Polynesian Accounts of Creation
that he opened first, became his house, the dome of the god’s sky, which was a confined sky, enclosing the world (ao) then forming.
Another chant given to Orsmond in 1822 in Borabora and again in Tahiti describes a “chaotic period” after a condition of nothingness in which all was originally confined in a state of balance between such opposites as darkness (po) and light (ao), rapid and slow movement (huru maumau, huru mahaha), thinness (tahi rairai) and thickness (tahi a’ana).
Wyatt Gill describe under a different symbol the change from life within the Po to that of the world of the Ao, the world of living men on this earth.
Above the first land, Tumu-Po, arches Tumu-Ao; above the last land, Fakahotu-henua, arches the sky ’Atea.
Both areas represent a succession of generative pairs, in the Tuamotus of “lands” and “skies,” in Hawaii of “nights” (Po) advancing toward day (Ao), with some identical names between the two.
Ki’i as this third member occurs but once, and that quite naturally at the moment of dawning from the night world, the Po, into the light of day, the Ao.
Exactly in agreement is the Tahitian myth of the cutting away of the arms of the octopus Tumu-ra’i-fenua, “Beginning-of-Heaven-and-Earth,” into which Ta’aroa has placed his essence, and the consequent dawn of light (ao) after “the long wearisome night” (po).
This is not darkness in the physical sense but applies to the supremacy of the spirit world, the Po, as compared with the world of living men, the Ao.
Hawaiian Accounts of Creation
Hawaiians generally represent Po as a period of darkness and give the word the meaning of night as opposed to day (ao). So my translator in a passage from Kepelino: “There was Deep-intense-night (Po-nui-auwa’ea), a period of time without heaven, without earth, without anything that is made.
The only attempt I have seen made to explain these two opposites, Po and Ao, on the basis of Hawaiian thought about the relation between this material world and a corresponding spirit world called the Po is to be found in Joseph Kukahi’s printed text of 1902.
Turtle
Chinese Mythology: The turtle Ao carries the world on its back and is associated with longevity and stability.
A member of the General Staff has ao physical body, but makes one for Himself by Kriyashakti — the 'power to make' — of the matter of the globe to which He is sent.