Rangi and Papa

In the primordial beginning Māori accounts describe Rangi and Papa as a primal parental pair locked together in a tight embrace in the darkness. Their numerous children—gods and ancestors of winds, forests, sea, cultivated and uncultivated foods, war, and earthquakes—are forced to live cramped between them. After many attempts, Tāne (god of forests and birds) forces the parents apart, raising Rangi into the sky (Ranginui) and leaving Papatūānuku as the earth below; this separation produces light, space, and the conditions for life. Several children resist or oppose the act (notably Tāwhirimātea, who wages war), and one child, Rūaumoko, remains inside Papatūānuku and causes earthquakes and volcanic activity when he moves.

Sources do not supply a detailed anthropomorphic portrait; the primary images are relational and cosmological. Before separation both lie locked together in a close embrace so that the children dwell in the cramped darkness between them. After separation Rangi is conceived as the sky above and Papatūānuku as the earth below; later narrative details evoke visible signs of their continuing relation—Ranginui's tears falling as rain and Papatūānuku's sighs and rising mist from forests. Referential traditions also describe the placing of stars, sun, and moon upon the sky and other cosmological dressings by their children (Tāne and others) in the broader narrative context.

As primal parents their primary function is progenitive and cosmogenic rather than interventionist: their union produces a vast progeny (sources state "over 500 children" in summary accounts), and the state of their embrace explains the pre-creation confinement. Their separation is the central cosmogonic event that allows the children (gods) to take on and govern natural domains: Tāne (forests and birds) effects the separation; Tāwhirimātea (storms and winds) wages war in opposition; Tangaroa governs the sea; Rongo and Haumia-tiketike are associated with cultivated and wild foods; Tūmatauenga is associated with war and human technologies (nets, hoes, canoes); Rūaumoko, remaining with Papatūānuku, explains earthquakes and volcanic activity. After separation Rangi and Papa are largely passive as actors in these accounts but their ongoing grief and longing are etiologically invoked for weather and mist.