Close Encounters of an Aumakua Kind

Photo by Milad Fakurian on Unsplash

When I sat down on the edge of the lava to slip on my fins, I noticed the diver’s buoy right away but didn’t think much of it. There were always free divers here testing their limits in the deep water in center of the bay. I hadn't been in the ocean for a week and was eager to enter. I would have preferred a big swim across Kealakekua Bay, but when a couple of afternoon hours off presented themselves I hopped in my Honda Fit and headed to Two-Step. Not the most exciting place to swim, but one I knew well. Comfortable.

Sitting on the rock, I wasn’t really thinking about the body of water right in front of me, already touching my toes. I was thinking about the long list of articles accruing in my notebook I wanted to write for you. I was thinking I needed to get back to Part III of “Thumb Out and Bound for the Underworld,” and could hear Part IV waving its arms at me farther out in the deep water. I was thinking about how I wanted to write a little version of my own history of poetry, inspired by receiving a book with that title as a Christmas gift from a friend, a history that began with Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses and Dr. Seuss, that really kicked into gear when, at age twelve, I recited “The Highwayman,” by Alfred Noyes in the local library’s declamation contest and came in second, my prize a hardbound copy of Poems that Live Forever which the librarian bound in plastic to preserve its paper cover. I read it from cover to cover many times-Longfellow, Whitman, Emily Brontë, Christina Rosetti, both the Brownings, Keats, Byron, Shelley, and of course “The Highwayman,” which seared its way into my adolescent soul and body and made me somewhat of a masochist as I entered the world of young men not conditioned to be dashing romantics riding up to the old inn door.

I was thinking how I need to get my course on circumnavigating the po’ai together, and of editing my latest poem structured on the nine oscillations that administer a spell in Heka, Mū Hawaiian magic, themselves kin to the seven acknowledged properties of light, and wondering what the two others are, because of course they exist. The Mū knew far more than we do about the true nature of reality because they weren’t limited by the tools of science. Those tools are useful, but how can they measure what exists beyond their range?

And I was also thinking about the WhatsApp audio I sent to my friend Morgan from the parking lot at Kaya’s where I stopped to get a gluten free brownie on my way to this swim. (Once she and I had been parked in the very spot where I was speaking into my phone and a spirit knocked on the car window. I swear there was no one in corporeal form there.) Anyway, I was telling her about a revelation I’d had earlier in the day that my access to my aumakua center was blocked and that’s why I didn't remember my dreams, and if I did, they were a muddled mess. My brain felt clogged and congested. No wonder I couldn’t connect with my aumakua.

Aumakua is a Hawaiian word for ancestral guardian spirits that watch over generations of families. They are particular, not general like a totem animal. When a relative dies, they go into the body of an animal or plant and look after their family on Earth. It is also the word for one of three energy centers recognized by Hawaiians that correspond to the physical body. The centers are 'unihipili, uhāne and aumakua-sacral, heart and crown respectively. The centers are both universal and individual, unique to each person. The ‘unihipili holds the particular energetic qualities for each individual’s feminine, the uhāne the masculine, and the aumakua is androgynous, beyond the stimulating limitations of polarity.

For the past two years I have been getting to know my own centers in mentorship with Ke’oni Hanalei of Pōhala Hawaiian Botanicals. The process we use is very organic and flexible. For me, it’s a perfect combination of the structure provided by the three centers with no expectations that we have to finish anything by a certain time. For the first two centers I showed up and did the work, which is actually better described by the words surrender and remembrance. As I began to understand my frequency and embody the qualities of my energetic feminine and masculine by correcting how I’d allowed them to be distorted by my own personal history and a culture without a true understanding of the highest potential of both, I was amazed at how my external reality shifted and excited to move onto the aumuakua.

As a post-menopausal woman in my 50s I felt ready to explore the possibilities beyond my society’s traditional gender expectations. Freed from expressing the moon’s cycles through menstruation, which for me, was often draining and debilitating, I felt liberated by menopause, not just because it was more convenient not to bleed every month (not easy in a society that requires most of us to hustle to meet our basic needs), I could feel my being had changed. I was looking at the world through new eyes and as an artist was excited to express this new perspective. My aumakua was calling.

One day in conversation with Ke’oni, something surprising happened. I don’t even remember where we were in our exploration of my uhāne (masculine), but I do remember thinking that it was taking a long time. Why was my masculine dragging his feet? Didn’t he want to be restored as a hero? When was I going to write my Ho’okukāla, my uhāne’s proclamation, like I’d done for my ‘unihipili? The words were not there. They in fact, were not even waiting for me to invoke them out of my energy body. I had moved beyond the point where they needed to be expressed because I’d already integrated them. They were embodied. I was the proof.

The surprise was a new voice showing up. And it sounded just like me! It was my voice remembering my Draco star lineage. ( I’m not going to go into the star lineages right now, but for those interested here’s a link to explore them yourselves.) The remembrance, stuttering at first, was not expressed through facts and events like we expect from archaeology or history books. It came through as a shift in my tone of voice. I spoke with a new authority, powered by the red dragon I’d been sensing had been flying around me since 2020, when I was living on Kauai. I didn’t know about the Draco then, but when I did it wasn’t obvious that I was a descendant of these maligned beings who came to Earth to seed the experiments of time, ritual and sacrifice, all themes which had always interested me. (Time through archiving the past through writing.) As I spoke with the power of the dragon unwinding its tail in my belly and spreading its wings in my heart, I transcended the exploration of my uhāne and leapt on those shiny new wings into my aumakua. My masculine didn’t need a ho’okukāla to proclaim himself. That leap said more than any words could.

So there I was in the parking lot at Kaya’s speaking into my phone telling Morgan how I was experiencing a strong sensation in the back of my head where it met my neck, the medulla oblongata, the ā’ī oeoe in Hawaiian, considered to be a bridge between the physical and the etheric, and felt by me as a clog that was inhibiting my connection to my aumakua, which I was trying to explore through my Draco lineage.

Before I left the house to go for this swim, I’d decided to take a dose of a fern medicinal with the intention to see what I could unclog. I chose ‘Āhinahina, Maui wormwood, the medicinal of mysticism. (It’s not a fern, but still part of pua’aehuehu.) I was eager to get in the car and reached for the bottle on the butcher block counter, twisted the cap, squeezed the cap to suction a dose into the dropper and opened my mouth.

The feeling as it reached my tongue was strangely oily, not crisp and biting like a tincture preserved in alcohol. I looked at the bottle. Oh no. I had not taken a proper sized dose of ‘Āhinahina tincture, I had just swallowed a massive dose of ‘Āhinahina essential oil! It hit the back of my head immediately like a window opening into spring on a planet that only knows winter. This was going to be interesting. I could have laid down on my bed and waited it out, but decided to put my psychonaut suit on and see what happened. I got in my car and headed south to the water.

Wormwood, artemisia, is related to absinthe, the hallucinogenic liqueur loved by so many revolutionary romantic 19th century European artists. By nature, absinthe is not an either/or, it is a both/and- a devil’s brew and possibly a gift from sympathetic angels to sensitive humans weighed down by a time where the material world was so heavy it crushed the spirit every time a human attempted to call it into the body.

Imbibed by Van Gogh and Toulouse Lautrec, and probably the poets Baudelaire and Rimbaud and Verlaine, though I’m not sure about that, absinthe was a double-edged sword. Like all spells it required homeostasis to be effective, meaning what was invoked by its visions needed an equal sacrifice. If the person invoking its powers didn't make an equal sacrifice, spirit would step in and do it instead.

For Van Gogh, the sacrifice became his human avatar. He died from a gunshot wound, possibly self-inflicted though there’s debate about that, in a field outside the town of Auvers-sur-Oise. Traced back to its Proto-Indo-European origin, the word auver means edge or shore. Traveling backward, Oise, the name of the river near the town, comes from the name of the river, Isara. However, Isara is not a Roman name. Time traveling even further back on forgotten songlines, Isara shape shifts into the Proto-Indo-European *isərós (“vigorous, quick”), from *eis(ə, related to Sanskrit इषिरम् (iṣiram, “fast, quick”). Van Gogh, addled by angelic visions, haunted by devils, died at the edge of a quick river.

Based on current circumstances in the Kaya’s parking lot speaking into my phone, I was not going to die today by the edge of quick river, though maybe I was going to expel some worms, since wormwood is a strong purger of parasites from the human avatar. Because I’m the kind of person who believes there are no mistakes, especially in regards to the magical, I knew I’d dosed myself with the massive amount of essential oil instead of the tincture with some kind of purpose, unconscious yes, but nevertheless intended by a version of myself I didn’t yet have access to. I was going to ride this out and trust it was going to take me where I needed to go, which for me as I spoke into my phone could possibly be the expulsion of words from my brain.

I considered the possibility they could be physical worms congesting my brain keeping me from accessing my aumakua, but more likely they were thought forms, worms of doubt conditioned into me by society. They could even be worms passed onto me through genetics by my ancestors, most of whom for thousands of years faced a constant struggle the continual state of warfare on the European continent going back to the Roman Empire, and probably even further as humans moved out of the Asian steppes to inhabit the European continent. Let’s do this worms, I thought, turning the ignition and backing out of the parking lot.

If you’re wondering why I’m taking such a long time to tell this story, it’s because I’m having fun. As a writer, I like to riff like a free jazz saxophonist, John Coltrane or Pharaoh Sanders, like Alice Coltrane journeying to Satchidinanda on her harp. Writing in a straight line serves a purpose when information is absolutely essential to survival. Sometimes we need those instructions printed on the safety card about how to inflate the life vest when the plane crashes in the ocean, but straight-line writing will not open up what Aldous Huxley called “the doors of perception.”

Of course, a brief haiku can do the same thing as this essay, but I’m not Bāsho wandering the Road to the Deep North on foot in long ago Nippon, alone beneath an open window in a barn with snow dusting his dying body. (We know this because it’s the subject of his last haiku, composed as he died and found so that we can read it today in wonder at his wonder at those lost moments on this precious Earth.)

I am a jazz poet like my friend Elizabeth McKim, only I’m writing essays. I like to riff because I get a thrill from all those doors opening. I love the squawk of Pharoah’s sax and Alice’s harp hurls me into other dimensions where I dance with octopii while Ringo sings. But more than the fun to be had, I find riffing leads to the sublime, the overwhelming love and beauty pouring out of John Coltrane’s sax in A Love Supreme.

Not to compare myself to geniuses like those three-but I do have something to say, and why not have fun with it? Who knows where we’ll end up!

But I do recognize the need for limitations. Creation may arise from chaos, but to be a relatable contribution on Earth it needs to expresses itself in the physical, have some sort of edge we can rub up against in order to know it. My riffing is a spontaneous expression of the multiplicity within all forms. It’s also an attempt to encourage anyone who reads this to expand their mental boundaries. In other words, purge the worms.

But-again-to resolve the story within ourselves and enter the more expanded story, we need to recognize an ending, even if it’s momentary. That’s why I’m circling back down the spiral to bring your attention back to me sitting on that rock at Honaunau. I’m slipping on my fins, noticing the red diver’s buoy but not really paying much attention because there are always divers here. And I am plunging headfirst into the water, kicking and stroking to get past the cold entry where springs empty into the ocean. Warm water waits just beyond the cloudy edge.

Just beyond the cloudy edge I see legs hanging down near the red buoy, and something else-a Hawaiian sling, basically a big sling shot used to spear fish. I slow down. I had been a spearfisher once. I know how easy it is to get excited by any motion and fire a shot. I want to stay away from this guy and the others with slings I notice beyond him. Swerving left around him, I cross over into the clear water zone and the back of my head explodes: shark.

I’ve seen sharks plenty of times before swimming in the waters off Moku o Keawe, but they are usually far below me, or napping in a cave, and they’ve always been swimming away. This shark is not doing any of those things. It’s wide awake, hovering at eye level three feet away from me, attention entirely focused on the three boys with spear guns who I assume have shot a fish and have left a blood trail that has lured the young white tip (It’s only about four feet) out of its cave in the middle afternoon when it’s usually napping.

I am perfectly calm. We are three feet apart. Eye level. It’s a small shark, maybe even a baby, but it’s still a shark and the fact that I don't have a primal reaction and thrash back to shore pleases me. We are sharing space, floating eye level next to each other watching the dangling legs of the other humans in front of us.

Its gaze is not the unconditional love of a dolphin’s. It is not joyous or playful, just the absolute focus of a predator on prey. It’s a look I know well having been on the other side of it. But it’s not a threat. I feel no fear and neither does the young shark. I’m entranced by the white tip on its fin. Why is it there? War paint?

All of this happens in about thirty seconds but it seems like forever. The shark decides to move on, crossing in front of me and circling back to my right. I remember all the shark encounter videos I’ve watched and drop my legs vertical so I don’t look like prey. It’s a little shark, but clearly it is stimulated and on the prowl. Blood is in the water. I pivot so my back is not to it, circling as it does. Popping my head above the water I see the boys spearfishing have no clue it’s stalking their catch. Two tourist boys are also treading water a few feet away from me. “Did you guys see the shark?” I say casually. Slightly panicked they put their heads back under the water and we watch it circling us. Heads back in the air we smile and share an unspoken moment of awe. “It’s just a little shark,” one of the boys says, holding his hands out to measure two feet of space that holds all the wonder we don’t express.

“Oh, it’s bigger than that,” I say, and smiling start swimming south away from the spears in the direction of the cave where the shark usually naps. I don’t look behind me.

I don’t think at all for the next hours, drifting over the reef near the Hale o Keawe in the National Park on the far side of the bay from where I entered. Entranced by schools of yellow tangs and silver slivers of needlefish, I cruise down a tunnel in the reef my brother and I call Shark Alley and dive down to look in the cave. Empty.

It’s when I get back to shore that I notice-the space where my skull and neck meet seems more spacious. Whether it was the massive dose of ‘Ahinahina or the close encounter with the shark, my ‘ā’ī oeoe has come unclogged. I know without a doubt I now have access to my aumakua.

Now I’m not saying this shark was my aumakua. I am not Hawaiian, nor do I have any Hawaiian ancestors who could have taken on the little shark’s body to guide me, but the shark showed my something about the qualities of my aumakua as a center of energy.

As a descendant of the Draco lineage I have the gift of scanning, claircognizance it’s sometimes called. I just know things. For me in particular, I can see people’s vulnerabilities, sometimes ones of which they aren’t even aware. If I chose, I could use this power to prey on people to my advantage to gain power or status in the material world, one of the reasons the Draco lineage is feared and reviled, but I don’t.

I’m not interested in that kind of power. I’m interested in the power that comes through remorse. through tenderness and compassion, the power of knowing you could destroy someone, but choosing not to, the power of using someone’s weakness as a way to know how to love them.

Do no harm. It’s simple really. Just because you have a mouthful of razor sharp teeth that replace themselves as they fall out from tearing into flesh, doesn’t mean you have to bite more than you need. Nobody will ever be truly satiated from a meal like that. Sharks are not mindless predators. They keep the ocean healthy by removing the sick and dying. They are angels of mercy, terrifying at times, but angels nevertheless in the same way anything is that propels you into a wider circle. I hope that shark got a morsel or two from those boys with the slings.

I started this macrocosmic meander saying I wanted to clarify my dreams, to receive clear visions instead of the anxiety ridden tangled thickets I found myself in each night when asleep. Face to face with the shark, I finally encountered what was on the other side of my clogged medulla, a juvenile white tip hovering in the water as if it was waiting for me to finally show up. If I’d panicked, I wouldn’t have been ready to receive my aumakua’s true nature, but I didn’t. What I received was the knowledge that there really was no difference between my waking life and my dreams. If one was muddled, then so was the other. The clogged feeling in the back of my brain signified how my physical avatar was representing my spiritual state. And you know what? It hasn’t come back. In the circumnavigation of my po’ai, I have defined and proclaimed my domain. I have maintained the oscillation and am unlocatable. Of course I’m here right now writing to you, and there are bigger sharks out there I might run into-tigers- but no matter what happens I am safe.

Sources on Oise from Wiktionary are linked in the text above.

Info on ‘Ahinahina and other references to Mū culture gleaned from the treasure trove of wonder that is www.pohala.net.

Kō aloha la ea

Concentrate on love by way of the light