Tāne Pushes His Father Sky from His Mother Earth

They are in darkness.

Not the darkness of night, which has an end and a promise of morning. The darkness of their parents’ embrace — Ranginui the Sky Father and Papatūānuku the Earth Mother locked together in a hold that has no beginning in memory and no end in sight. Their children exist in the narrow gap between: Tāne, Tangaroa, Rongo, Tū, Whiro, and the others — a family pressed flat, unable to stand, unable to see, breathing the breath that cycles between the two bodies that made them.

They hold a council in the dark. What should be done?

Each speaks. Tū, who is war, says kill them — push them apart with violence, kill the father if necessary. Rongo, who is peace and cultivated foods, says we should not kill anyone; there must be a way to separate without destruction. Tangaroa, who is the sea, says nothing useful. Whiro argues against any separation at all, for reasons the later tradition will elaborate: Whiro prefers the dark. Whiro will choose the path below.

Tāne listens. He is the god of forests, of the trees that grow between earth and sky as his living expression. He understands something about the mechanics of separation that the others have not articulated: you do not need to kill the father. You need to grow.

He positions himself between his parents. His shoulders go against his father’s chest. His feet press against his mother’s body. He pushes.

His brothers help. But Tāne’s push is the decisive one — the great extension, legs straightening, the force of the forest-god working against the gravity of two beings who have been embracing since before memory. The sky groans. The earth holds still. Tāne pushes.

The sky moves.

The first light enters sideways — horizontal, pale, the light of the very first dawn filtering between two beings who have never been separated before. The children of Ranginui and Papatūānuku stand upright for the first time, blinking in the new light, looking at their parents’ faces as they are pulled apart.

Ranginui weeps.

His tears fall as rain. His grief becomes the clouds. The mists of morning are his longing for Papatūānuku below. When dew forms on the leaves of the forest — on the leaves of Tāne’s trees, the trees Tāne planted after making the space for them — that is Ranginui’s tears reaching the earth he was separated from.

Papatūānuku holds still. She turns red with grief, which is why the earth is red at its deep layers. Her sighs are the warm underground breath that sometimes comes up through caves.

Tāne goes further. Having separated his parents, he now ornaments the sky. He takes the stars and sets them on Ranginui’s chest as the garment of the night sky. He takes the sun and moon and places them in their orbits. He makes the sky beautiful — a compensation for the separation, a way of honoring the father he had to force away.

Then he makes the forest. He makes the birds for the forest and the trees for the birds. He shapes the first woman from earth — Hineahuone, the earth-formed maiden — and breathes life into her. The creation that follows from Tāne’s act is enormous: forests and birds and people and the first genealogy of human life.

The separation that made all of this possible was violent and irreversible. Ranginui and Papatūānuku still reach for each other. They will reach for each other forever, and the world that was born from their separation will live in the space between them.