Te Rerenga Wairua

Also Known As: the leaping place of the spirits; also Te Reinga and Cape Reinga, the headland carrying both names officially
Region/Culture: Oceania
Mythos: Maori Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Mythological Places
Mythical Attributes: It is the point at which the wairua of the dead leave the land of the living and begin the descent that carries them home.
Role in Mythos: Every spirit that travels te ara wairua, the pathway of spirits, arrives here and goes down by the root of a single pohutukawa into the sea.
Relation to Humans: The living come to it as the most spiritually significant place in the country, and the protocol asks them to eat nothing on the headland, since the ground belongs to the dead who are passing over it. Water may be drunk, and the cape is visited constantly, which means the pathway of the departing is crossed daily by people carrying cameras.

The wind at the top of New Zealand arrives off two oceans at once, and where the Tasman and the Pacific run into each other the sea stands up in a white seam that reaches out past the last rock and keeps going. Spray comes over the clifftop in sheets. Below the edge, on a face of stone with almost no soil on it, a single pohutukawa grows sideways out of the rock, salt-burnt, gripping with roots that have very little to grip. Every Maori who dies comes to this tree. Not the body. The other part.

Te Rerenga Wairua sits at the tip of Te Hiku o te Ika a Maui, the tail of the great fish that Maui hauled out of the ocean, which is the North Island. Its name says exactly what happens there. Rerenga is the leap or the departure, wairua is the spirit, and the cape is the place where one becomes the other. The land narrows and narrows through the dunes and the scrub of Muriwhenua until there is nothing left of it but this headland, the light on its crown, and the drop.

Getting there takes the wairua some time. The pathway is called te ara wairua, and in the northern tellings it runs the length of the coast, up the long western beach called Te Oneroa-a-Tohe, through country where the living also walk, until the road and the land both run out together. The spirit is not sent on this journey empty handed. A dying chief would often ask for one particular food, or for water from one particular spring, and what was brought became the o matenga, the death provisions that would keep the wairua going once the body had stopped. Over the dying a tohunga chanted the tuku wairua, the release of the spirit, which loosens the tie and eases the passage. The karakia is for the traveller, not for the mourners.

At the cape the tree is waiting. The spirits go down by the aka, the root, which hangs from the rock and turns upward at its end above the water, and there they wait for the tide to draw out before letting go. That detail is the whole thing in miniature: even the dead keep to the timing of the sea. Then they slide, and the surface closes, and the reinga has them.

What follows happens underwater. The wairua travel out beneath the swell to Manawatawhi, the Three Kings, the low scatter of islands lying off the cape in open ocean, and there they come up again onto Ohaua, the highest point of the group. This is the last stop. From Ohaua the spirit turns and looks back at the country it will not see again, and makes its farewell, and only then goes on to Hawaiki, the homeland the ancestors sailed from. The tellings do not always agree about the final address. Some have the wairua descending to Rarohenga, the world below, where Hine-nui-te-po draws her offspring down to her; others have them continuing across the ocean to Hawaiki itself. Both versions end with the same gesture on the same rock.

The cape acquired its office from Kupe. The navigator is said to have found this coast while following what he took for a whale, and his crew settled the country between the cape and Parengarenga Harbour. Kupe named the pathway of spirits and named the leaping place at the end of it, and he fixed Te Rerenga Wairua as the point from which those who came after him would go back to Hawaiki in spirit, since he had gone back in a canoe. The tidal race that boils below the headland is remembered as the wake of his departure, still churning centuries later. It is a striking piece of geography to inherit as a doctrine, and the place does nothing to argue with it.

There is a second story fastened to this coast, and it belongs to a man rather than a myth. Tohe was an old chief of Ngati Kuri whose daughter had married south, and when he could no longer bear not seeing her he told his people he was going to walk to her. They begged him not to. The country between was enemy ground and he was old. He went anyway, and before he left he gave them an instruction that reads now like a man arranging his own funeral in advance: if I die, snatch my spirit, because it will certainly come back along this way on its journey to Te Rerenga Wairua. The bay where they were told to catch him is called Kapowairua for that reason. The long beach he walked carries his name too.

What the place offers is a door, and one that only works in one direction. Nobody comes back up the root. Its power is not something it does to a visitor but something it does for the dead, reliably, without conditions of merit, for every wairua that arrives regardless of who they were in the light. Its limits are the limits of a threshold. It cannot be moved, it cannot be reproduced anywhere else on the coast, and it depends on a tree that grows in a place no tree should manage, lashed by the same wind that drove Abel Tasman past and eventually cost enough ships that a light was put on the headland in 1941, the last watched lighthouse built in the country.

The light is automatic now and has been since the keeper was pulled out in 1987. The car park is busy. The rule about food still holds, and the reason for it is not squeamishness: people are standing on a road that is in use. Out past the seam of broken water, the low profile of Manawatawhi is visible on a clear day, which means that anyone at the railing can see both ends of the last journey at once.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Te Rerenga Wairua?

Te Rerenga Wairua is the headland at the northern tip of New Zealand where, in Maori tradition, the spirits of the dead leave the land. The name means the leaping place of the spirits. The same cape is also known as Cape Reinga, and it is regarded as the most spiritually significant site in the country.

What happens to a spirit at Te Rerenga Wairua?

The wairua travels the spirits’ pathway to the cape, descends the root of a lone pohutukawa growing on the cliff face, and waits for the outgoing tide before dropping into the sea. It then travels underwater to Manawatawhi, the Three Kings Islands, climbs onto the high point called Ohaua, makes a last farewell to the land, and goes on to Hawaiki.

Why is there a pohutukawa tree at Te Rerenga Wairua?

The tree is the way down. It grows out of the bare rock below the headland, and its exposed root is the path by which spirits descend into the reinga, the world below. It is very old, and it is the single most important feature of the site.

Can you visit Te Rerenga Wairua, and are there rules?

Yes, the cape is open to visitors, and there are protocols. Food should not be eaten on the headland, because the ground is the pathway of departing spirits, though drinking water is acceptable. Visitors are asked to treat the whole area as what it is, a place still in active use by the dead.

Who was Tohe, and what does he have to do with this place?

Tohe was an elderly Ngati Kuri chief who set out south to see his married daughter one last time, against the advice of his people. Before leaving he told them that if he died they should catch his spirit, since it would pass back that way on its journey to Te Rerenga Wairua. The bay named Kapowairua, meaning catch the spirit, takes its name from that instruction.