Loa

Loa Oceania
In the Marshall Islands, the supreme being and creator deity, a parallel of the Tahitian Ta'aroa. At the beginning Loa, or Lowa, dwelt alone in the primeval sea. Loneliness and boredom made him raise up reefs and sandbanks, create plants and birds, and station a god at each of the cardinal points. From Loaapos;s leg emerged Wulleb and Limdunanji, the first man and the first woman. When their offspring conspired to kill Wulleb, he fled and fell to earth, where from his leg came two more sons. Edao, the younger one, became a great magician and had many adventures, not unlike those of Olofat.

A variant myth relates that Wulleb and Lejman, male and female worms living in a shell, were the first human beings, a notion echoed in the Tongan Islands. The worms raised the upper part of the shell to become the sky, leaving the lower as the earth. Loa here remains in the background as the first cause.

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