Kanaloa
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- For the near-extinct plant genus, see Kanaloa (botany).
Kanaloa is one of the four great gods of Hawaiian mythology, along with Kāne, Kū, and Lono. He is the local form of a Polynesian deity generally connected with the sea. Roughly equivalent deities are known as Tangaroa in Aotearoa, Tagaloa in Sāmoa, Tangaloa in Tonga, and Taʻaroa in Tahiti.
In the traditions of ancient Hawaiʻi, Kanaloa is symbolized by the squid or by the octopus, and is typically associated with Kāne in legends and chants where they are portrayed as complementary powers (Beckwith 1970:62-65). For example: Kāne was called upon during the building of a canoe, Kanaloa during the sailing of it; Kāne governed the northern edge of the ecliptic, Kanaloa the southern; Kanaloa points to hidden springs, and Kāne then taps them out. In this way, they represent a divine duality of wild and taming forces like those observed (by Georges Dumezil, et al.) in Indo-European chief god-pairs like Odin-Tyr and Mitra-Varuna, and like the popular yin-yang of Chinese Taoism.
Kanaloa is also considered to be the god of the Underworld and a teacher of magic. Legends state that he became the leader of the first group of spirits "spit out" by the gods. In time, he led them in a rebellion in which the spirits were defeated by the gods and as punishment were thrown in the Underworld.
The Eye of Kanaloa is an esoteric symbol associated with the god, consisting of a seven-pointed star surrounded by concentric circles that are regularly divided by eight lines radiating from the inner-most circle to the outer-most circle.
Interpretations of Kanaloa as a god of evil opposing the good Kāne (a reading that defies their paired invocations and shared devotees in Ancient Hawaii) is likely the result of European missionary efforts to recast the four major divinities of Hawaiʻi in the image of the Christian Trinity plus Satan.
Of interest to some would be the possible correlations between Kanaloa and Cthulhu, a being developed in the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft and other writers of the Cthulhu Mythos.
[edit] See also
Tangaroa, the Māori god of the sea.
[edit] References
- M. Beckwith, Hawaiian Mythology (University of Hawaii Press: Honolulu, 1970).
- G. Dumezil, Mitra-Varuna (MIT Press: Cambridge, 1988).
- P. Turner & C. R. Coulter, Dictionary of Ancient Deities (Oxford University Press: New York, 2001).
