Tane

TYPE deity: child of two deities (Atea × Fakahotu). Entered male / immortal / mythic. The Atea–Tane conflict is the Tuamotuan form of the Polynesian sky-separation/struggle. Wired as sibling of Tu and Rongo (the man-making triad); Atea/Fakahotu parentage is asserted for Tane (firmly attested) but NOT for Tu and Rongo, whose genealogical placement varies in the Paiore charts.

Parentage

• parent: Atea
• parent: Fakahotu

Domains

• demiurge and the shaping of the visible world
• the making of mankind

Powers

• shapes and orders the visible world as demiurge
• forms the first man with Tu and Rongo, in his own image

Relations

• sibling: TuFellow of the man-making triad; the great gods Tane, Tu and Rongo treated as a fraternal triad.Emory, Kenneth P. 'Tuamotuan Concepts of Creation', Journal of the Polynesian Society 49 (1940), pp. 69-136, on the man-making triad Tane, Tu and Rongo (secondary)
• sibling: RongoFellow of the man-making triad.Emory, Kenneth P. 'Tuamotuan Concepts of Creation', Journal of the Polynesian Society 49 (1940), pp. 69-136, on the man-making triad Tane, Tu and Rongo (secondary)
• equated with: TāneReflex of the same ancestral Polynesian deity (*Tāne), cognate across the island groups.Comparative Polynesian mythology: reflexes of the same ancestral deity across the island groups (E. Tregear, Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary, 1891; R. D. Craig, Dictionary of Polynesian Mythology, 1989) (secondary)
• equated with: TāneReflex of the same ancestral Polynesian deity (*Tāne), cognate across the island groups.Comparative Polynesian mythology: reflexes of the same ancestral deity across the island groups (E. Tregear, Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary, 1891; R. D. Craig, Dictionary of Polynesian Mythology, 1989) (secondary)
• equated with: TaneReflex of the same ancestral Polynesian deity (*Tāne), cognate across the island groups.Comparative Polynesian mythology: reflexes of the same ancestral deity across the island groups (E. Tregear, Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary, 1891; R. D. Craig, Dictionary of Polynesian Mythology, 1989) (secondary)
• equated with: TaneReflex of the same ancestral Polynesian deity (*Tāne), cognate across the island groups.Comparative Polynesian mythology: reflexes of the same ancestral deity across the island groups (E. Tregear, Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary, 1891; R. D. Craig, Dictionary of Polynesian Mythology, 1989) (secondary)

Sources

• Tane, son of Atea and Fakahotu, is the active demiurge of the Tuamotuan cosmogony — shaper of the visible world, the rebel-god pursued by Atea (his flight and hunger-killing of an ancestor giving the origin of cannibalism), and one of the man-making triad Tane–Tu–Rongo who form the first man in the image of Tane.: Emory, Kenneth P. 'Tuamotuan Concepts of Creation', Journal of the Polynesian Society 49 (1940), pp. 69-136 (secondary)