Julius Scammon Rodman (1912-2001), of New Bedford, Massachusetts, whaling stock, arrived in Hawaii in 1930 following a year at sea, and from then until 1940, he scoured the caves of Hawaii in search of age-old Hawaiian artifacts – bark tapestry, weapons, calabashes, ornaments of feather work and ivory, and the like – that he supplied to collectors such as Honolulu’s Bishop Museum.
Julius Scammon Rodman (1912-2001), of New Bedford, Massachusetts, whaling stock, arrived in Hawaii in 1930 following a year at sea, and from then until 1940, he scoured the caves of Hawaii in search of age-old Hawaiian artifacts – bark tapestry, weapons, calabashes, ornaments of feather work and ivory, and the like – that he supplied to collectors such as Honolulu’s Bishop Museum.
This was risky work for Rodman, for by entering hidden burial grounds sacred to Hawaiians, he was defying kahuna curses and incurring the animosity of individuals who resented his intrusions into the venerated final resting places of Hawaiian dead.
In his travels about the Hawaiian Islands, Rodman met Hawaiians who still believed in the old Hawaiian religion and in the sorcerer kahunas who maintained it.
He listened to their tales of meetings with ghost dogs with flaming red eyes, deaths credited to the black magic rituals of kahunas, and of ghosts of dead people, and ghost armies marching at night, and so forth.
Of Rodman’s relationship with kahunas, biographer Evelyn Wells (1899-1984) wrote, and I paraphrase: “Rodman learned first-hand that many kahunas were still practicing their powers for good and evil. He sought them out, befriended them, and learned their secrets. He was permitted to observe their ancient rites and hear chants and prayers of old. ”
Rodman also became familiar with several authenticated cases of sorcerer kahunas having prayed their victims to death. In these cases, superstitious persons, whether or not they were aware that they were being cursed by a kahuna, would take to their beds, and without apparent reason, would die.
According to Rodman, if you were to meet a kahuna, he would at first appear to be an ordinary person. You would only then recognize him by his eyes, which had been turned red by magic potions that had enhanced his powers of sorcery.
Charles E. Frankel, book reviewer for the “Honolulu Star-Bulletin,” described Rodman’s book, “The Kahuna Sorcerers of Hawaii,” published in 1979, “as an amazing book … everything you wanted to know about kahunas but were too frightened to ask.”
