The Wind from Ha'ena

The tale of Pele and Hi'iaka, a Hawaiian Epic

I’d like to begin this week’s post with welcoming my new readers! I’m delighted The Corpus Callosum Chronicles is venturing further out in the world through recommendations by other writers I admire and hope you find this a space of expansion and wonder. I know we collectively face a lot of problems these days, but as a student of permaculture I do believe in one of its core principles, “the problem is the solution.” How can the exponential chaos whirling around us be the impetus for the new creations we need to evolve humanity and fulfill our purpose on Earth and in the cosmos?

This week I’m sharing a story from my upcoming book, Piko: A Return to the Dreaming, that has some things to say about that. It’s a story about Pele, whose island home is also my home, Moku o Keawe, which you probably know as the Big Island. One of the incredible things about living here is being able to witness land actually being formed when Pele erupts. Sometimes the new land takes away beloved places like the Kapoho tide pools. Last November the Saddle Road connecting Hilo side and Kona side was almost obliterated, and far offshore the next Hawaiian island, Lō’ihi, is slowly rising from the ocean floor as the lava hardens to rock deep underwater.

Before I share the story, I’d like to share some news. Piko, published by Whale Road Press, should be out August 15th. My fabulous editor and book designer and I, Norman Minnick, are hard at work on final edits and layout. I could not be more pleased with the design and am so grateful to Norm for his editorial guidance. The book will be distributed by Ingram and will be available on all online platforms as well as available for purchase in bookstores. If you’d like to support the book’s launch, send me a message here or through the contact form on the Whale Road Press Site. Pre-order links will be available soon. Pre-orders help book’s rise in the algorithm, so if you can help in this way to spread the good word, I’d most appreciate it.

I’ve been very gratified that my series The Art of Spell-Casting on how to reanimate the English language through Heka, Mū Hawaiian magic, has been so received well. I planned to post Part V this week on the principle polarization, but have chosen to focus all my energy on Piko edits and have not applied the proper focus to truly contemplate this principle. For those who’d like to catch up on the series while I write Part V, here is a link to Part I. The other parts are still accessible to free subscribers in the archive, though if you’d like to support my work with a paid subscription, of course I’d be thrilled and grateful.

The Art of Spell-Casting Part I

Without further ado, here is this week’s story, one of the tales I told to the water in the ceremony related in Piko. It is the epic story of Pele and her sister Hi’iaka, and has many parallels with the Odyssey, the Greek epic of Homer. Note, this is my version of the story. I compressed the adventures Hi’iaka had on her journey from Moku o Keawe to Kauai to bring back Pele’s beloved Lohi’au. I encourage to find a complete text as they are extraordinary, or better yet find someone to tell it to you live. If you do, let me know, because I would love to hear it!

The Wind from Ha’ena

The volcano never let me sleep. When I was young I didn’t care so much. I loved the torture of the flames licking the soles of my feet. I loved the way my heat drew men to me. But then I grew older—then old, so old no man would want me. My flame-colored hair was white as ash and I reeked of rotten eggs. I longed for a breeze to blow the stink of myself away.

To my surprise, Ipo-no-eno’e, the Wind from Ha’ena, answered my call and took pity on me. She whispered of a man on Kauai who was waiting for me, a man so beautiful flowers fell at his feet. Lohi’au, a prince of Ha’ena, beating a sharkskin drum all day in the halau, longing for love so much he had scared all the women of his village away.

Ipo-no-eno’e told me I was the only one who could withstand the heat of this young man’s yearning. I was intrigued. “But I am old now and ugly,” I told the Wind from Ha’ena. “How could he possibly want me?” I knew I could enchant him, but only as a spirit. My body was bound to Kilauea on Hawai’i. What would happen when my magic faded and he saw my true face?

I took the chance anyway.

Leaving my body behind in Hale’ma’uma’u, my home in Kilauea’s crater, I traveled to Kauai in my kino wailua, my spirit body, following the sound of a sharkskin drum to the halau in Ha’ena where Lohi’au sat with his friends Mapu and Ka-lei-paoa.

Oh, how I quaked when I saw him. His body was strong and hard as a koa tree, but it was his eyes, fever-bright, that gripped me. He looked insane. Finally, a man who burned the same as me, who would not run and hide in the ocean like Kamapua’a when I got angry. A man who wouldn’t fall to pieces and weep. A man who just might consume me. 

I stepped out of the trees and walked toward the platform where the three men were drumming. In my kino wailua, I was young again. My flame-colored hair swirled to my feet. As I walked toward Lohi’au the crowd jumped back, scorched by my heat. The dancers stopped swaying. One by one the drummers stopped until only Lohi’au played, his drum a living heartbeat. Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom. 

I didn’t stop at the platform. I climbed right up and sat down next to him. Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom. His heart, strong as a koa tree. My heart, fierce as the subterranean eruptions that gave birth to our island chain. He had called me across the eight seas that surrounded the Hawaiian Islands from my crater where the sun rises in the East, but when he asked me, “Where are you from?” I replied, “From here.” He knew I was lying because he had searched all of Kauai looking for a lover. There was no way he could have missed me.

“How could I have missed you?” he said and I breathed a sigh of relief that he was going to accept my charade. I would have to tell him someday, but for now, he was willing to dwell in this enchantment with me. I pushed away the thoughts of what would happen when I brought him back to Hale’ma’uma’u and saw my old, withered body and enticed him with my eyes, shooting flames that actually made him blush, but not enough to stop him from rising and descending from the platform when I said, “Let’s go somewhere more private.”

His friends Mapu and Ka-le-paoa tried to stop him, but he batted them away. I don’t think he even heard them. When we got to his hut I couldn’t resist letting him kiss me, even though it wasn’t real since my body was back in Hale’ma’uma’u. He was so inflamed with desire he couldn’t tell he was kissing spirit flesh and not a red-blooded woman who could die like him one day. It did hurt to deceive him, but I pushed that feeling away, too. What did anybody get by feeling guilty? Maybe I would be miserable later, but I was willing to take that risk for this, his hot hands stroking the currents of my body, inflaming the molten streams trying to take form in my spirit flesh. I remembered what it had felt like to be human again, a girl rejected by her own family, fleeing her homeland in a canoe with a few loyal brothers and sisters. I remembered the fear of being trapped in a cave by Kamapua’a who had raped me, then made me love him somehow with his tears. 

Kamapua’a’s love had made me immortal. If I hadn’t rejected him and fled into the caves below Hale’ma’uma’u, I wouldn’t have been drowned by lava and become a goddess. I used to secretly thank him for this, but now, my spirit body wrapped in Lohi’au’s embrace, just able to feel his touch enough to want so much more, I cursed him. My body had been so lonely.

That is why I let him kiss me, even though I knew it was wrong. I let him lower me onto his mat and begin to untie my pa’u, stopping him over and over again until he was begging. “Please,” he moaned in pain, his hand returning to the knotted cloth, but I couldn’t let him unravel it and expose my body. In my mind, I felt his pain. In my heart, I felt his pain. And I felt it in my soul, but the body I’d conjured felt nothing. My desire was an act. I had to get him back to Hale-ma-uma’u so I could stop performing. Finally, on the third night, I couldn’t stand his suffering any longer and tried to tell him why I wouldn’t allow him to take me, but I couldn’t get the words out. I didn’t tell him it was because my real body was old and ugly, I only told him I needed to go back to Puna to prepare a place for us. “I will send for you in forty days when it’s ready.”

Lohi’au did not like this. “I’m ready now!” he raged. I was thrilled, but a little afraid of what I’d started. What would happen with this rage when he found out I’d deceived him? What would he do when he saw my hair was no longer the color of flame? “I must go, Lohi’au. Come to me in Puna after forty days. If you come I will only ask you to stay five days and five nights. Then you are free to go if that’s what you decide.”

Lohi’au howled like an animal. “Don’t you understand I love you! I want to stay with you forever!” Now I was more than a little afraid. Maybe he did love me, but I wouldn’t be sure until he had seen my true face.

“I’m going.” I walked toward the hut door. He ran and blocked my way. “I won’t let you leave!” I tried to slip past him, but he grabbed my arm and twisted it behind my back. The pain was heart-wrenching. It didn’t hurt my body because it couldn’t feel, but I was disgusted with myself that I’d pushed him to this. I looked into his eyes to see if I could reach him, but all I could see was my own reflection in his black pupils. He snarled at me. I didn’t know what to do. How could I leave him like this, twisted and insane? 

But I had to go back if we had any hope of being together. I snarled back and bit his hand to free myself. He held on until I broke the skin and then I ran for the trees. By the time he reached the grove I was gone, a puff of smoke lifted by Ipo-no’ene’e, the Wind from Haena who carried me back to my home in the East.

I sent my younger sister Hi’iaka to bring him to me. She had been keeping vigil over my body in Hale’ma’uma’u all this time, worried because the earth below us had not stirred in days. Everyone else thought I was in a deep sleep, but she suspected I had traveled somewhere in my kino wailua and had wandered to the land of the dead ruled by the goddess Milu. I awoke to the sound of her chanting and told her how I’d fallen in love with the most beautiful man on Kauai. She agreed to go get him for me, asking only that I protect her dear friend Hopoe, who she cherished so much she’d gifted her an ohia lehua forest where the two of them would rest and play watching the i’iwi drink nectar from the spiny red blossoms of the sacred trees. I promised to guard Hopoe and the beautiful forest where my sister and her friend passed so many sweet days. “Just bring him back to me,” I pleaded. Her two friends Wahine, a human woman, and Pa’u’o’pala’e agreed to accompany her.

There are many tales of Hi’iaka’s adventures on the way to Kauai to bring Lohi’au back. It’s true she was a fierce and wily warrior, as well as beautiful. She was my sister. People tell those stories today, of how she conquered monsters and even the evil mo’o people as she traveled Hawai’i, journeying through Waipi’o Valley, and onto Waimanu and Polulu, those mystical valleys where stories rose up from springs that flowed into streams that flowed into rivers meeting the sea where the shark god Kamohoali’i patrolled the reef’s edge, picking off the weak to keep the balance between predator and prey. Many places in those valleys are named for her triumphs, and many still speak of her exploits on Maui, Molokai, and Oahu, and they have certainly not forgotten what she and Wahine did (the only companion left by the time they arrived on Kauai) when they arrived in Ha’ena and discovered it was too late for her to bring Lohi’au back to me. They had done their best, but with all those famous exploits people admire, they arrived after the forty days I’d told Lohi’au to wait.

After I’d left, Lohi’au had hung a kapu sign on his hut. “Keep out.” His friends Ka-lei-papa and Ka-hua-nui tried to reach him, but he ignored their pleas. His weeping was so terrible they were ashamed for him. They kept everyone away. 

How many days past forty did this man wait for me, noble and strong as a koa tree? Did he beat his sharkskin drum until the only thing he could hear was his own heart pounding through his blood to get to me? 

The weeping finally stopped. Ka-lei-papa and Ka-hua-nui thought he would come out of his hut and join them on the beach, maybe go for a surf, but he didn’t appear. The silence grew so heavy and ominous, the two friends ignored the kapu sign and entered his hut.

Lohi’au was dead. He had hanged himself with his own malo. 

Hi’iaka and Wahine discovered his body high up in a cave, transported by two sorceresses he had rejected. The sorceresses had also been enchanted with him and were offended he’d rejected their advances. Now they were having their way with his dead body, keeping it warm with their deviant spells.

Everybody loves the story of how Hi’iaka and Wahine defeated the sorceresses, how they summoned Maui to hold back the sun to give them enough time to reach the cave before dark and battled the witches with magical pyrotechnics that attracted the wandering spirit of Lohi’au to the cave where his dead body was being showered with gruesome caresses and fireworks, of how Hi’iaka realized that the sorceresses were going to destroy Lohi’au’s soul so that it could never be reunited with his body, how at the last possible second my sister destroyed the witches with a final burst of energy and ensnared Lohiau’s soul. Everybody’s heard of how my sister Hi’iaka-i-ka-wai-ola sprinkled the water of life from her calabash onto his corpse, and how the people below danced and chanted, channeling mana from the gods to help her. How they loved her, Wahine holding Lohiau’s ankles and Hi’iaka maneuvering his captured soul back into his body through his eyes—yes, it was painful—excruciating in fact, the slow descent of soul inch by inch back into his body. It was like pushing a fish hook back through your palm after you’ve snagged yourself, the barb gouging out new pathways of pain before the original wound had healed. Everyone knows how Laka and Lono were so impressed with Hi’iaka that they sent their own personal rainbow to the cave to save them the long climb down. Yes, it was a marvel how Hi’iaka, Wahine, and Lohi’au descended on a rainbow. Yes, Hi’iaka deserved the crowd’s adulation and elation that Lohi’au was alive again. She was the one there, not me, who watched his jubilation as he came back into his body and ran into the sea to surf a multicolored wave, roiling again with energy and life.

I wish I had been brave enough to let him see my withered, old body instead of pushing his hands away those three days and nights he’d burned to possess me. I wish I had given him the choice. In a way it was my fault what happened next. No, it was my fault. I’ll say it, just this once and you’d better forget it because I don’t take well to being reprimanded and you don’t want to be the one to pay. 

Hi’iaka and Wahine set forth from Ha’ena, journeying back through the islands, bringing my Lohi’au. They had a lot more adventures, turning shark gods into men, you know the way it goes with demigoddesses, they like to show off to mortals because they know half of them are as vulnerable and weak as they are. Finally, they reached Hawai’i Island, long past the forty-day deadline.

I believe promises must be kept. Hi’iaka had promised me she’d be back with him in forty days. If she hadn’t been so eager to be a heroine she could have done it. She wanted the glory. She could have made it in forty days.

I’m sure she was attracted to Lohi’au right away. Who wouldn’t have been? He was the most beautiful man in the Hawaiian Islands, but I don’t think she would have done what she did next if I hadn’t destroyed her friend Hopoe and their beautiful ohia lehua forest. It was my act that led her to act on her desire for my true love, and she planned it to be as devastating for me as she probably was when she heard I’d killed Hopoe. She fucked him right at the base of Kilauea in full sight of people, no shame or attempt to hide in the ferns. I ordered her friends Pa’u’o’pala’e and Wahine to kill Lohi’au, but they wouldn’t do it. For that, I blasted them off the earth. 

When I reached the faithless lovers at the base of Kilauea they were covered in dust and ash, a feeble attempt by lackeys to appease me. I was not amused. There they were, basking in the afterglow of their rutting. I had never felt more betrayed or humiliated. When Lohi’au saw me he jumped up and yelled, “This is between you and your sister. Leave me out of it!” Weasel. “You will not escape my vengeance!” I raged at him. I released wave after wave of lava and that took care of that bitch-boy. Buried under lava. What a way to go. Now it was time to ruin Hi’iaka. But she had always been wily and once again slipped past me, burrowing underground to hide and bide her time until she could bring Lohi’au back to life again. Down she went, into the land of Milu, the underworld. Her plan was not only to revive Lohi’au, but to carve a tunnel that would allow the waters of Milu to rush to the surface. She knew the collision of underworld water with my lava could destroy me and quite possibly the entire world. 

Hi’iaka blasted through the first two levels of Milu, but on the third level, she encountered the suicide god, eternally hanging from a noose, with bulging eyes and tongue hanging out of his mouth. The sight was so grotesque she almost failed, but she pushed on through her terror to the fourth level where she found her friends that I had killed, Wahine and Pa’u’o’pala’e. Ever the generous one, she restored them to life and as they ascended she kept going down to Milu’s lowest level where the underworld river hissed like a serpent waiting for someone to channel its deadly fury.

Wahine and Pa’u’o’pala’e arrived up top just in time to find me about to decimate a man groveling before me. He was weeping so hard his face was covered in snot.“Pao’a!” they cried. When I heard his name I realized the man before me was Lohiau’s best friend. His grief had brought him to the foot of Kilauea where he was determined to speak his truth before dying because of course, he knew I was going to kill him. If it hadn’t been for those two girls bursting up from Milu I would have. Instead, I heard this: “He hanged himself out of grief for you, Pele!”

Even though I’ve been telling you the story of how Lohi’au hanged himself, and of how Hi’iaka brought him back to life to bring him back to me, at the time Pao’a wept before me, I didn’t know it. I thought my lover and sister had betrayed me. I also didn’t know Hi’iaka had resisted her attraction to Lohi’au the entire journey until she’d heard I had killed Hopoe and burned her beloved forest.

All’s fair in love and war.

Who said that? I don’t recognize the accent. Some god from another dimension? I decide the rules here. Still, there was some truth in it. Guilt began to creep in. Regret. Memories of sailing with my sister on the canoe that brought us to Hawai’i, banished from our homeland. Combing each other’s hair. Laughing at our reflections in forest pools and wondering who our lovers would be. 

It was a long way down, the most difficult journey of Hi’iaka’s life. Finally, she reached the bottom and beheld the River of the Dead. Her eyes were slits of silver fire compared to my gold. She raised her hands to summon the power of Milu’s waters to release destruction on the world above. 

I have no idea why, but our father Kane stepped in. None of my siblings and I had heard from him in a while. He was a distant father and never seemed to care much about any of us. He rarely left Hunamoku, his floating island in the clouds. Before Hi’iaka could summon the power of the River of Milu, our absentee father stopped her. “You don’t belong here, Hi’iaka. You still belong to life. You must go back.” My sister probably knew it was no use resisting him and gave up her quest for vengeance. She’s never told me, but I imagine it was a bitter journey back through the Underworld to the surface where I was still Queen, and I’m sure she probably expected to be killed as soon as she surfaced. 

You know what she heard on the way up? A love song.

You know who was singing? Lohi’au. 

Lohi’au, the man I loved, was singing, not to me, but to my sister Hi’iaka. I should have been even more enraged with jealousy, but  something inside of me started to thump and quake. It was my heart. I waited for it to explode and unleash the fire that was me, but no matter how many outrageous scenes of betrayal I replayed in my mind, the lava stayed inside the earth, swirling beneath my feet, but coming no closer to the surface. I heard a hissing sound, water and fire coming together. Could it be my tears striking the lava? I will not be the one to say.

So that’s how it ended. When I heard Paoa’s revelations of how much Lohi’au had grieved me, and of how Hi’iaka had resisted her feelings for Lohi’au until I’d destroyed her best friend and the place she loved most, my heart softened. I know people probably don’t think I have a heart, but I do. Everyone does. We are all held in the heart of the gods beyond the gods, the great mystery we pass through as it passes through us, changing shape like earth shaped by wind and water, never recognizable but always so familiar. The only way to come close to understanding it is to close your eyes and listen to the ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom inside you, your own heart that once rested close to your mother’s rib cage.

The heart is not caged within bones. If you listen with the ears of an embryonic bird still nestled in an egg, or the ears of a whale encased inside a double-layer of water, womb, and the vast ocean in all directions, you’ll hear it moving through everything created and uncreated, visible and invisible. There is a word for it: aloha mā. Self-reflective love. The Maya say “in la kech a la kin.” I am another you. It’s difficult to understand with the mind, but the heart knows.

I wouldn’t bring Lohi’au back to life—my newly softened heart was too tender—but I allowed Kanemilo to do it. For the second time, Lohi’au’s body was reunited with his soul. I gave them my permission to marry, but I couldn’t bear to have them live so close. I told Hi’iaka if they wanted to be together they had to go to Kauai. If they left I wouldn’t harm them. I even managed to save some face by taking Pao’a as a lover for three days. He didn’t seem to notice I was old and ugly. Maybe I wasn’t anymore. 

Hi’iaka and Lohi’au remained together, happy, until his mortal life came to an end. She did not revive him a third time. Because of all her adventures and brave deeds on her journey to Kauai and back again, she has since been revered as the goddess of pathways and wanderers. Sometimes you can still hear lost travelers pray to her. Does she answer? Let me know. I am still here, awake and fiery-eyed in Halema’uma’u crater. Don’t come too close. Or do. If I destroy you, it’s only because I love you.

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Thanks for reading friends, and please share this post to others in need of some mythic news. I also love to read people’s comments if you are so inclined. I appreciate you all so much.

Kō aloha lā ea

Concentrate on love by way of the light