Whispers and Vanities in Samoan Indigenous Religious Culture

The god of this Tagaloa government was believed to be the Supreme God Tagaloa.
His earthly manifestation, whose chiefly title was Tagaloa, was head of this earthly
regime in Uafato. The ancient Samoans who subscribed to the Tagaloa tradition
would go to Uafato to pay homage. This involved saying prayers, fasting and
meditating at each of the nine prayer mounds (known in Samoan as lagi) located at
different levels up the mountain, starting near the bottom. There were nine such
prayer mounds representing nine heavens or places of spiritual engagement. These
prayer mounds served as places of worship around which a community of people
settled, most of whom were adherents of the Tagaloa religion. When worshippers
walked from one mound to the next they would acknowledge through prayer the
different stages of creation, as recorded in the Tagaloa auala or funeral chant. 20 It
was believed that on death the spirit of a person would travel the auala or pathway up
this mountain towards the ninth heaven or lagi 21 . If the deceased had achieved during
his/her lifetime each of the levels of spirituality required to enter each heaven, they
would proceed through until they reached the ninth heaven, their final destination.
The tenth heaven where God Tagaloa resided was beyond the ninth heaven, beyond
the earthly mountain, into the cosmos and the realm of the unknowable. In life and
death the tenth heaven was considered beyond man’s reach. This thesis on the
spiritual and temporal realms of human life was part of Uafato indigenous history and
implicit in their religious chants, including their medicinal incantations.
The laoa chant of a Ti’avea taulasea provides the last example of healing practices.
The significance of this chant is that unlike the other three chants, this one provides
clear evidence of the character of the religious duality experienced by Samoans today,
where there is an explicit joining of their Christian and indigenous religious beliefs,
even if somewhat awkward.
In this treatment the Ti’avea taulasea would ask his patient to face seaward, fan his or
her face and then chant:
Folo, oi Folo e, ia e alofa mai
O Pai ua laoa i le ivi o le mu
O Iesu o le taulasea,
O Iesu e maua ai le fofo
Ia e alofa mai.
Folo, oh Folo, have pity
Pai is choking on the bone of a mu fish
Jesus is the Physician, Jesus will cure him
Have pity.
After the chant the fishbone would usually have dislodged itself.
The religious and cultural underpinnings of the healer’s medicinal knowledge are
apparent within the traditional treatment of this relatively straightforward and
common ailment. The treatment of laoa provides a helpful example not only of how
indigenous religious beliefs are embedded and embodied in traditional Samoan
healing practices – the main casualty of the culture of whispers – but how religion
20
21
See a full account of this Tagaloa funeral chant in Tui Atua (2009a, p.155).
The term lagi is used to describe a spiritual heaven and a place of worship.
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