Maiden
What you need to sow
Something new begins the moment you stop asking permission. Take the path upward.
Polynesian
Hina
Woman in the Moon
Ancestral Polynesia; carried across the Pacific by voyaging traditions
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Her story
Historical context
goddess · Ancestral Polynesia; carried across the Pacific by voyaging traditions
Hina appears across the whole Pacific — Tahiti, Aotearoa, Hawai'i, Samoa — as the woman who went to live in the moon. In the best-known telling she grew tired of endless labour beating tapa cloth for others, paddled up the rainbow or the moonbeam, and settled there, beating her cloth in peace where everyone can see her.
Mythology & traditions
She is the goddess who left. Her myth is not punishment or abduction: she chose the moon over a household that would not stop asking. Navigators steered by her, tapa makers worked to her rhythm, and her name marks the nights of the Polynesian lunar month, so the calendar itself is written in her.
Domains
- Moon
- Tapa making
- Voyaging
- Women's crafts
- Tides
Symbols
- Moon phases
- Tapa beater
- Banyan bark
- Tiare flower
- Canoe
In the oracle
Her guidance
Mother
What you need to grow
Nurture your own work with the same devotion you give everyone else's.
Crone
What you need to know
You are allowed to leave what will never be finished. Rest is not desertion.