We walked to ahu
Set in stone
To stare at mo‘ai
Who also walked
To where they stood
Face to face
Now or past
Eyes uplifted to blue
White skies drifting slow
Moi and us both still
Seeing the fallen
Knowing we too
Will fall
Face down
In volcanic dust
To other worlds
Mana gone
© 2017 Jim Davis
https://imaginaisladepascua.com/en/easter-islands/rapa-nui-culture/rapa-nui-religion-and-beliefs/
The Easter Island inhabitants’ life, as well as in Polynesian cultures, was organized around their Rapa Nui religion and spiritual beliefs. These beliefs and their evolution significantly affected the course of history.
The religious rituals started from birth, when the umbilical cord was cut, and extended through their whole lives, including rituals for the first haircut, the first tattoos, initiation and coming of age rituals.
But perhaps the most important rituals, that most affected Rapa Nui art and history, were the ones associated with death. The Rapa Nui believed that their forefathers’ spirits had the ability to come to their aid in case it was necessary, since the spirit remained around his relatives for a long time before leaving for good. This spiritual energy or mana, attributed mostly to chiefs and important members of society, had the ability to influencer events for a long time.
This cult to the ancestors led to the development of a funeral ritual which consisted in wrapping the bodies in vegetable fabric and expose them to open air inside the ahu until their decomposition. Finally, the bones were washed and deposited in a funeral chamber in the same ahu, so that the spirit could reunite with its ancestors.
But above all else, the ancestor cult gave way to the most representative Easter Island characteristic, the moai. When a tribe chief or any of the important members dies, a moai was ordered to be sculpted in the Rano Raraku quarry and was later transported to its village and placed on an ahu or ceremonious altar. Once placed on its altar, the eyes and pukao were placed (a type of hat carved from red scoria), at which moment the moai obtained their mana and could exercise their power. There were more than 300 ahus on the whole island and more than 600 moai, mainly in the coastal regions and always facing their village, which it protected.
But the crisis and conflicts within the population, due to the scarcity of food, which happened between the 17th and 18th centuries, caused a decline in the moais and ancestor cult era, giving way to a new religious and political order.