Steam is made from Fire and Water

Pele and Kamapua'a

Happy Friday the 13th Readers,

It’s always been one of my favorite days since 7th grade when I learned it was associated with witches. Long before I learned of how my ancestors, the medicine women of Europe were persecuted and burned at the stake, I somehow knew that witches were not what we’d been taught. I took pride in rebelling against the superstition that said 13 was unlucky. It was a useful sort of pride that provided me with a bulwark against the coming trials of adolescence girlhood in 1980s suburbia. Looking back from now, I can hardly believe I made it without myth to sustain me.

But it did sustain me. I just wasn't aware of it. The stories were speaking to me even though I wasn’t aware of them besides what I knew from Disney movies, Hans Christian Anderson, and a few Grimm’s tales. I also had Susan Cooper and Madeleine L’engle whose books were infused with the mythic. No wonder I loved them so.

Anyway, this week’s post is short on commentary, long on story. I am going to let the images speak for themselves and I suggest you do the same, at least on the first read.

My hope is the story will move you somehow and you’ll go back to it from that perspective. Maybe you’ll even notice it begin to weave into your daily life, your reactions and responses to how the world greets you after interacting with these images.

The mo’olelo I am going to share today is one about the well known fire goddess Pele and her lesser known lover Kamapua’a. Although you may be triggered by some of the events in the story, I encourage you to read it from a transpersonal viewpoint, not to bypass your triggers, but to understand how they play out in the larger forces of nature that surround us. Next week I will go into these dynamics from a rational standpoint. This week let’s just stew in the images and any emotions they evoke.

Pele and Kamapua’a

I wasn’t born ugly. I wasn’t born bitter. And Pele didn’t always rule this island. My people were here many years before she landed here, an exile. Here she found sanctuary. We gave it to her. My people. The people of the fertile, green forests of Hamakua where the waterfalls chant the world into being under the wane and swell of the moon.

Hina was my mother, before she was the goddess of the moon. I was born to her in the cool mountains of Koolau on Oahu. My mother was a young and beautiful girl, married to an old man, Olopana. He was an influential chief, so she did her duty in marrying him, but secretly she was in love with his younger brother Kahiki-ula. Some say he was my father.

Hina would often invite Kahiki-ula to go berry-picking, and he always accepted, wandering the mountain together, they talked plant lore, sharing water in the cool streams. Creaky-boned Olapana was resentful of their friendship, but was too proud to say anything. He didn’t interfere or ask my mother any questions. Only she herself knew if Kahiki-ula was her lover.

That all changed when she gave birth to me. Olapana refused to acknowledge me as his son. “Let Kahiki-ula claim him,” he declared for all to hear, dooming me with his words. “I name this child Kamapua’a. Hog-Child.”

I grew up strong and handsome despite his bitter curse. I was also smart, and some said god-like, since Hina was my mom. Right from the beginning I could shapeshift into all sorts of other creatures from fish to ferns. I thought this would win my father’s love, or even his approval, but the harder I tried to impress my father, the more he mocked me, and the more my hatred for him grew, until eventually I didn’t care if he approved of me or not. I left my village and set up camp in the hills, followed by a few dozen young men who also felt oppressed by my cranky and cruel father. We plundered and pillaged Olapana’s lands, devoted outlaws, laughing as we robbed and killed.

I loved being an outlaw, so I told myself. Loved it so much I shaved my head and tattooed it and my upper body with black, menacing marks. I let a short, bristle grow on my scalp. Hog-Child. Hog-Man, was more like it. Watch out, Olapana. I even skinned a boar and made a cloak out of its bristly hide. When I looked at my reflection in the stream I was horrified, though I pretended to snort with pride. My father wanted a monster, well he’d got one.

They finally caught me. My father himself was going to execute me. My head was on the block. I remember looking up at him as he stood over me with a knife, searching for a glimpse of regret about what he was about to do. None.

One of my father’s priests had slipped me a knife. Tired of the old man. Time for a new ruler. If I had seen regret in my father’s eyes, even a glimmer of mercy, I wouldn’t have plunged the knife into his heart. To be killed while sacrificing his son—not the way my father thought he would leave this world.

I thought I was completely jaded, devoid of innocence or any desire to trust another human being, but I found that after I killed Olapana, the man who was supposed to be my father, I had a desire to know my real father, the one that had birthed me into the world. I went to see Kahiki-ula on Maui, my mother’s rumored lover, and asked him if the rumor was true, was he my father. “I don’t know you,” was all he said. “I have no son."

And that is how I embraced utter debasement: killing, raping, plundering without mercy, regret, or a shred of guilt. I took whatever I wanted in the form of a man or hog. No one could stop me. When I looked in the stream at myself I was no longer horrified.

I had a boat and men to follow me, pirates one and all. One day we found ourselves looking at the shore of Moku o Keawe, Hawai’i Island, and harbored in a lush, green valley between Polulu and Waipi’o. Everybody there was talking about a woman that had recently arrived from some other land and moved into Halema’u’ma’u, the crater of Kilauea volcano. They were saying she was the most beautiful—and powerful—woman they had ever seen. I had to have her. My men and I traveled south to find her and I fell in love at first sight.

It was dreadful. To fall in love like that. To want something with my whole soul. To be so out of control. I loved her so much I had no shame. I begged her to be my wife. Again and again. She laughed, mocked me, just like Olapana. She found my tattoos and head-bristle (you call them mohawks now) repulsive. I just wanted to be loved.

I was so crazed with desire and heartache I decided that if she wouldn’t love me I would destroy her. I would rip that mocking laugh right out of her throat, gore her with my tusks, rut on her in the mud. I planned my attack.

She was a worthy opponent. I fell on her with the power of rain and storms. She fought back with fire. “If you drown me you’ll never have me as a woman,” she gasped beneath me.

I was holding her down even though her skin was so hot my hands were smoking. “If you burn me, your own barrenness will starve you,” I challenged her back.

I don’t know if it was because she wanted me or she was worried her people would starve, but she yielded, and I did, too.

In Pele’s arms I became soft again. I became the man I’d always wanted to be. I felt loved.

For a few moments we were the only people in the world. I looked at her in my innocence, eyes shining with love, let the monster’s mask drop.

It was too much for her. She wanted the monster. She was not ready to be loved.

Pele, the exiled daughter, leaped up from our fern grotto and said the words that doomed us, “Not again. No. Leave me alone. I came here to be Queen and you are too powerful. Take the green valleys of Kohala, Hilo and Hamakua. I’ll stay here in Ka’u and Kona and balance your water with the sun’s fire.”

She broke my heart.

Away she ran, ignoring my cries for her to stay and talk it out. “I know you’re afraid!” I yelled after her. “Please, come back! We can work it out!” but she was long gone, hiding herself and her family in Kilauea’s caverns.

I called her for hours, days, years, I don’t know how long. I may still be calling. I called so hard the earth shook. This stopped me, and looking up I saw lava streaming down Kilauea’s slopes, setting bushes ablaze and in horror I realized Pele and her family, hidden in the caverns beneath the volcano, would be incinerated. So would I if I stayed, so I turned and fled toward the water and when I reached the edge plunged in without a thought, transforming into a humu-humu nuku-nuku apua’a, a hog-nosed triggerfish, strange looking just like me. Even as a shapeshifter I couldn’t hide the monster.

I swam in my loss for years, never setting foot on shore. Eventually I grew tired of swimming and sought sanctuary in the cool, green hills of Kohala, in the river-carved gulches where the maile grows. And there someone told me Pele and her family had survived, that the fire had actually made them immortal. And I learned that Pele, nine months after I’d leapt in the water, gave birth to our son, Opelu-nui-kauhaalilo, who became the ancestor of many chiefs and common people.

People told me Pele, seeing our son, longed for my cooling presence, that maybe I should venture south to see if I could woo her back. I even heard her love chants ringing through the mountains, still do when the wind is right, but I will not venture south to find her. Here in the green forest I protect the wild pigs who never mock me. Here, soothed by the sound of waterfalls, I protect my wounded heart.

A Little Commentary

This story particularly interests me because it combines an account of how natural forces came to be (the wet and dry sides of Hawai’i Island) with the human emotional journey. Viewing stories solely from the vantage of archetypal psychology risks reducing them to explanations of human behavior, when the stories are embedded in something far more ancient than human existence. Interpreting this way puts humans at the center, erasing the earth’s story. Here we have both and are the richer for it, emotion expressed as the elements of fire and water. We become part of Earth’s processes by feeling and expressing.

What would Earth like if we resolved our rage and despair?

How did you feel at the end of this story I’d love to hear. Please share in the comments. I feel for both Pele and Kamapua’a, see a little of myself in both of them and people I love. I felt so heavy and sad writing the last line, the weight of my losses and the long journey to complete them through grief.

When I think of Pele and Kamapua’a I think of so many loves lost, and the pain of dwelling so long in loss. Loss is not an experience to rush, but it is also dangerous to linger. Remain too long and even sweet spring water will taste metallic and bitter.

In the longest run, however, we stay as long as we need to, until the scars heal enough to be witnessed, by a human eye or just a little day light shining through an east facing window.

My wish is for us all to witness each other, to lift the sadness, to share the burden, but uncomfortable emotions like bitterness, sadness, abandonment, and rage are necessary steps on the path to moving out of victimhood. Sometimes we just have to let Pele stew in her cauldron and Kamapua’a sulk in the forest. Sometimes we just have to let broken hearts be broken.

The Japanese have it right. They call it kinstugi, repairing broken pottery with gold.

Photo by SIMON LEE on Unsplash

Kō aloha lā ea

Concentrate on love by way of the light,

Jen

image by Herb Kane