The Shrine of Pele:
Volcano Goddess
Hawaii
"The Hawaiians had several images of the afterlife... The highest of these
afterworlds was in a flaming crater at the top of the mountain of the volcano-goddess
Pele, where there was no pain, only sheer delight."
Joseph Campbell, Primitive Mythology
Pele is just one of a number of Volcano
Goddesses. In Hawaii she is Goddess of Mount Kilauea, a still-active volcano. During the
1950s, when christian missionaries were busy converting the people to christianity,
prayers to Pele preceded the stopping of lava at the edge of villages. The people still
knew which chants and gifts would please Pele.
"Of all the world's Goddesses, Pele is one of the few still living in the belief of
her people, not as a metaphor, but as a metaphysical reality, to whom offerings are still
made when volcanic eruptions threaten Hawaiian towns."1 In Hawaii people
have reported seeing an old woman who asks for a cigarette, lights it with a snap of her
fingers and disappears. Others have seen a red-robed woman dancing on the rims of the
fiery mountains.
There are a number of legends of Pele. In one her people say, when Pele was young the
centre of the earth glowed with her loveliness, and she was content for a million years to
live in Her house in the centre. Until one day, when Pele walked to the edge and met
Ocean. "Pele, may I come in," he said. Pele would not let him in but gradually,
after several meetings, Pele and Ocean began to know each other, and a fiery love began to
glow in Her heart.
Finally, as Ocean pleaded one more time for Pele to let him into her house of flames, She
curled Her fingers into the edges of a crack and pulled it wide for his to enter. Ocean
fell into Her arms. This was the beginning of the marriage of Pele and Ocean. Some say
that lava is the offspring of Pele and Ocean. "It is the fire of Pele that makes it
red hot, and the water of Ocean that makes it flow like a mighty river."2
Another legend tells that Pele, the daughter of the earth-Goddess Haumea, spent her
childhood watching and making fires, and this did not please the sea Goddess Namaka. After
causing trouble in Her mother's homeland after toying with the Underworld fires, Pele's
mother told her to find a home of her own. Namaka trailed Pele on her search, furious at
the mayhem caused by Pele in their homeland. "Ocean and Fire met in a terrific brawl,
and Pele got the worst of it, rising like a steamy spirit from the fray. No longer
embodied, She disappeared into the Hawaiian volcanoes..."3
Pele was honoured in Hawaii as the essence of earthly fire and another story tells of her
fiery sexuality. Pele fell in love with a young man called Lohiau. She embodied herself in
human flesh and seduced him, spending three days making love before she decided to return
to her volcanos. Pele still desired Lohiau and gave her sister Hiiaka the gift of magick
and sent her to fetch him. Through many trials and tribulations, Hiiaka fulfilled Her
task, and returned to Pele with Her lover.
Pele however was a jealous spirit, and while her sister was journeying, had convinced
herself of her infidelity. She has scourched Hiiaka's beautiful gardens and killed the
poet Hopoe in Her fury. Hiiaka made love to Lohiau then and there on the rim of the
crater. Pele burned him to death but could not harm her immortal sister. Hiiaka fled to
the Underworld to free Lohiau's soul, deep into the place where the rivers of chaos were
held back by a gate. Hiiaka knew that the flooding of the world would extinguish Pele and
her fury but her conscience kept her from doing such a deed.
Hiiaka returned to the surface and demanded her lover from Pele. By this time Lohiau's
friend Paoa had arrived in time to satisfy the Goddess's heat! Later Pele took another
lover, the hog-God Kamapau'a, God of Agriculture, whose idea of courting was to douse her
flames with rain. To this day their affair plays itself out on the islands called Hawaii.
Notes:
1. Patricia Monaghan, The Book of Goddesses and Heroines, Llewellyn Publications,
USA,1993, page 276.
2. Carolyn McVickar Edwards, The Storyteller's Goddess, Harper Collins, 1991,
page 18.
3. Patricia Monaghan, op.cit., page 277
Background from Adler's Graphics
Thanks to Stormwatcher for the Cauldron
This page is Copyright Lilitu Babalon, 1999
I'll give you permission to reproduce anything on my page if you ask, provided it is mine.
However, if I find you plagiarising, well.....