This page groups deities by the domain or function myth assigns them, the area of life, craft or natural force a god is called on to govern. Wikipedia's overview of deities gives a clear example in the Yoruba god Ogun, described as "the primordial masculine deity as well as the archdivinity and guardian of occupations such as tools making and use, metal working, hunting, war, protection and ascertaining equity and justice." Browsing by domain lets a visitor find every god of, for example, war or the harvest, across many different pantheons at once.
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.
Wilderness and wild animals
Filter Results2 entries
Connections
Belongs to Tradition
The deities of the Polynesian tradition.
Source Polynesian Mythology and Ancient Traditional History of the New Zealand RaceGeorge Grey
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Hawaiian Mythology
Martha Warren Beckwith, Yale University Press, 1940IntroductionView the Source 3. On the Road of the Winds: An Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands before European Contact, 2nd edition
Patrick Vinton Kirch, University of California Press, 2017chapter on the Hawaiian Islands
4. Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand
Manatu Taonga, New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage, New Zealand Government, 2005s.v. Maori religion and the godsView the Source Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
Polynesian Mythology and Ancient Traditional History of the New Zealand Race
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