5) Hawaii’s Biblical and Quranic Myths (with variants)

Okay, let's recap. From the outside, Hawaiian rituals have many "biblical" features, in particular the construction of a tabernacle by religious dignitaries for sacrificing to the gods, and the use of standing stones, often anointed with oil, which are recognized as celestial openings allowing communication with ancestors . On the other hand, the same Hawaiian society seems to borrow many traits from the mysterious KouFaR, muShRiKun of the Quran, which are translated as disbelievers or associators/polytheists, with an obsession with the fertilizing function of rain, ancestor worship, female infanticide, and, of course, standing stones.

It's like an inverted triangle having Hawaii as its base, connected to two vertices, the Tanakh and the Quran, but in opposite registers: Hawaii seems to be criticized by the Quran, while it borrows many traits from the Bible. There is a strange opposition here, where one would rather expect a parallelism. We will come back to this—because things are always much more complicated than they seem...

Let's now turn our attention to the very essence of Hawaii: its myths. And let's start at the beginning. Bereshit. The creation of the world by KaNe, the procreator, the most important of the Hawaiian gods. First of all, what is very interesting in Serge's book is that, each myth is often recounted with several variants. And that's FUNDAMENTAL, kids. There isn't just one myth, but always a variety of myths. This is quite counterintuitive for those of us who grew up in a world of Pharisians, where our knowledge is entirely structured by Writing, by the Letter that kills, that freezes our knowledge and has made us forget our Paleolithic roots. But before Writing, when human knowledge was transmitted orally, multiple versions of the same myth coexisted without any problem. The more the merrier. For it was this variety that ensured both the evolving nature of the myth, as well as its faithful transmission—as paradoxical as that may seem. Just like DNA — we'll come back to that.

But let's get back to the creation of the world by KaNe, of which Serge has the courtesy to provide us with several variants. In the first variant, collected by Fornander, three gods « emerge from the night »: KaNe, the supreme god, Ku, the god of war, and LoNo – the god of fertility, whom we have already encountered several times. Then, our three companions « create three heavens as dwellings: the highest for Kane, the middle one for Ku, and the lowest for Lono ». The cosmological model of the Quran also contains several heavens, seven to be precise. Then, after the earth was formed by our three companions, KaNe, the supreme god, then created « the sun, the moon, and the stars, with which he populated the space between heaven and earth. He produced the salt of the ocean, which the priests would use to purify themselves  ».

A human form is then shaped from the earth, as in the Bible. KaNe serves as the model, Ku as the craftsman, and LoNo as the assistant. We find this same idea of a model in Genesis 1:27:

Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.

In Hawaii,

Kane and Ku [then] blow into the nostrils, Lono into the mouth. Their creature comes to life.

Just as in Genesis 2:7

The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.

Note that Genesis also had the courtesy, like Serge, to keep two variants of the myth of the creation of man in its first two chapters—which made many Pharisians tear their hair out because they did not understand how two contradictory variants of the same story could coexist. You see, the hallmark of a good paleoanthropological text is precisely that it provides us with variants. The more the merrier! Serge definitely got that.

Let us leave our Pharisians behind and return to Hawaii with Serge. Our three gods « then offer [man] a beautiful garden to live in [and] give man a wife pulled from his right side  ».The same mention of creation from the side of man is found in Genesis 2:22

The Lord God formed a woman from the rib he had taken from the man, and he brought her to the man.

Then, in Hawaii

...in the primordial garden [...] there are pigs, dogs and [...] lizards of various kinds. There is also a taboo tree, sacred water apples, which are fatal to foreign mouths, and bark cloth reserved for the great chiefs [...] the couple was driven out of the garden by the great white albatross of KaNe.

There are no less than six points of convergence here—the only difference from the Genesis account is that instead of a serpent, we have a white albatross. Fortunately, we have this albatross, otherwise the Pharisians would pounce on the snake as irrefutable proof that these myths were borrowed from the Biblical tradition. That brood of vipers!

But let us now look at the other variants of the myth that Serge so generously recounts. In Kepelino's version

During the first five periods, the heavens and the earth, the sun, the moon, the stars, and the plants to clothe the earth were created. Man was created during the sixth period.

The same sequence as in the biblical cosmogony.

The first couple « lived happily until the day when the great white-beaked seabird seduced [the woman] into eating the sacred water apples of KaNe. She went mad and turned into a seabird  ». The couple was carried away « into the forest. The trees parted as they passed, but then returned to their places. Thus was lost the path to the hidden land of KaNe, the primordial garden  ».

The same idea as in the Bible, where the Garden of Eden becomes inaccessible once it has been left.

The first man is « punished with death for his disobedience to God. [He] is jeered by the people, on the road he wets with his tears » - just as in Genesis, Qayin is condemned to wander and be mocked by men after the murder of Abel. In Hawaii, this first cursed man ends up taking refuge on a hill, for several years, and is eventually buried on a mountain that « also serves as the final resting place for his descendants, hence its name, [...] the ossuary » - just as in the Book of the Cave of the Treasures of Saint Ephrem, which tells how the bones of Adam, the first man, were also buried on a mountain. We will return soon to this very important « variant » of the Genesis story...

Let us return to Hawaii for the moment. In another variant, that of His Majesty Kamakau, the « first man notices that his shadow is attached to him, KaNe takes advantage of his sleep to turn it into a beautiful woman. The man finds her beside him when he wakes up and calls her « celestial shadow»  » —it is also during the man's sleep that the woman is created in Genesis 2. But what is incredible in this variant of the creation of woman from the shadow of man is that in Hebrew, the rib is called « TseLa », while the shadow is called « TseL » and the shape, « to mold », is called « TseLeM ». Yes, my children, Hebrew has preserved in its structure the memory of these two variants of the myth of the creation of woman from the rib or shadow of man.

So, of course, the Pharisians, who understand nothing, will tell you, as with the SheReNTe, that the Hawaiians have taken the creation myths of man from the Bible. But this comparison between the Hawaiian and Biblical variants shows how idiotic this is, as well as being an insult to Hawaiians—because not only do these two traditions overlap on many points in their main narrative, but we also find the same variants of this main narrative in both traditions.

But that's not all. Another great biblical – or rather Quranic – story is that of KaNaLoa, the other great Hawaiian deity P319, the « god of squid and octopus ». He is

... the leader of the first spirits sent to earth after the separation from heaven. Spat out by the gods, these spirits revolt on his initiative because they are forbidden the awa. Defeated, they are cast back into the underworld, where Kanaloa [...] becomes the master of the dead. The opposition between KaNe and KaNaLoa mirrors that of good and evil. When KaNe fashioned the first man, KaNaLoa did the same, but his creature remained stone. Furious, he condemned man to death and concocted all kinds of poisons. It was he who seduced the first woman, he who animated KaNe's great albatross.

And here, my children, is another little bombshell — because while the explanation of Christian missionaries teaching the ignorant Hawaiians about their founding myths at least has some historical credibility, I find it harder to imagine Muslim preachers landing in Hawaii. Well, yes, believe it or not, this story of fallen angels appears almost word for word in the Quran—it is the story of Iblis, who was one of the Djinns (Q18.50) and was banished from Heaven (Q15.34, Q7.13) with his legions (Q26.95) because he was too proud to bow down before the first man – having been created from fire and not from clay (Q38.76), like man. However, God leaves him alive in the world to seduce and mislead men — he becomes the adversary, Satan. He is notably the originator of the famous ShiRK, the act of associating powers with God (Q26.98) — which we just saw in Surah Al Isra 17.64. He is also responsible for the expulsion of man from Paradise (Q7.20, Q20.120). We will return to Sssssatan shortly.

In the meantime, note also that in another variant of the Hawaiian creation myth, that of Westerwelt

KaNe makes a human form out of earth. Ku and LoNo capture a spirit from the air and give life to KaNe's creation. His name will be « burning fire of Heaven  ».

Here we find the same idea of Iblis as one of the Djinns, those mysterious ethereal beings who claim to be made of fire and not clay... The Hawaiian divine kings also claimed to be made « of pure fire, in the image of Wakea. Anyone who encountered him was forced to prostrate themselves on the ground. Such a sun brooked no shadow ».