Besides the outer order of the Hawai’ian Royalty (Ali’i), there had existed an inner order since at least 1200 C.E. (and likely even earlier than that), that of the "Kahuna". And while the outer order was known for its manifestations such as the Kapu ("forbidden / taboo") System, politically motivated warfare between the Hawai’ian Islands, and some forms of human sacrifice – collectively termed "The Order of Ku" and thought to have arrived from other Polynesian islands at least several hundred years before Cook, the inner order of Kane was largely concerned with personal development, healing, and mastery.

Since the meaning of the term Kahuna is a combination of the root words for keeper (kahu) and secret (huna), as well as the adjunct roots for light (ka) and calm/balanced (na), in the most basic sense a Kahuna was an expert in his field of purview, similar to our modern-day concept of a "Ph.D."

The great number of the different types of Kahuna listed by e.g. Laura Yardley gives further credence to this view: There were besides the more spiritually and mentally oriented Kahuna some as straight-forwardly concerned as the "Kahuna Kali Wa’a" (canoe makers), or those expert in the intricate lava rock masonry used for everything from homes and walls to the famous Hawai’ian temples (heiau).

This is also how many people have heard the term first used in popular culture in relation to the "Kahuna of Surf" or the "Big Kahuna" (from 1950’s and 60’s film and television).

As for the class of the spiritually concerned Kahuna, major examples include the Kahuna La’au Lapa’au (medicinal healers and doctors), Kahuna La’au Kahea (mental healers or "psychologists"), Kahuna Po’i Uhane (spirit catchers), Kahuna Kilokilo (experts concerned with divination and omens), and Kahuna Na’au Ao (mystics of the science of mind), each typically with several sub-designations too long to reproduce here.

While most of these pursuits would have been considered on the side of the positive and of healing for the greater good of society, there were clearly also some that might be considered under the mantle of Black Magic or Sorcery, collective known as Kahuna Ana’ana (again with a number of subspecies). These were the ones later primarily – and one might say unduly – focused on by the Western missionaries.

This preoccupation with the morbid led to a state of affairs where the native keepers of these bodies of knowledge strictly kept things from the Westerners to themselves. Most Kahuna practices were formally outlawed since the early days of the missionaries, with several of the prohibitions, on things including the performance of the Hula, the Hawai’ian ritual dancing, chanting, and drumming performances, carried forward all the way into the 1960s.