Afterpants: Nether Regions pt 24 (Puloto)

In Samoa and Micronesia in general, they have a Nether Region called Puloto. It, like so many others is divided into 2 sections of their world of darkness "lalo fonua."

(The section for most everyone and the section for the 'elect')

While looking for info on this underworld...it is fairly scant....I came across the word "po"

The ruler of it is called Hine-nui-te-po (Great woman of the night) Night, here, being the main idea as Many tribes from this area of the world associate the world of the dead with darkness.

In the Hawaiian "po" means darkness and the realm of the gods but I had this thought about Taoism...in Chinese..."po" means "bright" but not bright like the sun...bright like the moon.人陰神 and this Po is considered 1 of 2 spirits resting inside a person.

The Po is the spirit which stays upon death.

There is an excellent write up on the Hun and Po souls in White Wolfs original 1000 Hells book.

I'm not saying that that Chinese influenced tribal culture in the South Pacific...I'm suggesting the opposite. I believe it's likely that the Micronesian tribes are the remnants of a more original race.

The Ancient Chinese believed in Meng Po the goddess which causes you to forget the living world upon entering Diyu.

Either way, it seems fairly obvious that the word Po had an original source.

The other thing I wanted to mention is the Polynesian word for ghost...Aitu...the derivations amoung island peoples don't stray to far from one another but the interpretations do.

To Maori people, Aitu can mean "sickness" or "demon."

In Tahiti, it means "gods."

For many others, it means "ghost"

I bring this up #1. Because we're discussing the afterlife in general and #2. the Aitu spirits seem like the Yurei of Japan...which are also simultaneously ghosts/gods and demons.

Known to seek revenge and to cause sickness.

Anyway, that's it. Lack of info on this underworld makes me want to compare it to old briefs with holes in them, but I suspect if I could find more I'd give it a much nicer underwear index.

Uhmmm...I donno....3 out of 5 Hellbriefs.