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Polynesian Deities
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The gods of the Polynesian islands, from Hawaii and Aotearoa to Tahiti and Samoa, whose shared ancestry is visible in cognate names and common myths distributed across an enormous span of ocean. Genealogy is central: gods, ancestors and chiefs belong to a single recited line of descent.
Facts
Overview
What Defines This GroupingThe gods of the Polynesian-speaking peoples of the Pacific. The traditions are genuinely related - Tangaroa, Tagaloa and Kanaloa are one name across the region - but they are not one religion: rank, role and even which god is paramount differ by island group, and each archipelago's material was recorded separately and at a different date. 2 Peoples and Traditions CoveredAotearoa New Zealand and the Maori, whose gods and whakapapa are held within tribal traditions 3 Peoples and Traditions CoveredHawaii, whose traditions were written down by Hawaiian authors from the 1830s onward 3 Peoples and Traditions CoveredSamoa, Tonga and Western Polynesia, whose traditions differ markedly from the eastern ones 3 Peoples and Traditions CoveredTahiti and the Society Islands, the earliest Polynesian religion described at length by European voyagers 3 Peoples and Traditions CoveredThe Marquesas, the Cook Islands, Rapa Nui and the wider eastern archipelagos 3 Attestation
Era of AttestationTransmitted orally, and far older than its documentation. The written record begins with European voyage accounts from 1769 and continues in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century compilations made by Hawaiian and Maori authors and by ethnographers. 2 Veneration TodayThese gods and the protocols around them remain culturally significant to Pacific peoples, and some cult sites have been restored and rededicated. 4 Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryThe Polynesian pantheon is a comparative construct. The cognate god-names across the region are real, but the ranks and functions attached to them differ by island group, and a single reconstructed pantheon flattens that difference. 2 Learn More
The Gods of Polynesia
This group holds the deities of the Polynesian peoples spread across the Pacific, from Hawaii to New Zealand to the many islands between. Related traditions share a common ancestral stock of gods whose names shift from island to island: Tangaroa, Kanaloa, Tagaloa are one sea-god across the region.
The browser will find creator and sky figures, the demigod trickster Maui who fished up islands and snared the sun, and major Hawaiian and Maori gods such as Kane, Ku, Lono, Pele of the volcano, and Tane and Tu. The atlas records the regional variants and notes that these traditions remain culturally significant to Pacific peoples today.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
The deities of the Polynesian tradition.
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