Haumea Mythology

In the Hawaiian sources collected by Martha Beckwith, Haumea is identified with Papa, the wife of Wākea. One name of Papa is Papahānaumoku, Papa who gives birth to islands. In these stories Haumea lives on Oʻahu in a human body as Papa, and in a spirit body she returns as Haumea to Nuʻumealani, the land of the gods.

Beckwith writes that some connect the name Haumea with honua-mea (sacred earth), an epithet of Pele, while she herself connects it more naturally with hānau-mea (sacred birth). Both explanations are interpretations, and there is no settled etymology.

In one version of the Pele stories, Nāmaka-o-Kahaʻi is born from Haumea's breasts, Pele from her thighs, Kamohoaliʻi from the top of her head, the thunder Kāne-hekili from her mouth and the lightning Kauila-nui from her eyes. Hiʻiaka is born in the shape of an egg, and Pele carries her under her arm. The Kumulipo also says that Haumea's generations were born from the brain, that is, from the fontanelle.

Pele, the volcano goddess, is Haumea's daughter in most of the stories. Her father changes with the source. In one story he is Kū-waha-ilo, in another he is Moemoe, and in yet another Papa and Wākea are Pele's parents. Beckwith notes that Haumea is sometimes identified with Pele as well.

According to the Minor Planet Center record, Hiʻiaka is the daughter born from Haumea's mouth, whom her elder sister Pele carried to Hawaii from their distant homeland in the form of an egg. She is said to have danced the first hula on the shore of Puna, and she is the patron of hula dancers. Haumea's larger moon was found on 26 January 2005 and received this name.

Nāmaka is a water spirit born from Haumea's body, and she is a sister of Pele. According to the Minor Planet Center record, when Pele sends lava into the sea, Nāmaka cools it and new land forms. The enmity between the two sisters also holds an important place in the Pele stories.

Makalei is a magic branch that draws fish to itself. In the story Beckwith reports, Haumea turns from old to young by means of this branch. The same branch is also connected with a source of food that never runs out. The story of Makalei was serialised by Samuel Kaiakea Kekoowai between 1922 and 1924 in Kuokoa, a newspaper in the Hawaiian language.

According to the Haumea section of the Kumulipo, Haumea grows young again and marries her children and then her grandchildren. This goes on for generations, until Kio is born and a priest named Uaia reveals her true face, which is that she has grown old. Haumea leaves Nuʻumea, and the line of chiefs begins with Kio.

In a story set in Kalihi valley, her husband is seized by the men of the chief who owns the land and taken away to be sacrificed. Haumea catches up with them beside a breadfruit tree. The tree opens like the door of a house, and the two go inside and vanish. In this form Haumea is worshipped under the name Kamehaʻikana. The husband's name appears as Makea or Wākea, depending on the source.

According to the story in a Hawaiian book of medicine printed in 1895, Muleiula, daughter of the chief Olopana, is about to give birth, and preparations are made to cut open her belly. Haumea arrives, says that in her own land babies are born without cutting the mother, and eases the birth with the Kani-ka-wī flower. For this reason Haumea is regarded as the guardian of childbirth.

In return for the midwifery, Muleiula gives Haumea the 'tree of changing leaves'. In the version Westervelt reports, god images named Makalei, Kū-ke-olo-ʻewa and Kū-hoʻoneʻe-nuʻu are made from this tree, and they become the gods of the chiefs of Oʻahu and Maui. The story traces the origin of these god images back to Haumea.

The Hawaiian historian Samuel Kamakau wrote in 1869, in the newspaper Ke Au Okoa, that Haumea came from Kahiki to Hawaii together with Kāne and Kanaloa. Kamakau also records that Haumea was reborn six times and that each of her forms was worshipped under a different name.

Beckwith says that the Haumea stories gather around two themes. The first is the food that people need in order to live, and the second is the marriage and birth needed for the line to continue. The branch that draws fish, the breadfruit tree and the birth story are different sides of these two themes.

In the Tahitian stories Beckwith reports, Haumea, who is also known as Nona, is a high-born woman who eats human flesh. She turns cannibal after her husband leaves her, and in the end she is killed. The same name has been given to very different figures on different islands of Polynesia.

Haumea's two moons and the icy bodies in nearby orbits are regarded as fragments broken off in a very old collision. This is the only collision family known beyond Neptune. The Minor Planet Center record notes that the goddess, whose children were born from different parts of her body, suits these fragments well.

The moons were found with the Keck telescope on Mauna Kea, on the island of Hawaii. The discovery team chose Hawaiian names to honour this place. Mauna Kea is a sacred mountain for Native Hawaiians, and the telescopes on its summit have been a matter of dispute for years. In 2019 long protests took place against the construction of a new telescope.

After 2008 Haumea was added to some astrology software, and its glyph spread. No commonly accepted tradition of interpretation has formed, however. The classical sources do not mention this body, and it has no connection with the system of dignities.