In Polynesian parable, to lift the sky meant to expand the known world. Each discovery enlarged the habitable world, raising the height of the sky. Polynesians envisioned the Sky or the Heavens as a huge cupola covering their sea and islands. The sky cupola housed all the stars and heavenly bodies. When the Europeans appeared, they were thought to come “from beyond the Sky,” or from beyond the known boundaries of the Heavens, and thus were called palangi, or heaven bursters.
The story of Maui lifting the sky is an euphemism for how Maui discovered new lands in order to free those oppressed by the lowness of the sky. In the beginning, the sky pressed heavily upon earth such that plants were growing flat leaves. The plants lifted the sky inch by inch until men were able to crawl about between the heavens and the earth. When Maui became a young man, he was determined to lift the sky for his people. He came to a woman and said: “Give me a drink from your gourd calabash, and I will push the heavens higher.” The woman handed the gourd to him. When he had taken a deep draught, he braced himself against the clouds and lifted them to the height of the trees. Again he hoisted the sky and carried it to the tops of the mountains. Then with great exertion he thrusted it upwards once more. Nevertheless dark clouds many times hung low along the eastern slope of Maui’s great mountain Haleakala and descended upon the hill Kauwiki with heavy rains. But they dared not stay for long, lest Maui hurled them so far away that they could not return.
For Polynesians, the forces of the universe were divided into “Ao” – the masculine force of day and sky, and “Po” – the feminine force of night and earth. All the celestial bodies rose from the east and traveled through the Heavens in the morning. At night, they descended and were buried in the earth in the west, or the Underworld. Thus the concept of Po also encompassed the Underworld of their ancestors. Maui traveled west to the Underworld often to learn tattooing and to bring back fire, food, and wives. In Filipino lore, Lumawig was said to come from and return east to the Sky world, or the Heavens. So it is telltale that Maui and ancient Polynesians traveled back and forth between the Philippines and Polynesia.
To celebrate Maui’s journey to other worlds, the embroidery motif on the pants represents his canoe rowing amidst the ocean waves. It required an impressive feat of knowledge to navigate such vast stretches of ocean – by reading signals in the waves of the ocean, the luminescence of plankton, the flights of birds, position of stars, and weather patterns in order to find the most remote specks of land. It is an attestation to human dexterity, ingenuity, and perseverance.
hardlyplaying.blog 