Polynesian PantheonSacred Site
Haleakala
The 'House of the Sun' on the island of Maui, where according to Hawaiian tradition, Maui captured and beat the sun to slow its passage across the sky. The massive volcanic crater is one of Hawaii's most sacred sites.
About Haleakala
House of the sun
Haleakala, "house of the sun," is the Maui volcano where the trickster Maui snares the sun with ropes of his sister's hair (or with coconut fiber, in variants) and beats it until the days lengthen enough for his mother's kapa to dry. Hawaiian tradition, recorded by Fornander and others, is the source. The crater is a later park; the story is a time-fix. No pre-contact written text exists. The mountain is a snare, not a temple of Helios.
On the map
Haleakala among other places of the Polynesian Pantheon.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Hawaiian tradition of Maui and the sun (Fornander)
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.
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