Sunset at Black Rock on Maui (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nWith my late and much lamented colleague and friend William J. Hamblin, I published the column below in the Deseret News<\/em> on 22 February 2014 \u2014 which is now almost exactly eleven years ago. \u00a0(It still astonishes me to be writing about Bill in the past tense.) \u00a0Given my current location, within easy walking distance of Black Rock, I think it appropriate to share the column again here. \u00a0It bore the title \u201cDiving into the afterlife in Hawaii\u201d:<\/p>\n\nThree-mile long Kaanapali Beach, on the Hawaiian island of Maui, is often ranked among the world\u2019s best beaches, and its resorts are thronged with guests throughout the year.<\/p>\n
Dividing Kaanapali roughly in half, directly adjacent to the Sheraton Maui, the lava promontory known as Black Rock provides especially wonderful snorkeling. At any given moment, scores of tourists paddle about it, watching tropical fish, sea turtles and the occasional ray. A few intrepid souls climb onto Black Rock and jump from it into the sea.<\/p>\n
Probably few of them are aware of Black Rock\u2019s ancient religious significance. Hawaiians knew it as \u201cka-leine-a-ka-\u2018uhane\u201d or \u201cleap of the soul.\u201d<\/p>\n
Almost every Pacific island group, from New Zealand to Samoa and Easter Island, had a departing-place from which dying souls were thought to jump into the next world. Typically, though not always, these places were situated on promontories or high bluffs overlooking the western sea.<\/p>\n
In pre-modern Hawaii, as in many other cultures \u2014 notably ancient Egypt, with its pyramids and tombs on the western side of the Nile, toward the sunset \u2014 \u201ctraveling westward\u201d was a polite euphemism for dying.<\/p>\n
Every Hawaiian island has at least one such place of departure, usually on its northwest (e.g., Kaena Point on Oahu, and the rise overlooking Hanapepe Bay on Kauai), and Pu\u2019u Keka\u2019a, Black Rock, is one of those. It\u2019s even said that many battles were fought in the area of Kaanapali for the convenience of those who would be killed.<\/p>\n
The last independent ruler of Maui was the 18th-century chief Kahekili, a great athlete. His special skill was \u201clele kawa,\u201d or cliff jumping.<\/p>\n
Places called \u201cKahekili\u2019s Leap\u201d exist on Oahu and Lanai, but his favorite location for spectacular cliff dives was Maui\u2019s Black Rock, the very place where tourists continue to jump today, presumably rather more timidly and with less artistry. He didn\u2019t jump merely for fun, though. His leaps had religious significance.<\/p>\n
To the Hawaiians, only a man possessing especially powerful \u201cmana,\u201d or divine or magical power, could return unharmed after jumping from the very place where the dead entered the next world. Thus, Kahekili\u2019s impressive dives confirmed his sacred kingly status.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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\nGathered about each jumping-off point were ancestral spirit helpers who guided souls into the underworld. Nearby was a testing place for the newly dead, who would either be permitted to continue on to the realm of spirits or, because they still had earthly obligations, be sent back to their bodies.<\/p>\n
One folktale, strikingly reminiscent of modern accounts of near-death experiences, concerns a young warrior who meets his dead sister at the doorway to the spirit world. She first takes him to the underworld itself, where he sees the happy spirits of the dead, but she forbids him from joining them because, having done so, he could never return to Earth. Next, he learns the passwords that would enable him to enter the presence of the chief of the spirits, but he\u2019s ultimately forced to re-enter his body.<\/p>\n
Northwest of the inhabited Hawaiian Islands is rocky 46-acre Necker Island. The last of Hawaii\u2019s basalt high islands \u2014 the other, older ones, such as Midway and Kure Atoll, have long since subsided below the sea \u2014 it was once about the size of the island of Lanai.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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