lessons from Mahuika: looking after fire

You know Urutengangana (atua of light, eldest of te ira atua) is the favourite. He’s been the trickiest wānanga (thought process*) to try and wrap my head around, the one I’ve had a fascination with for the longest time in regards to how we can engage with him or harness Uru on the daily, and it’s his associations to light and perception that do it for me.

Since we’re covering the light part of our sequence, I thought I’d be coming at him from all different angles every week! Then we had Tāne (atua of the forest, pursuit of knowledge, light) last week, our poster boy for pūrākau (stories) who could not have achieved any of it, including but not limited to;

separating heaven and earth to bring about Te Ao Mārama (the world of light) and retrieving ngā kete o te wānanga (baskets of knowledge) to attain enlightenment — which later lead to the formation of Hineahuone (Earth formed Maiden, the first woman).

Tāne could not have accomplished any of it, had it not been for the efforts and contributions of others.

Our pursuit of light and realisation of it is a collective effort.

As I started thinking about this week’s post and how to share kōrero, Mahuika (atua of fire) came to mind. In particular, her behaviour when Māui came to town and one by one, lay waste to her children.

She’s portrayed as the old witch, greedy, keeping fire all to herself — and Māui, the man of the people, doing the honourable thing and tricking her into sharing her fire with him, with the world. Quickly think for a sec who captured these stories from our tupuna (ancestors) and what biases they had when documenting them… don’t think too hard.

Now onto the second question, think about your own fire.

That one in your puku, deep inside you, some call it passion, calling, yearning, purpose — it could even be your inner child. Whatever you identify as that fire, how would you behave if someone came to snuff it out? If metaphorical expressions of Māui came to extinguish your flame and suck out all the oxygen from the room and leave your flame to dwindle and die

— what would you do?

If we liken ourselves to Mahuika and think of our own expressions of light and fire as her fingernails, her tamariki (children), how would you behave? What would it bring out of you to ensure no harm came to that fire?

What can we takeaway from the Mahuika and Māui story to help us better look after our own fire, to fan it and keep it alive — but not too much it grows out of control and the light consumes everything in its path. that we don’t let it diminish and fade to darkness. or protect it from being misused, abused or manipulated by others?

Tēnā tātou,

Hana.

*in this context