Title: Intuitive Ritual: A Mana Wahine Sourcebook
Author: Ngahuia Murphy
Illustrators: Jordy Elise. Sarah Hudson. Designed by Chloe Reweti.
Publication date: 1st November 2024
ISBN 978-0-473-71105-4
Format: Hardcover in a card slipcase
Page count: 230pp
Dimensions: h315mm x w260mm x s30mm 1700g
Illustrations: numerous full colour original artworks and photographs
Languages: Predominantly English with Māori language content and glossary
Category: Non-Fiction: Women’s spirituality; Māori Ceremony and Ritual; Health and Wellbeing
RRP: $130.00. Wholesale discount 40% ($78.00)
Target Audience: Māori women; People interested in Maori culture and traditions; People interested in feminine spiritual traditions; People interested in self-healing and personal growth
Handle: Grounded in ancestral Māori wisdom, written by an award-winning scholar and mātauranga wahine cultural expert, this is a self-help guide, a source book, and a practical toolkit to assist Māori and other women who are seeking to strengthen their own self growth and spiritual healing practices today.
Synopsis: Intuitive Ritual is a sumptuous work of art, full of ancestral Māori feminine wisdom, original artworks and lavish photography by acclaimed wahine Māori artists. QR codes embedded in the work link to audio-visual recordings of ritual chants (karakia). A pull-out gatefold highlights rituals for each night of the lunar calendar (māramataka). Poetry and creative writing sits alongside robust scholarship to inspire and illuminate. Designed pages invite the reader to journal and create their own sacred ceremonies and healing practises of self-growth from the knowledge and tools provided in the book. There is simply nothing like it available on the bookshelves today.
The book draws on the doctoral research of the author, two decades of academic scholarship, and a lifetime of experience, to showcase traditional and contemporary Māori sacred feminine knowledge. There are sections of the book that celebrate Māori feminine deities (Atua Wahine) offering stories and understandings not widely shared in print. Other sections relate to the different phases of womanhood, to feminine sensuality, beauty rituals, meditations, and creative exercises to inspire personal growth. Through the practice of ritual, meditation, and creativity, the book encourages readers to nurture their well-being and develop a stronger relationship with themselves and the divine.
Practical tools are provided for constructing and creating powerful personal rituals to celebrate life events, assist transitions and help the reader connect to themselves, their surroundings and to the archetypical deities that underpin Māori culture. As such this is a source book, a self-help guide and a toolkit for healing, empowerment and self-acceptance. It can be read and applied by anyone interested in deepening connection with the Atua Wāhine and feminine divinity through the portal of their own intuitive wisdom.
Key Sales points: This book is part of a growing genre of Māori knowledge, traditional & contemporary practise and specifically Māori women’s knowledge. It taps into a key demographic of successful Māori women with disposable incomes who want to invest in themselves, who want to reconnect with their culture, and who want to empower themselves. It speaks to the desire of many Māori today to live according to tikanga that is grounded in tradition but is reimagined to make it relevant to today’s world.
It also has a place in the popular self-help, personal growth genre.
Platform & Marketing: The author is extremely effective at generating sales. Her previous books, Te Awa Atua: Menstruation in the Pre-Colonial Māori World and the bilingual publication Waiwhero: A Celebration of Womanhood sold around 6000 and 8000 copies respectively (separate to a large purchase by the Ministry of Education) and continue to sell consistently. They have been sold primarily through speaking engagements, wānanga, and on-line sales promoted through word of mouth. They have not been widely stocked in bookshops.
Intuitive Ritual is intended to be sold primarily through stores. To support sales the following activities are in train:
- Etangata interview profiling author and the upcoming book (May 5th 2024) https://e-tangata.co.nz/korero/ngahuia-murphy-the-mana-and-matauranga-of-wahine-maori
- Waka Huia profile of research work and new book (Screening November to coincide with launches)
- Keynote and book launch at the Nga Maia Maori Midwives National hui Otaki 7th Nov
- Book launch at Maoriland Hub Toi Matarau Art Gallery Otaki 7 November
- Keynote book launch and signing at Ruahinetanga symposium Rotorua (16 December)
- Book launch at the Menstrual Health Research network Symposium in Dunedin. (November 20)
The online campaign consists of the following, posted across Facebook and Instagram:
Videos: 8 x 2-3mins / 8 x 30 secs-1min
Tiles: 13 10sec video loops tiles / 13 still image versions
There will also be 5-8 additional content creations
Author Bio: Dr Ngahuia Murphy (Ngāti Manawa, Ngāti Ruapani ki Waikaremoana, Ngai Tūhoe, Ngāti Kahungunu & Te Arawa) is an award-winning scholar, author, artist and public speaker committed to reclaiming Indigenous women’s sacred knowledge and ritual practice. Her widely celebrated research work in Aotearoa New Zealand has been instrumental in reviving ‘lost’ Māori menstruation rites of passage and women’s ceremonies. Her books ‘Te Awa Atua: Menstruation in the Pre-colonial Māori world’ and ‘Waiwhero: A celebration of womanhood’ continue to be wildly popular, inspiring multiple art installation works, international and national theatre pieces, a short film and documentaries on the revival of Māori matrilineal knowledge. ‘Intuitive Ritual: A Mana Wahine Sourcebook’ is her third book.
Publisher:
He Puna Manawa Ltd
57 Hillcrest Road
Whakatane
cell: 021887011
Author awards, honours
2020 Judith Binney Writing Award
2016-2019 Health Research Council Maori PhD Scholarship
2015 Sir Hugh Kawharu and Auckland War Memorial Scholarship
2015 Maori Education Trust Scholarship
2012 Nga Pae o te Maramatanga Publication Support Grant
2010-2012 Sir Edmund Hillary Leadership Award
2010 – Graduate Representative School of Māori and Pacific Development
2010 Waikato University Masters Research Award
2009 Arts Waikato Award
15. Endorsements or Reviews
“Intuitive Ritual: A Mana Wahine Sourcebook is an act of love, service and legacy. It’s an act of Revolution. A revolution isn’t just slogans, flag flying and rhetoric. It’s ears, eyes, minds and hearts. A full body experience. Intuitive Ritual A Mana Wahine Sourcebook is a full body experience. In Intuitive Ritual A Mana Wahine Sourcebook, Ngahuia Murphy combines academic rigour with heart-centred, tīpuna grounded practice and creativity and in doing so births a third space, where Indigenous scholarship exists equally alongside poetry and artistic endeavour.” Dr Maraea Rakuraku, playwright & poet.
“Intuitive Ritual A Mana Wahine Sourcebook is a deep, tender and revealing return to our sovereign selves. A reverent homecoming. A rekindling of whakapapa connections to our Atua wāhine. A scintillating, sensual suite of supreme mana wahine sacred practices. A portal to our Atua wāhine which serve as compasses from the past to the present allowing us to understand who we once were and empowering us to become who we are meant to be… I envisage every mana wahine will seek out, obtain and use the wisdoms of this taonga for generations to come.” Te Huamānuka Crown, Rise Global Collective.
“Page by page parts of myself became awakened… Intuitive Ritual he taonga oranga mō rātou, mō mātou, mō ngā kōhunahuna … Ngahuia, I missed the guidance of your words during my transition from Kōhine to Wahine, but I am excited now for my transition from Wahine into Ruahine.” Maisey Rika, Singer, songwriter.
“E rere ana taku mihi ki tēnei uri o Hinekura, ki tēnei mokopuna a Tangiharuru, me kore ake koe Ngahuia ka ngaro haere ēnei rongoā ki ngā wāhine, o nāianei. Huge appreciation to this descendant of Hinekura, this mokopuna of Tangiharuru, without you Ngahuia these healing practices for women of today’s contemporary world would become more and more obscured.” Dr Hinemoa Elder.
He Puna Manawa Ltd 