Polynesian

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Polynesian

Maui

The Trickster Demigod

Domain: Cunning, Heroism & Creation
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Element: Air
Relics of Power: Magic Fishhook Mānaiakalani

Speak with Maui

The full Codex

5 sections of this entry are open to everyone: the summary, the people, the symbols, the lineage and the sources. The other 9 (Name and epithets, In the ancient sources, The myths, Worship and archaeology, How the god was depicted, What scholars debate, After antiquity, Did you know?, Codex relic) are part of the full Codex: PRO opens the whole study of all 500 deities, and without a subscription you can read one full entry a day, just like in the app.

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The People

People

Polynesian peoples

Region

Pacific islands

Period

c. 1000 BC – present

The Polynesian gods were worshipped by the navigators who colonized the Pacific islands, from Hawaii to New Zealand and Easter Island. They honored them on sacred platforms (marae) and through the concept of mana, spiritual power. Their myths, such as those of the hero Maui, are still told among the Maori and Hawaiians.

On the marae, sacred stone platforms, priests offered first fruits and invoked the gods before fishing and war. The kapu (taboo) system ruled what was sacred and forbidden, and in Hawaii the hula was born as a devotional dance to goddesses like Pele and Laka.

At a glance

Māui (often invoked as Māui-a-kalana in Hawaii and Māui-tikitiki-a-Taranga in New Zealand) is the supreme archetype of the civilizing hero, shape-shifter (kupua) and cunning trickster of all Polynesian mythology. Unlike the great foundational gods who dwell in the celestial vault and demand strict worship, Māui acts at the direct interface between humans and the powers of nature, using his intellectual boldness and magical ingenuity to alter the laws of the cosmos in favor of mortals. His mythic exploits, shared from Hawaii and Tahiti to Samoa, Tonga and Aotearoa, form one of the most cohesive oral traditions of the Pacific: he fished whole islands from the ocean depths with his magical hook of ancestral bone (Manaiakalani), lassoed the swift rays of the sun on the summit of Haleakalā to lengthen the day, raised the sky vault that was suffocating the earth, tore from the ʻalae birds the secret of domesticated fire, and challenged the biological limits of human death by trying to win immortality before the underworld goddess Hine-nui-te-pō.

7 min read · Reviewed on September 28, 2026 · How we research

Sacred symbols

The magic fishhook, the snare of the sun, the flame of fire and the canoe

Family

Parents

Akalana (in Hawaiian tradition) / Makeatutara (in Māori tradition)Hina

Siblings

Māui-mua (the eldest brother, later associated with Rupe)Māui-hope (brother in Hawaiian genealogies)Māui-kiʻikiʻi (minor aspect or sibling in the Kalana lineage)

Maui

Unions

Hina-ke-kā (traditional wife in Hawaiian cycle) / Rohe (in Māori tradition)

Genealogy according to Kumulipo (Wā 9); Sir George Grey, Polynesian Mythology (1855); W. D. Westervelt, Legends of Ma-ui (1910); Katharine Luomala, Maui-of-a-Thousand-Tricks (1949); Edward Tregear, Comparative Dictionary (1891)

Sources and further reading

Primary sources

Grey, Sir George, Polynesian Mythology, and Ancient Traditional History of the New Zealand Race. translation: London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1855. read
Liliuokalani (Queen of Hawaii), An Account of the Creation of the World according to Hawaiian Tradition (Kumulipo). translation: Boston: Press of Lee and Shepard, 1897.
Fornander, Abraham, Fornander Collection of Hawaiian Antiquities and Folk-Lore. translation: Memoirs of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, Volume V, Part 3. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 1919.

Studies

Westervelt, William Drake, Legends of Ma-ui: A Demi God of Polynesia and of His Mother Hina. Honolulu: The Hawaiian Gazette Co., Ltd., 1910. open
Luomala, Katharine, Maui-of-a-Thousand-Tricks: His Oceanic and European Biographers. Honolulu: Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin 198, 1949. open
Tregear, Edward, The Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary. Wellington, N.Z.: Lyon and Blair, Lambton Quay, 1891. open
Beckwith, Martha Warren, Hawaiian Mythology (Section: Maui the Trickster). Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press (reprint of 1940 Yale ed.), 1970. open

Name and epithets

The Polynesian anthroponym and theonym Māui is common to nearly all linguistic branches of Oceania, descending from the reconstructed Proto-Polynesian form *maawui.

In the ancient sources

Polynesian Mythology, and Ancient Traditional History of the New Zealand Race, 1855. Classic compilation by Sir George Grey, recording the Māori manuscripts of Wiremu Maihi Te Rangikāheke on the feats of Māui.

The myths

Fishing Up the Islands with the Manaiakalani Hook. As documented in Polynesian folklore by George Grey and William D.

Worship and archaeology

The religious relationship of the Polynesian peoples with Māui was categorically distinct from the worship offered to the great gods of the lineage of Kū or Tāne.

How the god was depicted

Māui's figure appeared in the material culture of the Pacific through wood carvings and personal adornment amulets.

What scholars debate

Ethnological Classification: Deity, Demigod or Trickster Hero?. The anthropologist Katharine Luomala, in her monumental monograph Maui-of-a-Thousand-Tricks (1949), analysed the ontological ambivalence of Māui in Western…

After antiquity

In contemporary Pacific culture, Māui remains the most influential and universal symbol of ingenuity, mental agility and indigenous self-determination.

Did you know?

The North Island of New Zealand is officially known in the Māori language and tradition as 'Te Ika-a-Māui', which literally means 'The Fish of Māui', alluding to the legend in which the entire island was pulled up from…

Codex relic

Magic Fishhook Mānaiakalani. A hook made of enchanted bone with which he fished entire islands from the bottom of the ocean.

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