Polynesian PantheonSacred Site
Te Rerenga Wairua (Cape Reinga)
The northernmost tip of New Zealand, where Maori tradition holds that the spirits of the dead depart for the afterlife. Souls travel north along the island, descend an ancient pohutukawa tree, and slide down its roots into the sea to journey to Hawaiki.
About Te Rerenga Wairua (Cape Reinga)
Where spirits leap
Te Rerenga Wairua at Cape Reinga is, in Maori tradition, the leaving-place of the dead: spirits travel north, descend a pohutukawa, and go into the sea toward Hawaiki. It is a directional eschatology tied to a real headland. Nineteenth-century collectors (Grey, later ethnographers) wrote down local accounts. There is no Book of the Dead equivalent. The site is still treated as tapu.
On the map
Te Rerenga Wairua (Cape Reinga) among other places of the Polynesian Pantheon.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Maori tradition of Cape Reinga
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.
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