Ta'aroa
Ta'aroa (the Society-Islands Tangaroa) is the supreme creator of Tahitian religion. The Orsmond/Henry cosmogony has him existing alone, self-created and parentless, revolving in his shell Rumia in the lightless void; he cracks the shell, raises one half as the dome of the sky and lays the other as the rock and soil of the earth, then forms land and living things out of his own body — backbone into mountains, ribs into cliffs, flesh into soil, blood into the rainbow and the red of creatures, tears into the seas, nails into fish-scales, the down shaken off him into the trees. From his body he builds the first 'god's house', the model of the marae, and then summons the artisans who sculpt Tāne and the other great gods. Beneath this supreme-creator role lies his older pan-Polynesian aspect as god of the sea and of fishing. Flagged SOLITARY: Ta'aroa is self-existent, with no parent attested; his only kin-ties are downward, to the gods he makes.
Children
Domains
- creation and the cosmos
- supreme deity
- sea and fishing
Powers
- Exist self-created and parentless in the void
- Form the world out of the substance of his own body
- Break and reshape the shell Rumia into the dome of the sky and the rock of the earth
- Conjure the artisans who sculpt the great gods
Epithets
- Ta'aroa-tahi-tumu
- Ta'aroa-nui-tumu-tahi
Relations
- spouse: Hina
- parent: Tāne
- parent: Tū
- parent: Ro'o
- parent: 'Oro
- equated with: Tangaroa
- equated with: Kanaloa
- equated with: Tagaloa
- equated with: Tangaloa 'Eitumatupu'a
- equated with: Tangaroa
- equated with: Tangaroa
- equated with: Takaroa
- equated with: Tanaoa