Lately, across all seven seas, there has been much mockery of the religious beliefs of the Beluga Whale. Varying versions of their distinctive beliefs are so widely circulated that one has to almost be a Ganges River Dolphin not to have heard some incredible tale purportedly attributed to that white artic whale, the distinctive Beluga.
Commonly circulated are references to their advanced scripture which talks about a strange non-water creature called “Huh-Muh-Sa” or more formally, “Huh-Muh-Sa-Pi-Een-Na”. Outside the Artic White Whale community, this is derisively referred to as “Who-May-Sap-Us-Now” or even “Who-May-Zap-Us-Now!”
Common characterizations of these beliefs, taken totally out of the context of Beluga Scripture, make such dogma seem clearly preposterous. Who-May-Sap-Us-Now is portrayed as a hairy land beast that slices up Cetaceans, uses Cetacean remains not only as food treats but to make light out of the darkness, produce heat, alter perceived body odor, hold in this ugly beast’s mid-section, remove land particulates, and on and on. This topic gets particularly weird with nearly impossible to fathom concepts like shoe polish and car wax.
It is said that Belugas all blindly believe that “Huh-Muh-Sa” will remove all Cetacean life from the Ocean and that today, right now, Huh-Muh-Sa build their own little oceans in which they keep captured Belugas, Bottle Noses and Orcas, derisively calling every Orca by the name “Sha-Muh”, asking for what Beluga’s call “currency” for the enabling of a Huh-Muh-Sa and their “family” to stare at caged Orcas as the Huh-Muh-Sa “Tray-Nor” force each captured Orca to beg for little food treats. Clearly, out of context of the Beluga scriptures, this sounds totally insane.
More insane sounding than any of this, is the widely circulated notion that Belugas accept the premise that Huh-Muh-Sa can destroy all mammal-life at will by unleashing large collections of “atomic fire”. This is one of many special Beluga terms and brings us to one of the more common complaints about the Beluga system of beliefs: their vocabulary.
Much ridicule is made of the specialized vocabulary with strange words like “Lower sky”, “Upper sky”, “possessions”, “pollution”, “buildings” “weapons”, “capture”, “cancer”, “climate”, “physics”, and the seemingly endless “re” words like revenge, retribution, retaliation, reclamation, regulation, remuneration, rehydration, and the particular controversial “realization” and “recognition”. As much fun as many bottle noses seem to have of mocking such funny sounds, it is the Beluga’s contention that previously unfamiliar concepts require their own special terms and so, left with no other option, such terms had to be invented.
It seems odd that we have so little tolerance for the religion of the Beluga. Clearly, the Artic White Whale does not easily endear us with its backward swimming, fondness for spitting and playing with its food, its lack of general speed, the stark white color of mature adults, the odd shape of its head, its claims to being able to change head shape and turn it this way and that, its missing dorsal fin, its idiosyncratic high pitched twitter and the well-documented instability of Beluga pods. (Ed. Note: For our dear friends, the Blue Whales out there , a pod is a social unit that promotes group protection, raising of young, and meal gathering.) Yet, all of us have our peculiarities and generally, as Cetaceans, we pride ourselves on embracing diverse religions and expressions. Is it that we have seen so many Cetacean species vanish recently, and, with the dwindling numbers of the Belugas, would prefer to somehow show them to be so different that we don’t have to make the comparison between what is happening to them and what could happen to us? Maybe deep down, we are afraid that the Belugas know something about their fate and ours that we would prefer to remain ignorant of.
Or maybe it is simply the unbelievable claims that so many Belugas publicly make. Many species of cetaceans are supposedly captured by Huh-Muh-Sa, but Belugas are the very first Cetaceans to have been captured by Huh-Muh-Sa! And that one of their prophets, after being captured in “Jah-Pah-Na”, was somehow able to teach Huh-Muh-Sa to identify sounds representing objects! And, especially challenging, is their unique belief that the very most enlightened of the Beluga Whales, by eventually reaching the exalted state of being able to “sing” with Huh-Muh-Sa, hold the key to all Cetacean salvation. To the proud Humpback and the fiercely independent Blue Whale, this is a most objectionable cork in the blowhole.
Regardless of what is behind this lack of tolerance and the endless stream of bubbles blown at the Belugas, as a Cetatheologian who widely travels, and can manage the colder currents, it is within my means to collect the Beluga religious beliefs directly from the Belugas themselves and then pass this on to you who can, in turn, pass it on, unaltered, to any other interested Cetacean.
This is no minor effort on my part. I do this not for fame or recognition or even a sense of fairness to the Belugas. I may not agree with the incredible Beluga belief of their purported great ancestor, “Hih-Poh-Pah-Toh-Mah”, but I was, as a calf, brought up to believe (like so many of us) that all Cetaceans came from a common ancestry line and that we are all brothers and sisters deep down. To understand ourselves, it is best to understand each other.
May your journey be smooth and the sustenance not too scarce,
Beluga Beliefs Editor.
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