In Melanesia today, Christianity seems to be the most prevalent religion. This was not so in traditional Melanesia. The traditional religion of the Melanesian was quite symbolic in nature.

Where in the Western part of the world Religion was seen as the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods, Melanesians were more cosmic in their religious attitudes and beliefs.

Cosmic in the sense that for instance, man was considered as part of nature and not its Lord and master.

Religion to traditional Melanesians were more practical and carried out in myths, dances and other ceremonies and expressed in other practices. In other words, Melanesians had an enchanted vision of the world and were unchallenged.

The world of the Melanesians was filled with mysteries, divinities and spirits and they were ready than most cultures to take on board something new when the old one did not work.

But do not get confused, the belief in some kind of high and supreme spirit or god could be present in the culture but was not central to it.

Although very different in various parts of Melanesia, they all can be seen as sharing a core of beliefs and practices.

At this point, we should be grateful for the missionaries who risked their lives to set foot on an entirely different soil to bring the Good News and make us to realize Christianity and save our souls.

Moving on to some of the practices or rather “religions’ in traditional Melanesia, some sound familiar to modern times for example natural phenomena like the rain, sickness or death.

These processes even though are naturally effected,could howeverbe “assigned” towhat others would call supernatural causes.

Another example are dreams. Dreams occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep and is not yet understood in terms of its contents and function up till date.

In traditional Melanesia and no doubt in recent times, dreams are products of the wandering of a man’s spiritoutside of his original body.

Of course, more recently or perhaps also in traditional times, there were “seers” of the dreams who can explain the meaning of a certain dream and when someone dreams of something weird or disturbing, there is an urgent need to findor know behind the meaning of the dream.

What is interesting is that there were a certain group of people dubbed by Anthropologists as “cultural heroes.”

These were usually the distant ancestors who not only were the originators of a clan or higher grouping but were also the source of their tradition and culture.

You might recall “tumbuna” storieswhere there were two brothers who founded a clan but for some reason fell out with each other. Those were your cultural heroes.

There are many more examples that could be given, from natural features like mountains, stones and others having spiritual presences who would rather be favourable than annoyed to custodial spirits infested in the woods and springs who send their messages through birds, initiation rites and rituals.

Reading through this piece, you might highlight a certain feature relating to your tribe or clan or similar to another but hey, despite some strong common features, Melanesian religions were highly specific to each clan.

That is what makes Melanesians unique!