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The State of Aloha

Last month my friends were coming home after living on the Mainland for what seemed like years. My wife and I went to their homecoming party with flower lei, but I had to dart off to the kitchen and make sure that one of them was cut. You see, one of my friends is expecting. As I found myself snipping the thread and retying knots on each end I had to chuckle.

It didn’t matter if I actually believed that a closed lei around a hapai woman was bad luck. I wasn’t going to risk it. And for the most part, it didn’t matter if I believed it or not. Hawaii folks are a superstitious bunch, and I wasn’t going to mess with age-old rules.

Ask local people or anyone who’s lived here long enough and they will be ready to give you their list of superstitions. Most of them are prohibitions: don’t whistle at night; keep your chopsticks from sticking straight up in your rice; don’t write a name in red ink; and never — and I mean never — take home lava rocks.

And yes, we take it seriously. Rangers at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island get their share of heavy envelopes full of sad stories and rocks returned from remorseful tourists who dared to defy Madame Pele. This year, even the Wall Street Journal featured a story about the popular superstition.

Stories abound of tourists who take rocks and find themselves returning them with apologies. For some, their lives are seriously turned upside down. One report stated that a man took a rock from Kilauea and went back to the Mainland. Soon after that, his marriage collapsed and his mother died. He blamed it on the rock, returned it, and when he did, things started to turn around.

Park officials, however, aren’t pleased with getting rocks in the mail. They claim that the superstition does not stem back from time immemorial, but the 1940s and ’50s when park custodians were getting tired of finding rocks and sand in rented cars and facilities after touring Kalapana. Why not start a rumor that a curse would befall anyone who took with them rocks or even a grain of sand with them? That was one way to get rental cars clean.

But I don’t buy it. I am always careful to make sure that when I step out of Haleakala Crater, I’m not taking any rocks home with me.

How did I end up like this? Our superstitions are certainly a cut above the usual stuff you hear about on the Mainland with broken mirrors or walking underneath a ladder. The answer has a lot to do with the fact that we are one of the oldest multicultural communities in the union.

Local culture is a hodgepodge of other ethnicities, experiences and identities. The waves of immigrants from the United States, Asia, Europe and the Americas have all intermingled and become interlaced with the indigenous culture of the Native Hawaiians. The result is kind of like a plate lunch of superstition and folklore.

Take the red ink rule: Don’t write anyone’s name with the stuff. The origin for this one comes from Asia. In Korea, red ink was used to record the names of the departed in registries and other documents. The tradition may go back even further to China, where it’s also unlucky and considered very rude to write a name in red ink. It’s only natural to conclude that the Chinese and Korean workers who immigrated to the islands brought with them this and other superstitions.

Unlike the Mainland, where such a superstition is usually confined to ethnic communities, this superstition has managed to cross over to all cultures and peoples in the islands. Portuguese, Hawaiians or Filipinos are careful to avoid red ink.

Other superstitions are homegrown. I remember being told over and over again never to take pork over the pali on Oahu. If you do, bad things happen. Perhaps your car will break down. Perhaps you’ll get a visit from a ghost or other spirit. It was never clear what those bad things were, but such mandates should not be questioned.

This urban legend has Native Hawaiian roots. Folklorists believe that it comes from the legend of Kamapua’a and Madam Pele, former lovers who agreed to reside on opposite sides of Oahu. Perhaps carrying pork (pigs are associated with Kamapua’a) over the boundary between the leeward and windward sides violated the agreement between the gods.

These rules, legends and cautionary tales are easy to discredit. Yes, these things are illogical and unscientific. But that doesn’t matter. It’s a big part of our island culture that links us to our past. And even though they may make no sense, why tempt fate with Madam Pele and take her rocks?

* Ben Lowenthal is a trial and appellate lawyer who grew up on Maui. His email is 808stateofaloha@gmail.com. “The State of Aloha” alternates Fridays with Sarah Ruppenthal’s “Neighbors.”

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