ANCESTORS,TRICKSTERS AND DEMONS: AN EXAMINATION OF CHIMBU INTERACTION WITH THE INVISIBLE WORLD1

The fundamental premiss of Gods, Ghosts and Men in Melanesia (Lawrence and Meggitt 1965) was that the epistemology of people of the Seaboard of Papua New Guinea was more dominated by religion than was that of the Highlanders. Among the latter, the Chimbu have commonly been portrayed as supreme pragmatists. However, they believe in a complex and variegated spirit-world, described in some detail in this paper.