Lono

In the cosmological framework recorded in the sources, Lono is one of four principal gods who existed before the world was created (alongside Kū, Kāne, and Kanaloa). Traditional narratives link Lono with voyaging figures from Kahiki (Tahiti), such as Laʻa‑mai‑kahiki, who is associated with bringing Lono's musical instruments and festival practices to Hawaiʻi; such genealogical and voyaging tales situate Lono as both a primordial akua and a figure remembered through ancestral and chiefly lines.

The supplied sources record no fixed, standardized iconography for Lono. Mythic accounts describe symbolic modes of arrival—e.g., descending to Earth on a rainbow to marry Laka—and narratives also recount human embodiments or ritual representatives (legendary voyagers such as Laʻa‑mai‑kahiki and named aliʻi who bear the Lono name). Sources emphasize that an akua may be an invisible spirit or manifest in living persons rather than providing a single anthropomorphic description.

Sources attribute to Lono the power to bring rain and dispense fertility for food plants, patronage of music and hula (linked in tradition to instruments such as a small hand-drum and a flute introduced by Laʻa‑mai‑kahiki), and institutional authority over a season of ritualized peace during Makahiki when war and unnecessary work are kapu (taboo). Hawaiian weather terminology and seasonal practice sometimes link Lono to winter Kona storms that bring rain to leeward areas. Lono functions both as a natural agent of fertility and as a social principle enforcing ordered sacred time through priestly and chiefly regulation.