A brief discussion of Huna lineages is very much in need of the caveat contained in the ancient saying above: Rather than engage in useless infighting over who’s version of Huna is “more pure” or “more right”, realize that things of value can be learned from all of them, and that some people may naturally resonate more with one than another.

One of the foremost principles of the ancient teachings is to see the illusion inherent in all duality, of which “separate schools” would make an excellent example. Here are a number of the known lineages:

• The studies of Max Freedom Long, the first known Western researcher into the ancient Hawai’ian teachings who coined the term “Huna” for what he uncovered over the span of many decades under very adverse conditions.

  Long studied Huna since 1917 or so, at a time when the native Hawai’ians would not speak to Westerners about these matters, in part out of fear of legal penalties in place since the arrival of the Western missionaries after Cook until in some cases the 1960’s. Any errors or omissions on Long’s part can easily be forgiven in light of this context.

  He founded Huna Research Associates in 1945, with Rev. James Vinson Wingo, D.D. being the current president. There is a Yahoo group for this organization among other things.

• The lineage of Morrnah Simeona, currently carried forward by Dr. Hew Len and recently written about by Joe Vitale in “Zero Limits” can be found here.
• The lineage of Tanneo Sands Kumalae.
• The lineage of the Bray family (David “Daddy” Bray 1889-1968, and his son, David “Papa” Bray Jr.), has been carried forward by both Laura Kealoha Yardley and Tad James’ family. Tad’s son Matt currently teaches a workshop near Kona, Hawai’i (Big Island) with the blessing of several Hawai’ian elders, among them:

  Uncle George Na’ope, Master Kumu Hula (Kumu = “teacher”), founder of the Merrie Monarch Hula Festival, and designated by Congress a “Living National Treasure”. His student, Master Kumu Hula Etua Lopez, who trains Matt’s workshop participants in the principles of Hula. Also, Kumu Hula John Ka’imikaua who carried a lineage of the Hawai’ian Island of Moloka’i (1957-2006), and who taught at the workshop about Hawai’ian cultural issues and Hula until his passing in June of 2006. The class has since been taken up by his wife Ka’oi.

  Find out more at huna.com

  Tad James also incorporated elements from several other lineages that he was fortunate enough to come into contact with.

• The lineage of Serge Kahili King, who was adopted into the Kahili family, following its Huna traditions. He has also studied a variety of other forms of shamanism in his world-wide travels, and his may thus be considered a blended approach. His organization is called Aloha International, and he purportedly was also a member of Long’s organization for a while.

  Find out more at huna.org

• Dr. Rima Morrell maintains an organization called hunalight.com
• Wikipedia entry on Huna contains some lineage information.
• Feel free to add information on additional lineages known to you, or any concerns about errors or omissions in the comments section… E Kala Mai I Au.

Long had called Huna a “psycho-religious structure”, and he wasn’t that far off, except that Huna as a spiritual philosophy must be seen as religiously neutral, with the focus being more on the psychological side of things. In fact, the Hawai’ians had developed, many centuries before Freud and others, a sophisticated view of the human mind as composed of several distinct partitions, including an Unconscious Mind (the “Unihipili” or “little creature”, or as we would say in today’s parlance “the inner child”).

Some of the examples of the ancient Hawai’ians level of understanding include insights into psycho-somatic illness, as well as the formalized “deprogramming” of warriors returning to normal life after battle.

For a brief glimpse of the historical background, it is instructive to read descriptions of the state of Hawai’ian society before the arrival of the Westerners: When Captain Cook and his men landed in 1778, and were soon followed by more white men and finally the missionaries (around 1810), the Islands contained a population much larger than what might be surmised from today’s population patterns (estimates range from 250,000 to as high as 800,000).

And this large society, with a well developed system of political rule and agriculture, was virtually free of both physical disease as well as mental illness. Unfortunately, these populations were subsequently decimated to about 40,000 by the diseases that were brought by Cook’s men and their successors.