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Evidence of the Sakti Cult in Maori Culture

Our outlook on the archaic cosmological symbolism of Gobekli Tepe is that one primary path of its transmission to later cultures was through the Sakti Cult in India. The Sakti Cult is thought to have originated in regions nearby the Fertile Crescent and is traditionally seen as a direct predecessor of the later Vedic, Buddhist, and Hindu religions. Key cosmological concepts of the Sakti Cult are evident among the Tamil and are expressed in the words of their language, much as the existence of similar concepts can be demonstrated in the modern Turkish language. While key words of Dogon cosmology are demonstrably ancient Egyptian words, the Dogon language is understood to consist of discrete subsets of words from several different language groups. Many of these same concepts are also evident in the Dogon culture, where they are also given in relation to Tamil or Turkish roots. Because the modern Dogon culture seems to closely reflect the civic and cosmological practices of ancient Egypt at around 3000 BCE, the suggestion is that the same elements may have also influenced pre-dynastic culture in ancient Egypt. Evidence from predynastic locales such as Elephantine, Saqqara, and the ancient stone quarry of Gebel el-Silsila supports this outlook.

We have said that, in its earliest forms, the archaic tradition that seems to underlie these cultures was a matriarchal one, with emphasis on Mother Goddesses such as the two sister goddesses, Dharni Penu and Tana Penu, of the Sakti Cult and later goddesses of India such as Sati and Devi. Also pivotal to the cosmological symbolism of these traditions was the elephant-headed god Ganesha, who was the son of the two sister goddesses, or according to alternate myths, of Sati. Various icons and symbolic attributes of Ganesha have significance outside of India in such cultures as the Dogon and ancient Egypt, despite the absence in those groups of surviving references to an elephant god. The suggestion is that early cosmological elements were passed along from India to these cultures, but such passage may have preceded later personification of those meanings in the form of anthropomorphized deities.

On first impulse, the two sister goddesses of the Sakti Cult may call to mind the sisters of Isis and Nephthys in ancient Egypt. The goddess Isis was understood to symbolize Sothis, the bright star of Sirius. The Dogon understand that this main sunlike star of Sirius has a dark dwarf star companion, which we see represented in Egypt by Isis’s dark sister, Nephthys. Similarly, one of the sister goddesses of the Sakti Cult was named Dharni Penu (the word dharni means “luminous,” perhaps distantly similar to a Maori term puhana, which means “glowing”), and the other was an Earth Mother goddess named Tana Penu. Cosmologically speaking, the term earth implies the concept of “mass,” which is a key attribute of a dwarf star. So like Isis and Nephthys, we interpret the two Sakta goddesses to have symbolized the same two binary stars of Sirius. (Note that as a general usage, Sakti Cult goddesses are often referred to as Sakta goddesses.) In terms of a general outlook, the Sakti Cult does not fall very far from the main premise of Maori cosmology, which is that all natural phenomena descended from a Sky God or Sky Parent and an Earth Mother. Best himself cites comparisons to Hinduism as a correlate when characterizing Maori cosmological principles.¹

Allowing for reversals in symbolism that seem to have been instrumental in transforming the matriarchy of the archaic era into a later patriarchy, it is understandable that the likely correlate of Tana Penu in Maori cosmology might be not a mother goddess named Tana, but rather a creator god named Tane. Tregear defines Tane as “one of the greatest divinities of Polynesia. He was known and worshipped in almost every island of the Pacific, either as the male principle in Nature, or as the god of Light.”² Best echoes Tregear’s definition when he flatly asserts, “We may state briefly that Tane represents the male principle generally.”³ Knowing that on one level of interpretation the Sakta goddesses stood as representations of the female principle, we can see that Best’s understanding of the cosmological significance of Tane constitutes a very direct reversal of that same symbolism.

Maori references indicate that there were relationships between Tane and several of the aniconic elements that traditionally defined the Earth Mother goddess Tana Penu in the Sakti tradition. Best tells us that mythic storylines define Tane as having married the Mountain Maid, and so like Tana Penu, he comes to be closely associated with mountains. Cosmologically speaking, during the processes by which matter forms, mass (defined as “earth”) is said to be drawn up in the shape of a mountain. Parallels to the Sakta goddesses can also be seen in Tane’s association with standing stones. Best tells us that “certain upright stones were known as the ‘stones of Tane’”⁴ and that these stones served as altars and places where family offerings were made. Best mentions that the stones were sprinkled with water, a detail that calls to mind the clay pots filled with water (called potbellies) that were associated with Tana Penu.

Although it seems an unlikely role to be assigned to a male god, Tane was also responsible for certain fertility rituals, which is comparable to the fertility symbolism that characterizes Tana Penu. For example, it was Tane who was responsible for preparing “the Living Water in which the moon renews herself every month.”⁵ This responsibility, which should more intuitively fall to a Mother Goddess, serves as further evidence of the theoretic reversals in symbolism that we believe to have occurred in later eras of the cosmological tradition. The Maori concept of the Living Water, referred to as Waiora or Te-Wairoa-a-Tane, is one that is rooted in fundamental outlooks on the nature of our universe as they are given in the cosmology we have been pursuing, which postulate the existence of a primordial source for creation that is of the nature of waves or water. As is true for the archaic cosmology, Polynesian traditions associate these waters with the Tree of Life. The Maori notion is that the Living Waters are located in the fourth heaven, the source from which the soul of a new baby is drawn.⁶ From the perspective of the Dogon cosmological tradition, ours is the fourth of seven material universes.

In discussions of Tane’s relationship to another Maori deity, Tiki, Best himself cites examples of reversals in the gender role for Tiki that appear in Maori lore, some of which cast him in a biological role comparable to a phallus, while others overtly state that Tiki was given by Tane as a wife for Io. These discrepancies call to mind similar ambiguities of gender that have come to exist within Dogon cosmology in relation to their creator god Amma. In India, the word amma can be traced to Sati, who was the mother of Ganesha. There, amma is an affectionate term by which Ganesha refers to his mother, Sati, akin to mommy. Griaule quotes the Dogon priests as referring to their creator god Amma as being both male and female. This outlook might be seen to uphold a principle of dual opposites in Dogon cosmology, or it might possibly represent the accommodated result of a historical reversal in symbolism.