Hine-nui-te-po- Polynesian GodDeity"Great Woman of Night"

The First Woman and Her Daughter

Before Hine-nui-te-pō existed, there was only Hine-ahu-one, the first woman, shaped by the god Tāne from the red earth of Kurawaka and brought to life with his breath. Tāne had long searched for a companion among the existing beings of the world but found none suitable. He fathered children by trees and stones, producing insects, birds, and the creatures of the forest, but none were human. Only when he traveled to Kurawaka, a sacred place on the body of his mother Papatūānuku, and molded a figure from the red clay found there, shaping it into the form of a woman and breathing into her nostrils, did a true woman come into existence.

Hine-ahu-one, the "Earth-formed Maiden," became Tāne's wife. From their union was born Hine-tītama, a name meaning "Dawn Maiden," for she was as radiant as the first light breaking over the horizon.

The Dawn Maiden

Hine-tītama grew in the world of light, knowing nothing of the circumstances of her own origin. Tāne, captivated by her beauty, took her as his wife, his own daughter, though he never revealed this truth to her. They lived together, and Hine-tītama bore him several children, content in a marriage she believed was ordinary. She was the Dawn Maiden, bright and innocent, walking in Te Ao Mārama, the world of light, that her father had brought into being when he and his brothers forced apart Ranginui the Sky Father and Papatūānuku the Earth Mother.

But the secret of her parentage lay at the foundation of their life together like a fault line in rock. The other gods knew. The world knew. Only Hine-tītama did not.

The Terrible Discovery

In some tellings, Hine-tītama asked Tāne directly who her father was; in others, she overheard the other gods speaking, or sought out her mother Hine-ahu-one for answers. However the revelation came, its effect was devastating. The husband she had loved, the father of her children, was also her own father.

Hine-tītama's response was not rage but a grief so total that it reshaped the cosmos. She did not attack Tāne or demand retribution. She would leave the world of light forever. She would descend to Te Pō, the realm of darkness beneath the world, and never return.

The Descent to Te Pō

Hine-tītama fled from the world of the living, traveling downward through the passages that led to Te Pō. Tāne pursued her, calling out her name, begging her to come back to him and their children. At the threshold of the underworld, she stopped and turned to face him one last time.

She told him to return to the world of light and raise their children there. She would remain in Te Pō. And when those children died, and their children, and their children's children, she would be waiting to receive them. "You will push them toward me," she said, "and I will draw them down." Then she turned her back on the light and descended into the darkness. The way closed behind her.

In that moment, Hine-tītama ceased to exist. In her place stood Hine-nui-te-pō, the Great Woman of the Night, and death entered the world.

The Death of Māui

Having fished up islands from the ocean floor, snared the sun and forced it to slow its passage, and stolen fire from the underworld, Māui conceived his most ambitious plan: to win immortality for all humanity by reversing the passage of death. He would enter the body of the sleeping Hine-nui-te-pō through the passage between her thighs, travel through her, and emerge from her mouth, reversing birth, reversing death.

Māui journeyed to the edge of the horizon where the goddess lay sleeping, accompanied by the small birds of the forest. He warned them that absolute silence was essential; if Hine-nui-te-pō woke before he completed the passage, he would die. The birds agreed. Māui stripped off his clothing, made himself small, and began to enter the sleeping goddess's body. The birds watched in tense silence as the trickster crept forward, disappearing inch by inch into the vast body of the death goddess. He had traveled halfway through when the fantail, pīwakawaka, unable to contain itself at the sight of the tiny trickster wriggling through the enormous sleeping goddess, burst out laughing.

The shrill sound shattered the silence. Hine-nui-te-pō woke, and in the instant of waking, crushed Māui between her obsidian-toothed thighs. Death remained permanent in the world.

The Path to Te Reinga

In Māori tradition, the spirits of the dead travel to Hine-nui-te-pō by following the path of the setting sun. They journey northward through the length of the land, passing the places where the living once gathered, leaving behind the world they knew. Their destination is Te Rerenga Wairua, the Leaping Place of Spirits, at Cape Reinga on the northern tip of New Zealand's North Island, where an ancient pōhutukawa tree clings to the headland above the churning meeting of the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean. This gnarled tree, wind-bent and rooted in the rock above the sea, marks the final threshold. The spirits pause to look back one last time toward the land of the living, then descend by the tree's exposed roots into the sea and from there travel beneath the waves to Te Pō.

At their destination, Hine-nui-te-pō waits as she has waited since the moment she turned her back on the light.