Huna (New Age)

Huna (Hawaiian for "secret") is a new religious movement by the New Age practitioner Max Freedom Long (1890–1971), founded in 1936, professing to be inspired from the spiritual practices of the ancient Hawaiiankahunas (priests), and includes his metaphysical principles. However, contemporary scholars consider the Huna as a blend of spiritual practices from various cultures, with roots in New Thought and Theosophy rather than in traditional Hawaiian beliefs.

Long claimed that he had rediscovered some ancient spiritual principle, not just about Hawaiian religion, but one that linked back to ancient Indian and Egyptian religions. Huna emphasizes practical living and harmony with three levels of consciousness or selves, a low, middle, and higher self, which were supposedly recognized by ancient kahunas.

Long had been interested in the spiritual secrets of Hawaiian religion, but he left Hawaii in 1931 without much success. In 1934, he felt a breakthrough, a revelation of secrets encoded in the Hawaiian language, and called the religious system he developed from this revelation Huna (the Hawaiian word for secret) and wrote his first book in 1936 to chronicle his beliefs.

In 1945, Long founded Huna Research, and in 1953, published The Secret Science at Work as a Huna textbook, and in 1965 The Huna Codes in Religions, examining parallels between his system and religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity.