three decades.

In January 1779 James Cook anchored with his ships in Kealakekua Bay on Hawai’i. By chance, that was just the peak phase of the Makahiki. The rectangular mast-crossbeam-cloth structures of his ship recalled the Lono banner.

A number of Hawaiian sources and Western observers report that Cook was indeed received ritually as an incarnation of Lono, or at least as connected to Lono.

This story is the subject of a famous controversy between Marshall Sahlins (Islands of History, 1985) and Gananath Obeyesekere (The Apotheosis of Captain Cook, 1992). Sahlins defends the thesis of ritual identification; Obeyesekere argues that it is a colonial construction.

From a religious-historical perspective the central point remains: Cook was killed in a confrontation on 14 February 1779, probably after the Makahiki had ended and his unusual return could no longer be theologically classified.

The episode of James Cook, who was associated with Lono on his arrival, can only be understood if one knows a basic feature of the religion of the Maori and Hawaiians: rite and everyday activity interlock.

While other religious systems separate the sacred sharply from the profane, here the references to the Atua permeate the whole of life. This religiosity anchored in the life-world itself is the subject of religious-phenomenological studies by Mason Durie, Charles Royal, Lilikala Kame’eleihiwa and other Polynesian scholars of today’s generation.

How closely ritual practice and everyday life are intertwined can also be read from the language: terms like mana, tapu, aroha or hauora belong today to the general English of Aotearoa and are also used outside religious contexts. That Maori theology has thus inscribed itself into language usage documents its deep cultural impact.

Lono was worshipped in his own heiau, among them in the Halulu temple on Lana’i. Certain heiau were ‘peace heiau’ (Lono heiau), others ‘war heiau’ (Ku heiau). This differentiation is instructive from a religious-studies perspective: it shows a systematic ritual separation of the spheres of life.

In the Makahiki ritual a specific liturgy was central, documented by Pukui and Beckwith. It comprises prayers, dance, offerings and the procession of the Lono banner. Farmers brought the banner offerings from their harvest, the nobility distributed gifts.

Polynesian religion remains alive above all at marae and heiau, those sites that are at once meeting place and place of worship, and during the Makahiki months in particular Lono was bound to the heiau rites. Every marae and every heiau has its own whakapapa, its own traditions and its own Atua references.

A marae visit begins with the powhiri, the ritual in which the tangata whenua solemnly receive their guests. It is not ceremonial folklore but lived religious practice and counts, from a religious-studies perspective, among the best documented Polynesian welcoming rituals.

In the 20th and 21st centuries cult practice has changed markedly. Where the tohunga once played a central role, the rite is today often carried by the kaumatua, the elders, as well as the marae committees. From a religious-sociological perspective this shift is instructive; Manuka Henare and Mason Durie discuss it in their research.

In protective contexts Lono is worshipped primarily through the invocation of peace and fertility. Farmers who pray for a good harvest turn to Lono. In peace negotiations too, Lono was the point of reference. This practice is today partly revived within the framework of cultural-political initiatives.

The annual Makahiki is today celebrated anew in some Hawaiian schools, cultural centers and sovereignty movements, often as a symbolic remembrance of the pre-colonial order. This practice is not magical but cultural and ritual.

On the topic of protection, a distinction is worthwhile from a religious-studies perspective: the Western understanding thinks in terms of the effective amulet, the Polynesian in terms of the cultivated relationship. Protection here does not rest on a magical-causal effect but is set up relationally and ritually.

Whoever stands in relationship to an Atua such as Lono and maintains this relationship is regarded as ‘protected’, not because an object works, but because an existing relation is cosmologically binding. In religious anthropology this idea runs under the term ‘relational ontology’.

Protective practice is moreover a field on which tradition and modernity meet. Smartphone applications with karakia, online instructions for protective rituals and virtual marae visits show that Polynesian religion takes up new media for its practice. This modernization is not to be understood as a flattening, but as an adaptable further development.

Within Polynesia Lono corresponds to the Maori Rongo, the Tahitian Ro’o, and is comparable to Demeter, Ceres or Saturn (in his agrarian function). Like these, Lono embodies the cultivated plant and social peace.

The specificity of the Makahiki is important: an institutionalized four-month phase of peace per year is remarkable in religious history and is so pronouncedly attested in only a few other cultures. Valeri and Sahlins discuss this specificity.

Joseph Campbell and Mircea Eliade have systematically investigated such universal structures of religious experience. As fundamental as their works are, they must nonetheless be rethought for the concrete Polynesian contexts, without lapsing into a pan-globalizing simplification. Recent Polynesian research attaches great importance to this context-sensitive interpretation.

Within international Indigenous Studies, parallels between Polynesian worlds of belief and other First Peoples’ traditions have been systematically worked out since the 1990s. The Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith decisively shaped this field of research with her standard work Decolonizing Methodologies, published in 1999, whose methodical line was taken up worldwide.

Lono is present in the Hawaiian renaissance. Movements for the revival of the Makahiki, for the promotion of the Hawaiian lunar calendar and for the care of the Lono heiau are active. Lilikala Kame’eleihiwa and other Hawaiian scholars work on bringing Lono back into public awareness.

The Cook-Lono debate is the subject of international religious-ethnological teaching. A deeper classification within the Polynesian family of religions shows the close kinship of Lono with Rongo and the specifically Hawaiian form.

A deity like Lono, associated with the idea of peace, agriculture and the Makahiki festival, belongs to a religious system to which international discourse increasingly grants independence and which is no longer disparaged as ‘mythology‘ or ‘folklore‘. Terms such as ‘mana’, ‘tapu’, ‘mauri’ and ‘whakapapa’ are by now part of the religious-studies technical vocabulary, which documents this recognition.

Their use, however, presupposes a contextual sensitivity that is not self-evident.

How Polynesian religions are taken up in popular culture, in Disney productions, in tourism, in esoteric literature, is the subject of critical debates. Where does an appropriate mediation take place, where is it flattened or distorted? These questions are discussed emphatically and in public in Aotearoa and Hawai’i.

Important contributions on Lono are found in Martha Beckwith, Mary Kawena Pukui, David Malo, Valerio Valeri, Marshall Sahlins, Gananath Obeyesekere and Lilikala Kame’eleihiwa.

Sahlins’ Islands of History and Obeyesekere’s The Apotheosis of Captain Cook are the central texts of the Cook-Lono debate. Valeri’s Kingship and Sacrifice is the standard work on the structure of the Hawaiian religious system.

Lono remains a central reference for the understanding of pre-colonial Hawaiian religion and its encounter with Europe.

The dialogue between the Polynesian-internal traditions of knowledge and academic research is today carried by a number of institutions: the Royal Society of New Zealand: Te Aparangi, the Maori Studies Department of Auckland University, the University of Hawai’i at Manoa and the Te Punga Tipu foundation.

This institutional underpinning ensures that Polynesian research does not remain only a speaking about Polynesia but also proceeds from Polynesia itself.

A bridge to global religious studies is built by studies that use Polynesian theology as an example case of a non-Western religiosity. As methodically demanding as this comparative work is, it nonetheless opens up new perspectives for understanding religion as a cultural phenomenon.