The Fire Next Time: The Conversion of the Huli Apocalypse

Abstract

And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, ''Come and see '' . . . . And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth. . . . And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.-Rev. 6:1, 12-14Abstract.Christian notions of the Apocalypse, which were first introduced to Huli speakers of the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea during the 1950s, encountered an existing indigenous eschatology, or doctrine of last things. Precontact Huli cosmology posited a moral constitution for the fertility of the universe in which the health of people and the land reflected the state of moral order in Huli society. Failure in social behaviour, which could be gauged from the declining condition of the ''skin'' of the land, was attributed to an inexorable process of loss of the knowledge of customary lore. Human agency, however, was accorded a significant role in redressing this universal tendency to entropy, and ritual leaders claimed the ability to induce an apocalyptic, earth-renewing fall of fertile soil from the sky. The adoption of Christian understandings of the Apocalypse as the revelation of divine will, and the abandonment of most of the precontact rituals, have thus had significant consequences for Huli conceptions of the role of human agency in history, and for the nature of their engagement with the land.In a series of letters set out in the Book of Revelation, Saint John the Divine announces his apocalyptic vision to the seven churches of Asia. In the only work of prophecy to find formal acceptance in the Christian canon (BauckEthnohistory 47:1 (winter 2000)

Witchcraft, Torture and HIV

“…As fertility is morally constituted (cf. Ballard 1998;2000), ongoing fertility must be negotiated through appropriate moral behaviour and proper social intercourse (Haley 2002). These underlying beliefs inform the way Duna interpret and understand environmental and social changes, including the manifestations of HIV (see also Haley 2008b).…”

Rawa-Nore gifting

“…Though Rawa interlocutors never shared a concept of "entropy" with me, anthropologists have interpreted concepts of "entropy" in many Papua New Guinea cultures (e.g., Ballard 2000;Errington and Gewertz 1986;Jorgensen 1981) and Rawa share a common Papua New Guinea cultural ethos of asserting themselves against unseen resistive forces (Schieffelin 1976) as they make continual adaptive adjustments for their negentropic self-organization and maintenance. Willems's (2001) model shows that dissipative systems require that the growth of their inputs and outputs must be at least as great as their own.…”

4. The Waterfall at the End of the World: Earthquakes, Entropy, and Explanation

“…But the timing is uncertain. As Chris Ballard wrote, the Christian apocalypse 'is both terminal and fundamentally non-negotiable', it renders Huli history 'plastic to the will of God', it offers no place for agency (Ballard 2000). Knowledge of that forthcoming apocalypse induces 'a severe loss of autonomy' and 'confusion about the destiny of the cosmos'.…”