Fijian religion, as far as we understand, resembles the others in drawing an impassable line between ghosts and eternal gods.  The word Kalou is applied to all supernal beings, and mystic or magical things alike.  It seems to answer to mana in New Zealand and Melanesia, to wakan in North America, and to fee in old French, as when Perrault says, about Bluebeard’s key, ‘now the key was fee.’  All Gods are Kalou, but all things that are Kalou are not Gods.  Gods are Kalou vu; deified ghosts are Kalou yalo.  The former are eternal, without beginning of days or end of years; the latter are subject to infirmity and even to death.[20]

The Supreme Being, if we can apply the term to him, is Ndengei, or Degei, ’who seems to be an impersonation of the abstract idea of eternal existence.’  This idea is not easily developed out of the conception of a human soul which has died into a ghost and may die again.  His myth represents him as a serpent, emblem of eternity, or a body of stone with a serpent’s head.  His one manifestation is given by eating.  So neglected is he that a song exists about his lack of worshippers and gifts.  ’We made men,’ says Ndengei, ’placed them on earth, and yet they share to us only the under shell.’[21] Here is an extreme case of the self-existent creative Eternal, mythically lodged in a serpent’s body, and reduced to a jest.

It is not easy to see any explanation, if we reject the hypothesis that this is an old, fallen form of faith, ‘with scarcely a temple.’  The other unborn immortals are mythical warriors and adulterers, like the popular deities of Greece.  Yet Ndengei receives prayers through two sons of his, mediating deities.  The priests are possessed, or inspired, by spirits and gods.  One is not quite clear as to whether Ndengei is an inspiring god or not; but that prayers are made to him is inconsistent with the belief in his eternal inaction.  A priest is represented as speaking for Ndengei, probably by inspiration.  ’My own mind departs from me, and then, when it is truly gone, my god speaks by me,’ is the account of this ’alternating personality’ given by a priest.[22]

After informing us that Ndengei is starved, Mr. Williams next tells about offerings to him, in earlier days, of hundreds of hogs.[23] He sends rain on earth.  Animals, men, stones, may all be Kalou.  There is a Hades as fantastic as that in the Egyptian ‘Book of the Dead,’ and second sight flourishes.

The mysteries include the sham raising of the dead, and appear to be directed at propitiatory ghosts rather than at Ndengei.  There are scenes of license; ’particulars of almost incredible indecency have been privately forwarded to Dr. Tylor.’[24]