Atua Fafine, 'the Female Deity', is one of the very few prominent female deities in the eastern Pacific. In Tikopian cosmology she and the Deity of Raropuka are the two original occupants of the island who introduced the basic crafts of human life, she the plaiting of pandanus-leaf mats and he the making of sennit cord. From this ancestral couple descend the four divine brothers who became the eponymous gods of the four clans. In the tradition of the culture-hero Sako, it is the Female Deity who cleanses his soul when he rises to join the company of the gods, marking her role at the threshold between the living and the divine dead.