Tangaroa

Tide of the Severed Loom

Tangaroa is the great sea-god of the Polynesian world, ruler of the ocean and ancestor of all fish and reptiles. In Maori tradition he is a son of the sky-father Rangi and earth-mother Papa, and when his brothers tore their parents apart he raged against the wind-god Tawhirimatea, who drove his children into the deep. The endless surge of every tide is reckoned his breathing, and seafarers across the Pacific honored him before trusting their canoes to the water.