OF KNOTS AND DOTS AND COCONUTS:
DIVINATION IN MICRONESIA
BY
MARIA SILVIA CODECASA
1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLES
TABLE I
MAP OF MICRONESIA AND NEARBY ISLES
TABLE II
THE 16 GEOMANTIC PATTERNS OF ARABIC DIVINATION
TABLE III
DIVINATION IN THE GILBERTS AND NAURU
(AFTER HIRAM BINGHAM)
TABLE IV
THE 16 STANDARD QUESTIONS IN NAURU DIVINATION
TABLE V
THE SERIES OF 16 ANSWERS FOR THE LETTER A GROUP
TABLE VI
THE COMPARATIVE TALE OF THE NAMES OF THE 16 MAGIC
MICRONESIAN SAILORS
(AFTER THE 1910 RESEARCH OF THE GERMAN EXPEDITION)
TABLE VII
CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN THE SAILORS OF THE
NUKUORO AND NGULU CANOE
TABLE VIII
THE YAP MAGIC CANOE AND ITS SAILORS, NUMBERED
ACCORDING TO THE ORDER IN WHICH THEY BOARDED
THE CANOE
(AFTER MÜLLER)
1
2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Geographical Information about the Isles mention in the text
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
What is Divination ?
Odd and Even
The Holy Coconut Tree, the Pandanus and the Turtle
Of Cords and Strings and Canoes
The Canoe from Arabia
The Sacred Number Four
A Canoe Full of Fates
Ngulu and Yap
The Fais Canoe and the Namoluk Tale
Magic Sailors in Nukuoro
Conclusion
I
1
4
10
11
13
14
16
18
19
21
24
2
I
GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE ISLES
MENTIONED IN THE TEXT
(From East to West)
PALAU
-
The smallest of the Federated States of Micronesia, has a total area of 500
sq km in 350 islands and a population of 15.000
The capital, Koror, is situated only 600 km E of Mindanao
250 km from the Indonesian island of Moretai
1300 km SW of Guam
YAP
-
consists of the 3 islands of Yap proper (21sq km and a population of 9000
people), and 130 widely scattered atolls, for a total of 18,6 sq km.
Its most SW atolls are Tobi and Ngulu; the E atolls are Ulithi, Fais, Sorol,
Faraulip, Mogemog, Ifaluk;
SE atolls are Woleai, Elato, Lamotrek, Satawal
Yap is one of the Federated States of Micronesia
TRUK
-
is situated 1440 km E of Yap,
it consists of 15 islands, 14 of which are volcanic: the total area of the land
is of 118 sq km, but the Oceanic area on which it is spread is of 480 km x
960 km
Truk proper has an area of 72 sq km, but its lagoon is 2000 sq km
The Mortlocks consist of 100 islets (in 3 groups), the larger of which are
Etal, Lukunor, Satawal
POHNPEI
-
is a volcanic island, and it belongs to the Fed. States of Micronesia, has an
area of 330 sq km, 30.000 inhabitants
The submerged city of Nan Madol was inhabited between 1285 and 1485
Atolls: Ngatik (290 km NW of Truk)
Oroluk (435 km SW of Truk)
Ku group : Lukunor and Namoluk, Losap and Nan;
Pulowat, and Hok; Satawal
Lemarafat, Namunito (also called Onoun), Pollap, and Tamatan
East Fayin and the Hall group (Nornwin and Murilo) are Pulap and Pulawat;
Nama and Losap
Mokil, Pingelap and Nukuoro and Kapinga marangi
POHNPEI
-
volcanic island, one of the Fed. States of Micronesia area 330 sq km, 30.000
people
KOSRAE
-
formerly called KUSAIE; single island, area 107 sq km 7,000 inhab.
ancient basalt walled city 1250-1400 AD
MARSHALLS
-
independent Republic; 31 coral atolls, the East chain called Ralik, the West
chain called Ratak, 5 single islands, 1552 islets total area 180 sq km upon
1,000,000 sq km ocean, 45,000 inhabitants
I
II
GILBERTS
-
astride on the equator, 33isl. over an area of 5 million sq km, 80,000 inh.;
Tarawa, 1800 km N of Suva (Fiji)
NAURU
-
20 sq km, 5,000 inh.
NUKUMANU
-
Tasman isl., 400 km NE of Bougainville; area 2,6 sq km; 500 inhab.
II
1
1.
What is divination ?
For more than two thousand years, that is, even before Christianity, both sensible common people
and the élites have considered divination " a notoriously ineffective method for attaining the
specific ends its practitioners hope to achieve through its use ..." 1
Such ill reputation is certainly well deserved if we hold that divination is identical with fortunetelling. Though in everyday speech the two words are interchangeable, etymology and philosophy
tell us that they should not be.
Divination is a search for the trend of the divine will, hidden beneath the surface chaos of aspects
and events: and God s will can be detected, but not manipulated. Behind divination there had been
a universally acknowledged ideology, according to which a divine energy permeated the whole
universe, plants, animals and stones, and its flow materially connected human lives and the flight of
birds, stars and volcanoes, clouds and ants. Such connection was called sympathy by the
philosophical school of the Stoics, and sympathy literally means together-feeling (suffering) .
The will of God can be read anywhere, though it is more easily traceable in some parts of the
creation, and that is where diviners intervene.
Today official medicine is reluctant to accept the checking of our body s health through the control
of spots in the ear or in the foot, but acupuncture (that is, stimulation of the skin to influence inner
organs) has been (reluctantly) admitted into hospitals as a means to achieve anaesthesia. There is a
sympathy between our skin and the organs inside, they influence each other ... yet to admit this is to
start acknowledging the interconnection of all sorts of life and of cosmic phenomena, since that is
the belief that led to such methods of checking and healing.
Neither the Christians, nor the Jews, nor the Muslims might admit the presence of the divine inside
living or inanimate matter: since they dogmatically assert the existence of one (male and
anthropomorphic) god external to its creation. Anyway, even before the triumph of monotheism,
there had been strong attacks against the pantheistic Stoical school of thought, the best known of
which is that of Cicero in his essay De divinatione.
There was a political reason for immanentism (or pantheism) to go out of fashion, and that was the
formation of bigger and bigger empires, in the place of a myriad of small kingdoms and
independent tribes. There was too much at stake, for a would-be emperor, to tolerate the freedom
of a respected oracle such as Delphi, and to depend for the sort of a battle on the appetite of
chickens or on the wind among the leaves. Yet not even Alexander or Caesar might have gone
against the feelings of the majority of their subjects. The fact is that imperialism had already
implied a banalization of languages, by imposing to all subjects the learning and usage of words
whose roots were alien to the native speakers..
A native Romanised Gaul, or a Greek custom officer, would not recognise the presence of God
( Divus ) in divine more easily than a present day English speaker. The growing number of alien
terms in the language of colonised majorities created habitual disattention to the original meaning
1
Moore, Omar Kh., Divination: a New Perspective, in American Anthropologist, 1957, 59, p.69
1
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of words. Terms which formerly conveyed the feeling of the group towards what fell under their
senses, became just conventional sounds, to be uttered for utilitarian purposes.
Mankind started forgetting that one might find a mention of divine in divination , that sacred
meant separated (from the root SEK - to cut) and not simply related to Christian religion . But
above all they stopped getting accustomed to recognise connections, after losing the memory and
appraisal of that early, primary connection, between the name and the thing.
That had been the essence of all pre-monotheistic religions, which had now become the other
religion , or the old religion , in the Western world. The fatal outcome of the new trend, which
we must acknowledge as historical progress , was, as Dodds pointed out with regard to classical
Greece, the deep regression of popular religion in the age of enlightenment 2.
Divination was degraded to fortune-telling, and its rituals were allowed to survive only as
children s games3 or in a form of gambling well known in Rome as well as in Greece and India4:
but dice had been used for divination purposes both in Rome5 and Greece as well as in Ruanda6.
This happened because the believers, who perceive nobody will advocate their cause, very seldom
openly reject the new rites and deities, but in a way withdraw into clandestinity, so that their
underground practices are obviously subject to local developments, and liable to be directed to
satisfy their elementary needs. Thus the man of knowledge is substituted by the witch.
The fortune-teller answers the human need of being reassured and advised in a world full of
prepotence and dangers, while the diviner was a holy man who knew the subtle ways of excluding
illusory appearances (what in India would be called Maya), in order to identify the golden route
through which a social group can progress in intimate and positive relation with the territory.
Such was the position of the diviner even in the Pacific islands, and it was not different from that of
the Chinese interpreter of the I Ching, The Book of Changes , today well known to many
Westerners (Jung wrote an Introduction to one edition of it), which had been compiled to counsel
kings, so that their course of action should not harm their subjects and their lands. And the
Romans, in their worst plights, would consult the Libri Sibillini. And to do honour to the high
spiritual level of the Micronesians, we have but to read the earliest reports about their culture.
A report dated ca. 1720 in the Archivium Romanorum7 informs us that in the month of February all
the chiefs from the Caroline islands had a four days meeting, to learn from an oracle whether the
season would be favourable for navigation and fishing, and the method consisted in the
2
Dodds, E.R. The Greeks and the Irrational, Berkeley 1971.
Such was the final usage of cat s cradle, universally adopted as a method of divination in Europe
as well as in the Pacific, just as the throwing of those knuckle-bones (in Latin, astragali), which
children try to catch on the back of their hands (in a play diffused in the same wide area), as they
used already in Homer s times (Illiad, XXIII, 87-88).
4
In India dice were called aksha (Basham, A. The Wonder That Was India, p. 209).
5
Svetonius, Tiberius, 14.
6
Arnout, A. La divination au Ruanda, Anthropos, XII-XIII, p.39
7
Ref. ARST Phil. 13, folios 360, v: ... consistunt autem haec sortes in certo numero nodorum, quos
faciunt in 4 foliis palmarum: ex cuius operis perfectione aut defectu augurantur de prospera aut
adversa fortuna.
3
2
3
interpretation of a certain number of knots, which they made in 4 coconut leaflets . The religious,
unselfish aspect of the ceremony is revealed by the collective meeting of all tribal chiefs: the Latin
text says omnes Tamol .
The term religious is used here in its etymological sense. Re-ligere literally means to pick up
again , that is, to come back to pick up what had been neglected, or, to re-examine (for the second
time) a past experience, or, to tie together data or facts which formerly had not been judged as
being connected.
Therefore (no matter how effective divination may be, how coarse and irrational its methods may
be) there is no doubt about the strict relation between divination and a religious conception of life.
The man who believes in divination (not simply in T.S. Eliot s wicked deck of cards ) is hoping to
receive messages from the invisible Forces that rule the Universe, and to harmonise his individual
conscience according to the changing environment he lives in. In our pseudo-philosophical slang,
such a person is anxious to find the meaning of life .
There are hints that animals (and sometimes plants) are sensitive to auras that we may call
sacred (cut off from ordinary reality). They feel the presence or imminence of death, and
certainly they have an acute perception of changes in the earth s magnetic fields or inner
movements, such as incoming floods, or incipient droughts.
Yet intuition or perception of the Holy precedes religion: which implies a mental process,
inseparable from language. Animals and plants do not possess an organised language, therefore
humans are the only living creatures who may be defined religious, since they are capable of
describing and remembering their experiences.
Of course a number of the methods elaborated to track down the Divine Will in ancient
environments can fill with distrust not only the missionary, but any person acculturated by many
generations of urbanised life. Volumes have been written on divination based on examining the
entrails of a sacrificed animal, and a scholar will enjoy comparing the tidy photos of a bronze liver
from Babylonia with its Etruscan parallel (similarly divided into 16 parts, probably in sympathy
with the sky that they also divided into 16 parts8). And it is puzzling to read that in Borneo too,
they would find the answer to their questions9 in a pig s liver, just as they did in Hawaii and in
Tahiti.
But a scholar will feel puzzled in a different way when facing a Korean shamaness lifting her
blood-dripping mouth after biting the pig s liver to get her answer: though, obviously, one could
not receive a more punctual answer to a question in that segment of time (the same answer the lion
finds to his hunger, or the peasant finds when wringing a turkey s neck for his Christmas dinner).
And we should not forget that in the Middle Ages, in the West, it was customary to divine
innocence by ducking the suspected witch into boiling water, or throwing her down a waterfall.
Unfortunately the bloody scene is apt to obscure, in one s memory, the fact that divination is, on the
whole, inspired by abstract considerations about the impact of odd and even numbers, of birds
8
9
Plinius, Natural History, II, 149
Levy-Bruhl, L. Primitive Mentality, London 1923
3
4
flying at the right or at the left of the observer, or of shells falling on the concave or convex side,
and so on.
In the immaculate contest of the I Ching, Jung expressed his conviction that the hexagram worked
out in a certain moment coincided with that moment, in quality not less than in time, by being an
indicator of the essential situation prevailing in the moment of its origin ... Such assumption, Jung
adds, involves a curious principle that he would call synchronicity : which is diametrically
opposed to the principle of causality ruling the whole field of Western knowledge since the age of
Aristotle10.
In fact, the diviner is not so much interested in the cause of an event as in the field of interacting
forces: his throwing of coins (or of milfoil sticks) used in divination will not only produce a sort of
metaphor of that moment s situation, a sort of mirrored hyper-reality, but it will also include the
impact of the observer ... which, as Jung acutely remarks, is a necessity modern physicists had to
consider.
To speak of I Ching divination when the subject is Micronesian divination may sound paranoiac:
one should not mix hypercivilised Han China functionaries with naked savages on mosquito
shores! Yet this paper will show that on the contrary one should, one cannot help doing it.
Micronesian divination is not comparable with the I Ching for what regards the impact it had on
learned elites all over the world, but it shares with China not only the same immanentistic ideology,
but also strikingly similar methods and identical detailed rituals such as the choice of the sacred
number 4, in order to reach the final omen.
One should also keep in mind that in Micronesia, as well as in China, behind their popular
immanentist religion, there were no Churches. The main concern of a Church is to keep the
institution unaltered: which is inconvenient for people whose purpose is to be the diligent
observers of a universe in perpetual change, who must be in dynamic connection with it, and be
open to suggestions and influences. On the other side, not to be backed by a Church is dangerous.
It makes it easier for any Church s people to burn you, as a holder of heretical views. To respect
Nature, in a monotheistic West, meant to be a heretic. Giordano Bruno was burned, St Francis
lived in constant danger..
Happily, people s attitudes are changing, and the humble merits of animism start being recognised.
The Maori, who would ask a tree for forgiveness before cutting it, will get the applause of
ecologists. And modern science might do a lot for diviners, since fields of energy are becoming
more and more interesting scientific subjects.
2.
Odd and Even
As Mircea Eliade in his Encyclopedia of Religions informs us, the classification of odd numbers as
masculine and lucky and of even numbers as feminine and unlucky stems from the Pythagorean
doctrine, and it influenced all Western cultures. In Pythagoras s time, patriarchal cultures had
triumphed all over the Mediterranean, and the status of women was very low. In Rome, where
10
Jung, C.G., Foreword to I Ching (R. Wilhelm Translation), London 1920
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5
women had no juridical personality, Vergil could write that God is happy with odd numbers 11.
Some centuries later, the Muslims claimed that, God himself being One, God is an odd number,
therefore he loves odd numbers.
On the other side of Eurasia, in South Korea, shamans used to shake a number of pine leaves or
pine seeds out of a bowl: what remained at the bottom gave a good omen if the number was odd,
and bad if it was even or null12. This type of divination was called sanul ponda (= truth by
counting).
All over Eurasia, most magic practices required the usage of objects and formulas by 3, or 7, or
other odd numbers. The superstition about the unlucky influence of even numbers might explain
why some tribes (mainly in Africa) used to kill twins at birth.
As for even numbers being connected with the female gender, we may remember that in I Ching
divination, the broken line, consisting of two fragments, corresponds to the yielding, dark, humid,
yin female principle, while the unique uninterrupted line represents the hard, bright, dry, male
principle, that is, yang.
In South East China, even recently, divination was made by throwing two pieces of bamboo marked
with yin and yang symbols, but originally they would throw a split oyster shell: should the two
convex sides be up, that would mean yang and yes. The two concave sides (obviously a symbol of
the female gender) would mean yin and no. Yet the propitious omen would be an uneven result of
the throw: one concave and one convex shell. That is, in Southern China too, odd meant lucky13,
and odd implied the masculine gender.
Such uniformity of interpretation throughout Eurasia makes it remarkable that, in Micronesia and in
other Pacific islands, even should be lucky and odd unlucky. One is tempted to connect this with
the most dignified social status women have (and above all, had) in Micronesia and in most Pacific
islands, where genealogies were matrilinear, and property was inherited through women and
belonged to women. Let us consider for instance an atypical island like Nukumanu, which is
situated to the north of Ontong Java: it politically belongs to the Melanesian state of Papua New
Guinea, but one third of its inhabitants are Polynesians14. In Nukumanu divination did not require
professionals. They would simply apply to their ancestors before making what they call the lau niu
Rai akelawa. They would take two coconut leaflets of different length, knot them at random and
set them along the arm from the fingertips up to the elbow. If the number of knots in this interval is
the same in both leaflets, then the omen in good. This is, even chances announce good luck.
11
Numero deus impari gaudet
Lee, Joung-young, Divination in Korean Shamanistic Thought, in Korea Journal, 1976, 16, 11
(p.5). The throw was repeated 3 times.
13
Bloomfield, F. Chinese Beliefs, London 1980
14
Nukumanu was studied by Sarfert, E. and Damm, H. in Luangia and Nukumanu, Hamburg 1931,
vol.2(oracle, p.368). Its name (nua-manu) might refer to its being created by a bird that carried
sand from the islet of Tava.
12
5
6
Let us then consider Nauru, an island situated in the centre of the Pacific ocean. Hambruch15
describes an ancient divination method used in Nauru: after measuring the distance between the
forefinger and the little finger of the questioner, a coconut leaflet must fold neatly and evenly to its
end, filling such distance: then the omen is good. Hambruch found the same method was used in
Namoluk, which is situated in the Upper Mortlocks, near Truk: but in fact such folding was also
common to all Micronesian isles, being called tsib in Yap and sof in Kosrae.
In Pulowat atoll, (Truk Western isles), they used an even simpler method: one single striplet from
coconut leaves would be thickly knotted, then 5 knots would be counted off, and the sum of the
remaining knots gave a good omen in case of an even number, and a bad one if the number was
odd16. One feels entitled to conclude that there is a Pacific divinatory interpretation that is
consistent all over the Ocean, but in neat contrast with continental theories.
Anyway such peremptory judgements at one single trial (or after only a few trials) are quite unusual
in professional divination. In order to discover God s hidden will (or the secret holy Way) one
must rather consider combinations of odd and even, and respect sometimes the right and sometimes
the left side, sometimes advance stiffly in a strict observance of tradition, and sometimes yield to
sudden inspiration, or leave it to chance, as the Greek Sybils would do, when, after writing inspired
words on leaves, they would allow the wind to ruffle them and suggest the omen.
Allowing the wind to come in, meant to leave the last word to Fate itself: this might explain why
the Sybil s cell in Cuma opened on a long tunnel dug in the rock, and why there was a gallery near
Hera s oracle in Samo, and why the Latin oracular Carmenta stayed in a cave.
Out of the same belief in the direct intervention of God once the devotee renounces personal
choices, it was an innocent illiterate child who was in charge of drawing the sortes (oracular
wood blocks) in the famous temple of Fortuna in Preneste, near Rome ... and it used to be an
innocent little orphelin who weekly drew out the numbers of the Italian Lotto .
Another paradox accepted by diviners in many places is the reversibility of extremes, which also
belongs to the so-called popular wisdom , that is, to the memory of very ancient experiences and
formerly widespread knowledge. That extremes touch each other is a well known proverb in
Italy, and on the other side of the continent a Korean writer, Soon Young-youn, remarked that
there is another relationship stemming from the linkage of one reverse to the other 17 so that in
the state of disharmony due to such reversibility, there emerges a linkage that integrates them all ...
with such linkage people overcome the antagonism embodied in life and in the world. 17
In its ultimate steps, divination cannot be but dually based, and a dually based method of choice,
aiming at districating the apparently inextricable divine Will out of deceiving appearances, might
15
Hambruch, P., Nauru, Hamburg 1914, p.367. Nauru, formerly the phosphates island, after the
phosphates were exhausted, became totally emarginated and survives with the poorest subsistence
economy.
16
Damm, H. and Sarfert, E. Inseln um Truk; Pulowat, Hok, Satawal, Hamburg 1935. Pulowat was
the home of the most famous Micronesian navigator, and a few good sailors could still be met there
in 1970: they distinguished themselves by the traditional extended ear lobes and traditional regard
for turtles (Gladwin, Th., East Is a Big Bird), Harward 1970.
17
Soon, Young-Youn, Magic Science and Religion in Cheju, in Korea Journal, 1976, 16:3, p.4
6
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achieve that by rhythmical inversions of polarity, as we shall see when examining such methods in
detail.
The technique reminds one of dance: the dancers will count up to 8 beats and then turn ( volta , in
Italian). Very often, in fact, when we examine some extant traits of the earliest cultures of
mankind, we notice their inner structure is not isolated, but it occurs in other apparently unrelated
features. Diviners may no longer be dancers (as they still are in some Siberian tribes, and in South
Korea), and dance may have nothing to do with their training, as it happens in Micronesia, and be
no concern of theirs. Yet dancing is a language, an articulated language of the body, asserting
human individual rhythm in harmony with the rhythms of Nature. There was no such thing, in an
early vision of the world, as art for art s sake , or as vanguard random experiments and individual
investigations. Dance was knowledge, and the fruit of a tremendous illumination, of an
overwhelming wave of understanding, whose ripples may reach such a scholar as Levy-Strauss
today. Just as today science recognises the constant recurrence of simple, tiny atomic particles in
all sort of organised matter, our ancestors had the intuition that there was a secret rhythm in Nature
which was the same in every single natural manifestation. A crane dance must mirror star dances,
and human dance is an alphabet to decipher the unknown.
Even the XX century man, protected by concrete buildings, insurances and medicare, is sometimes
drawn to feel that he has entered a labyrinth where monsters are dwelling. The late Greek myth
about Theseus says that the hero could kill the Minotaur and get out of the labyrinth because he
kept in his hands one end of the thread from the skein in princess Ariadne s hands. Yet next we
learn that the victorious Theseus had to stop in the sacred island of Delos to dance a crane dance ,
totally unrelated to the story. It is more likely that Theseus was taught what turns to take inside the
labyrinth through memorising the steps of a dance, and that, their task being accomplished, they
had to undance the magic.
The way the Micronesian diviner disposes of the knotted strips from which the omen will be drawn
is in fact a sort of ballet. The method was detailedly described with regard to divination on the
island of Truk by a number of German scholars. 18
First a ritual song must be sung before climbing the tree. One must pick the young fronds (ubud)
from a coconut tree never formerly used for such aim, and their white side must always be kept up
when making the sheaf. The two lower ubud are not cut but just bent, as an offering to the spirit of
Pukulimer, whose name we find among the sailors of the magic canoe (see p. Table VI), but who is
thought to be the first diviner, or a spirit from heaven.
The first leaf is cut starting from the left, but the second leaf is cut from the right, and the third
from the left again, and there must be 6 or 7 leaves, because the questioner is called to make his
first choice, by selecting personally only 4 of them.
The 4 leaves will be divided into two by extracting the central rein, which must be cut off with
one s thumbnail (or with a ritual non-metallic tool). Then again only 4 of the 8 strips will be
18
Böllig, L.: Die Bewohner der Truk Insel, Münster, 1927, in Anthropos Ethnologiesche Bibliothek,
Band, 1, Heft 1, and Walleser, S. Religiose Anschlauungen und Gebraüche der Bewohner um Jap in
Anthropos, 1913, 8: 607-29, 1044-45.
7
8
chosen, alternating the direction (left, right, left, right), and the 4 strips will be knotted at random
but in alternate direction, all the time repeating the question.
The 4 knotted strips will be set into the intervals between the fingers of the left hand, starting from
the little finger. Next the knots will be counted off by 4, having care that the strip knotted last
should be counted first, and placed inside the intervals of the right hand, this time starting from the
interval between thumb and forefinger, but the second to the last will be set between ring finger and
middle finger, the third between forefinger and little finger, and the last between little finger and
ring finger.
In the final counting, apparently the strips are back into the left hand, emerging from the back of the
hand and showing vertically the remaining knots, (which may be either, 1, or 2 or 3 or 4). Finally
the numbers will be paired, starting from the thumb for the second couple, and from the little finger
for the first19.
The process may stop here, or the strips may be set down on a mat as they do in Truk, or the knots
may be replaced by shells set on a mat.
The interpretation of the two pairs of numbers varies according to the social status of the questioner
and the nature of his question, but the important thing is that in this clever skipping of routine the
diviner has tried to avoid the easiest chances, and to reach that innermost hidden Chance, which is
the Divine Path.
In practice, the 16 possible combinations of 4 pairs of numbers correspond to the 16 names (more
or less the same all over Micronesia) of 16 mysterious sailors, who are, as we shall see, the bearers
of Fate.
The Micronesian attempt to detect the divine will under a numerical form may seem exceedingly
intricate, yet it is not unique: there are striking parallel methods both in China and in the Middle
East.
In China, in the place of coconut leaflets, the diviner will use a bundle of 49 (50-1) stalks of milfoil
or yarrow, which will be divided at random into heaps, and counted off by fours, with a long
process that will finally leave either 1, or 2 or 3 sticks to be set in the three intervals between
fingers (the thumb is not considered a finger). The sticks jutting out of the back of the hand will be
added up, and their number (necessarily either 6, or 7, or 8, or 9) will correspond to the lowest line
of the six-line pattern (hexagram) familiar to I Ching interpreters.
19
Lessa, W., Divining by Knots in the Carolines, in J. of Polynesian Society 1959, III, p.188 - The
back of the hand is not used in the Marshalls, where the knotted leaflets are thrown on the left
shoulder and counted off by four both ways, down front and down back.
In Kosrae the knotting is done only to record the results. To reach the final pairs of numbers, they
insert 3 wedges at random into a cane flooring, and count by fours the canes between the central
wedge and the outer ones. In 1908 nobody remembered the catchword to be recited to find the
names of the sailors along the cord. The cord was called oak in foa, canoe of the foa oracle.
8
9
Such process must be repeated six times. The possible 64 combinations even in China bear names,
though they are not personalised as in Micronesia20.
The Middle East divination method was adopted under the name of geomancy by European diviners
after the Crusades, and bore the Arabic name of raml = the sand art . They would make random
holes in the sand with one finger along 4 lines. Then the holes would be counted off by 2, and the
final result would give one of 16 patterns consisting of 1 or 2 dots arranged in 4 lines. These
patterns remind us of the Chinese hexagrams (1 dot = 1 yang continuous line, 2 dots = an
interrupted yin line), and bear symbolical names. A complicated series of couplings will lead to the
final pattern, which is the omen (see Table II).
In Tibet21 the rosary of Buddhist monks is grasped at random in 2 places, then the beads within that
interval are counted off by 4 (alternatively on the left and on the right) and the omen is given by the
number of beads left. The operation must be repeated three times (111 - very good; 133 = good and
soon; 123 = good but late; 223 = soon and disaster). While the recurrence of number 4 in selection
reminds us of Chinese and Micronesian divination, both the Arabic dots and the yin and yang lines
lead back to the primary distinction of odd and even.
Practically, what a magician does consistently all over the world, is to reduce the tremendous
harmonious complexity of Creation to a binary rhythm. The infinite, frightening possibilities are
channelled into two sets, based on the alternation of odd and even, of 1 and 2.
Such operation should not be compared with the binary based computer system, since the latter
was not elaborated to explore the unknown. Yet there is one interesting modern Western parallel:
one century ago, the great mathematician Georg Cantor proved that he could compare the
dimensions of two infinite sets of numbers by paring off each single element of one set with another
single element of the other set, and either the paring would exhaust both sets at the same time
(which means even), or it would empty one set only, leaving all further possibilities in the other
container, meaning odd.
Micronesian diviners had no access to high mathematics: yet they shared the same faith as their
colleagues in China and in the Middle East in the biunivocal correspondences between the infinite
possibilities imaginable in the course of a human adventure (or contained in a liver, or twinkling
from the stars, or going to the horizon and back with the grains of a sand desert) and the terrifying
number of positive and negative chances offered to any terrestrial creature anguished by doubt.
It is a desperate enterprise, but they would try to help: and they courageously picked up a bucket of
some sort, and started counting off grains.
20
A further, yet not so intricate, parallelism may be found in the dice throwing of Roman
divination: the 4 dice with 4 faces (bearing the numbers 1,3,4 and 6) could give origin to 35
possible combinations, and each of these would bear a personal, masculine or feminine name. See
TALUS, in Pauli-Wissowa Encyclopedia.
21
Loewe, M. and Blacker, C., Oracles and Divination, Boulder 1920 (1981)
9
10
3.
The Holy Coconut Tree, the Pandanus and the Turtle
All living creatures struggle to survive, and without food and drink there is no survival. In the
Pacific, high islands have wells and rivers, but on low atolls (though there may be hollows where
one can drink unsalted water on the upper layers of a pond) the coconut tree offers not only the
necessary liquid but also the necessary wood and fibres, the leaves for roof thatching and the nuts
as cups, and fats will come from the fruit pulp.
Now what is necessary to survive is no doubt on the side of life and therefore must be sacred (not
simply consecrated by some minority in power!). In fact for the human communities living on
atolls the superfluous does not exist: therefore all plants and fish share an essential sacrality, and
often they are identical with the deity, as breadfruit is identical with goddess Sinlaka in Kosrae, and
the snake goddess Hausibware is identical with taro in Malaita.
The coconut tree is sacred, and this is why divination, all over the Pacific area (and not only in
Micronesia) involves the use of coconut leaves. In the Marshalls, just by tying a coconut frond to
the mast, while humming a magic formula, one might exorcise a storm.
The pandanus tree is also sacred, since it may become the extreme resource for the inhabitants of an
atoll. In Nukuoro they used a pandanus leaf for the simplest and most ancient type of oracle, that
is, the folding of a leaf according to the width of one s palm, leaving the thumb out22. In Palau, a
leaf of pandanus is held between the palms while praying, and the seeds are related to a female
snake goddess23.
The most widely used name for the coconut tree is niu (Malay and Senang niyor). The tree could
not grow in the climate of New Zealand, but the word remained in Maori divination with the
meaning of throwing small sticks , though it used to mean to spin the nut (Hawaiian to whirl ),
and today Maori niua means to lay under a spell 24.
Turtles are sacred in Micronesia. In Yap they can be killed only in a taliu (sacred place), and in
Ngatik atoll (Kosrae) the whole population preferred to be killed to the last man rather than enter
the turtle shell trade. Yet turtles were not used in Micronesian divination, at least in historical
times. On the contrary, in China turtle shells were used to contain the 3 coins used in substitution
for the 49 sticks to identify the hexagram lines. The turtle is so sacred in China that the Great
Mother of the West, Goddess Xi Wang Mu, was associated with the shamanistic oracular turtle.
It is intriguing that an image likely to be inspired by the gigantic sea turtles should have travelled
far inland into China25. Anyway in China that reptile was considered to be a perfect representation
of the world, since its base was a sort of quadrangle (that is, the Earth) and its summit was a
pyramid (that is, the sky, being sort of triangle shaped), thus associating the numbers 4 and 3. The
22
Eilers, A. : Inseln um Ponape: Kapingamarangi, Nukuoro, Ngatik, Mokil, Pingela, Hamburg,
Band 8, p.190 ff.
23
McKnight, R., Orachle s Drawings, in Mcr.R.W. Papers, Saipan 1970
24
Andersen, J.L. Myths and Legends of the Polynesians, London 1928
25
According to Hawa, Uno, Les representations religieuses des peuples altaiques, Paris 1959, the
primary source of Tortoise sacrality is the Indian myth of Vishnu, later passed into China and
Mongolia (square stone with column).
10
11
sea-turtle can be seen supporting memorial monuments in Korea26, and in Hindu iconography the
world is represented as supported by an elephant standing upon the powerful back of a tortoise.
The orange is a plant whose role is secondary in Micronesian magic, though its presence reveals
trade routes. Sarfert27 speaks of a love charm done by picking orange leaves early in the morning,
after bathing in a river and in a reef. The lover would chant the formula orange leaves, make me
fragrant . The name for orange is mu or sal and the tree seems to have been imported from Yap28.
Yet a role of oranges in Micronesian divination may have existed in the past: since, strangely, they
were used with such aim in the southern island of Cheju in Korea, where the writer of this paper
took a photo of a shaman studying a twig of orange leaves in order to deliver an omen.
Turmeric is another sacred plant, but it was not used in divination: in Yap, there was a picture
showing the ancient rite of offering reng (turmeric) to an eel, their sacred rain god29.
4.
Of Cords and Strings and Canoes
The 16 names, each corresponding to a pair of numbers, through which the Micronesian diviner
interprets the divine will, are the names of 16 sailors, and sailors obviously move about in canoes.
Therefore the most important divination method is called the canoe , that is bubu in the Marshalls,
bwe in Truk, buey in Ifaluk, Ta petop or be in Fais, foa in Kosrae, and wei/bei in Yap. Other names
are bobo or popow, but in fact all of them are related to Samoan papao30.
Ubud is not only the specific name of the oracular knotted coconut leaflet, well distinguished from
the common name for cord , universally used in the Pacific, which is TALI31: ubud is also the
name of an actual cord along which the results of the final knot reckoning were registered in many
Micronesian islands.
H. Stonehewer Cooper, a stranded English sailor who lived a few years in Kosrae, published a book
on his experience (Coral Lands, London 1880) where he mentioned that in Kosrae records were
kept by wooden beads and knotted cords, which they carefully preserve and refer to, when they
want to tell what happened in bygone times . According the Sarfert too, such cords were used as a
26
See the memorial stele of King Myol of Silla (7th century AD) in Kyongju.
Sarfert, E. Kusae, Hamburg 1919, Band 4
28
Segal, H.G. The Sleeping Lady Awakens, Kosrae 1989.
29
Yap Our Island, by Yap Dept. of Education, Saipan 1986
30
It is logical, since a canoe is the most common vehicle in Oceania, that the will of God should
travel by canoe. In Fiji, where there is an ancient serpent worship, the sacred snakes are called
god s little canoe . And in Kosrae the knotted coconut leaflet, that goes in most islands under the
name of ubut, is called oak in foa, that is, the canoe of the oracle, the canoe of the canoe ...
31
The Pacific is only a part of the immense area of diffusion of such root, which is clearly related to
tali in Malaysia, to talia = to plait in Fiji, tari = noose in Arosi, tari in Tahiti = to suspend, kali =
to gird in Hawaii, and tady = cord in Madagascar. Central to this area, one finds among the Tamils
of the tip of India tali = the sacred cord or necklace (see Gentes: M. Scandalising the Goddess at
Kodungallur (Kerala), in Asian Folklore Studies, Kagoya, 1992, LI, p.296.
27
11
12
mnemonic help, and the natives would run with their fingers along them, while reciting a
catchword with the name corresponding to the pairs of knot-groups made for divination purposes.
As for Palau, Krämer32 reports they used to transmit information by sending a cord, called rusl,
whose knots and folding could actually be read. Another cord, called teliakl (from meliakl = to
make knots), could bear more than 100 knots, and was used as a calendar. Krämer was impressed
by the cords, which reminded him of similar ones he had seen in the Marquesas (to countersign the
months of the year) and of the Incas quipus: though, he remarked, the Palau cords were much
more primitive.
In Nukuoro too, the results of divination were knotted on a cord33. As for Pohnpei, we know only
that the knot divination was called katiani and that catchwords were used, but we do not know if
those results were set on a cord.
As for Woleai, (one of the Central Carolines, and once part of the so-called Yap Empire), Lessa
could quote, in his Tales from Ulithi Atoll, the account of Otto Kotzebue (A Voyage of Discovery)
dated 1821, according to which on Woleai ropes with knots were used for contability. A similar
information was supplied by a fellow traveller of Kotzebue s, Von Chamisso, according to whom
knotted cords were used for time reckoning and for accounts.
Heyerdahl mentions such typical usage of recording by knots in the Pacific islands in his Sea
Routes to Polynesia (1968), and suggests that kipona might be related to Peruvian quipus, but
probably the nucleus of the Pacific term is pon, that is, the knot. One might anyway consider as
akin the term kupe used in the Torres Strait islands for a cord on which they suspend sticks of
different length and thickness, but the phonetic similarity may be accidental.
We also know that knotted ropes were used in Nauru and in the Gilberts, for measuring the duration
of menstrual impurity34.
Certainly the usage of knots as records of something is widespread: to such extent that an Italian
old-fashioned idiom, to urge someone not to forget something, is make a knot in your
handkerchief, please!
Quite likely, all these customs derive from an ancient sacrality in the act of knotting, going up to a
proto-linguistic stage of the history of mankind in which gestures involved important meanings.
(There must be no knots where a woman is delivering a child, or where someone is in point of
death, as we are reminded by Frazer s Golden Bough.) And loosening knots is important for
shamans in Korea.
Even for Polynesians knots are linked with divination, since the Polynesians of Nukumanu (an atoll
close to the Solomons) will not start their divination by means of a bundle of coconut leaves (lau
niu ku) unless they have set around their necks (or wrists or foreheads) a leaf with a double knot,
32
Krämer, op. cit., p.351
Eilers, op. cit.
34
Nilsson, M. Primitive Time Reckoning, Lund, 1920
33
12
13
which represents the first and oldest ancestor of the family: and on this knot the other leaves will
be laid. In such a way they ask their ancestors to tell them the truth35.
In New Zealand, according to P. Buck, the Maori use a special gadget, called orongo, made with
plaited fibres, to which knotted cords are attached, in order to record genealogies36.
It is not easy to say whether the knotting of coconut (or of pandanus leaflets) in Micronesia began
independently there, or if it was influenced by visiting travellers or if it was imported from those
distant lands from which Micronesians are believed to have migrated.
Yet there is one reason to believe that ritual knotting is ancient, since it is connected with the belief
that the Yapese god Solal, who is waiting for the dead up in heaven, keeps holding in his hands a
rope, on which knots appear, according to the number of his expected guests ...
Girschner37 found that in Namoluk knotted leaflets (ubút) were used also as love charms to ask for
help of the goddess of love Inemek.
5.
The Canoe from Arabia
Besides the primitive divination by folding, Nauru can boast the most modern oracle of the Pacific,
which seems most fit to being delivered by computer. It is called kaiwa, an Arabic term, and its
origin from the Middle East is beyond doubt.
One hundred years ago, Hiram Bingham found the same divination method in the Gilberts and
recognised at once the principles of what in Europe is known as geomancy (already mentioned, see
p. 9) though in the Gilberts they count off by twos their customary knots made at random along
leaflets, while Arabs would draw their oracle by counting off by twos holes made at random with
their forefinger in the sand.
One can well imagine the kaiwa s route into the Pacific via the Islamized Philippines, and a
successive tract of the route might be suggested by the fact that in Truk, as reported by Lessa38 in
case of uncertainty a native may dab his finger into the sand a few times and then count the dots:
even will be a good omen, as it is usual in the Pacific, and odd a bad one.
The final result, reached by counting off knots, gives in the Gilberts 4 numbers, which will be
traced in one of the 16 columns of Table III, in the first 4 lines. Below these, separated by a
horizontal line, there are sixteen columns of sixteen items each, bearing alphabetical letters. Table
IV contains 16 ready made questions, and the questioner will choose among them. Let us say the
question is No.8: should I go away or not? and that the quartet of numbers as resulting from knot
35
Sarfert, E. and Damm, H. Luangia and Nukumanu, Hamburg 1931, Band 12 vol. 2, p.368
Orongo in Polynesian is the 27th night of the month, but in Micronesia RONG is a root
connected with the idea of sacred. In Woleai rong is tradition, and rongorong is to hear (Sohn Homin, Woleai Reference Grammar, Honolulu 1975), the name of Rongelap atoll means big grave ,
in Namoluk rong en anu means holy .
37
Girschner, M. Namoluk und Ihre Bewohner, Baesster Arch, 1912, 2, p.123-215
38
Lessa, W., Divining by Knots in the Carolines, in J. Pol. Soc. 1955, III
36
13
14
counting, is 1112. Running down from his column of numbers until he reaches the line
corresponding to 8, he will find the letter A. The answers are contained in 16 Tables, countersigned
by the first 16 letters of the alphabet. The answer searched for will be found in Table A, at the line
corresponding to the quartet of numbers. Table V shows the standard answers for letter A.
For what regards geomancy as it is familiar to Westerners, there are strong suspicions that the
oracle might be pre-islamic, since the groupings one must make in order to reach the result are
entitled to 16 females, and in Islamic countries women are discriminated against, while in this case
they seem to be considered as possessing particular spiritual powers.
In geomancy the 16 patterns of Table II have polyvalent meanings (the first pattern, VIA refers to
way, intestine , stream, July, silver, camphor, ... and great success . Even each of the 64 Chinese
hexagrams of I Ching has many meanings).
Neither in Nauru or in the Gilberts they are conscious of philosophical implications. The Nauru
divination system is in fact in clashing contrast with the ideology underlying the other traditional
methods.
Anyway kaiwa is easy, quick and cheap, and one should not be surprised in learning that it landed
successfully also in Islamized Madagascar. Those distant cousins of the Micronesians, do not
possess such sophisticated Tables, but they can be seen in the streets, with a mat and a set of
pebbles, busy in delivering omens.
6.
The Sacred Number Four
In Middle Eastern divination, the chances to be excluded will be counted off by twos and not by
fours, as it is customary in the early steps of Micronesian divination. Yet in the end, even in
Micronesia, the choice is restricted to two.
Two, rather than One, seems to represent the essence of Nature. Bipolarity is recognised as a
constant element, in the old religion , and bipolarity must not be confused with manicheistic
opposition, such as that of Evil and Good, or the crude yes/no or 0/1 of Western machinery. It is a
sort of diffused magnetism: and in fact, originally, yin was the shady side of the hill, and yang was
its sunny side. Yet it is the same hill, and without the sun, there is no shade.
Therefore in Micronesian divination the final result is a pair. As for the counting off by fours, one
may consider that four is the most sacred number in Pohnpei and Truk. In Chinese thought, number
four explicitly symbolises the Earth, but almost everywhere (which includes Roman religion), four
is symbolic of the four dimensions of space: and in Pohnpei 4 are the pillars supporting the sky.
In the human body, Micronesians see 4 intervals between the hand s fingers, but in China
divination sticks are set only in three intervals, since the thumb is felt to be different: it has only
two phalanges and is set far apart. The thumb is distinguished in many languages by a special
name, and probablynumeration based on number four is more ancient than numeration based on
14
15
number five39. The Roman foot, for instance, was divided into 4 palmi and corresponded to 16
digiti40, though Roman numeration was based on number 5.
A further hint that 4 was once the final number, and therefore a unit for further numeration, is the
fact that in Pohnpei 4 bunches of leaves means he is dead . A less primitive numeration was based
on number 5, which in Malay and all over the Pacific is called LIMA , meaning also the hand .
And that is intriguing since in Sumerian four was LIMMU.. The possible link between 4 and 5
is that in practically all prehistoric languages the hand had four fingers, since the thumb is different.
Modern sentences like let us make four steps , or as quick as 4 plus 4 , in Italian, have come
down from neolithic counting. We recognize the same ancestry in the French quatrevingt for
number 80.
Now the logic of Pohnpei s number four being related to death, would be obscure, if there were not
a Korean sa = number 4 and death., from a Chinese sa being 4 and death, but also a Tamil sa = 4
which also means death 41. The connection comes from hunting experiences: the last deer of the
herd running away is the one that will fall under the hunter s spear, yet the choice of the same
syllable for number 4 in China and in Tamil Nadu, gives one pause when considering that even in
ancient Etruscan number four was called SA. Was there in 1000 B.C. a common philosophy along
the eggplant belt?.
In Micronesian Yap the sacred number is 7, obsessively occurring in legends and customs and
rituals42, yet in a legend from the Yapese atoll of Ulithi43, we learn that, in order to get food, Lorop
jumped in every fourth wave .
Anyway, counting off by 4 is the rule in Micronesian divination, as well as in Chinese I Ching
divination.
The sacred number in Melanesia is 8, but that should not be a cultural fracture, since 8 = 4 + 4.
Number 16 is 4 x 4, and 16 seems to be fundamental in divination all over the world: 16 are the
patterns of geomancy, and the sectors of the Etruscan sky and liver, and 16 were the sortes of the
39
Levy, Sylvain, Pre-Aryan and Pre-Dravidian India, suggests that Austrasiatic numeration was
based on number four, since still in historical time the Santals had a coinage where four kauri shells
would sum up to one ganda, which in Sanskrit gave gandaka = a mode of reckoning by four (see
Monier-William Dict., p.344, column II and since a pana (ancient copper weight divided into 4
Kakini (p.267, col III) also meant handful .
40
Barrow, John D. La luna nel pozzo cosmico Milano, 1994 (= Pi in the Sky, 1992) remarks that in
some cultures they counted not the fingers, but the intervals between them, hence the privileged
role of number 8 (alu/walu in the Pacific).
41
Room number 4 is often skipped in Korean hotels.
42
Seven in Yap is underlip. There is a council of 7 chiefs, each college has 7 estates, there are 7
shrines, 7 vegetation gods, 7 specific crops, 7 entrances to the reef... The god of navigation,
Nunwei, has 7 eyes, (which might, or not, be the Pleiades, but certainly are stars) and kills for two
times the crews of seven-manned canoes. In Kosrae too, the breadfruit goddess Si-nlaka returns
from Yap after counting 7 waves.
43
Grey, E., Legends of Micronesia, 1971, p.97.
15
16
Italian pre-Roman oracle of goddess Reitia ...44 Sixteen are the Micronesian Fates navigating on
their magical canoe ... And 16 x 4 is the number of Chinese hexagrams, and 16 x 16 = 256 are the
possible answers in the Gilberts divination system.
Kubary found that in the Mortlocks they might use four pairs of numbers instead of two, and reports
the list of the 256 possible combinations at p. 201-208.
Finally, the sacred number 16 occurs in a story about 7 men and 9 women who sailed from Pohnpei
to find the edge of the world (reported by Hambruch, op. cit. TALE 165), while another story
regards 4 women who sailed from the South ...
7.
A Canoe full of Fates
Divination on the wicked deck of cards is static. Which is not the case if one must take into
consideration a canoe manned by 16 daring and lively Micronesian sailors. And a lot of
calculation was needed in order to avoid disastrous mishaps in alien reefs and on shark frequented
routes. The sea is cruel.
Western people should not be supercilious in studying the Micronesian diviner s shortcuts to
advice: our very language, the grid for thought that Westerners inherited, was fabricated on the
same foundations as Micronesian languages. We can be fiercely opposed to astrology, but we
cannot help considering what interests us, which literally means either to find inspiration in
favourable stars (sidera), or to put the stars together before passing judgment. That might help
disastrous conclusions, which literally means meeting a malignant start . As for reflection ,
that might be even less rational, leading us into a hall of mirrors.
The canoe oracle must be accepted for what it is: the alphabet of a language of which we lost the
command. The Micronesian alphabet has a canoe as a container, and the questioner who has duly
gone through all the necessary elaborate steps, will not meet a pair of comforting words, but a pair
of sailors, out of a crew of sixteen.
The names of such sailors are more or less the same in all Micronesian islands, and they correspond
to almost always the same pair of numbers, as it can be seen from comparative Table VI.
Unfortunately the meaning of those names has become obscure even to those who are willing to
follow a seven days course in order to become not a simple diviner (a tamani wei ), but a
shaman, that is a tamerong. Müller was the first scholar to make conjectures about the names of the
16 sailors: did the names correspond to stars, and was a coupling of constellations that which could
give a bad or a good omen?45 And since the magic canoe used to come down from the sky:, were
its sailors heavenly spirits? ... Anyway they behaved like professional sailors, to the point of
taking a fixed seat in the canoe, as professionals normally do, when they go sailing or fishing in the
big communal canoes, at least in Yap.
44
45
Mastrocinque, A. Santuari e divinità paleovenete, 1994
Jahresberucht, 1912, Orakel des Jap Volkes, p.44
16
17
Or, are they sea demons? ... In that case they would be easily encountered in some legend, but on
the contrary they seem to be alien to folklore, with the possible exception of Pukunemar (who
might recall the Gilbertese fishing spirit Bokamarawa) and maybe of Saujag (Saueior is a breadfruit
god in Namoluk).
In the Marshalls, one the edge of the Micronesian area, no canoe apparently arrived, and only the
names of 9 sailors out of 16 are found46
Dschojak (0-0, that is 4-4), in Yap Wayog, in Truk Sauia
Nogemin (1-1) usually (2-2)
Torofailing (1-2) usually (3-3)
Thilebik (2-1)
Medjek (3-2)
Naome (2-3)
Nebai (0-2)
Eleuber (2-2) usually (4-1)
Bogonemet (2-0) usually (1-2)
In the Marshalls the oracle is given by a single pair of numbers, just as in the Yap system called
murupi, used by Yapese to envisage a very distant future. In this case the knots jutting out of the
hand s back are summed up horizontally all together: a procedure reminding one of the way in
Arabian sand dot divination: one draws, out of the Mothers quartet, a quartet of Daughters: all the
time counting off by fours.
The resulting pair may possess a favourable or unfavourable aspect, according to the purpose for
which the diver was questioned. In the Marshalls the pairs (0-0), (1-1) (2-2) will be considered
favourable, (1-2), (2-1) (2-0) unfavourable. (3-2) is negative but not completely, and the other pairs
are dubious.
In all other Micronesian islands the sailors arrive in their canoe, which is a sort of gondola, with a
long necked swan at both ends, holding in its mouth a white cowrie. A canoe of such description is
used in Yap (where it is called tsukupin) with the only aim of catching flying fish, and once the
season is over the tsukupin is dismantled and carefully guarded in a special hut. It is, in fact, a
plank built canoe, as all Yapese boats are: a legend says that the first tsukupin had lowered from
heaven on the most sacred spot of Yap.
Only the Yami in Botel Tobago (East of Taiwan) possess boats of such shape. As for the custom of
dismantling boats, the Tamils on the East coast of the tip of India use to do it, with their katamaran
(= tied up - trees), which are, in fact, rafts.
In the Marshalls with the exception of (0-0), (2-1) and (0-2), the other sailors names bear little
resemblance to the names recurrent in the west of Micronesia.
46
Krämer, A., and Nevermann, H. Ralik Ratak, Hamburg 1938, p. 237 and 250.
In Kosrae, where the direction in which the pairing of numbers was immaterial, probably the
combination of the numbers was limited to ten, but the Marshalls list looks simply incomplete,
since we find names for (2-0) and (0-2), for (2-3) and (3-2). We know no names for Kosrae.
17
18
The crews of the other islands will be examined following the direction West to East, which might
be the one in which the divination spread: that is, in the order, Ngulu and Yap, Fais, Truk,
Manoluk and Nukuoro.
8.
Ngulu and Yap
According to Müller, there were 8 men and 8 women in the Ngulu canoe that lowered from heaven.
When Eilers visited Ngulu, the atoll contained only 5 inhabitants. (According to their legend, the
island was built by carrying sand on the spot47.)
They were such excellent sailors that for them a voyage to Palau was just routine.
Peter Bellwood48 suggested that the Eastern Carolines were settled before Palau and the Marianas,
that is, before 1000 BC. They would have retained their ancient matriarchal customs and this
hypothesis would not contrast with Furness s claim that the presence of men and women in the
Ngulu canoe was balanced, since the husbands would correspond to all ascendant numerical pairs,
while the wives had the descending combinations.
This does not agree with Müller s list. In Table VIII the female sailors are marked in accordance
with Müller s and not with Furness s list. But if we consider that li-, ni- are normal prefixes for
women, even (1-3) (3-1) and (4-2) should be women.
Anyway, it is known that the status of women became lower in historical times, so that in Müller s
times women were formally forbidden to be present during divination rituals. Besides, with the
exception of Ifaluk, Micronesian women were not allowed to enter canoes (and it is intriguing that
even in the Mediterranean, women on board bring ill luck)49.
We know from Müller (1917, p.226), that in Ngulu each fisherman had a fixed seat with each fixed
village team. Therefore it is interesting to reproduce the Ngulu canoe, and notice that the seven
women were mostly seated on the left side of the boat. The Ngulu shaman (the tamani wei) would
teach his apprentices by drawing the shape of the canoe on a mat and setting 16 heaps of pebbles
with the exact numbers of pebbles for each pair of numbers to occupy the sailor s seats.
The captain (Seyok, corresponding to 4-4) would sit on the outrigger, and the heaps of pebbles
were made in the order in which the sailors would enter and occupy their seats, and for what
regards the Yap canoe they would sit as set out in Table VIII.
47
Such story is scattered all over the Pacific, and reaches the big island of Cheju, in South Korea,
midway between Korea and Japan.
48
The Oceanic Contest, in The Prehistory of Polynesia, ANU, Canberra 1979.
49
See for such information Müller, W., Jahresbericht, Orakel des Jap Volkes, in Baessler Archives,
Hamburg 1910; Furness, W.H., Island of Stone Money, Philadelphia 1910, and as for Ifaluk, where,
as in Palau, people seemed to prefer female babies to boys and genealogies were matrilineal, see
Burrows, E.G. and Spiro, M.E., An Atoll Culture: Ifaluk, New Haven 1983.
18
19
Müller specified that THILIFEG (1-1) and NAGAMON (2-2) were called the Mothers of the
canoe, while THAGALOP (3-3) and SAYOK (4-4) were called the Fathers . As for the other
women, the symmetry would be perfect, with all women on the left side, if No.10, NIFAU (4-2)
was a female, as the prefix ni- (typical of women and birds) seem to indicate.
Apart from the slight differences in spelling, the Ngulu canoe is identical to that of Yap, except for
the gender of No.14 (female in Ngulu) and 13 (masculine in Ngulu).
In his second volume on Yap, Müller, among the local legends, mentions a tale regarding the canoe,
originally found in a MS by Father Daniel50
A canoe belonging to heavenly spirits landed near a village in a full moon night, on the island of
Lamotrek. Then THILIFEG (1-1) left the ship to steal some bananas, and the canoe left for
Faraulip without THILIFEG, who had been caught. In Lamotrek THILIFEG shared the life of the
fishermen, but they noticed that he always knew how many baskets would be needed for the fish
they caught. Then the chief s wife spied THILIFEG and saw him consult the oracle before
boarding the canoe, and they asked him to share his knowledge. Though afraid lest his mates should
punish him, THILIFEG was compelled to teach them the oracle: he painted on a mat a red canoe,
and cut coconut leaflets with a flint stone, and showed how to count the knots and put the right
number of pebbles on the canoe seats. Then the magic canoe returned, and the captain, SEYOK,
asked THILIFEG to join them, but the village chief wanted him to stay, so that he had to set the hut
on fire in order to escape.
But since the secret was no longer such, the canoe went to Mogemog and started spreading
the knowledge of the oracle all over Micronesia.
One cannot help noticing that THILIFEG (1-1), normally described as one of the Mothers, is a man
here, and that the leaflet is cut with a flintstone, either because the rite is very ancient, or because
metal is not sufficiently pure.
Müller gives some example of the actual interpretation. If, for instance, the result was
Nagamon (2-2) and Vaneg (4-3) the omen was bad
Thilifeg (1-1) and Thilifeg (1-1) was not favourable if one had a cough
The two Mothers (1-1) and (2-2) were not favourable for stomach ache
Sayog (4-4) and Nagamon (2-2) were favourable for fishing but unfavourable for voyages
and disease.
Apparently there is no logic in the diviner s conclusions: probably the quality of the omen depends
on the personal characters and adventures of the 16 sailors, of whom we know nothing.
9.
The Fais Canoe, and the Namoluk Tale
The Fais canoe is a fork-tailed popo. It is not clear how many of its ocean spirits are female.
Ilagomal (2-2) (a female) and Saujag (4-4) might be the parents of the other sailors.
50
Op.cit., 1918, p.615-616.
19
20
Fais is a raised atoll situated at 1/3 of the route between Yap and Truk, and the names of the sailors
of the magic canoe are phonetically slightly different from those of Yap. Besides, (4-1) is not
called Lifer (female) as in Yap, but Bugolomer, corresponding to Yap Wummer (1-4), a man.
The most complete account of the magical Micronesian canoe was collected by Krämer and
Damm51 according to whom Fais might be the place from which the wei spread (though in Fais the
oracle is called ta petop). And according to Lessa52 the responsibility for the spreading of the
oracle in the archipelago belonged to a native of Fais, who fled from his island because somebody
wanted to kill him: he escaped first to Barem, then to Fefen and finally to Uman (all these are islets
in Truk lagoon), and in gratitude for their hospitality he taught them the oracle53.
According to Böllig in the Truk canoe 13 sailors were seated inside the hull, 3 were on the
outrigger, and (1-1), that is Dilefes, (the same as Thilifeg in Ngulu) stayed on the platform.
The total number of the navigators adds up to 17, because, Böllig says, in the middle of the canoe
there stands the shaman, whose name is Supulumen. The captain is (1-4), that is Pukunumar (in
Ngulu = Vunumor and Wummer in Yap).
Böllig adds that besides such names (with all their correspondents shown in Table V) there are
many other names with which the 16 sailors are known: but his list includes the most common.
Such situation is not unique: for instance, in Roman divination where the combinations of 4 dice
are considered, the possible throwings are only 35, but we have inherited many more than 35
names for the throws, which means that many throws were known by more than one name.
As in the Marshalls, and as in the Yap system called murupi, even in Fais one may draw an omen
by one single pair of numbers. Thus for instance the two Mothers of Müller s canoe (1-1) and (22) are always a good omen. But (1-3) = which in Truk is called Saupis , and (4-1) = which in
Truk is Inifar, are always bad. Anyway, in Truk as anywhere else, the omen depends also on the
type of the question and on the status of the questioner.
Krämer54 quotes from Girschner a story told in Namoluk:: in that atoll the 16 sailors may look
human or may appear as marks on the skin of a god called Supuneman, who travels with the others
on the boat, but has no weight in divination:
51
Zentral Karolinen, Hamburg 1937, Band 10, 1 Halband: Lamotrek, Oleai, Fais, but the story
about how the art of foreseeing reached man is reported in Band 6, story No.7, p.128, apparently
reported from Girschner, M 1912, p.200, or from Bollig (op. cit).
52
Op. cit.
53
Krämer, E. op.cit. Truk, Band 5, p.336.
54
Krämer, A. Inseln Truk (Zentral Karolinen Ost), I Halband, Gruppe Ku Lukmor Insel und
Namoluk, Losap, and Namo: Lemarafat, Namonuito, oder Onaum, Pollap, Tamatau, I Halband,
Hambruch 1935, Band 6, p.110 Orakel (Namoluk); Kubary reported they used to compare four
pairs of numbers instead of two and we find at page 201-208 the list of the 256 combinations (16 x
16); Among the examples at p.213: (7 + 10) or feinaten (Oroluk) favourable, since a shipwrecked
sailor is rescued the following day; (8 + 4) fan moi bad, terrible story of a sailor stranded for 3
months on a desert atoll, (8 + 5) arun, (Leulan) favourable in case of war, because of the positive
adventure of the hero.
20
21
Supuneman carried on his skin the 16 signs called mesanepwe. One day he put them down
and they became men. He ordered them to build a keel-less boat, and they did. The name of the
boat was wanepwe, that is, va en pwe = boat of fate. (1-1) Tilifek was the captain.
(3-1) Laneperen was a bad sailor and made the boat capsize at the entrance of Ngatik,
therefore he had to abandon his seat in front of the boat and exchange seats with Pukenemar (1-4).
They landed in Ifaluk (though Tilijek refused to do it) because Supuneman took them back
on his skin, and they had to obey. A native offered him his hut, and was terrified when he saw the
16 men appear. Supuneman explained to him that they were Fates, and taught him divination.
During that night the Fates had learnt to drink sakau (the name of kava in Truk).
Next they sailed to Pulwot, Truk, Losop, Namoluk, Etal, Modj, Kitu, Ta, Lukunir and
Oneup
... They missed Ngatik and sailed to Oroluk. Meanwhile Inoaeiman (2-2) was see to sweat blood:
she was a woman, and she was thrown out of the boat and swam to Ngatik. Later Inipwai (2-1) and
Mesauk (2-3) were sent to take her back. Then they started teaching the oracle: Inifai taught the
people of Ngatik, Laneperem those of Pingelap, and Lipul those of Mokil. Mokil is an atoll between
Pohnpei and Kosrae, and from Mokil they went back to heaven. A questioner certainly needs the
help of a shaman to draw n answer to his problems by a story like this.
In Pohnpei they say they had been taught divination by Pukunemar (1-4), and the itinerary of the
canoe explicitly points to an eastward diffusion of this type of divination, which never reached
Kosrae.55
In 1959 Lessa could still find that the Trukese would do nothing without first consulting the oracle,
yet to get details besides those collected by German scholars almost one century ago is very
difficult. Thus the interpretation of Inoaeiman (2-2) s punishment and of her rescue is likely to
remain dubious. She was one of the two Mothers, in Müller s canoe, but in Namoluk she seems to
be transsexual.
As for Ngatik, since the entire population was massacred in 1837 by the crew of a British whaler,
it is now inhabited by people from Pohnpei. In Mokil and Pingelap too, most inhabitants are
newcomers, and these newcomers do not know anything of the old traditions.
As for the god Supuneman, who travels on the outrigger, Böllig suggests that he might be the same
as Tugumeum, the amulet protecting the house.
Though Lamotrek is an atoll quoted among the places visited by the canoe in Müller s tale from
Yap, (p.19) yet Krämer could not find any detail about the 16 navigators east of Fais, therefore he
suggested that the myth originated from the Western Carolines.
10.
Magic Sailors in Nukuoro
Nukuoro, together with Kapingamarangi, belongs to Pohnpei Federated State of Micronesia, though
it lies 402 km south of Pohnpei, and though its inhabitants are linguistically and ethnically
55
In Kosrae they did not knot coconut leaflets on which to operate the counting off and the
selection of two pairs; see p. 8.
21
22
Polynesian. Yet we find the Micronesian knot oracle among the Nukuoro kava drinkers, and there
is no key to know when and along what routes the magic canoe reached Nukuoro.
According to Eilers56, in Nukuoro the knotting is limited to the recording of final results, and the
selection is made by handling handfuls of pebbles or shells, which are picked up by fours, until the
diviner is left with 1, 2, 3, 4 pieces. Such handfuls of shells are thrown, and the first throw gives a
single number, to be confirmed by a second throw. In case the result is a doublet (for instance, (22)), the omen is certain. Otherwise the pair of different numbers, corresponding to the usual
sailors names, may give a favourable or unfavourable answer.
Nukuoro has a tale of its own about the origin of the bue oracle.
Once upon a time there lived in the island of Toro a man called Sikinimanu, who was very
eager to know the future.
And one day a canoe descended from the sky, carrying an old man, and his two wives, plus
their 14 sons: and all of them had only one eye each.
The father s name was Sapuriwimeni, and he sat in the centre of the canoe. One of his
wives was seated in front of him, the other behind him. And behind each of the wives there
sat seven sons.
These heavenly creatures taught Sikinimanu how to make divination, and then went back to
heaven.
The one-eyed sailors suggest the idea that they were stars: but unfortunately the spirits names bear
no convincing similarity to the names of constellations in the Pacific. Only the second wife,
Dilipaki, (1-1) may be akin to Arabic Dilibat, which is the name of the second month of the year.
The curious man of Toro bears no number, since he is no sailor, just as Sapuriwimeni, the 17th
passenger of the canoe, who sounds identical with the Supuneman of Namoluk.
As for the two wives, they sit in the centre of the canoe, like the two Mothers in the Yap canoe, and
they are called Dilipaki (1-1) and Nakoimane (2-2), yet they too, are somehow left out.
Their two eldest children, Saujate (4-4) and Toropeiling (3-3), sitting close to their mothers, head
the two rows of male children, totalling 14. The pairs of ascending numbers stay on the prow side,
and the descending pairs stay in the back, in perfect parallelism (Table VII).
One wonders whether the 14 sailors, each of whom represents two numbers, may have something to
do with the moon cycle. That would explain the 14 (7 x 2) ascending numbers, the two days of full
moon, and the 14 nights of the moon waning (7 x 2).
56
Eilers, A., Inseln um Ponape: Kapingamarangi, Nukuoro, Ngatik, Mokil, Pingelap, Hamburg
1934, Band 8, P.190.
22
23
Anyway the sailors names are distinctly Micronesian, and they bear no similarity with the
Polynesian names of the 30 nights of the month57. The undervalued mothers might be used to fill in
turn the missing lunation day, since the moon cycle corresponds more or less to 29 nights.
However, Nukuoro must have some significance in the progress of the oracle canoe across the
Pacific, since it occupies a key position in the mysterious story of a canoe from Samoa, in which
number seven is insistently recurrent, and out of a group of 49 sailors only 14 are left58. The story ,
which was signalled to be by Niel Gunson, deserves to be mentioned.
In order to atone for a terrible plague, the priest of Faitaaulage, devoted to Tagaloa, urged
a group of 42 young men and 7 girls to offer themselves to the death gods by leaving the
island in 7 canoes. In each canoe there were six men and one girl, and they carried
provisions for 7 days.
They sailed for 7 days and 7 nights, then they reached one island in the north, and stole fruit
from it since they had finished their food, but the inhabitants surprised them and in every
canoe one man was shot. Next a storm carried off one rowing man from each canoe, and
next seven fishes attacked them, and each canoe lost a man. Which left 3 men and one girl
in each canoe, and their total number was twenty-eight.
They arrived at Nukuoro, and the 28 were well received and stayed there for a whole year,
since Tagaloa had pardoned them.
Unfortunately during a great feast, the Samoan survivors got drunk and talked
blasphemously about their god.
Tagaloa with a lightning from the sky split open the breadfruit tree under which they were
banqueting, and the tree, when falling, killed another 7 men.. The Nukuoro people asked
them to depart, which they did, and they were 14 men and 7 girls.
Again they sailed, going eastward and trying to reach the Ralik and Ratak islands (the
Marshalls), but they could find no land and no food, and in each canoe the girl strangled one
of the two remaining men, in order to eat him, so that only 7 men and 7 girls survived.
At this point Tagaloa ordered them to travel for 7 days and 7 nights and to go back to
Samoa.
But the sea and the winds carried them to Hawaii, where they were friendly received in
Oahu by chief Umi.
Lastly, with the help of Hawaiian rowers (two families who wanted to take that trip), they
travelled south and after 77 days they saw the peak of the small island of Manu a (or Tau),
11 km South of Olosega.
The recurrence of number 7 and the ritual killing by suffocation make one think that the voyage
from Samoa was mystical, rather than purely mythical.
57
Johnson, R.K. and Mehelone, J.K., Na Inoa Hoku, a Catalogue of Hawaiian and Pacific Star
Names, Honolulu 1975, and Goodenough, W.H., native Astronomy of the Central Carolines,
Philadelphia 1913, and Hehuira, Henry, Tahiti aux temp anciens, Honolulu 1848.
58
I may quote this story, owing to the courtesy of Dr. Gunson, of the ANU School of Pacific and
Asian Studies, who signalled me the tale collected around 1900 by H. Draws-Tychsen. The tale
had been told to Dr. Mathias Keeken by a chief of the small island of Olosega (Manu a group), and
was published in the Ost-Asiatische Rundschau, Nov. 1940, xxi, 11 by H. Draws-Tychsen.
23
24
Seven canoes carrying a boy and a girl each gives a total of 14, which is the number of the
passengers of the heavenly canoe previously landed in Nukuoro. Yet there are no substitutes for the
two Mothers, there are no names of the 14 survivors, and there is no hint that they were double.
Therefore it is difficult to say whether there is a distant relation between the two tales, and whether
Nukuoro played an active role in the creation and diffusion of the oracle.
Conclusion
An ideology is respectable whenever it is not an ungrounded conjecture, (to favour a group inside a
community, or a speculation on the nature, unique or sevenfold, of a deity), and when it is a
working hypothesis, that is, when it offers a frame according to which a human collectivity or a
branch of knowledge may develop for a certain period of time.
The human grasp of planetarian or cosmical reality is necessarily limited, therefore now and then
theologies as well as scientific working hypotheses show their frailty, and suddenly we discover
that human nature may not be congenitally good or that the unlimited expansion of profits in a
limited planet is a dangerous nonsense.
Divination, a practice spread all over the world, is based on a vision of the world according to
which any microcosm may reflect the macrocosm, and such idea has given support to the
enterprises of the wonderful sea people who ventured on frail wooden boats on the Pacific ocean for
thousands of miles and colonised hundreds of isles and atolls without destroying their ecosystems.
They applied to diviners before leaving, to learn whether their enterprise would not be against the
divine will: we may find the diviner s methods awkward and naive, but the questioner s intention
was just as earnest as that of a Crusader applying for his bishop s blessing.
As for the origins of the most complex among Micronesian divination methods, that is, knot
divination, they are as difficult to trace as the origins of any cultural feature whose beginnings are
not datable and whose manifestations have multiple aspects in many different places.
Since we are living in a crowded world we are willing to accept theories involving mass migrations,
wars, and even sinking of continents to explain changes in language or customs or law. In fact
deplacements of large numbers are not the only possible explanation. The transmission of ideas
follows the same pattern as the transmission of disease. That is the message of the story about the
canoe of Bakanamoku, manned by 6 women and 3 men, which came from the West to spread
disease in the Gilberts. And Europeans are conscious of the fact that, given a favourable
environment - such as malnutrition, unhealthy and crowded settlements, climatic extremes, lack of
anticorps - a few rats did spread the Black Plague in 1348 and killed two thirds of the European
population in a couple of years.
We do not need a migration to impose a custom: a single monk converted the king of Kent to
Christianity and the King of Korea to Buddhism, and their subjects followed the lead. In the same
way a single tradesman can impose diabetes on an archipelago by advertising unhealthy but
fashionable Coca and Pepsi Cola. In the case of scattered small communities, as are found in
Micronesia, the impact of a single cultural worker in different islets can be almost visualised.
24
25
The Chinese word for teacher reached Palau, but only Palau, as ssen-chen. A crew of Islamized
Indians brought to Kosrae, but not elsewhere, such personal names as Shri, and Kanya (maybe
before getting shipwrecked in New Zealand, where their ship s bell was found with an inscription
in Tamil, suggesting the interesting date of 600 years ago). Yet the Kusaians had kept their
Indonesian style saddle roofs, which are not found in Pohnpei, but are still visible in Yap, and of
their traditions the Kusaians were well conscious.
Kusaians, who boast that in the past they would sail to Japan59, and not only to Tonga and
Baanaba, and who obviously traded with Pohnpei, exported to the Marshalls the breadfruit (the
Marshallese used to come and carry away breadfruit from Kosrae, in past times). But with
breadfruit there went the canoe oracle too, reduced to a simple system of ten pairs of numbers, as it
was in Kosrae (the foa oracle). The names of the magical sailors had been forgotten in Kosrae:
therefore from some other source a strange assortment of names reached the Marshalls, where the
divination boat got the name of bubu. Anyway, though in Kosrae they used to count off the canes
of a caned floor, and in the Marshalls they would use their left shoulder as a divider between the
knots falling in the front of the body and those falling in the back, yet the idea was the same: the
questioner got his answer after getting a final pair of numbers by counting off by four in opposite
directions.
The growing in isolation had favoured the development of dialects no longer mutually intelligible
even in two comparatively close archipelagos as Palau and Yap: yet all Micronesians have kept a
few fundamental terms proving their ancient Austroasiatic unity in a continental Western
motherland where they must have lived either together or in closer contact with other Pacific
islanders: terms like lima (the hand), talinga (the ear), tali (the cord), langi (the sky) uru (the
west) reng (turmeric) , vahine(woman). From its diffusion up to Turkey, we guess that hava (the
weather )comes from Arabic; while tali is the Tamils (Dravidians) sacred cord; and vahine (as
bahini, bahiri, Beni) is sister all over Northern India. But above all, they all shared the
philosophical belief that in the natural environment tout se tient , so that a man of knowledge (a
shaman, a diviner) can trace the divine Will.
The main factor for their minimal resistance to alien influences may have been the geographical
isolation of the Gilbertese and the Nauru people: they easily surrendered to the Middle Eastern
kaiwa (Arabic for divination), with the same silent fervour one can witness in American Samoa
during the Saturday bingo communal playing.
The sacrality of the coconut and pandanus leaves (both trees being essential for survival) continued
being respected in private individual divination, but for truly important issues even the Gilberts
goddess Nei Tituabine would start using a divination set of mat and pebbles to be counted off by
two (the same whose usage had been taught by Arabian traders to those migrant cousins of the
Micronesians who had emigrated to Madagascar).
When did the kaiwa reach the Pacific? Good sense suggests that Nauru s computerizable
divination may be no more than one century old, while Nei Tituabine s set (though the legend
would date it back to the Gilbertese s alleged return from their Samoan exile) might be 3-4
centuries old.
59
Segal, H.G. The Sleeping Lady Awakens, p.117 the landing of people from Ku-thia is recorded
in Japan .
25
26
Anyway, in the IV century there was already a consistent Arabian colony in Canton, where their
mosque survived the Red Guards cultural revolution . And we know from Chinese Annals of the
XII century that Formosan canoes had visited Fukien looking for metals.
On the other side, those heaps of pebbles might have been used even in the Micronesians early
Asiatic mainland home. Pebbles were used for counting by Pythagoras in civilised Greece, shells
were used as money for a much longer time, and 4 kauri was the natural subdivision of the Santals
ganda coins. The Santals were Austroasiatic speakers, and their contability influenced Sanskrit to
such extent that gandaka entered Sanskrit with the meaning of division 60.
That division should be division by four is a quite interesting point in favour of development of
Micronesian divination independently from Chinese I Ching influences.
Serially connected trade might explain the presence in Truk of a single wide-travelled sailor who
convinced a pragmatically minded Trukese that to count off holes made into the sand with a
forefinger was quicker than to count off knots from coconut leaflets. Such divination method gave
origin to that geomancy which is familiar to Europeans, but it did not go outside Truk, because it
lacks the religious meaning involved in the coconut oracle. And the knotting of leaflets to reach an
omen was a genuine Micronesian contribution to the ritual. The same may be said for the setting of
the knotted strings into the four intervals between the fingers.
At first sight, one would say that such a rite was inspired by the I Ching diviners. The counting off
by four, was, so to speak, in the air. It was done in Tibet as well as in China, and 4 were the
divination dice in Rome and in India, 4 were the pillars supporting heaven in Egypt and in Pohnpei,
4 were the three phalanxed fingers of the hand, from which numeration might have started among
the Austrasiatic Santals as well as among northern indoeuropeans ... Micronesia was just at the
periphery of the same Eurasiatic cultural area, to which China belonged too in pre- and protohistory.
As to the setting of the counted strips in the intervals between fingers, and making the resulting
knots jut out of the back of the hand (which seems such a patent imitation of what Chinese would
do with milfoil sticks), even that sprang out of the same background, out of a prehistorical shared
ideology.
Catching with the back of the hand is a typical magic operation: in ordinary life one catches objects
with one s palm. But in Rome (and in India too) when playing dice the bones (since originally
they played with bones) had to be caught on the back of the hand.
And, according to Hambruch, in Namoluk atoll as well as in Nauru, a simple form of divination was
made by folding a leaflet on the back of the hand.
Therefore the only Chinese inspired feature seems to be the setting of the divination tools in
between fingers. Yet there too the similarity is only apparent. The hand has five fingers and four
intervals in Micronesia, but only four fingers and three intervals in China, perhaps with reference to
an earlier stage of the language. Besides, the setting of milfoil sticks in between fingers is just an
60
See Monier-Williams, Sanskrit Dictionary, p.344.
26
27
early stage of the process, whose aim is to identify the nature, one by one, of the six lines that will
compose the hexagrams, while in Micronesia with this step the final stage is achieved.
Therefore a direct derivation from Chinese divination should be excluded. Micronesia seems to be
independent, as for what regards that simpler divination method, aimed at finding an even or
odd result, in which the Micronesian (in fact, one should say Oceanian) interpretation is opposite
to that of Eurasia: even is good, and odd is bad ... One may even suppose that the people of
Oceania were conscious of the misogyny involved in assimilating even with the feminine gender,
and women with bad luck: they reacted by overturning the interpretation, since Micronesian
society was matrilineally organised, and in Palau the superiority of women was so universally
accepted that they tolerated the infanticide of boys.
This might lead to an interesting working hypothesis. One should, for once, just upturn the tables,
and suggest that that sort of divination was a truly Micronesian invention, a crude one, later to
undergo sophisticated improvements in mainland China.
After all, the highly refined Chinese mouth organ has an ancestor in Indochinese bamboo
instruments, and the Korean kayagum and the Japanese koto have an ancestor in a bamboo string
instrument found in Luzon61.
It is not logical that the islanders should only have received cultural contributes from abroad, and
should have given nothing to the world around them. Possibly, it is not true.
Another interesting autonomous development is the anthropomorphism of the pairs of numbers
resulting from the Divine Will coming down to us: but a Pacific islander could not imagine a
voyage without a canoe, and a canoe without sailors. And such sailors must have names, just as for
the Roman gambler the dice combinations had a personality, had sympathies, had hearts. The
German Expedition of 1908-1910 in Micronesia could not find a clue to the origin of those names,
or to their meaning, which means that already at the beginning of this century the ancient tradition
had been forgotten.
Whether the 16 sailors are so ancient as to be the cultural heroes of the time Micronesian colonized
their islands, nobody can say. To be sure there is a high percentage of women in the canoe from
Ngulu and from Yap, and the initial syllable of other names in the Namoluk canoe shows that prefix
I-, li-, ni-, which in Micronesian languages countersigns women and birds: Lipul, Lithanwei,
Inoaeiman, Inifai, Inipwai, Ilifar might have been female sailors in a distant past.
It is quite likely that in the remote time of their immigration women were welcome in their
husbands and fathers canoes (instead of being forbidden to go on board, as they are now). Another
possibility is that they were deities, since Micronesian deities must have been of female gender in
the past, when the status of women was higher than today.
If such is the case, one understands that the punishment of Linifaren, who is charged with being a
bad sailor and is sent to take a seat at the back of the canoe, might just mark the moment in which
women started losing authority and respect, and one feels such hypothesis is supported by the
61
Codecasa, M.S., An Ancestor of the Korean Kayagum, in Korea Journal, Seoul, 1975, 15, 4.
27
28
strange errands of a canoe manned by four females, and of the other mythical canoe, manned by 16
sailors, namely 9 women and 7 men, which sailed to discover the end of the world ... .
But De Beauclair reports a clarifying legend from Ulithi62 about an expedition organised by a chief
from Yap: he planned to drop in Ifaluk one man and one woman for each of the 8 low class clans.
They would create a new population, calculated to be forever subject to the higher classes rulers
remaining in the capital of the Yap empire.
A Western observer would stop at this: they were 16 because there were 8 inferior classes in Yap:
it was just a casual necessity. But that would not be the opinion of a Micronesian diviner: they had
to be sixteen because 16 is the number of the right rhythm of being and becoming.
62
On Religion and Myths of Yap, BIAES 1967, 23
28
TABLE II
THE 16 GEOMANTIC PATTERNS 0F ARABIC DIVINATION
1 VIA
X
2 POPULUS
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
3 CAPUT
DRAGONIS
X X
X
X
X
4 CAUDA
DRAGONIS
X
X
X
X X
X X
X
X X
X X
8 ALBUS
X X
X X
X
X X
X
X
X
5 PUER
X
X
X X
X
6 PUELLA
X
X X
X
X
7 RUBEUS
9 CONJUNCTIO
X X
X
X
X X
10 CARCER
X
X X
X X
X
11 FORTUNA X X
MAJOR
X X
X
X
12 FORTUNA
MINOR
X
X
X X
X X
13 LAETITIA
X
X X
X X
X X
14 TRISTITIA
X X
X X
X X
X
15 ACQUISITIO X X
X
X X
X
16 AMISSIO
X
X X
X
X X
TABLE III
DIVINATION IN THE GILBERTS AND NAURU
THE FIRST FOUR LINES CONTAIN THE POSSIBLE COMBINATIONS
OF TWO PAIRS OF NUMBERS (1 AND 2)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
1
1
1
1
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
l
m
n
o
p
2
1
2
1
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
l
m
n
o
p
a
1
2
1
1
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
l
m
n
o
p
a
b
2
1
1
2
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
l
m
n
o
p
a
b
c
2
2
2
1
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
l
m
n
o
p
a
b
c
d
2
2
1
2
f
g
h
i
j
k
l
m
n
o
p
a
b
c
d
e
2
1
1
1
g
h
i
j
k
l
m
n
o
p
a
b
c
d
e
f
2
2
1
1
h
i
j
k
l
m
n
o
p
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
1
1
2
2
i
j
k
l
m
n
o
p
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
1
1
1
2
j
k
l
m
n
o
p
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
2
1
2
2
k
l
m
n
o
p
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
1
2
2
2
l
m
n
o
p
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
1
2
2
1
m
n
o
p
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
l
1
1
2
1
n
o
p
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
l
m
1
2
1
2
o
p
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
l
m
n
2
2
2
2
p
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
l
m
n
o
TABLE IV
THE 16 STANDARD QUESTIONS IN NAURU DIVINATION
X
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
Will my wish be fulfilled or not?
Will my work be successful or not?
Is there any danger in my work or not?
Is my work here nearby or not?
Shall I receive hostile visitors or not?
Shall I get back what was stolen or not?
Are the efforts of your friend honourable or not?
Should I go away or not?
Will you be happy, if you get married?
Will she be faithful, if I marry her?
Will the girl have me, or not?
Will a child be born?
Shall I be happy again or not?
Will the respasser be discovered?
Shall I start my enterprise today or not?
What does my dream mean?
TABLE V
THE SERIES OF 16 ANSWERS FOR THE LETTER A GROUP
1111
2121
1211
2112
2221
2212
2111
2211
1112
1122
2112
1222
1221
1121
1212
2222
You will get what you wish
You will be sorry after
You will be successful today
The thief will be caught
No way to know, whether he will be healed
A beautiful girl
Either boy or girl, a beautiful one
Wait for when you get married
You must not leave
Forget your wish, there is nothing in it
Your enterprise will be successful
You will not recover what was stolen
Hostile visitors will come
Watch out for the land
You will receive help
Don t worry, God will help
TABLE VI
COMPARATIVE TALE OF THE NAMES OF THE 16 MAGIC MICRONESIAN SAILORS
(AFTER THE 1910 RESEARCH OF THE GERMAN EXPEDITION)
Eilers
Müller 1917
Walleser 1913
Girschner 1912 p199
Krämer 1932, p337
Krämer 1937, p375
NUKUORO
NGULU
YAP
NAMOLUK
TRUK
FAIS
F Vunumor
F Supis
Nivul
Nama n
Masog
F Tsänu-ul
Sayog
F Nagamon
F Thiliveg
Thagalop
Väneg
F Fugomo
Nifau
Lineparón
F Navai (Long)
F Lifór +
Wummer
Sopes
Newul
Namein
Mesok
Fenuel
Seyok
Negeman
Ziliweg
Zogolop
F Weneg
F Fogomou
F Nefau
F Lanporon
F Newei
F Lifer
Pukenemar
Saupith
Lipul
Inemain
Mesauk
Lithanwei
Sauya
Inoaeiman
Tilifek
Toaleifan
Pwainek
Momo
Inifai
Laneperen
Inipwai
Ilifar
Pukunumar
?
# Saupis
Inemein
Mesauk
Litanual
Sauia
Inoman
Dilefes
Taulap
Bueijak
Mamu
Inefau
Lengibaron
Ineboei
Inifar
# Ilefar
Sopes
Lubul
Lémal
Mesog
# Venjeg
Saujag
F Ilagomal
F Thilifeg
Fagálai
# Djeluel
Mogoméi
Ilebau
Langabaul
Ilebai
# Bugólomer
1. PUENIMARE
2. SAUPIS
3. NIPURE
4. INAMENU
5. MESEKI
6. LENIWARE
7. SAUJATE
8. NAKOIMANE
9. DILIPAKI
10. TOROPEILING
11. POINGEKI
12. BAKOMOI
13. NIBAU
14. LANGIPARAN
15. MEPEI
16. ILINIPARE
1-4
1-2
1-3
2-4
2-3
3-4
4-4
2-2
1-1
3-3
4-3
3-2
4-2
3-1
2-1
4-1
F = female spirit
# = messed up transmission generally inverted couple of numbers
+ = positive omen
- = nagative omen
MARSHALLS
# Bogonemet
# Naome
Dschajak+
# Eleuber
Torobailing
# Medjek
Nebar
# Dilebik
# Nogemin
TABLE VII
CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN THE SAILORS
OF THE NUKUORO AND NGULU CANOE
NUKUORO
List order and names
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
NGULU
Sex of the passengers and names
PUENIMARE
SAUPIS
NIPURE
INAMENU
MESEKI
LENIWARE
SAUJATE
1-4
1-2
1-3
2-4
2-3
3-4
4-4
F Vunumor (Uunema)
F Supis
Nivul
Nama n
Masog
F Tsänu ul #
Sayog
F NAKOIMAN
F DILIPAKI
2-2
1-1
F Nagamón (Negaimon)
F Thiliveg
8. TOROPEILING
9. POINGEKI
10. BAKOMOI
11. NIBAU
12. LANGIBARAN
13. MEPEI
14. ILINIPARE
3-3
4-3
3-2
4-2
3-1
2-1
4-1
Thagalop #
Väneg
F Fugomo
Nifau
Lineparon
F Navai, Navailong
F Lifor
TABLE VIII
THE YAP MAGIC CANOE AND ITS SAILORS, NUMBERED ACCORDING TO THE ORDER IN WHICH THEY BOARDED
THE CANOE (AFTER MÜLLER)
1. Seyok (4-4)
2. Thagalop (3-3)
6. Nevul (1-3)
15. Mesak (2-3)
5. Lanporon (3-1)
14. Fenuel (3-4)
16. Fogomon (3-2)
3. Negeman (2-2) F
7. Vummor (1-4)
13. Weneg (4-3) F
9. Namein (2-4)
4. Thiliveg (1-1) F
12. Sores (1-2)
8. Lifer (4-1) F
10. Nefau (4-2) F
11. Newei (2-1) F