Pele Kate Kealani H. Winter We stood pressed against the horizontal rain that whipped across the lava desert at the top of Kilauea Volcano. Perched on the edge of Halema’uma’u Crater, looking into the steaming, smoking firepit, we waited for our Kumu Hula, our master teacher, to begin the chant and drumming that would signal the start of our sacred dance to honor Pele, Hawaiian Goddess of Fire, at home below us at her volcanic hearth. Accustomed to dancing hula nearer the ocean, we shivered in the mountain cold at the crater’s almost 4000 foot elevation. Wet and shuddering, breathing in the sulfurous air of eruption, we began the hula dedicated to Pele, offering her our movements, our sisterhood, our aloha, our love for the land she had created. The chant rose over the thrust of hip and rustle of our skirts. The slap of bare feet on lava was lost against the whistle and howl of wind. We swayed and dipped, called out, plunged and whirled. When it was done, having left our offerings of chocolate and special stones and gin and the skin of our soles, we backed away from the abyss and picked our way across the uneven lava desert to the parking area where other hula halau (troupes) waited their turns to stand against the elements and dance for Pele’s blessing. In April every year, the crater is Mecca to hula dancers who are preparing to compete in the most prestigious hula competition in the world, the Merrie Monarch Hula Festival in Hilo on the windward side of the largest of the Hawaiian islands, Hawaii. All paths lead to Kilauea that week. Pele lives. If you doubt it, become one of the throngs of tourists and pilgrims to trek to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park -- 2.5 million people annually. A “drive-in volcano,” Kilauea is readily accessible by tour bus, rental car or motorcycle. But the best way to meet and know Pele is barefoot, shuddering on the precipice that is the threshold of her home. In Hawaii nei , as the whole chain of islands is known, tourists are entertained by stories of the Goddess’s volcanic outbursts and tempestuous love affairs, but unless they make themselves visitors, it is unlikely that they will hear the complex narratives that explain the interconnectedness of the spirits and landscapes of Hawaii nei, the temperament of Pele, and the world view that permeates Hawaiian culture even now. Pele seems to be the only one of the Hawaiian deities who takes human form and moves among the islands’ inhabitants today. Nearly everyone who is “local” or “kama’aina,” a longtime resident, either knows of someone who has seen the Goddess or has encountered her personally. A devoutly Christian couple I know totaled their car on a mountain road late one night after seeing the figure of a woman in black rise up in the middle of the macadam. A hotel employee tells of having a woman ask him for a match and then, as she moved across the lobby, noticing that she had no flesh below the hem of her dress -- she moved on a current of air like cloud over ocean. A Jewish realtor tells me he married his flame-haired third wife because he saw her hitchhiking, looking like Pele, and Volume 13, Number 1
SPRING 2001
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Pele didn’t dare not pick her up. I myself was urged by a park ranger not to let my mother carry away stones because the Goddess protects Her body and something bad might befall her. When I learned of my mother’s fall down a lava embankment at the very time I was being warned, I believed. One never invites a lava flow by taunting or denying Pele, nor does one move rocks without permission. The Visitors’ Center at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park receives almost daily mail with rocks being returned usually accompanied by letters from tourists detailing the misfortunes that have plagued them since they ignored the warnings and took a sample of Pele’s lava home with them -- broken limbs and marriages, accidents, fires, dismemberments and cancers -- all attributed to breaking Pele’s taboo. Pele’s appearances mirror the many women she is. Sometimes we meet her looking like a crone, asking for a ride, a bit of food, a light. She may appear as a stunning young woman in a red dress, bright auburn hair flowing luxuriantly about her. In this guise, she may be warning of an eruption. Sometimes her dress is white, and she assumes the air of a comely maiden with hair as black as cooling lava. Some say seeing her like that warns of impending illness, misfortune or death. At any time, she may be traveling with her small white dog. One consequence of these many transformations is that no woman one meets should ever be denied what she asks, regardless of her appearance or whether one recognizes her or not. Stories both ancient and contemporary abound of Pele appearing to individuals and requesting some service or provision. Generally the tales end in some lesson that reinforces the elemental values of Hawaiian culture, and often these stories explain the existence of some feature of the island landscape. One such tale accounts for the presence of two hills, a red and a black (cinder and lava) in an area called “Kaupulehu,” Athe place of the roasted breadfruit.” A withered but agile crone walked down the flank of Mount Hualalai, one of the three volcanoes that make up the island of Hawaii. She approached a girl who was roasting breadfruit, but when she asked for a bit to eat, the girl refused, saying that there was only enough for herself and her parents. The old woman shrugged and passed on down the mountain. As she neared the ocean, she came upon the younger sister who lived near the beach with their grandmother. When the crone begged a little of the breadfruit she was roasting, the girl invited her to sit awhile and have a drink of water while they waited for it to be finished cooking. After sharing a draught of fresh water and tasting the breadfruit, the elder said she must be gone and cautioned the girl that before she and her grandmother went to sleep that night, they must put two sticks upright on the side of their hut facing the mountain and tie a white banner between them. With that, she thanked the girl and handed her a length of white cloth. The younger sister savored the well-made tapa cloth, and when she looked up again, the Old One had disappeared. That night there was a great rumble in the mountain as lava poured from the center of the island. The coiling black flow engulfed the hut of the first girl 6
Pele and her parents leaving behind a black hill. The lava moved steadily toward the ocean, but as it came near the home of the second girl and her grandmother, it sundered itself and passed by on either side, leaving them safe though surrounded by molten rock. A red cinder hill grew up nearby to mark the place. Today the highway bisects the lava plain between these two hills, reminding kama’aina of the importance of caring for sojourners, even the sometimes difficult tourists on whom the Hawaiian economy depends. As difficult as travel was in ancient and nineteenth century Hawaii, modern wayfaring across the islands may still be fraught with deprivation, thirst, heat, cold, and hunger. Traditionally, one is always expected to offer fresh drinking water and food of some kind, however humble, to any traveler who comes by. This is aloha. King Kamehmeha I codified this Hawaiian tradition and amplified it in one of his first edicts after unifying the islands, “The Law of The Splintered Paddle,” which assured anyone traveling the trails anywhere in the kingdom of security from bandits and succor from residents. The story of the two sisters at Kaupulehu affirms that the tradition lies deep in the values of a people who themselves were great travelers, who sailed around the Pacific exploring and searching for a new home, and were prepared to honor all other wanderers as well. Pele herself had wandered across the Pacific seeking a suitable home for herself and her family of deities, briefly stopping along the way and leaving a crescent of volcanic islands in her wake. Thus Pele created Hawaii nei, the most distant bits of land on the planet, when she left Kahiki, the land beyond the ocean, the place which is not “here.” This accounts for the presence of a chain of islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean’s vastness, a narrative that explains the increasing size of the islands as she danced across the sea from northwest to southeast, staying only long enough in each place to build small islands with her heat and stone, until at last she came to the place she liked best where the largest of the islands, Hawaii, grew around her. Pele’s beneficence includes providing places in the uplands where travelers who have trekked through the cold mists and rains of the mountain can warm themselves -- steam vents, hot springs, and craters. She likewise offers succor to the dead who are of her lineage, the relatives of the departed ancestor spirits who dwell with Her in the fire. The remnants of the corpse -- hair, fingernails, bones -- are taken with the offerings and supplications to Halema’uma’u Crater where, if acknowledged by Her, the remains and spirit are absorbed into her body. Thus the mana or spiritual power of the people who descended from Pele is returned to her and manifested in her life-giving lava. Pele’s body erupts with life, her lava deserts providing nurseries for creatures that are well-adapted to and evolving for the extreme conditions. Pele is both darkness and light. Her womb churns with glowing magma, she lights the sky with her loosed power, the glow of lava flow filling the heavens with the mountain’s nimbus that served as beacon to transpacific mariners from Tahiti to New Bedford. She is both celestial and terrestrial. She rests beside her 7
Pele lava hearth deep in her crater-home on Kilauea. Her flanks are pitted with night-black caves, collapsed lava tubes that once ran orange like veins of flaming plasma. Yawning dark mouths and incandescent streams once spewed liquid life as earthly women’s bodies do. She has two skins, the riven, jagged and the smooth, ropey pahoehoe that curls like licorice on the earth. Tattooed with petroglyphs incised by unknown artists both ancient and post-contact, she bears the scars of her existence nobly. She resides deep in her crater-home on Kilauea beside her lava hearth. With black skin withered like jerky and eyes reddened like coals, hair the color of cinders, back burning, she is the havoc-maker. The land is hers: she gave birth to it, and she can destroy it, thus giving life again. She is burned but never barren. This complex duality embodies a divine paradox in Pele’s being: the reality of rock gives the illusion of permanence, especially in the midst of ocean, yet there is always the equally real presence of immanent disruption, dislocation and dissolution from and eruption. Pele embodies the fundamental belief that Nature evolves through sex. The sacred dance of Hawaii was originally a form of worship with erotic movements that were intended to arouse the gods. Like Pele, the other deities were moved by the same desires as the people, and stimulating their erotic interests was a way to guarantee the procreation that would bless the land, the >aina, and its people: rain, cool cloud cover, plenty of sea life, and lava flows to build their homeland. Pele’s love affairs are fiercely passionate, wildly erotic. Pele’s sexual encounters with the pig god Kamapua’a are rough and raw. For his part, Kamapua’a’s job is to make the land fertile and receptive by rutting, wallowing, and digging with his great phallic snout. Though he assumes the guise of a handsome man, Pele recognizes him by his longer than normal ears and the bristly body hair on his back. Kamapua’a comes courting as a handsome human lover, but when aroused by her, he reverts to his boar-ish self, tusks and cloven feet ready to ravish Her rather than give Her up as She resists, flees, and turns on him with fire and flow. Finally surrendering to his passion, Pele pleasures him and herself in a lusty union that tears up the countryside and creates valleys, cliffs and waterways and for a time halts the molten flow. Pele’s mating with Kamapua’a creates a child who became the ancestor of chiefs and commoners as well as new land and landscapes. Pele as lover expresses a range of sexuality that we rarely see celebrated. Pele as a birthing woman similarly challenges our culture’s notions of mother: she has none of the gentleness and generous passivity we associate with maternity. Hers is a birthing of raging destruction that manifests the bloody, messy, dark reality of labor and delivery for many women. The human descendants of Pele commemorate her and keep her kapu or taboos. Some of the faithful were inspired to prophecy and ritual including dance, dedicating themselves to Her. People who deny Her are pursued by ill-luck and trauma, inviting the many fire spirits to take their volcanic forms and overrun 8
Pele everything in their paths to destroy the naysayers. Missionaries have led assaults on Her, and scientists enlist logic or cast doubt on Pele’s power and even her existence. In the century of searching for geologic history and clues to how and why the volcano does as She does, the ultimate goal for volcanologists seems to have been predicting the next eruption. They are trying to control what is essentially uncontrollable. In Hawaii, scientists who work on the lava flows become deeply attuned to and respectful of the in-dwelling Goddess. She is undeniable and irresistible. On the mountain, volcanologists, dancers, visitors all feel an intense presence though the land around us is empty of other human beings, other animals, trees. The vast and empty mountainsides seethe with a life we cannot see or measure or define. We can only name it: Pele. Accepting Her, we accept that we may never be able to predict her passions: we can only live with them. Sometimes humans attempt to wrest control from Her by controlling or directing her molten love. Stopping Pele’s flow is, for the most part, against Hawaiian thinking. Supplicants might ask for a favor or a blessing, but few would approach the Goddess asking for a halt to her creativity. Today we still see gifts and offerings left at the edge of the crater -tobacco, flowers, food, joss sticks, and the presumed favorite -- gin. Park Rangers routinely pick up the glass bottles that the careless or ignorant have left on the lava. Occasionally we see someone throw a bottle over the lip of the crater, though the correct protocol is to lean over the edge and pour the gin into her gaping mouth and hike out your trash. Pele’s power seems to cause writers and volcanologists to feel as if the lava is indeed Her body, the tug as they pull molten rock away with their axes is flesh’s resistance to violence, a body’s protest. It is this visceral understanding that honors the Goddess and all the rocks, sand and stone as living tissue, yearning, burning flesh. Hawaiians will tell you never to take a stone away from Hawaii and not even to move stone from place to place without asking permission of the rock first. Each pohaku was once the blood-red viscera of Pele’s moody outbursts. It is useless to fight her, though sometimes a resident will use a fire hose to cool the flow that threatens his house, trying to turn the lava away rather than stop it. In the nineteenth century, the female chief Kapiolani challenged Pele’s power by approaching the pit of pluming lava and eating Her sacred ohelo berries without offering Her some first or even last. Kapiolani taunted the Ancient Woman of the Pit by insisting that her new god Jehovah was superior. The flow did not apparently cease immediately. King Kamehameha I intervened when She was hurling earth-devouring lava down her flanks toward the fishponds north of the king’s residence, an important source of food for the court. He approached the flaming edge of the flow and cast a pig -- a most prized offering -- into the moving lava. It stopped. There were reportedly eyes in the lava to see him and ears to hear his pleading and prayers. In more modern times, the US military and assorted engineers have attempted to halt the flow from Kilauea toward the port city of Hilo. In 1935, the US Air Corp bombed a 9
Pele lava tube at the 9000 foot elevation to stop Pele’s progress. The lava spilled to one side but continued flowing. In 1942, US bombers tried to stop an eruptive flow, but while it seemed for a time that they had been successful, the flow had merely gone sideways and joined the original stream farther down the mountain. This persistent and insistent force is one of many deities called “akua” in Hawaiian, a word typically translated as “god” or “goddess” by westerners and Christians. Akua are divine beings who are more like Buddhism’s bodhisattva, spirit entities that have will, emotions, desires, and consciousness. Akua are moved by the same impulses as the people, but the consequences are writ large. Human stories assume mythic proportions to mirror our elemental struggles. For example, sisters are plentiful in Pele stories, and often their allegiances are sorely challenged. Pele’s younger sister Hiiaka came from the bosom of Pele, carried there curled in an egg while her fiery sister leaped across the ocean. Theirs is a special bond. One day, Pele rose out of the crater’s pit and took the form of a beautiful woman. Her many sisters surrounded her as she went to the seaside to bathe and feast. When they were done, she settled into a cave, told her sisters not to wake her, and fell into a deep sleep. Soon her spirit rose from her place of repose, still the image of a beauty, and followed the sound of a hula drum to the island of Kauai, at the most northern point of the island chain, and there she saw and seduced the chief Lohiau. All night they lay on scented mats, but she would give him only kisses and caresses, promising that when she spirited him to her island of Hawaii they would possess each other completely. Her spirit body rose and disappeared. Lohiau was bereft. After searching for her madly and uselessly, he despaired and hung himself. Meanwhile, Pele slept in the cave until her little sister Hiiaka chanted her awake and agreed to go to Kauai and bring the lover Lohiau back for Pele. Hiiaka obtained a promise from her sister that while she was away on this epic errand, Pele would not ravage the lehua groves of her dearest friend Hopoe. In turn, Hiiaka promised that she would not dally with Lohiau but bring him swiftly to Pele though both sisters knew that the prophecy was that he would be lover to both of them. When Hiiaka arrived and saw the spirit body of Lohiau separate from his corpse, she chanted him into life again, restoring him to wholeness. Their journey to Kilauea was fraught with difficulties, not least being their mutual desire for each other, but Hiiaka kept her word. Pele had not done as well. Her fires had raged through the lehua groves and killed Hopoe too. When Hiiaka and Lohiau saw what had been done, the younger sister bitterly railed against her elder and declared their compact ended. She led the handsome and eager Lohiau to the edge of the lava terrace in full view of Pele and there embraced, entangled, kissed and loved him. The Goddess of Fire rallied all her helpers and other sisters and ordered them to destroy Lohiau. She did not believe that Hiiaka had truly kept her part of the bargain since she herself had difficulty doing so, and she was prepared 10
Pele to deny them both the pleasures of love with Lohiau. Hiiaka was spared by the power of Lohiau’s prayers to other akua, but the man himself was overcome by lava and died a second time. Only the god Kane cooled Pele’s rage and soothed her back into the pit. Later a sorcerer came into the crater and confronted Her, asking why it was that Lohiau had been required to die twice. He told how Lohiau had hanged himself in his longing for the disappearing goddess and how Hiiaka had been faithful to her promise. Pele summoned her brother to restore Lohiau to life once again, and Hiiaka was joined to him for all time. Hula is a way of talking to the akua and inviting them to bless us with inspiration and enlightenment. Pele shows Hawaiians how to be in a world that has displaced aloha with tourism, academics and militarism. She can also teach women around the planet how to honor the tempestuous centers of themselves in this new age. This is what Pele tells us: women are fierce in their passions, conflicted in their allegiances to their sisters, contradictory, powerfully creative, unpredictable, unstoppable when aroused or inspired and epic in love. Perhaps because Hawaiians are so accepting of the vagaries of desire, they imagine a goddess who embodies all the passions and possibilities of womanhood. Theirs is a culture that leaves gender lines fluid and permeable, profoundly celebrating all that is female, even honoring the mahu men who act as women and love as women. Hawaiians celebrate a divine feminine who is capricious, capacious, and ageless. That is what we honor and invoke as our soles slap the rock at crater’s edge. We sway and chant for our sacred ancestor just as Hiiaka herself danced for her sister. We feel the bond of spiritual sisterhood with Pele and the women who dance beside us just as Hopoe, the first to dance hula, danced beside her dearest friend Hiiaka and taught her the sacredness of movement. There is one hula that is at the center of many hula halau repertoires and often performed in public: “Ha’aku’I Pele I Hawai’i” -- “Pele Prevails on Hawai’i.” She does.
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