God

Ta’aroa was the ancestor of all the gods; he made everything.

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.

he conjured forth (rahu) gods (atua), and they were born to him in darkness (i fanau i te po).

.” All this is still taking place within the original shell (’apu) out of which Great Ta’aroa had formed the sky of the gods, the shell called Rumia, translated “upset” in the text.

At one time he is a conjuror molding earth in his hands or uttering an incantation to stabilize the forms he has molded, at another time a god sending his essence into the rock Tumu-nui that it may unite with Papa-raharaha and upset the condition of equilibrium that has prevented growth and change.

Gods are created, seventy of whom are named.

The New Zealand teaching goes on to organize the world, giving to each god his special function and classifying forms according to their order of creation as in Tahiti;

Gods are born of the two, and eventually Mangaia is pulled up from the depths and peopled by men, offspring of the primal gods.

Stories of chiefs succeed those of primal gods.

Although the generation of rocks does not enter into the Kumulipo story as we have it, rocks of phallic shape are worshiped in Hawaii as ancestral fertility gods.

The gods Kane and Kanaloa are rather regularly named in this trio with a third figure representing man.

In New Zealand the progenitor of man is Tane (Kane) son of the sky god, hence called Tane-nui-a-Rangi.

Allowing a shift from Tu to Kane in Hawaii, both gods of artisans in Tahiti, the Tahitian story of man’s origin corresponds in time, place, and function with the first Kumulipo trilogy.

Hitherto gods have been called into being in darkness; now light dawns over earth.

In the Kumulipo manuscript the first line of the refrain accompanying the births of the first four sections reads, not Ka po uhe’e i ka wawa with its suggestion of the “slipping away” (uhe’e) of night, but Ka pou he’e i ka wawa, thus picturing the god in the form of an octopus (he’e) supporting (pou) in darkness the first heaven and earth exactly as in the Tahitian chant.

The eight-armed octopus, called in the Kumulipo the “hot-striking” (hauna-wela), is the manifestation or body in which Kanaloa may appear in some Polynesian groups as god of the sea and sea creatures in contrast to Kane, god of land forms.

In Hawaii, a prayer at the launching of a canoe names both gods, Kane as god of the forest from which the tree was cut, Kanaloa as god of the element over which the canoe must travel.

A sorcerer’s prayer for the healing of the sick invokes Kanaloa “god of the octopus”—ke akua o ka he’e.

The Samoan demigod Tae-o-Tagaloa is born of a woman part human and part fe’e (“octopus”), hence he is part god and part human.

A further factor entering into the position of Kanaloa in Hawaiian accounts of creation, but not apparent in the Kumulipo, shows strife to have arisen at some time either before or after the migration into the Hawaiian group between followers of the Kanaloa priesthood and that of Kane, with Kane eventually triumphant, Kanaloa repudiated, and god Ku set up in his stead as agent with Kane in the creation story.

.; of the prophet Hua of Maui—in all these prophesies—it is said that the gods (na akua) created heaven and earth.

The gods who created heaven and earth were three, Kane, Ku, and Lono.

Kanaloa was a great enemy of these three gods.

Before this creation of heaven and earth, etc., everything was shaky, trembling and destitute, bare (naka, ’olohe-lohe); nothing could be distinguished, everything was tossing about, and the spirits of the gods were fixed to no bodies, only the three above gods had power to create heaven and earth.

There a Tangaroa god “who delighted in doing evil” set fire in the highest heaven “seeking thus to destroy everything.” “Tangaroa-i-te-po” he is called and “supreme ruler of the underworld.” 

But may not the idea of opposition between the gods depend upon a more basic symbolism in the universal facts of human birth?

Again, Kanaloa, god of darkness and the underworld, takes over man at death.

In Hawaii a story tells how the two gods each make a figure of a man and Kanaloa’s dies while Kane’s lives.

The gods are immortal, renewing their youth as a crab its skin.

If the connection with man’s ultimate fate suggested above for the drawing contest between Kanaloa and Kane is correct, is it possible that late reciters of the Kumulipo chant have obscured the part played by Kanaloa in the story of Ki’i and La’ila’i, and “Ki’i the man” was originally Kanaloa’s figure drawn after the form of god Kane, into which Kanaloa has “placed his essence” to deceive the woman, just as Wakea in the later story enters the image (ki’i) set up to lure Ka-we’o-a?

The hero’s search after the sun hidden by a god in the underworld or to recover a bright lady from an underseas ravisher, and his famous fishing after a robber sea god, are all variations upon the theme of daybreak translated into popular fiction.

And he was called Kane-in-the-Light, meaning that he was the god that made light.

There is first darkness, po, or deep darkness, po-uli, then light, malamalama. Later in the passage Kepelino tells how “muddy-earth” (honua-kele) is “drawn by Kane out of the ocean.” Kane becomes “the chief who broke through heaven” of Malo’s account, ancestor of the high taboo chiefs or hoali’i in distinction from the low-ranking, na li’i noa, who do not command the taboos of gods.

Only gods (he mau akua wale) lived at that time.

Like the first seven divisions in the first period of the world in the genealogical account of the Kumulipo night followed night and there lived gods alone [?].

During those intervals night reproduced night by living as man and wife and producing many gods often spoken of by the people of Hawaii as “the forty thousand gods, four thousand gods, four hundred thousand gods,” and in the eighth interval birth changed to that of human beings; that is, to La’ila’i and all those born with her.

There is a head and there are head gods (Po’o-akua) who dwell in power over Po; below them are governers (Kuhina), the executioner (Ilamuku), messengers (Alele), guards (Kia’i), down to the lower grades of gods who are commoners among the gods.

The head gods have great power (mana) in heaven and on earth.

From the messengers and guards down to the commoners among the gods come the innumerable hosts of night.

From the leading gods, the Kuhina and Ilamuku, descended the classes of chiefs and the priests.

There is no other explanation except the memory of the old faith held by this race that the chiefs are offspring and descendants of the ruling gods of Po, those who have power over the heavens and the earth.

Certainly Kukahi does little to clarify the Kumulipo idea of night following night and, “by living as man and wife,” producing the little gods represented, I suppose, by the varieties of plant and animal species which become their bodies in the material world, and later as begetting gods and men in bodily form.

His association with Rta means he enforces the moral code that governs both gods and humans.

Waters and Fertility: As the god of waters, Varuna controls the rivers, seas, and rainfall.

Bhaga: The god of wealth and prosperity, Bhaga ensures the fair distribution of resources, aligning economic activities with the principles of Rta.

It is personified as an aspect of Ahura Mazda, the supreme god, and is fundamental to maintaining the moral and cosmic order.

Represents the primal layers of law and order that shape the cosmos, with the Norns weaving the fate of gods and men.

The divine order or command that governs the universe, emphasizing submission to God's will and the natural order.

The goddess of divine law and order, representing the moral order and natural law governing both gods and humans.