"Balancing the notion of tapu, though not in perfect dichotomy, is the notion of noa. This pertains to mundane, ordinary objects and functions - household and serving utensils, the acts of preparing and eating food, the many small and common interactions of everyday life.

Noa is safe - without preternatural sanction or restricted association, it is demonstrated by the lifting of the condition of tapu from a particular environment or object.

A newly built house, ornamented and fresh, would be considered tapu - unsafe, prohibited, raw with spirit and inaccessible to the common touch of people. Making the place noa - 'blessing' it in current terms - would involve ritual, and the crossing of the threshold, usually by a high-born woman.

Her special form of tapu would counter the energies within the house, and thus render it noa, and safe for general entry. Such ritual continues to be observed today; even in the context of an ethnological or fine arts exhibition, these procedures are followed, to appease the ancestral forces who may generate tapu, which imbues the objects with dread or beauty."

(Starzecka)