(On a non-mythological note...Star Wars. Less than two weeks. AAAHHHH!)
I've got two stories left that I want to tell about Maui. Next week's will be one of the more interesting posts I've done. For this week, however, I want to talk about fire. There's a lot of variations on the story of how Maui stole fire, so I'll do a post about one story and then link you to another.
Having already raised the Polynesian islands and tamed the sun, one might think that Maui had done enough for humanity. But no! The hero was not yet done. He wanted to be of more help to mankind. So Maui decided that he was going to set out to steal fire, so that humans could warm themselves by its flames, cook their food, and have light even at night.
(Sound familiar? The Greek Titan Prometheus stole fire and distributed it to mankind.)
Maui went to visit Mahuika, the goddess of fire. He asked her to send some fire with him so that he could light the villages of man. Mahuika obligingly plucked out one of her fingernails - which was an ember - and gave it to Maui.
Remember that Maui is a trickster? He didn't just take the fire back to humans and call his trip a success. No, he had to figure out some way to trick Mahuika. So Maui left the cave she called home, and, as soon as he was out of sight, extinguished the nail she had given him. The demigod then reentered Mahuika's home and asked for more fire, since the last one had gone out.
Mahuika suspected nothing, and gave him another of her fingernails. This continued until she eventually had only one left. By now the goddess knew that she was being pranked, and she wasn't happy. She threw the last fingernail at Maui, but it caught on some dried wood and created a massive flame.
The demigod was able to escape, but Maui had learned the secret of fire. He returned to mankind and was able to teach them how to create flames of their own using dried wood.
That's the story I learned for how Maui found fire. If you want to read another, here's a link! In it, Maui is even more of a trickster - mankind already had fire, but he wanted to know where the flames came from, so he extinguished all of them to find out.
Interestingly enough, a couple of the Polynesian tribes in New Zealand have a variant on this story where Mahuika is actually Mahu-ika, and is a male giant. In their stories Maui wrestles the giant and eventually breaks his neck, then beheads him to take a spark of flame (which sets the world on fire, endangering everyone until the gods step in to save the day).
I find the way Mahuika's home is described fascinating, because it sounds to me like she lives inside a mountain. Though I've only ever heard her called the goddess of fires, I wonder if she's associated with volcanoes as well. The small sparks of flame (her fingernails) culminating in a huge woodland fire sound like a volcano spitting lava.
What do you guys think?
I'll be back next week with my final (and hilarious!) story about Maui. See you then!
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