Cyclone Dreaming 10 – Ta-Whiri-Ma-Tea

Ta-Whiri-Ma-Tea
In the Pacific, though there are several different cultures (Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian to name but three of the broad groupings) there is a widely shared class of myth about the separation of the sky (father) from the earth (mother) by their offspring. In a Maori version, five of the six children (the progenitors of humanity, forests, cultivated food, fishes and reptiles, and wild grown food) collaborate in pushing the sky away from the earth. The wind TA‑WHIRI‑MA‑TEA, however, is opposed to his siblings’ actions and drives the fishes into the sea and lays waste the forest. The earth shelters both kinds of food. Only humanity withstands the fury of the wind, though not without casualties and fear. It is, of course, the very wind itself by which the oceanic peoples orient themselves in the world, naming the winds, not after the points of the compass, but according to their influence, and the points of the compass after the winds, which are differentiated into no fewer than thirty‑two distinct influences.

It would be very difficult to imagine a more intimate image of human prosperity generated by its engagement with a ‘cosmic adversary’.