Polynesian PantheonUnderworld
Te Po (The Underworld)
The Polynesian realm of darkness and the dead, ruled by Hine-nui-te-po, the goddess of death. Te Po is where souls journey after death, a shadowy realm contrasting with Te Ao (the world of light). Maui died attempting to conquer Te Po.
About Te Po (The Underworld)
Darkness before and after
Te Po in Maori and wider Polynesian cosmogony is the darkness before Te Ao, the world of light, and also the night-realm of the dead. Hine-nui-te-po is the Great Woman of Night; Maui dies in some tellings trying to reverse death by crawling through her. Grey's Polynesian Mythology and later iwi recensions preserve variants. There is no single floor-plan of Te Po. It is a state and a goddess more than a mapped cavern.
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.
- Maori tradition of Maui and Hine-nui-te-po (Grey and iwi variants)
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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