And so, (almost a version of original sin?) the children of Papua New Guinea inherited a flawed life that, after the fact, could not be completely remedied, not even by the Yalyakali. In at least one story, the reason human life is hard and painful while that of the Yalyakali is not is that when human women began having children they fed their children with breastmilk before the Yalyakali could intervene and provide the infants with the water of life.
Therefore, the social structures and life on earth reflects the world of the Yalyakali and visa versa. There were myths about the Yalyakali explaining how they were involved in the formation of rivers, lakes and other land forms. The Yalyakali (3) were the agents by which the material world and its inhabitants came into being. The Yalyakali had access to the “water of life” which was a key reason why they were both eternal and lived without suffering and hardship. In the realm of the Yalyakali, gardens produced bountifully and life was truly good (epe). Aitawe was believed to have spawned a class of angelic beings called “Yalyakali” who are eternal and who inhabited an ideal version of the material, visible world inhabited by the Enga.
Aitawe was male and the moon was regarded as female. Aitawe was often identified with the sun and was regarded as the creator or source of pretty much all that existed. I learned of this name from some of the elders while talking about their understanding of this spiritual being). The Enga believed that there was a supreme spiritual being that most Enga’s knew as “Aitawe” although in the area where I served, he was also known as “Niki” and “Nita” and even by the name “Gole” a word remarkably similar to our name “God.” ( It is possible that this name is a variant on the word “God” and was picked up by way of trade routes from areas near the coast that had very early contact with missionaries. People united to hold rituals to restore balance and harmony.”(1)Īs mentioned in the above paragraph, there were different types of spiritual or invisible beings in the Enga Cosmology and I will begin by providing a brief sketch of them and how they interacted with the Enga people of Papua New Guinea. The god Aitawe, the sky people and the ancestors were rarely believed to interfere with the lives of individuals or to punish individuals for wrong doings… Illness and death were blamed largely on ghost attacks by recently deceased close relatives…It was believed that the sky people and ancestors would help with the fertility of the environment and growth of crops, children and pigs if the appropriate rituals were held to communicate with them.
“In Enga religion, beings in the spirit world were considered to be largely detached from human life on earth. The final paragraph of the chapter seemed like a good place for us to begin our thinking on this topic. However, I concluded early on in my ministry among the Enga people that while those spirits could fairly be classified as unholy, I did not think it fair or accurate to call them “evil.” And so, my thesis is that the invisible beings with which the Enga people related through a variety of rituals that we would characterize as religious were unholy spirits, but not necessarily demons, and that is the starting point for considering the work of the Holy Spirit in that context.Īnthropologist Polly Weissner who has done extensive research among the Enga provided me with a chapter on Enga Religion from a yet to be published book on Enga culture. And yet, I would hesitate to label myself and most people I know as “evil.” The inhabitants of the highlands of Papua New Guinea believed their world to be populated with a virtual pantheon of spirits that, generally speaking, were more dangerous than helpful. I do not necessarily regard everything “unholy” as also being “evil.” For instance, I understand that I and everyone I know could legitimately be labeled as “unholy” based on the fact that we are imperfect and sinful. I like the title you chose for this presentation, “ The Holy Spirit and the Unholy Spirits.” I don’t want to sound like some semantics parsing politicians from years gone by, but it seems to me that the first task is to determine what is meant by “unholy spirits,” and then see if the spirits that were part of the cosmology of the Enga people of Papua New Guinea could be fairly called, “unholy.” And then secondly, to determine if those spirits that were so central to what we would regard as the “religious” life of the Enga people could be equated with the demons and unclean spirits that Jesus encountered and exorcised from people in the gospels.
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