Varima-te-takere

Varima-te-takere occupies the lowest interior of Avaiki (the underworld/origin-place) and is presented as the very beginning or generative substrate. In accounts attributed to Mangaian/Rarotongan tradition she was anxious for progeny and created six principal children by plucking three bits of flesh from each side of her body, which were moulded into forms that became the primary gods (commonly named Vatea/Avatea, Tinirau, Tango, Tumu-te-ana-oa, Raka, and Tu-metua). In some linked variants an earth-goddess (Papa) is described as plucked from her left side and later partnered with Vatea. A minority variant describes Varima-te-takere as formed within an egg-realm called Te Enua-teki; this egg-image is recorded as an alternate cosmological motif in some sources.

Sources consistently describe Varima-te-takere as occupying an extremely confined posture in her realm — so narrow that "her knees and chin touch, no other position is possible." William Wyatt Gill characterises her as "a female spirit (or demon) of flesh and blood." In at least one variant she is associated with an egg-realm (Te Enua-teki, "the Silent Land") and is said to have been formed inside an egg, giving rise to alternate cramped-womb and egg-origin images.

Her documented role is creative origination: she produces the principal gods and the ancestors of humankind by deliberately plucking portions of her own body and fashioning them into beings. Named offspring include Vatea (Avatea), Tinirau, Tango, Tumu-te-ana-oa, Raka and Tu-metua; some accounts add Papa as an island-specific variant. Ritually she is associated in chants with being fed raw taro "at appointed periods of worship," but beyond origination and occasional cultic feeding the sources record no additional supernatural powers.