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God Name and Meaning

List of Gods : "Deity Polynesian" - 14 records

Name ▲▼	Origin ▲▼	Description ▲▼
God name "Fe'e"	Polynesian	God of the dead. Perceived as a giant cuttlefish who was once subdued by the god of deep underground rocks. Part of the principle of Polynesian religion that every deity has a superior and and inferior who have either bested, or been bested by, the other at some mythical time....
God name "Haumiatiketike"	Polynesian / including Maori	vegetation god. The deity concerned with wild plants gathered as food, and particularly with the rhizome of the bracken which has been traditionally relied on by the Maori in times of famine or need....
God name "Ika ere"	Polynesian	Fish god. The son of Punga and grandson of TANGAROA, the sea and creator god, he is revered in various regions of Polynesia as the progenitor of all life in the sea, especially fish. His brother is Tu-Te-Wanawana, the deity responsible for the well-being of lizards, snakes and other reptiles. When fierce storms arose at the time of creation under the control of TAWHIRIMATEA, the god of winds, mythology records that Tu-Te-Wanawana went inland to escape the devastation while Ikatere took to the safety of the sea. The incident became known as the schism of Tawhirimatea and has resulted in an eternal conflict between TANE(MAHUTA) the Forest god and Tangaroa, the sea god....
God name "Kane"	Polynesian / Hawaii	God of light. A sky god comparable with the more widely known Polynesian deity ATEA. Considered to be part of a primordial trinity with KU (stability) and LONO (sound).See also TANE(MAHUTA)....
Deity name "Ku"	Polynesian / Hawaii	Primordial being. An aspect of a tripartite deity which also includes KANE, the light, and LONO, sound. They existed in chaos and darkness, which they broke into pieces to allow the light to come in....
Goddess name "Laka"	Polynesian / Hawaii	Goddess of dancing. A minor deity who is nonetheless greatly revered by islanders in a hedonistic cult of song, dance and sexual liberality....

God name "Make Make"	Polynesian / Easter Island	Sea god. The tutelary deity of the Easter Islanders, he created mankind and animals. His sacred animal is the sea swallow and the huge anthropomorphic stone figures which characterize the island's archaeology form part of his cult....
Goddess name "Maui"	Polynesian / Maori / New Zealand	Tutelary god. Not a creator god but one who åśśists mankind in various supernatural ways. According to tradition he was aborted at birth and cast into the sea by his mother, who thought he was dead. He was rescued entangled in seaweed. He is the deity who drew the islands of New Zealand from the floor of the ocean in a net. Maui caught the Sun and beat it into submission, making it travel more slowly across the sky so that the days became longer. He also brought fire from the underworld for mankind and tried, unsuccessfully, to harness immortality for him by entering the vulva of the underworld goddess HINE-NUI-TE-PO while she was asleep. She awoke and crushed him to death. Though a deity, he had been made vulnerable to death by a mistake during his rites of birth (see also Balder). Also Mawi....
God name "Rongomai"	Polynesian / Maori	Whale god. He is the son of TANGAROA, the creator deity responsible for the oceans and the fish, and the father of KAHUKURA, the deity responsible for the appearance of the Rainbow. He is also regarded as the ancestor of several Maori clans. Various traditions are åśśociated with Rongomai. In some regions of New Zealand he is also regarded as a god of war and is thought to have discovered the magic arts during a visit to the underworld, including the power of kaiwhatu, a preventative charm against witchcraft. Rongomai is sometimes mistakenly identified with RONGOMATANE, or Rongo, though the latter is generally considered a distinct personality. As the god responsible for the well-being of whales Rongomai may take the form of a whale, a guise in which he once challenged MARU, a more widely recognized New Zealand war god. Separate mythology places him in the heavens in the form of a comet....
God name "Tana'ao"	Polynesian / Marquesas Islands	weather and sea god. A local variation on the Polynesian god TANGAROA, known as a god of winds and a tutelary deity of fishermen....
Deities name "Tangaroa"	Polynesian / including Maori	Sea and creator god. The deity responsible for the oceans (moana) and the fish (ika) within them. In Hawaiian belief he was the primordial being who took the form of a bird and laid an egg on the surface of the primeval waters which, when it broke, formed the earth and sky. He then engendered the god of light, ATEA (cf. TANE). According to Tahitian legend, he fashioned the world inside a gigantic mussel shell. In a separate tradition Tangaroa went fishing and hauled the Tongan group of islands from the depths of the ocean on a hook and line. He is the progenitor of mankind (as distinct from TUMATAUENGA who has authority over mankind). His son Pili married SINA, the tropic bird and they produced five children from whom the rest of the Polynesian race was born. In Maori culture Tangaroa, like all deities, is represented only by inconspicuous, slightly worked stones or pieces of wood and not by the large totems which are depictions of ancestors....
God name "Tifenua (lord of the land)"	Polynesian / Tikopia	Chthonic fertility god. He is linked with the sea god FAIVARONGO and with the sky god ATUA I KAFIKA. His father is Pusiuraura, a powerful deity personified by the reef eel, and his mother is one of the Sa-Nguti-Te-Moana. Also Pu-I-Te-Moana....
God name "Tino Taata"	Polynesian / Society Islands	Creator god. Probably regarded as the tutelary deity who engendered mankind and equating therefore to the more widely recognized Polynesian god TANGAROA....
Deities name "Whiro"	Polynesian / Maori	God of death. Regarded as an errant son of the creator deities, RANGINUI and PAPATUANUKU, Whiro stands as the chief antagonist of TANEMAHUTA, the creator god of light. He is, therefore, the personification of darkness and evil. During the time of creation from chaos, Whiro is said to have fought an epic battle against Tanemahuta in the newly formed heavens. He was vanquished and forced to descend into the underworld where he became ruler over the dead and chief among the lesser underworld deities who are responsible for various forms of disease and sickness. In the temporal world the lizard, a symbol of death, embodies him, and various creatures of the night, including the owl and the bat, are earthly representatives from his kingdom, as are such malignant insect pests as the mosquito. This deity is not to be confused with the legendary human voyager and adventurer of the same name whose traditions have, in the past, often been muddled with those of the god....