Episode 63 – Moonstruck – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 63 Show Notes

Source: Polynesian Mythology

This week on MYTH, we’ll watch a god go a little stir-crazy due to living in total isolation. You’ll learn that you should never trust anyone who lives in the sky, that palm trees can grow on the moon, and that the only thing worse than living alone is being stuck in a tiny space with a huge family. Then, in Gods and Monsters, you’ll see that the water isn’t the only place that isn’t safe from Jaws. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 63, “Moonstruck”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
With everything kind of going to shit lately, I figured we could also use a little levity for once. I (like many of you) have been stuck inside for weeks now and am sorely missing being able to just go places, so this week, we’ll be headed to the moon with the Maori for a story about dealing with isolation. Poorly. As a note, one of the main characters is Ina, but she is also sometimes known as Hina or Sina (who you might remember from back in Episode 19).
In the early days of the world, Ranginui (the sky father) and Papatuanuku (the earth mother) were locked together in a tight, passionate embrace. As one would expect from two naked lovers constantly in bed together, the couple fucked like rabbits and had many, many children. Since all of existence was to be found between the earth and the sky, these poor children had to grow up in the humid, sweaty, cramped darkness between their parents’ writhing bodies (which is a pretty awful way to grow up). The children (all male) soon grew old enough to wonder if life wouldn’t be better if they weren’t forced to live at the center of their parents’ sex lives and maybe see light for the first time.
Tumatauenga (literally Tu of the angry face), was the first to speak up. As the god of war, hunting, fishing, and cooking, his solution is a violent one – he argues that the best way out of their predicament is to straight up murder their parents. Even given the inhumanely musky living quarters between their parents’ naked flesh, that’s a pretty extreme solution. Tu’s brother Tane-mahuta, the god of rainforests, birds, and peace, argued that maybe instead of murder, they should try just, you know, separating them a little. They didn’t need to die, just stop fucking for a little bit. He suggests pushing Rangi the sky father away to be like a stranger to them, leaving earth mother Papa to remain below as a nurturing force. All but one of his brothers agree, and one by one, they try to push their parents apart from one another.
Rongo, the god of cultivation and agriculture, tries first, followed by Tangaroa, the god of fish and the sea, and Haumia-tiketike, the god of the wilds and the wild foods, but none can manage to push the two primordial lovers apart. After watching his brothers’ efforts, Tane tries his hand. Or rather, his feet. Everyone else had tried standing up and pushing entirely with their arms, but Tane knew that you should never skip leg day – he lay down on his back and shoved his father’s body away with the strength of his legs. Rongo and Papa resist, but with a cry of surprise and anguish, the two lovers are separated for the first time ever in existence. Their relationship is about to become long distance, and like high school sweethearts going off to college, they aren’t handling it well.
This leads to a war between the gods as Tawhirimatea, god of winds and storms, becomes enraged by the tears of his father (in the form of rainstorms) and the desperate cries of longing from both parents (earthquakes as Papa tries to reach the sky and mists formed from their mutual sighs of longing and despair). He warns his brothers that they have made an enemy in him and, from now on, they will have to suffer his wrath. He flies up to join his father in the sky and begins to have his own children (how is never really explained, though some versions say he gets reluctant help from his father, which is somehow even more confusing), literally fielding an army from his own loins. He rained down destruction on the forests of Tane, drove Tangaroa and his children (again, no idea where they came from) deep into the sea to become all of the sea creatures we know and love today, and drove Rongo and Haumia-tiketike to hide in the bosom of their mother Papa. Only Tumatauenga stands and fights, earning his brother’s respect as a warrior, and becoming his eternal, bitter rival. To punish his brothers for their cowardice, Tumatuenga invented the arts of hunting, woodcutting, agriculture, cooking, and fishing in order to subjugate their domains and sacred creatures as food and supplies for humans.
When the war was over, Tane looked up into the inky blackness of the sky, and he felt sorry for his father, naked and alone up there (except for his vicious sky god brother, and as we know, sky gods are assholes). He searched out lights to decorate his father with, creating the stars, the sun, and the moon. One version says that these lights were originally flaming spears, fixed in place in the sky by the mighty throw of Tane, and that the spears that became the sun and the moon grew rounded and brighter to become celestial bodies. The moon also grew cooler, until it became a great rolling moon world. The moonscape was a place of breathtaking beauty, with everything radiating a gentle golden light – the mountains and the lakes, the rocks and trees and flowers, and even the walls and twisted spires of the moon palace built by Marama (the god of the moon, though it’s not clear where exactly he came from – my guess is that he sprang into existence when the moon did).
Marama loved his world and his delicate, radiant palace, and he was happy for a time, but he soon became lonely. Marama lived all alone on the moon, with no one else to spend time with or talk to, and like many people do in that situation, he began to talk to himself. “Being alone all the time blows. Star-ball isn’t much fun with only one player, and singing seems pointless if there’s no one to listen and tell you how great your voice is! I need a companion. Bad.”
He looked out into the night sky, where the sky fairies flitted about between the stars. He asked them if they would like to join him in his luminous moon palace, but they told him they were too busy guarding the stars to move to the moon. Marama looked around some more and spied the humans moving around down on earth. One person in particular caught his eye – a beautiful woman walking alone in the twilight with a calabash in her hand. She was on her way to a stream in the foothills to fetch water for the next day. As Marama watched, a young man sprinted down the hill after her, racing to catch up. “Ina! Ina!” She turned as he called her name, and waited for him. She and the young man had been friends since they were itty bitty tots and had grown up together; they were best friends, as close as friends can be.
As she and her friend continued on their way to the stream, she glanced up at the sky several times, showing her face to the moon. Each time, Marama gazed at her lovely visage and found her even more beautiful than before. He sighed deeply. “I doubt she would be willing to leave her family, her home, and her best friend behind to come and live on the moon, but I really want her to! She is the only companion that could possibly make me happy, and keep the moon from being a beautiful, desolate prison. She would make the best friend I could possibly have.”
As soon as darkness began to fall the next evening, Marama searched for Ina from his moon palace. Soon enough, he saw her coming down the same hill as before, headed for the same stream as before, calabash in hand. She stopped and waited, and Marama guessed she was waiting for the young man who had walked with her the day before, only he didn’t show up. Marama sensed an opportunity. “She’s never going to accidentally wander up here to the moon, but there’s no reason that I can’t go down to earth and meet her there! Her friend isn’t with her, so maybe we can become friends instead, and she can come back here with me to be my best friend.”
In a flash of power, Marama stood on the earth below, blinding Ina momentarily with the sudden and unexpected brightness of his arrival in the dark. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the impossible brightness, and she could see a young man at the heart of the glow (or maybe he was the one glowing). She searched his face as it slowly came into focus, but he was a stranger to her. She was sure she’d never seen anyone like him before.
“Good evening, m’lady.” If fedora’s had been a thing yet, he probably would have been wearing one. He’s that kind of guy. “My name is Marama, and I have come to ask you to come and live with me on the moon. The moonscape is breathtakingly beautiful, and you would live in a palace and have the best life you can imagine. I would be so kind to you, and so grateful for your company!” Ina drew back, afraid of this obviously powerful figure of uncertain intentions. “I cannot go and live on the moon…Marama, was it? I couldn’t abandon my parents or my home like that. I’d miss them terribly, and I would be miserable up there.” “Oh, don’t worry about that – you’ll forget all about your family and your home soon enough. You’ll have other things to make you happy on the moon. There’s no way you can stay sad up there” (which we know is bullshit because Marama is himself super sad and lonely, but I honestly can’t tell if he’s lying to her or to himself right now).
Ina shook her head emphatically, hugging the calabash to her chest, uncomfortable and becoming more than a little frightened. “I don’t want to forget them. I don’t want to forget my family, or my friends. This is my home. I will not come.” Marama isn’t willing to take no for an answer, and decides to try to guilt her into doing what he wants. “Please? You can’t imagine how lonely I’ve been. It’s just me up there on the moon, all alone, with no one to be my friend” (which further underscores how much bullshit he was spouting before). “Ina, if you join me on the moon, you will never grow old! I can take you to Tane’s shining lake, which will grant you eternal youth and beauty. What could be better than that?”
Ina began to back away, clutching her calabash in terror. He knew her name. How did this strange being know her name? “No, please, I don’t want to. Please, just let me go back home…” Marama saw that it was no use trying to convince her, so he decided ‘fuck it’ and goes with Plan B – straight up kidnap her and hope for Stockholm Syndrome to kick in somewhere down the line. He flung his arm around her and lifted her from the earth and up towards the sky. Ina screamed in terror, calabash forgotten in one numb hand, and grabbed the only thing she could reach: a nearby young palm tree. She held on with everything she had, knuckles white with the force of her grip, but the tree was small, and Marama was very, very strong. Gentle but unyielding, he pulled her up into the sky with him, dragging the little tree along with them, pulled out of the earth by the roots. Ina was going to the moon whether she liked it or not (and she very much did not).
He set her down on the moonscape, eerily empty and alien and barren. She stood there and trembled, the little palm tree still clutched in hands that were clenched in a terror-fueled death-grip. “Welcome to the moon!” said Marama, utterly oblivious to his new “friend’s” obvious anguish. He spun in a little circle, gesturing to the vast expanse of empty, glowing rock. “I’m so glad you’re here with me, Ina! You’re going to love your new home.” He turned back towards her, noticing the palm tree for the first time. “Oh, very cool! You should plant that here so it can always remind you of your old home on earth, and of how you came here to start your new life with me!”
Ina was very much aware that she was this being’s prisoner here, and that he held all of the power, so she did as he suggested. Together, they planted the little palm tree on the moon, and, at his urging, she left the calabash there beside it (taking away the last vestige or her old life and her only hope for a weapon in one fell swoop). He led her proudly around the moon gardens, strange and alien, but undeniably lovely. It took her many days and nights to learn the ways of the Sky Kingdom, to learn to work and play and relax here as she had on earth, but she was a smart woman, and learn she did. The story claims that she and Marama soon became best friends thanks to the gentle way he taught her the strange ways of her new home, but given that the story has made it pretty clear that it’s just the two of them living on the moon, I doubt she had much choice. Maybe she was able to forgive him for kidnapping her and taking her away from literally everyone in her life, but I have to imagine that something like that is pretty hard to forget. Ever.
Ina learned to make delicate, spun curtains of fleecy clouds for the mornings and to throw them across the sky to hang like lace-work over the deep, endless blue. When storms raged over the earth, she rolled and kneaded thunderclouds to swell and burst with thunder and lightning. At sunrise and sunset, she took a brush and painted the dome of the sky in brilliant crimsons and golds and violets. The inside of the moon palace, she kept every bit as bright and beautiful and intricate as anything outside it; this was her home now, and the story claims she grew to love it (and hell, maybe she did – it wasn’t the moon’s fault she was here – well, I guess it sort of was, but you know what I mean).
When night fell, their work was over and it was time to kick back and relax. Marama and Ina would sing and dance; they would play with the stars, ride on moonlit clouds a la Aladdin and Jasmine during A Whole New World, and go to visit Rangi and the star-fairies of the Sky Kingdom. Once a month, the two went and bathed in Tane’s shining lake so that they would stay young and healthy forever.
Life became routine, and though she did eventually learn to love Marama and her new home, she never forgot about her old life or the people she’d left behind the way Marama had hoped she would. When the nights grew still, her thoughts always drifted back to her parents and her friend, and her heart ached with homesickness. Many times, when the earth lay lit in the gentle radiance of the moon’s light, Ina would stand under her little palm tree for hours trying to see the hill where her family lived. Bathing in Tane’s lake had given her inhumanly good vision (seriously, they actually address this question), and so she could actually see the surface of the earth quite clearly from her distant home on the moon. She saw her friend wandering the earth, exhausted and depressed, searching for any news of the vanished Ina; she saw her mother sitting in the doorway, weeping and wailing for her missing child. The sight was too much for her tender heart, and she ran to find Marama.
“Marama, look down at my home. My mother grieves for me, and my friend searches every inch of the kingdom ceaselessly for me. Look at them, Marama. Can’t you see their sadness?” Marama looked where Ina pointed against his better judgment. He saw the pain and despair writ clearly on their faces. “If only my friend could see that I am alive and safe up here, that I have made a life for myself, he could be at peace and move on. He could tell my mother and everyone else what had happened to me and put their hearts at ease. Bring him here for a visit, Marama. Please?” Marama could deny his best and only friend in the world nothing. He nodded. “If that is your wish, then of course I will bring him here.”
He flashed immediately to the earth and seized the young man in his arms, carrying him away into the sky as he had Ina. She watched them come, her heart swelling with happiness. She watched as her friend’s eyes lit up with astonishment and joy as she came into view. They hugged when he landed on the moon, and breathlessly, she told him what had happened to her on the night she had vanished from the hillside. In return, he told her how miserable all of her friends and family had been ever since, thinking her murdered or eaten. She wept gently at this news, but brushed away her tears. “Come! You must see the moon – it’s like nothing on earth!”
She showed him all of the gardens and palaces and wondrous places she had come to love, then stood with him beneath her palm tree. “I have bathed in the waters of Tane’s mystical lake, which will keep me young forever, but it also means that I can never leave the Sky. I must stay here, my friend. Forever. I have grown to love my new lunar home though, so please don’t worry that I am unhappy. I wouldn’t return to earth even if I could – the moon is just too wonderful.” I can’t help but think she’s lying here to try and keep everyone back home from worrying about her for the rest of their lives. “Will you stay and visit awhile, so I can show you what it’s like here?”
Her friend agreed (knowing without being told that this would be the last time he would ever see his oldest and dearest friend). She showed him everything she had learned, and taught him to make clouds. She introduced him to Rangi and the star-fairies, and they all danced and sang together. When it was time for him to return, she hugged her friend one last time. “Tell my mother and everyone else back on earth what you have seen. Tell them that I am safe, and that they don’t need to cry for me or worry about me ever again. And tell them that I will be watching over them.”
She called the rainbow to her and commanded it to take her friend safely back home. It did, arcing across the sky and hanging there as a silent testament to Ina’s love for her lost home, and her friend slid down its long, vibrant length to land safely back on the hill. Ina’s friend told everyone where he had been and what he had seen, telling them how happy Ina was in her new home (and I don’t know if he believed his words or was just trying to do right by his friend and help protect her family). Her mother was able to stop grieving, knowing that her daughter was alive and happy.
Each night, when the moon rose high in the night sky, Ina’s earth-bound friends spoke of Ina and Marama and the wonders of their moon palace home in the Sky Kingdom around their fires. Ina was satisfied that she had done the best she could, but she never stopped loving her home or longing to go back for a visit. Even now, when the full moon is clear of the clouds, you can see Ina gazing longingly at the earth, the tall palm-tree over her head and the calabash resting at her feet.
When I first read this story, I couldn’t help but think of the myth of Hades and Persephone from Greek mythology (which we haven’t covered yet, but we will). A lonely god, isolated and removed from all other living creatures, kidnaps a beautiful woman to be his companion (and his wife in some versions of the Ina story), and though she resists at first, she grows to love her new home, but she never forgets her old life. So the next time the moon is full, look up and see if you can’t find lonely, eternal Ina looking back at the home she can never see again. And now, it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s monster is Te Mangoroa.
In pretty much every mythos, you’ll find stories about the creation of the stars and, more specifically, of the Milky Way. If you’ve ever seen anything approaching the full glory of that breathtaking expanse of brilliant white stars and shadowy patches of darkness, it’s not hard to understand why. There are many stories about it in Maori culture, including its being a path through the heavens, the trail of some great chariot, the fishing net of a powerful spirit, or the masses of a sky-dwelling tribe (like the star fairies of the main story), but the story we’re discussing today is Te Mangoroa the shark.
For many Maori and other Polynesian tribes, sharks are seen as guardian spirits and there are many, many stories surrounding them (as one would expect from a people who traveled the waves from island to island). Many Hawaiian families had an aumakua, or a shark protector. For the Maori, one of the most powerful and important creatures was the great white shark, known as mango-taniwha (tanifa). In general, taniwha are beings that live in deep pools in rivers, in dark caves, or in the sea (especially in places with deceptive breakers or dangerous currents), and can either be powerful protectors of people or places, or dangerous predators. Often, it could be both, serving as a protector of one tribe and a menace to others.
In some versions of the story, Te Mangoroa is a massive and powerful great white shark that insulted Maui’s father (and is sometimes considered to be the father of the great serpent Tuna-Roa from way back in Episode 19); in others, it is a benevolent being that frolics and plays with the tribe’s children in the shallow waters of the beach until the gods of the sea warn Tahi-a-nu’u and Tahi-a-ra-i (heroes from Tahitian mythology) that the shark is in danger of becoming a man-eater. In almost all of the versions, the hero fights the great shark and hurls a spear into the beast, wounding it. The beast is then placed into the sky to protect its people from the safe distance of the heavens, though the spear is still lodged in the great beast swimming in the stars. One other version of the story says that the Milky Way is a vast ocean and the dark rift in the center is a great ship built by the god Kiho-tumu to sail the sky. The ship was named Te Magoroa, and is always overhead to protect Kiho-tumu’s people, with the dark patches being the boat itself, and the bright white splashes being the foaming waves (and if you’ve ever seen a photo of a boat from underneath, it’s easy to see why). So if you’re ever lost at sea, consider asking for the help of Te Mangoroa – if he doesn’t eat you, he just might help you to shore.
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on Stitcher, on TuneIn, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Twitter as @HardcoreMyth and on Instagram as Myths Your Teacher Hated Pod. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff, whom you can find on fiverr.com.
Next time, we’ll start off in Hungary, and then journey to the end of the world. You’ll see that you should never trust your parents, that being emo is more than a phase, and that sewing can kill you. Then, in Gods and Monsters, you’ll learn why fucking a demon chicken is a bad idea, no matter how hot they are. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.