Atea

Atea ('Atea, 'Light'/'Space') is the giver of light and the chief creator-progenitor of the Marquesan pantheon. In the cosmogony he evolves or separates himself out of the darkness of Tanaoa, drives Tanaoa off and confines the night-powers; he brings forth Ono (Sound), who destroys Mutu-hei (Silence); from these two struggles arises Atanua (Dawn), whom Atea takes to wife, begetting the host of lesser deities and the human lineage and creating the heavens and earth. In the pu'e sacred chant he impregnates One-u'i, the 'sand-woman,' fathering the first man Tiki. Marquesan genealogies traced the people of Hiva some ninety generations back to the progenitors Atea and Atanua. In a Hiva Oa tradition Atea and Tane are brothers, sons of Toho (Tohetika). Cognate with Tahitian Atea, Tuamotuan Atea/Vatea, and Hawaiian Wakea.

Parentage

• Tohetika

Children

• Tiki

Domains

• light and the open expanse of space
• creation and progenitorship of gods and mankind

Powers

• Separation of light from darkness
• Generative progenitorship of gods and mankind

Epithets

• Atea

Relations

• enemy: Tanaoa
• ally: Ono
• spouse: Atanua
• spouse: One-u'i
• father of: Tiki
• sibling: Tane
• equated with: Vatea
• equated with: Atea

Sources

• E. S. Craighill Handy, The Native Culture in the Marquesas (Bishop Museum Bulletin 9, 1923); Roland B. Dixon, Oceanic Mythology (Mythology of All Races vol. 9, 1916), ch. I; E. Tregear, Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary (1891), s.v. Atea.
• Handy 1923 — Hiva Oa tradition making Atea and Tane the sons of Toho (Tohetika). The Atea = self-evolved-from-Tanaoa cosmogony (Dixon 1916) is the alternative, parentless account, recorded here as the genealogical-anchor variant.