Wawata - Moon Dreaming

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Whakaeke 

Ki ngā whakaeke, haumi.

Join with those who connect the waka together.

Find your place, you are part of the action.

Our entrance onto Hina’s moon stage begins our lunar journey. This is our whakaeke.

The prefix ‘whaka-’ always indicates action, movement, causation. And the word ‘eke’ is a verb with a lot of energy concentrated inside this dynamic triad of letters. It has a real onomatopoeia. ‘Eke’ is a word with oomph to its signature. It means to come in to land, to get on board, to embark, to ascend. The word itself really makes an entrance.

Whiro, Tirea, Ohata, Ōuenuku, Okoro. Our entrance into Hina’s realm is vital. This is how we set ourselves up to dream of connection and a more open and intimate experience of living.

The next five moons are our fundamentals, our tūāpapa, our baseline. What we stand on. And traversing the next five days and nights helps us to clarify both where we stand and what we stand for. We rebuild ourselves from here each month. Hina provides the opportunity for a fresh start, for a renewed entry every month.

It seems fitting to begin the whakaeke with our precious Okoro, our moon dial from home.

I first saw this taonga, this treasure, hanging on the wall in my cousin Peter-Lucas Jones’ house in Taipā in 2020. It stopped me in my tracks. I could not believe my eyes. I had been slowly working on this book for more than a year already, drawing stories together and going back over my old maramataka, my moon calendars. In that instant I recognised a familar circular language.This way of depicting Hina’s travels reminded me of the concentric wheels of our whakapapa, our genealogy, drawn by our mum’s father, Tommy Bowman.

This orbital language spoke to me in a way I recognised so well.

Ted (Edward) Llewellyn Jones, our whanaunga, our relation, made this Okoro in 1969.

And yes, Okoro is the name of one of the days and nights of this lunar calendar too. At that time, Ted had just left Kaitāia College. He was 16 years old and living with his grandmother, Raiha Moeroa Jones, Mā Jones as she was known, who still lived in the house where she had many of her 16 tamariki.

Ted told me how Mā Jones and Tā Hekenukumai Busby, our illustrious navigator, asked Ted to meet them. He recounted how they passed him bits of paper and told him to put them together to make this lunar calendar, this Okoro. As Ted put it, he ‘hopped on the drawing board’. And this is what he made.

Tā Hek had the idea of the circle. The circular nature of time unmistakable. And so our revolving taonga came to life, the numbers designed to rotate, the continuity of lunar time enshrined for generations to come.

Ted has graciously allowed the taonga to be represented in this book. Another way for our mātauranga, our traditional Māori wisdom, to be humbly shared. Our ancestor’s legacy lives on. Seeing this beautiful moon dial was such a tohu, a wonderful and telling portent. A sign for me to continue, to follow through and complete these stories.

Our whakaeke phase is about entering. It is the word used to describe the walk towards the wharenui, the meeting house, from the waharoa or gateway. And it is the name of the performance of the items that bring our kapa, our group, onto the stage. In this way, it is like many such words,functioning as both a verb and noun.

The whakaeke is our portal onto Hina’s stage. Whiro, then Tirea, Ohata and then Ōuenuku and Okoro illuminate our foundations, our origins, our truths. And we are not alone.

We enter with our friends, our relations, even when we are physically apart, we can call on them to be part of our whakaeke. And of course we bring those who have passed on with us too. Our tūpuna who instigated the Okoro, Mā Jones, Tā Hek, our Karani Pāpā, Tommy, and many many others. We travel in convoy, already aligned with so many.

Here we go. Freeing up our wawata, our dreams, for the start of our round trip with Hina.

Whiro

Renewal

Kia katia ō karu kia pai ai te kite.

Close your eyes in order to truly perceive.

Let the darkness of Whiro open your eyes.

Whiro is where we begin our lunar journey.

Whiro is our name for the new moon. The darkness. A brief re-enactment of Te Pō. Our long night of creation. Our moon’s lustre completely obscured. Her face illuminated away from our gaze, on the other side. The side we never see.

Whiro signals beginnings and endings. Birth and death. Spring tide. The great washing away. A giant reset.

Here in the dark. Breathing in the darkness, my chest rising and falling with Whiro. Inhalations adding to the space deep inside, deep enough to be completely immersed in that luscious centre of my feminine being. Exhalations allow the release of old patterns. Stepping gently out of those old skins into freshly formed layers of realisation. Confidence starting to grow from that central hidden core of our being.

Welcome to this, our ancient Māori lunar cycle. Whiro welcomes us into her jet-black stare. She is in a class of her own. Her legacy is unique. Her wawata, her dreams, take us beyond our obsidian hardwalls of fear into what might be possible.

Whiro-te-tipua was one of the children of Papatūānuku, our earth mother and Ranginui, our sky father. Whiro is sometimes associated with the dark side of humanity. And yet our Whiro moon is so much more than that.

For me Whiro’s gift is so eloquently summed up by our tūpuna, our forebears, in the phrase ‘Ngā Ikaa Whiro’. Literally, Whiro’s army. The name for a group of experienced warriors.

** Ika can also mean fish, and victim, but not in this context.

I love that name, it is a name I belong to. A name that claims me back.

It is the name also given to graduates of Te Pīnakitanga o Te Reo Kairangi, a total immersion te reo Māori language course at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa. Forever language warriors, tongues forged in the fire of Whiro. The quest and the responsibility of speaking up for our reo, our language, at all times and in all places is upon us. Discovery of inner purpose and drive is the essence of Whiro for me. This experience was an ultimate shedding of language skin. Right in te muramura o te ahi, the heat of the battle, the fierce flames of learning our language, like a brand on my heart. This experience changed me forever. For the better.

It added potency to the threads binding me to mytrue identity as Māori. Looking into Whiro’s dark eye, into infinite space, somehow manifests those ancient dreams, flying through space and time. Time guided by Whiro. A time of the ongoing learning battle within myself, the battles against whakamā, fear and shame, feelings of inadequacy, the pain of learning and failing and getting up again to keep trying. Battle-scarred and weary at times, yet still here, standing firm. Replenished for another month in Whiro.

We are all warriors of one kind or another. We all have our battles with our own special kind of pain. So it’s that time again. A time to rebirth our warrior selves in Whiro.

This Whiro darkness makes our other senses more acute. I hear the ruru, our owl, hunting. That haunting call ringing out through the valley. That portent of those from beyond the ārai, beyond the veil. They are so close tonight and I think of Turikātuku, one of my tūpuna wāhine, my female ancestors. She holds my face tonight in Whiro.

Turikātuku knew about darkness. She gradually went blind, it is said, from some kind of inflammatory disease. Despite her blindness, she was a warrior, she fought in battle, she was a military strategist and she was a matakite, a seer. A true wahine toa, a warrior woman. Turikātuku was born in the late 1700s and married the Ngāpuhi chief Hongi Hika.

It is said she spoke these words about her descendants buried in Australia, whose remains were not returned as she had wished, ‘Ka tohe au, ka tohe au’. I will persevere, I will persevere.

This is my whisper to myself. To persevere, no matter my inability to see in the dark. To find my way carefully at this time of the month. For me the dark mantle of Whiro is a protective time for insights, a time to call on that deep core of resistance and fight for what is right.

So we begin again in the time of Whiro, our new moon. Te tai nunui, the first syzygy. What a word! The name for the alignment of our moon and sun’s gravitational forces. Pulling the oceans high and drawing them fiercely back again. The first spring tide. The combined forces of Tamanuiterā, our sun, and Whiro. A chance to renew from a deep inner place of truth.

A chance to dream ourselves into the vastness of space.

How will you renew yourself in this dark moon’s infinite energy tonight? What stories can you draw on from your old people, from women in your extended family, to replenish your strength for Hina’s new orbit? Isn’t it strange how being in the dark can make what matters clear? Now, close your eyes and see.