the famous Māori translator John White, as an academic act of “unpardonable recklessness”. As stated by Māori ethnographer Elsden Best: “Māori folk adapted the myths and teachings of Christianity. This is where ideas of the spirits of the evil person going to the underworld, and those good ascending to the heavens, crept into statements. Such beliefs were unbeknown to the Māori in pre-missionary days”. This “transcultural interlocution” can be witnessed when examining the historical works of writers such as S. Percy Smith. Smith recorded that spirits who conducted evil would be eternally punished and presided over by malicious spirits (Whiro-te-tipua) in Rarohenga. Whereas the “good” spirits would ascend to the mountain of ‘Tawhiti-nui’ and enter a realm of eternal reward. Critics such as Jahnke argue this as an example of cultural accommodation and assimilation to the Eurocentric belief of the afterlife that divides souls as good or evil. Critic Buck too maintains this is a loss of “cultural integrity”, where the translation of oral history and culture has been destroyed by Western influence: “The cosmogony of separating life from darkness… appears to have been post European additions made after the knowledge was acquired of the biblical story of ‘Creation’. The separation of the spirits through the East door to ascend to the supernatural realms, and the ‘sinners’ through the South door to the underworld is contrary to the Māori and Polynesian concepts of the future world”. Primary deities Within Rarohenga, several Guardians, Gods and Goddesses have been recorded to occupy the realm. This includes: Geography The Māori hold a deep connection to the land (whenua), which is evident in the continued, spiritual significance of real-world locations because of their role in the soul's journey to Rarohenga. Cape Reinga (Te Rerenga Wairua) is one of the most well-known spiritual sites in New Zealand. Mythology proposes that here the spirit descends into the underworld by sliding down the root of a tree into the sea. The spirit then travels underwater to the Three Kings Islands, where they climb the highest point of the island and bid their last goodbye to the human world. Explorer, Māori scholar and interpreter, Edward Shortland describes this location as a place where the spirit arrives at two hills after travelling northward. These hills are ‘Wai-hokimai’ and ‘Wai-otioti’, where the spirit strips off its worldly clothes, and finally turn its back on the land of the living. Shortland