"You'll know "le'a" as your ancestors did. It's natural. It's beautiful and satisfying. And, it's just lots of fun!" --- Mary Kawena Pukai.
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In pre-contact Hawaii sex and all relations between people were considered to be natural and normal, and not something to be ashamed of in any way. The Hawaiian ancient religion had no concept of "original sin," and so the Hawaiians were flabbergasted and even amused by the up-tight mores and the extreme religious strictness of the first missionaries to their islands.
To the Hawaiians sex and everything that led up to the actual act was to be enjoyed, not regulated. They felt no shame about nudity, which was considered practical, healthful, normal and beautiful, in a very warm climate. They surfed the waves on their surf boards joyously, and totally nude, since wet bodies dried quickly, without the chafing of sodden clothing, --- even if it was only bark cloth (tapa) loin coverings, or wrappings.By the way, in the pre-contact Islands sexually transmitted diseases were totally unknown; they simply didn't exist. (Common diseases known in the rest of the world ravaged the isolated Hawaiians. Measles was a deadly scourge among the Hawaiians, who had no natural immunity.)
Royal incest was practiced and seen as necessary to insure the highest "mana," or power of the kings and queens of their race. Brother and sister mating was done among the "Alii," the royalty of the Islands, for the supreme benefit of all the People, to create the most pure human "vessels" for communicating with the gods, and to insure that there would always be that human conduit to their deities. (Naturally, this horrified the missionaries.) In addition to the fact that after the royal mating, and marriage, was preformed the brother and sister couple were free, according to Hawaiian society practices, to take other wives and other husbands of their choice, often multiple mates. (The missionaries were, once again, absolutely scandalized by this.)
The hula, the traditional dance, done by both men and women, was a graceful and sincere expression of Hawaiian culture. But, missionaries saw this slow, sensual swinging of the hips and the rest of the body as disgraceful and sinful. They sought to stamp out the hula wherever they saw it preformed.
Madame Pele, the Hawaiian fire goddess, was a very powerful deity in the Islands when the missionaries arrived. Of course, they considered Pele to be as sinful as her worshippers. And, tried to stamp her out also.
(For a fascinating, beautifully, thoroughly researched and vastly entertaining look at Hawaii, even from it's very beginning, with the geological formation of the islands, I give my highest rating - ***** to James Michener's huge and marvelous novel: "HAWAII".)
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