Vari-ma-te-takere
Mangaian · deity · primordial · Recorded classification
Vari-ma-te-takere is the primal mother dwelling at the narrow base of Avaiki. Her six children are Vatea, Tinirau, Tango, Tumu-te-ana-oa, Raka and Tu-metua. She keeps her youngest daughter Tu-metua beside her.
Children
Variant accounts
- source review correctionThe former account interchanged the sides of Tango and Tu-metua. Gill explicitly places Tango on the left and Tu-metua on the right.William Wyatt Gill, Myths and Songs from the South Pacific (1876), pp. 3–6 (primary)
- source review correctionGill names all six children; the previous description wrongly said several were absent from the registry and called them minor.William Wyatt Gill, Myths and Songs from the South Pacific (1876), pp. 3–6 (primary)
Domains
- primordial origin
- underworld avaiki
- creation of the gods
Powers
- pluck living children from her own sides
- exist of herself at the root of all things
Relations
- mother of: VateaVatea, plucked from her right side, is her first-born.Gill, Myths and Songs from the South Pacific (1876), Ch. I, pp. 3–5 (primary)
- mother of: TinirauTinirau, lord of fish, the second child plucked from her right side.Gill, Myths and Songs from the South Pacific (1876), Ch. I, pp. 5–9 (primary)
Sources
- Vari-ma-te-takere ('the very beginning') is the self-existent primal mother at the base of Avaiki, the hollow-coconut underworld, who plucked six children from her sides — the primal gods of Mangaia.: William Wyatt Gill, Myths and Songs from the South Pacific (1876), Ch. I 'Creation', pp. 1–9 (primary)
- The Mangaian cosmos is conceived as the hollow of a vast coconut shell, its interior the underworld Avaiki, at whose cramped base Vari sits doubled with her knees against her chin.: Roland B. Dixon, Oceanic Mythology (The Mythology of All Races, Vol. IX, 1916), pp. 11–13 (secondary)