Pele, goddess of the volcano

The living Hawaiian goddess of the volcano, dwelling in Kīlauea

In Hawaiian religion Pele is the goddess of volcanoes and fire and the maker of the islands, called with respect Madame Pele or Tūtū Pele, and also Pele-honua-mea, Pele of the sacred land, and Ka wahine ʻai honua, the earth-eating woman. Her home is Halemaʻumaʻu, the fire pit in the summit caldera of Kīlauea, one of the most active volcanoes on Earth, but her domain is every eruption on the island of Hawaiʻi. She is known for her power and passion, her jealousy and her caprice.

The stories say she came from Kahiki by canoe. In one telling her older sister Nāmakaokahaʻi, a sea goddess, feared Pele's fires would smother their homeland and drove her away; Pele tried to kindle her fires on island after island as she came, with Nāmaka in pursuit, until the sisters fought and Pele was torn apart. Her body was destroyed, but her spirit lives on in Halemaʻumaʻu, in the lava and the steam. She carried an egg from her mother that hatched into her favourite sister, Hiʻiaka-i-ka-poli-o-Pele, Hiʻiaka in the bosom of Pele, said to be the first to dance hula, and so Pele is also a goddess of the hula. Other stories tell of Pele sending Hiʻiaka to Kauaʻi to fetch the chief Lohiʻau, and of the jealousy and lava that followed. On Mauna Kea she meets her match in Poliʻahu, the snow goddess, whose burning mantle chilled Pele's lava and drove it back.

Belief in her outlived the abolition of the old religion in 1819. In 1823 the missionary William Ellis ate the ʻōhelo berries at Kīlauea, which are sacred to Pele and traditionally offered to her first, and in December 1824 the high chiefess Kapiʻolani walked down into Halemaʻumaʻu after a Christian prayer and came out unharmed. People still tell of Pele walking the roads near Kīlauea before an eruption as an old woman or a young one, dressed in red, sometimes with a small white dog. In 2003 the park chose a new portrait of her by the Puna artist Arthur Johnsen, striding through a lava flow with her staff in one hand and an egg holding Hiʻiaka in the other.

One story about her is not old. Every year tourists mail rocks, sand and shells back to Hawaiʻi with notes of apology, convinced they took home Pele's curse. The park says no oral tradition mentions such a curse; it seems to have been invented in the mid-20th century to stop visitors pocketing the park. The anthropologist Tēvita Kaʻili notes that Hawaiians do hold that stone has mana, and that moving it without the proper rites is disrespect. Removing rock from the national park is illegal anyway.