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The Goddess
Pele
Pele, Volcano Goddess
of Fire
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According to
myth, the islands of Hawaii owe their very existence to Pele, the goddess of fire,
best known as ‘the volcano goddess’. Like most other deities
who play the starring role in creation myths, Pele held both the
power to create and to destroy.
Pele had to leave town
in a hurry--her angry sister (a Tahitian sea goddess) was
gunning for her. (Some say it was on account of Pele's
fun-and-games that involved her brother-in-law.)
With the angry sea
goddess threatening to drown Pele with tidal waves, Pele's
parents loaded her, her brothers and her sisters into a canoe and
sent them sailing in search of safety.
Eventually the siblings found a place
where they could stop, a tiny string of islands that was home to
a handful of human tribes and a few snow goddesses who lived in
the mountains.
Pele set about trying
to make a new home for her family, but it was proving difficult
because the jealous snow goddesses kept sending blizzards her way.
Hopping from one tiny island to another to escape the hard freezes, Pele
kept moving southward only to encounter tidal waves sent by her
vengeful sister.
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Soon the two were waging a ferocious battle. Though
she won, Pele did not emerge unscathed.
Pele’s fires
rose up out of the trembling earth, spewing rivers of lava fiery
lava into the ocean, driving the sea away from the coast. As the
lava cooled it added to the land mass, and the small atoll was
transformed into the beautiful Big Island of Hawaii.
After her death, she became a spirit and chose to
live within the crater of a volcano; she had become a
shape-shifter, one who could assume
any form she wished.
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Though
Pele now lived inside her volcanoes, her exuberant spirit was not
to be contained. Legends about Pele and her many lovers and rivals
are numerous and colorful. Never able to win a clear victory over her rivals,
the tension of these opposing forces kept everything in balance.
Like the volcano’s
lava that creates new land, the goddess Pele reminds us that, even
fiery eruptions and emotional upheavals are followed by new life and
change. |
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Discover
the
Goddess
Within |
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Learn more about the
Goddess Pele
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