Māori cosmology · a storybook in 5 pages
How the sky and the earth were parted, and light came into the world.
In the beginning there was Te Kore, the nothing, and then Te Pō, the long night. Ranginui, the sky, lay upon Papatūānuku, the earth, in an embrace so close that no light could come between them.
Their children lived in the cramped dark between their parents’ bodies, crawling, never able to stand up. They had never seen light. In the dark they began to argue about what to do.
Some of the brothers wanted to kill their parents. Tāne, whose realm is the forest, would not. He lay on his back against his mother, set his feet against his father, and slowly pushed. It took a long time. He did not stop.
Ranginui was lifted into the heavens, and for the first time light came into the world. The children stood. The forests of Tāne could grow tall in the space he had made.
The parents still long for each other. Rangi’s tears fall as rain and dew; Papa’s sighs rise as mist from the valleys. One brother, Tāwhirimātea, the winds, never forgave the others — and the storms are his anger still.