Io Matua Kore
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Io Matua Kore (Māori for "Io the Parentless who was always existent without beginning or end") is in many ancient Polynesian[1] traditions the supreme god.
The Io tradition was restricted to only the highest Tohunga ("priest" or "expert", the Māori equivalent of the Hawaiian "Kahuna") throughout the last 600 years. Io faith originated in the middle East,[2] and spread to Polynesia through migrations of people calling themselves Menehune. It was suppressed by Polytheistic tribes from Tahiti who invaded the Eastern Pacific, eventually reaching New Zealand.[3]
According to Nga Puhi reverend Māori Marsden who received the Io tradition from his grandfather, Io is:
- "both Being-itself and absolute Nothingness. That is, He is truly infinite, encompassing within himself both the absolutely Positive and absolutely Negative."
Māori Marsden's grandfather was born in about 1790, was a signatory to the Treaty of Waitangi and died in 1908. Māori Marsden himself was tohied, 'consecrated and dedicated', by a group of elders when he was about 8 years old. The Io tradition could be interpreted as a belief of Non-Dualism/Monism and similar to the idea described variously as the Void, the Is, Emptiness, or the mind of God.
Io lived eternally in i te korekore, "the absolute nothingness". The Korekore is a double negative, a double kore. According to Māori Marsden, to the Māori mind, the doubling of kore. meant
- "…not simply 'non-being', or annihilating nothingness, though it includes this meaning, but it went beyond this. By means of a thorough-going negativity, the negation itself turns into the most positive activity. It is the negation of negation. Te Korekore is the infinite realm of the formless and undifferentiated. It is the realm not so much of 'non-being' but rather of 'potential being'. It is the realm of Primal and Latent energy from which the stuff of the Universe proceeds and from which all things evolve."
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[edit] History
Io was first known generally with the publication in 1913 of Percy S. Smith's two volume work The Lore of the Whāre-wananga, and from some of the writing.
Two esteemed tohunga 'priests', of the East Coast Ngāti Kahungunu people, Te Matorohanga and Nepia Pohuhu gave a series of lectures at a whare wananga ("school of learning"), in the Wairarapa district in 1865. H. T. Whatahoro over a period of 40 years wrote down, developed and rewrote these lectures. Whatahoro's text was approved by the Tane-nui-a-rangi Committee in 1907 as an agreed expression of genuine Ngaati Kahungunu tradition in that year. (Not necessarily a tradition known by the general population of Ngaati Kahungunu.)
The Io tradition was initially rejected by scholars including prominent Māori scholar Sir Peter Buck who wrote "The discovery of a supreme God named Io in New Zealand was a surprise to Māori and Pākehā alike." Buck believed that the Io tradition was restricted to the Ngaati Kahungunu as a response of Christianity. This rejection was based on the Euro-Centric and Darwinistic view that differing people groups are historically unrelated. The Io Tradition recounts many Christian and Hebrew historical events and religious characteristics, describing them using Polynesian names: the son of God, the Holy Spirit, the Heavenly Father,[4] Abraham, Isaac, Joseph's life story[5] etc.
Contemporaneous accounts from Hawaii[6] indicate that Io has been known to Polynesians for millennia. Western Scholars have found the early oral traditions of Io, with the place-name Ur, or Uru and the heroic figure Nu'u[7] a difficult fact to swallow.
J. Prytz Johansen also rejects the Io tradition as existing before the introduction of Christianity to Māori. "All things considered there is the greatest probability that Io became a high god after the Europeans came to New Zealand." He does argue, though, that if there were other pieces of evidence "independent of one another, the pre-European existence of the high-god Io would be assured" because of the distance of the tribes from one another.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ D Kikawa, Perpetuated in Righteousness pp65 68
- ^ Io Origins, G Cruickshank, p 25
- ^ Perpetuated in Righteousness. D Kikawa, pp 141-150
- ^ Fornander, Account of the Polynesian Race , vol 1, p 128
- ^ G Cruickshank, IO Origins, p 26
- ^ Perpetuated in Righteousness by Daniel Kikawa pp. 55–60
- ^ Turun, In Hawaian folk Tales, p25
