Te Bo ma Te Maki
Te Bo ma Te Maki OceaniaLiterally, ‘the darkness and the cleaving together’. The primordial substance in Gilbertese mythology. Over this ‘heaven and earth’, dark and compact at the beginning of things, walked Nareau, the spider creator.
A variant creation myth has heaven and earth move, like the two hands of a man being rubbed together, so that Tabakea, ‘first of all’, and Na-Kaa, his brother, appear. In the darkness, called Te-bongi-ro, these gods put the universal process in motion.
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Oxford University Press Titles
