Dreams and Hawaiian Culture

[starrwriter]

At Howetzer's suggestion I am posting these notes: Dreams and their meaning played an important role in the culture and religion of ancient Hawaii and to a lesser degree, this role continues today among native Hawaiians. Before contact with whites and the introduction of Christianity, Hawaiian elders taught that the human soul travels on journeys during dreams. Moe uhane, the Hawaiian word for dream, means "soul sleep." Hawaiians believed they communicated with aumakua or ancestral guardians while sleeping and this important relationship was sustained through dreaming. During "soul sleep," people received messages of guidance from the gods, formed romantic relationships, made prophecies and revealed cures to illnesses. However, dreams could also have a dark side. The old Hawaiians feared becoming lost while dreaming. They thought their spirits would then roam the hills and forests as lost ghosts. Even worse, they believed that their spirits could be captured by a kahuna (shaman) and forced to do unpleasant things. Some Hawaiian families considered the shark or mano a guardian spirit manifested from deceased relatives. They believed that a departed ancestor took the form of a shark after death and appeared in dreams to living relatives. These Hawaiians would feed and pet a special shark whom they believed to be a relative. In turn, the shark spirit would protect the family by warning in dreams of coming misfortune and delivering advice to avoid immediate danger. Some Hawaiian chiefs believed they acquired premonition of future events by consuming the eyes of man-eating sharks such as the tiger and great white. For more detailed information you can order "Hawaiian Legends of Dreams" online at the University of Hawaii Press website. The new book was researched and written by Caren Kealaokapualehua Loebel-Fried, an author and artist who lives part-time in Volcano, Hawaii. Book purchase link: http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/cart/shopcor...f971e7e92b1021c

[Alaurast78]

Very Interesting... I think dreams could be anything. Who know for sure really!!! Thanks for all the information!

[WaaayOutThere]

That is very interesting. Thanks for sharing!

[YULAW]

WaaayOutThere you wanna stop with these 1 and 2 line sentences and reply like you actually care! Anyway If that book involves a free trip to Hawaii then considered it ordered by me. I love the tridition of Hawaiians because it favors The japanese so much Well I guess because its a mixture of Japanese there also. Good stuff.

[starrwriter]

Originally posted by Alaurast78 Very Interesting... I think dreams could be anything. Who know for sure really!!! Thanks for all the information! From an anthropology viewpoint, what is most interesting is that no culture thought dreams were meaningless -- except for the culture of medical science until quite recently. Even now some scientists still believe dream content is inconsequential -- a sort of gibberish background for REM sleep.

[irishcream]

I think i replied to another post wherein i said something along the lines of 'if dreams were meaningless, why would our brains waste time coming up with them?' I definitely believe they serve a purpose, even if it is just like a re-shuffle. But for my own part, i believe that some dreams do hold some kind of meaning or interpretational quality. i have some dreams that i find difficult to remember, and yet i'll have other dreams that are as clear as anything, that stay with me for a long time. These are the dreams i tend to look into a bit more, and very often, i find something that i can use in my daily life, to improve myself. Didn't the Native American Indians practice lucidity as a common thing? To contact the spirits? I mean, i read somewhere that mothers trained their children to dream lucidly from an early age. I apologise if i have that wrong...