{"id":6269,"date":"2019-04-12T16:11:16","date_gmt":"2019-04-12T16:11:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/moko-guardians-or-enemies\/"},"modified":"2019-04-13T03:54:27","modified_gmt":"2019-04-13T03:54:27","slug":"moko-guardians-or-enemies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/moko-guardians-or-enemies\/","title":{"rendered":"Moko – Guardians or Enemies?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h2>\n

Moko,Guardians or Enemies?<\/h1>\n

“Moko\u201d in the Rapanui language means lizard, a small reptile which, oddly, causes panic among the Rapanui.\u00a0 Even the most fearless of men will ask the wife to change the light bulb on the door step for fear of finding a moko there.\u00a0 Many women can\u2019t sleep if they hear the crickling sound that the lizards make as they are courting.\u00a0 Surely this reaction must come from conditioning with some terrorific associations.\u00a0 Let us see what can be found in Polynesian mythology.<\/p>\n

Lizards and tuataras of New Zealand are often considered the guardians of caves or funerary chambers where they are to watch over the dead.\u00a0 According to the tales collected by Dr. Stephen Chauvet…\u201dto keep the \u2018Aku Aku\u2019 (malignant spirits) from the caves or funerary chambers, the Easter Islanders buried a carved wooden lizard on either side of the entrance.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 They also hung them from their necks during special ceremonies.\u00a0 The Maori (of New Zealand) use stone carvings of lizards as a base for their talismans that are supposed to protect the health and vitality of a tree or a forest.\u00a0 Sometimes they have been buried underneath the main pilar of a Hare Whananga (a house for aprentices) or other important constructions.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cAll creatures feathered, scaled or hairy must be of dragon origin.\u201d Lin An Huai Zi (c. 120 B.C.)”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cNgarara\u201d is the Maori word for reptiles like the tuataras, lizards, iguanas and dragons in some legends.\u00a0 They believed that reptiles were the descendants of Punga, son of Tangaroa, the god of the sea. Punga and his descendants were ugly and replusive and the Maori feared them, considering them joined with Whiro or Hiro, the god of the dark, evil and death.\u00a0 One of their legends tells of a giant reptile called Te Whakaruaki who obliged a woman to marry him.\u00a0 Her family trapped him inside a house and burned him, but his tail separated and became the father of Mokopapa, the Pacific lizard.<\/p>\n

Another story tells that a tuatara had a discussion with his brother, the shark, about whether they should live on the land or in the sea.\u00a0 The shark remained with the sea, while the tuatara moved onto the land to frighten the people with his horrible appearance.\u00a0\u00a0 Yet another tale speaks of a woman who ran away with her lover, a warrior from Rotorua, but later begged forgiveness from the elders.\u00a0 They challenged the warrior and sentenced him to swallow a lizard.\u00a0 He died and was known from then as \u201cNgarara Nui\u201d (great reptile).\u00a0 Further legends tell of Tu Tangata Kino who took the form of a reptile and created insects, spiders and lizards.\u00a0 The Maori believed that he was the spirit of a reptile which would crawl into the mouth of a person while he was sleeping and eat away at his stomach, causing stomach aches and malaise.<\/p>\n

The only Rapanui legend related to lizards is that of a man called Raraku, who captured a great \u201cHeke\u201d, (squid) in the sea near Tongariki and ate it.\u00a0 The result was that he went crazy and was chased away by the people.\u00a0 Raraku made a wooden garrote, carved like a lizard, and rampaged over the northern and western coasts killing all he encountered. (Werner Wolf, 1847).\u00a0\u00a0 That might be sufficient reason to fear the \u201cMoko\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lizards and tuataras of New Zealand are often considered the guardians of caves or funerary chambers where they are to watch over the dead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":6035,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[134],"tags":[148],"class_list":["post-6269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-legends","tag-legends-of-easter-island"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}