Aku-Aku

Also Known As: also akuaku, aku; grouped with varua and tupuna in the Rapanui categories of the person
Region/Culture: Oceania
Mythos: Rapa Nui Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Fairy Folk and Spirit Beings
Mythical Attributes: They are protective spirits fixed to particular places, a stone, a stream or the whole territory of a clan, who watch over the families and possessions belonging to that ground.
Role in Mythos: They form the standing population of guardians and boundary-keepers through whom the Rapanui hold and share land, and through whom the dead remain present in it.
Relation to Humans: A household lives alongside its own aku-aku and expects protection, skill and knowledge from them, and expects punishment from those belonging to somebody else’s ground. Permission is asked before entering their places, and food is cooked and left for them rather than eaten.

The earth oven is opened at the mouth of a lava tube on the north coast, and nobody eats. Hot stones come out of the pit, then the wrapped bundles, then the steam, and the smell of cooked fish and sweet potato rolls back into the dark of the cave where the air is cold enough to raise the hair on a forearm. The pit is left open. The people who dug it stand at the entrance and ask, out loud and by name, whether they may go in. This is not theatre for visitors. It is the ordinary courtesy owed to whoever already lives there, and on Rapa Nui a great many places are already occupied.

The occupants are the aku-aku. They are not one being with a story, and treating them as a single monster misses what makes them interesting. They are a population, thickly distributed, several attached to every kinship group and well over a hundred across an island of roughly sixty-four square miles. Some are the spirits of distant ancestors, invisible and everywhere at once. Some were on the ground before any canoe reached it. The Rapanui set them in a wider order of persons that includes the kuhane, the inner soul that slips out of a sleeper and travels, and the family gods above and below the world of the living, and within that order the aku-aku are the ones you actually meet.

Their origin runs with the founding voyage. Hotu Matu’a, the first settler, is said to have crossed with the help of aku-aku, eight of them in one telling still given on the island, and when he landed they did not stay with him. They went into the landscape and took up residence in the features that mattered, and then they bred. They are breeding still. Every hill worth naming and every stone worth avoiding acquired an owner that way, which is why the parallel world of the aku-aku keeps pace with the human one instead of receding into a golden age. A spirit’s seat is called its pepe, and it is usually the dominant thing in the view.

Describing what one looks like is a trap the sources decline to walk into. The aku-aku change appearance at will and are reported mostly through borrowed forms, an animal, a squall coming across the water, a human figure with the proportions wrong in one particular. Others have no form to borrow and exist only as an expression: the crow of a rooster at the wrong hour, the scent of a flower where nothing is flowering. That is the whole of them. Their existence is limited to how they express themselves, and outside that expression there is nothing to see, which makes the island’s carved wooden figures with their sunken cheeks and visible ribs a guess rather than a portrait.

What they do with that presence is hold ground. Sebastian Englert, the Capuchin priest who spent thirty years on the island collecting what was left of the old knowledge, recorded that the last boundaries of clan land were the aku-aku themselves. Stone cairns marked the edges of a clan’s estate, but the cairns were only the visible part. Beyond them stood spirits that were vengeful and territorial, working for the wellbeing of their own people and the misfortune of anybody else, and because a territorial being cannot be argued with or bought, it was simply impossible for a person to take possession of another clan’s land. The system held for centuries on an island with no forests to hide in and no neighbours to appeal to.

A man walks a boundary he has no business on, near dusk, with a stolen chicken under his arm. Something goes wrong with him. The tellings do not always specify what, and the vagueness is the point, because the threat worked precisely by being unbounded.

Their powers follow from their fixity. To the family that belongs to them, aku-aku give protection of the household and its possessions, and they bestow knowledge and skills that a person could not otherwise have. They guard the soul against possession by hostile spirits, and they escort it on the voyage to Po, the world of the dead. They can also do real harm, and the same spirit does both, depending entirely on whose side of the cairn you are standing.

The limits are just as specific. The family guardians are not immortal. Unlike the older spirits of nature, who were there before people and will outlast them, a household’s aku-aku can die, and a lineage that loses its ground has a real problem. They are not worshipped either, and never were. Acknowledgement is enough, a share of the meal set aside, a word before entering a cave, and beyond that they are frequently a nuisance, responsible for petty and pointless mischief that nobody would attribute to a god. Their reach ends where their place ends. Carry an aku-aku off its stone and there is nothing left to carry.

The word travelled further than the spirits did. In 1958 a Norwegian archaeologist published a bestseller called Aku-Aku, named after the personal guardian a Rapanui man called on before revealing where the family carvings were hidden, and for most of the world that book is where the term begins. On the island it did not begin there and it did not end there. The umu tahu is still lit at cave mouths, the pit still left open, and the people going in still ask first.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an Aku-Aku?

An Aku-Aku is a spirit in the tradition of Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, attached to a specific place such as a stone, a stream or the whole territory of a clan. Aku-Aku watch over the particular family that belongs to that ground, protecting the household and its possessions. Some are the spirits of distant ancestors and others were present on the island before people arrived.

Where do Aku-Aku live?

Aku-Aku inhabit fixed points in the Rapa Nui landscape, and a spirit’s seat is called its pepe, usually a prominent feature within a clan’s territory. Caves are strongly associated with them, which is why an earth-oven offering called umu tahu is prepared and permission asked aloud before anyone enters. Places holding a potentially vengeful being are treated as kona tapu, forbidden ground.

What do Aku-Aku look like?

Aku-Aku have no fixed body. They change appearance freely and are usually reported through borrowed shapes, most often animals, weather phenomena, or human figures with one characteristic exaggerated. Some have no form at all and are known only through an expression such as the crow of a rooster or the scent of a flower.

Are Aku-Aku good or evil?

Both, depending on whose land you are standing on. To their own family an Aku-Aku gives protection, skills and knowledge, and guards the soul from possession and on its journey to Po, the world of the dead. To an outsider crossing into their territory the same spirit brings misfortune, and Sebastian Englert recorded that these vengeful, territorial guardians were the real boundaries of clan land on Rapa Nui.

Did Thor Heyerdahl invent the Aku-Aku?

No. Heyerdahl’s 1958 book Aku-Aku carried the word to a global audience, and it took its title from a Rapanui man’s personal guardian spirit, but the belief was documented independently before it and continues on the island today. Rapanui accounts trace the first Aku-Aku to the founding voyage of Hotu Matu’a, long predating any European record.