This is a portion of an ongoing series which seeks to chronicle the occult, magickal and mystical alchemy roots of the transgender and postgender movements from secret societies and mystery religion sources. I have chronicled these in the Postgender Androgyny, Hermaphroditism & Beyond section.
The Kumulipo – A Hawaiian Creation Chant, as translated and commented upon by Martha Warren Beckwith (pub. 1951 AD), chap. 18, “The Woman Who Sat Sideways” states refers to the “second half of the Kumulipo chant” thusly:
…the doubtful opening lines…As written in the text they name Maila, born to La’ila’i when she lived as a woman in the land of Lua; but, if read O mai la, where O replaces the regular e before an imperative, they would summon to a place in the interior of the new home the gods of procreation, the god Kane of the Night-of-multitudes and La’ila’i, the goddess who “sat sideways” to become mother of mankind.
This would be in keeping with Polynesian thought, although we have no confirmation of such an idea in Hawaii. Firth tells us that in Tikopia “structural members of a building” are regarded as “actual embodiments of deity”—hence the fixed positions in the house which were assigned to members of the household. At the house post sits the male head of the house with his sons and male guests whom he would honor, since the god is considered to be actually present in the stone upon which the post rests, while the women range along the opposite wall.[Firth, Work of the Gods in Tikopia, p. 64.]
If this is true for Hawaii, where is the place of Ki’i ka mahu in the structural setup? The word mahú with the accent on the last syllable is applied to a hermaphrodite; it is also given the sense of “quiet.” Firth tells us that the Tikopians had gods regarded as double-sexed, not in the physical sense but in the sense that, like the Indian god Siva, they were able to show themselves in either a male or a female body.
A curious Tahitian chant gives to the god ‘Atea such a shift of sex, a shift that would, if accepted in Hawaii, explain how Wakea, further on in the Kumulipo chant, lures a water maiden to shore by setting up images (ki’i), or why the god Kauakahi, in a folktale from Hilo district on Hawaii, is described as hiding behind an image of a girl until the unsuspecting water nymph of whom he is amorous comes within his grasp. [Firth, We the Tikopia, p. 470; Henry, p. 372; Beckwith, Hawaiian Mythology, pp. 540-41]
It is possible that Ki’i, as “image” of the god, has the power of appearing in either sex, but I am without evidence that Hawaiians regarded Ki’i as double-sexed or whether, if they did so regard him, they would give the name mahu to such an attribute. The queen’s translation,
Maila, with Lailai for protection
And Kane of Kapokinikini was support, Kii was helpless,seems to imply that Ki’i, perhaps representing the danger to a young wife of a misalliance, is one of the evil spirits to be conjured into helplessness. On the other hand, the word mahu, unaccented, may apply to a smoldering fire and it would then be possible to think of Ki’i as personifying the fire of sexual passion, with a place in the interior of the house at the oven kept smoldering for quick rekindling, were it not for the fact that Hawaiians built their ovens out of doors and had no need of house fires for heating. The problem hence remains for further investigators, and I take refuge in the more general of the suggested readings.
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