sometimes white.
He is not the only man whom the people of Tanna have mistaken for a god. The Yaohnanen tribe of Tanna believe that Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, is a divine being. He is in fact taken to be the pale-skinned son of a mountain spirit and the brother of John Frum. Whereas common knowledge in Britain holds that Prince Philip was born in Corfu, Greece, on June 10, 1921, the Yaohnanen believe that he was born in Tanna, then traveled over the seas to a distant land where he married a powerful lady and would in time return. And return he did....
It is not clear when the cult was formed, but it is believed to have been sometime in the 1950s or 1960s. It probably occurred when Queen Elizabeth I was somehow depicted as paying particular attention to Prince Philip during a public function, which the natives of Tanna either saw on television or as a photograph, and took Prince Philip as one of their own.
When the royal couple visited Vanuatu in 1974, the Yaohnanens’ beliefs were reinforced, though the Prince himself was at the time not yet aware of the fact that he was considered to be a local deity. A few years later, when he was told of the tribe, the Resident Commissioner got Prince Philip to sign a photograph, which was then given to his worshippers, who responded by sending him a traditional nal-nal club, with which the prince duly posed, sending the photograph back to the Yaohnanen.
The Papas of New Guinea called the first seaplane they saw “the devil who came down from the sky” and the first steamboat “God Tibut Amut smoking a long cigar.” During his expedition to New Guinea in the 1920s, Frank Hurley noticed that the natives from the village of Kaimari began to fashion small wooden replicas of his seaplane as toys, which were distributed to all the households. Natives from the Eastern highlands were seen making radio masts from bamboo—copying the Persian Oil Company’s transmitter. Following World War II, the natives of a small New Guinean island built a ghost airport near the village of Wewak, complete with bamboo airplanes, to entice the gods to return.
The Leahy brothers went to the highlands of Papua New Guinea in the 1920s to make a documentary about the cargo cults. In it, Mike Leahy recounts the story that a small group of adventurers had landed on the island and begun to clear a section of the jungle so that the aircraft could land. When they made contact with the locals, they told them they did not come to steal, but needed to make room so that the “barlas” could land—a big bird that came from the sky and made lots of noise. Grabowski, the pilot, was a tall fellow. Leahy observed:
Wearing a pilot’s flight suit, white helmet and black protective goggles, he opened the hatch and got out of the plane, while about 2,500 natives were standing in dumbfounded silence along the airstrip. No one uttered a word. They had no idea what was going on. To them, Grabowski was a god. A god who arrived in a celestial bird, also a type of divine creature. 4
What we see on these South Pacific islands is something that shows that men have been mistaken for gods; specifically, that an advanced technological civilization posed such a radical break from their traditional framework that the cargo and the men involved were deified. This is definitive proof that humankind could, and in fact has, numerous times, mistaken other humans—and maybe, by extension, nonhuman intelligences—for God.
John Frum was prophesied to one day return to the islands, when the Golden Age of the Gods would return. The existence of a Golden Age, when the Gods lived among humankind and taught them sciences, including the constellations, is precisely what we read in the legends and myths of our ancient civilizations. Later on, we will see the story of the Babylonian civilizing god Oannes, who appeared out of the waters of the PersianGulf, spoke to the local people, and offered them knowledge, including knowledge of the
He is not the only man whom the people of Tanna have mistaken for a god. The Yaohnanen tribe of Tanna believe that Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, is a divine being. He is in fact taken to be the pale-skinned son of a mountain spirit and the brother of John Frum. Whereas common knowledge in Britain holds that Prince Philip was born in Corfu, Greece, on June 10, 1921, the Yaohnanen believe that he was born in Tanna, then traveled over the seas to a distant land where he married a powerful lady and would in time return. And return he did....
It is not clear when the cult was formed, but it is believed to have been sometime in the 1950s or 1960s. It probably occurred when Queen Elizabeth I was somehow depicted as paying particular attention to Prince Philip during a public function, which the natives of Tanna either saw on television or as a photograph, and took Prince Philip as one of their own.
When the royal couple visited Vanuatu in 1974, the Yaohnanens’ beliefs were reinforced, though the Prince himself was at the time not yet aware of the fact that he was considered to be a local deity. A few years later, when he was told of the tribe, the Resident Commissioner got Prince Philip to sign a photograph, which was then given to his worshippers, who responded by sending him a traditional nal-nal club, with which the prince duly posed, sending the photograph back to the Yaohnanen.
The Papas of New Guinea called the first seaplane they saw “the devil who came down from the sky” and the first steamboat “God Tibut Amut smoking a long cigar.” During his expedition to New Guinea in the 1920s, Frank Hurley noticed that the natives from the village of Kaimari began to fashion small wooden replicas of his seaplane as toys, which were distributed to all the households. Natives from the Eastern highlands were seen making radio masts from bamboo—copying the Persian Oil Company’s transmitter. Following World War II, the natives of a small New Guinean island built a ghost airport near the village of Wewak, complete with bamboo airplanes, to entice the gods to return.
The Leahy brothers went to the highlands of Papua New Guinea in the 1920s to make a documentary about the cargo cults. In it, Mike Leahy recounts the story that a small group of adventurers had landed on the island and begun to clear a section of the jungle so that the aircraft could land. When they made contact with the locals, they told them they did not come to steal, but needed to make room so that the “barlas” could land—a big bird that came from the sky and made lots of noise. Grabowski, the pilot, was a tall fellow. Leahy observed:
Wearing a pilot’s flight suit, white helmet and black protective goggles, he opened the hatch and got out of the plane, while about 2,500 natives were standing in dumbfounded silence along the airstrip. No one uttered a word. They had no idea what was going on. To them, Grabowski was a god. A god who arrived in a celestial bird, also a type of divine creature. 4
What we see on these South Pacific islands is something that shows that men have been mistaken for gods; specifically, that an advanced technological civilization posed such a radical break from their traditional framework that the cargo and the men involved were deified. This is definitive proof that humankind could, and in fact has, numerous times, mistaken other humans—and maybe, by extension, nonhuman intelligences—for God.
John Frum was prophesied to one day return to the islands, when the Golden Age of the Gods would return. The existence of a Golden Age, when the Gods lived among humankind and taught them sciences, including the constellations, is precisely what we read in the legends and myths of our ancient civilizations. Later on, we will see the story of the Babylonian civilizing god Oannes, who appeared out of the waters of the PersianGulf, spoke to the local people, and offered them knowledge, including knowledge of the
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