► The Kahuna: His Education / Types of Kahuna

Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Friday, June 5, 1959 - Clarice B. Taylor's "Tales about Hawaii"

     "The kahuna of old Hawaii was a specialist because he was an educated man. He began learning his specialty as a child under the direct supervision of a mater artisan."

     This is the beginning of the explanation which Daddy (David K.) Bray gives haole "seekers of the truth" who come to him to learn of the old Hawaiian religion. 

     "Old Hawaii did not have a public school system which tried to educate everyone. But it had small schools conducted by skilled men or women who wished to pass their particular knowledge on to the young.

ORAL TEACHING
     "Selected students were taken into these schools. All teaching was by example or oral - The Hawaiian had not yet learned to write.

     "The schools of old Hawaii can be likened to our grammar schools, high schools and Universities.

     "The Kahuna anaana, the *sorceror of whom you have heard so much, was like a grammar schools student. He had learned a little about the power of suggestion and he probably knew how to compound poisons.

     "He used his powers to his own advantage and for evil." He stopped learning and did not advance to high school."

     "Had the sorceror gone on to high school, he could have become a specialist who used his skill for good, such as a kahuna lomilomi, one who massaged the muscles and nerves - a kahuna ho'ohanau, an obstetrician or a kahuna po'iuhane who was much like the spiritualist of today."

     The kahuna who finishes high school and continues his education in a University, Daddy Bray explains, is on the road to becoming a high priest, a kahuna nui.

PHYSICIAN
     He may become a kahuna lapaau laau, a physician who heals with herbs. He may become a kahuna haha, a 
*diognastician; or a kahuna ha'aha'iiwa, a bonesetter.

     "The kahuna maukaula is the skilled one who has learned to interpret the weather omens and the kahuna kilo is the one who has learned to forecast events.

     "Having graduated from the University, the kahuna can become a master kahuna by traveling about and learning from the skilled teachers. He becomes a specialist in psychotherapy and so earns his master's degree."

NEXT: Kahuna School