Hawaiian Mythology: Part One: The Gods: II. Ku Gods

This is a scholarly ethnographic account of Hawaiian religious tradition, drawn from kahuna (priestly) knowledge and indigenous oral sources, examining the theological structure and practical worship of the god Ku and his female counterpart Hina. Ku ("rising upright") and Hina ("leaning down") function as paired ancestral creator deities representing male and female generative power respectively, together encompassing all humanity past and present, all directions, and the full cycle of the sun — a cosmological duality that also grounds prayers for healing, fertility, and prosperity in claims of shared divine lineage. The text argues that this male/female antithesis is not merely theological but shaped the entire aesthetic structure of Hawaiian chant and poetry, where habitual pairing — sea and land, upland and shore, night and day — became a defining stylistic feature rooted in lived economic and environmental reality. A substantial portion catalogs the many specialized "Ku gods," subordinate deities under whose names particular professions (canoe builders, fishermen, farmers, warriors, hula dancers) worshiped Ku, each with distinct ritual protocols and associated myths, including detailed accounts of Ku-ka-ohia-laka (god of the ohia tree and hula) and Ku-mauna (a mountain rain god encased in lava). The work's distinctive claim is that Hawaiian symbolic thought — from stone shapes to tree forms to prayer structure — derives organically from sexual analogy, and that the figure of Ku as universal progenitor underpins both national identity and the proliferation of craft-specific deity cults across the archipelago.

Hawaiian Mythology: Part One: The Gods: II. Ku Gods

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