The north-west Hawaiian island of Mokumanamana is said to be touched by the gods. Bisected by the Tropic of Cancer latitude line, it is deep in the Pacific Ocean, about 400 miles from Honolulu. The island’s steep rocky cliffs give way to indigo blue waters dotted with monk seals and stony coral. No humans have lived on Mokumanamana, but it has the world’s highest density of ancient Hawaiian religious sites.
“It sits as a boundary between what Native Hawaiians refer to as ‘pō’, the darkness, and ‘au’, the light,” said William Aila, the former chair of Hawaii’s department of land and natural resources. “When a Hawaiian passes, their soul makes its way from wherever it is in the main Hawaiian Islands, up to the North-western Hawaiian Islands. And at that juncture, at pō, they’re met by their ancestors.” As Aila tells it, if a person has been good, they can pass into pō and be with their ancestors, who inhabit the Pacific waters west of Mokumanamana.
