Mitu

Mitu is followed on the Kei Islands in southeastern Maluku, where the spirits called mitu can bring happiness or misery. A good or failed harvest, prosperity or disaster, was held to come from their power, so people held small rites in the family and each year a village cleansing, the sob-sob, for the settlement, or ohoi. Mitu could also be harnessed through the magic called suanggi.

Researchers describe the old religion of Kei as a mixture of animism, magic and totemism. Beside it stood the customary law of Larvul Ngabal, handed down from the ancestors, which divided the Kei into two groups, the Ursiu of nine and the Lorlim of five.