SECRETS OF KAHUNA MAGIC by Brad Steiger

Here's our old pal Steiger, "one of the titans of the psychic field" according to Fate magazine right there on the cover, bringing us this study of indigenous Hawaiian magic as collected by researcher Max Freedom Long. Long pierced the veil of silence around Huna magic after being tipped off by William Tufts Brigham, first director of the historic Bishop Museum of Hawaii. It's a convoluted trail that leads us past death curses, fire walking, ancestral spirits, devil possession, and hopefully, ultimately, to spiritual enlightenment. And Steiger has been so kind to lay it out for us, the readers, for our own empowerment! An easy way to eliminate your enemies? Jeepers!

There's just one catch: it's all a crock! Long's "authentic" Hawaiian Huna magic sprang out of his own head, cobbled together from a New Age melange and laundered through the reputation of Brigham as an authority on Hawaiian culture. Says good ol' wikipedia: "There are no accepted Hawaiian sources – Malo, Kamakau, 'I'i, or Kepelino – that refer to the word Huna as a tradition of esoteric learning." And as for our authority figure Brigham ...

Described by Steiger and Long as an adorable grandfather figure overflowing with kindness and wisdom, the real William Tufts Brigham was unsurprisingly a much more complicated man, a product of his era and breeding. Hawaiian writer Makana Risser Chai has an in-depth piece about Brigham with details about his racial attitudes and their effects on his scholarship:

"Just to give a glimpse of his class consciousness, Brigham never met Hawaiian scholar Mary Kawena Pukui, though their paths crossed at the museum for a few years ... [S]he already had served as a source for books by Martha Beckwith and Laura Green because of her deep knowledge of Hawaiian ways. Yet this man of science who was working on a manuscript about Hawaiian religion did not interview a woman who was trained by her grandmother, a kahuna in the Pele line."

"He especially didn’t like Hawaiians. He called Queen Lili‘uokalani a “squaw.” In a letter he referred to the Queen as a “she devil,” said he “hoped she would be shot or hanged,” and wrote that the Hawai-ians’ attempt to restore the monarchy was “so that the n-gger might reign supreme.”"

So we find yet another dead-end of racism and cultural appropriation in the classic paranormal genre. These quickie cash-in books were nothing new for Steiger, who profiled many, many New Age hucksters like Long over the course of his prolific career, always with a sympathetic slash promotional gloss. The inconvenient facts of Long's dubious research didn't stop Steiger from writing further books on Huna, but we'll give Makana Risser Chai the final word on the original source of all this unseemly business:

"There is strong evidence that Long and Brigham did not meet at all, because none of the stories attributed to Brigham were in his own works. Even if they did meet, Brigham was not a reliable source on Hawaiian religion or kāhuna. Any quotes attributed to Brigham sourced from Long’s books are not credible."

Aloha for now, Brad, Max, and William, and may we meet again under better circumstances.

Award Books, 1971