In heaven the gods are ranged by rank; in
the highest heaven dwells the chief god alone enjoying his supreme right
of silence, _tabu moe_; others inhabit the lower heavens in gradually
descending grade corresponding to the social ranks recognized among the
Polynesian chiefs on earth. This physical world is again the prototype
for the activities of the gods, its multitudinous manifestations
representing the forms and forces employed by the myriad gods in making
known their presence on earth. They are not these forms themselves, but
have them at their disposal, to use as transformation bodies in their
appearances on earth, or they may transfer them to their offspring on
earth. This is due to the fact that the gods people earth, and from them
man is descended. Chiefs rank, in fact, according to their claim to
direct descent from the ancient gods.[4]

Just how this came about is not altogether uniformly explained. In the
Polynesian creation story[5] three things are significant--a monistic
idea of a god existing before creation;[6] a progressive order of
creation out of the limitless and chaotic from lower to higher forms,
actuated by desire, which is represented by the duality of sex
generation in a long line of ancestry through specific pairs of forms
from the inanimate world--rocks and earth, plants of land and sea
forms--to the animate--fish, insects, reptiles, and birds;[7] and the
special analysis of the soul of man into "breath," which constitutes
life; "feeling," located in the heart; "desire" in the intestines; and
"thought" out of which springs doubt--the whole constituting _akamai_ or
"knowledge." In Hawaii the creation story lays emphasis upon progressive
sex generation of natural forms.

Individual islands of a group are popularly described as rocks dropped
down out of heaven or fished up from below sea as resting places for the
gods;[8] or they are named as offspring of the divine ancestors of the
group.[9] The idea seems to be that they are a part of the divine
fabric, connected in kind with the original source of the race.

_Footnotes to Section II, 2: Polynesian Cosmogony_

[Footnote 1: In the Polynesian picture of the universe the wall of
heaven is conceived as shutting down about each group, so that boats
traveling from one group to another "break through" this barrier wall.
The _Kukulu o Kahiki_ in Hawaii seems to represent some such confine.
Emerson says (in Malo, 30): "Kukulu was a wall or vert