Case file · Folklore / legend
Spirit mediums of Tikopia
Anthropologist Raymond Firth, on Tikopia in 1928–29, recorded spirit mediums through whom gods and ancestors spoke, and the cycle of rites he called 'The Work of the Gods'.
1929 CE · -12.30, 168.83 · status: official
The account
Firth's long-term study, published from 1936, followed the island's conversion to Christianity, which by the 1950s had ended the old rites. His books are a classic record of Polynesian religion.