Pele, Goddess of Fire

Pele is probably the most well-known and prominent figure among the Hawaiian pantheon of gods and goddesses, a revered and powerful deity of fire, lightning, wind and volcanoes.

The Mythology

Both a creator and a destroyer, embodying the dual nature of volcanic activity, Pele was born in Tahiti and migrated across the Pacific Ocean to the Hawaiian Islands. During her journey, she created the islands one by one.

While Pele is revered as a creator goddess, she is also feared for her violence, passion, jealousy and rage. She commands all the elements; fire, lightning and wind as well as the primordial forces within the earth itself.

She puts the fire in the Pacific Ring of Fire. Her anger is expressed in violent earthquakes and in the explosive destruction of volcanoes.

There are many stories about Pele’s adventures, romances, and conflicts with other deities, including her love affair with the demigod Kamapuaʻa, who represents the wild and lush aspect of nature.

Their turbulent relationship symbolizes the often volatile interaction between fire and water in the Hawaiian landscape.

Honolulu

Natural Disasters

Wherever you live, especially in North America, there’s probably at least one type of natural disaster that hangs over your head like the Sword of Damocles. In Hawaii, it’s volcanoes. In the midwest, it’s tornadoes and on the east coast, it’s hurricanes. in Vancouver, it’s earthquakes.

Anywhere there are forests, there’s the risk of forest fires, and of course, there are man-made disasters like the earthquakes caused by fracking, and sinkholes that erupt out of nowhere to swallow up cars and houses.

A friend once told me she frequently dreamed of tornadoes. We live nowhere near tornado alley, and I don’t think she’d ever been anywhere they actually occur, but that didn’t stop her mind from fixating on this powerful symbol of wanton destruction, and feeding it back to her in times of stress. Is this how you feel? How about now? Bahahahaa! The unconscious can be a cruel mistress.

Choose the Form of Your Destroyer

Unlike the Ghostbusters, very few of us get to choose the form of our destroyer. Most people stay within several miles of the place where they were born, or move with little consideration to things like natural disasters. We may choose to live where we do for the climate, only to downplay the danger it represents in its most angry, elemental form.

Settle on the banks of the Mississippi or on the coast of Florida and you know that flood waters are just one bad season from taking everything. Residents of California know the Santa Ana winds may do the same at any moment.

Living in Vancouver means living on the edge of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, the most hazardous earthquake-prone region in the world. We don’t get a lot of earthquakes, like California or Japan, but when we do, they tend to be catastrophic.

The Really Big One

The Cascadia Subduction Zone is a 700-mile (1,000 km) long fault line extending from northern California to southern British Columbia, where the Juan de Fuca plate is slowly wedging itself beneath the North American plate.

The plate below moves at a rate of about 40 mm/year and the friction of the plates scraping together causes frequent very small earthquakes, mostly underwater. But powerful megathrust quakes, up to 9.0+ magnitude, can occur when the plates gets stuck and then suddenly slip, releasing centuries of tension.

Apparently, we’re overdue. While the average time between major earthquakes on the Cascadia Subduction Zone is 450-500 years, the last major event was in 1700.

If you want to read the scariest article I’ve ever read about the destructive potential of the fault where I’ve chosen to live, check out The Really Big One, by Kathryn Shultz. Here’s an excerpt:

“When the next very big earthquake hits, the northwest edge of the continent, from California to Canada and the continental shelf to the Cascades, will drop by as much as six feet and rebound thirty to a hundred feet to the west—losing, within minutes, all the elevation and compression it has gained over centuries.

Some of that shift will take place beneath the ocean, displacing a colossal quantity of seawater… By the time the shaking has ceased and the tsunami has receded, the region will be unrecognizable.

Kenneth Murphy, who directs FEMA’s Region X, the division responsible for Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska, says, ‘Our operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast.’”

Vancouver

Carpe Diem

All of which is both terrifying and utterly unthinkable, in the sense that it doesn’t bear thinking about. Sure, I’ll dive down the rabbit hole once in a while, watching YouTube documentaries about the quake that could annihilate the entire region.

It feels like my civic duty to marvel at the CGI mountains of water slamming into the coast, skyscrapers collapsing in waterfalls of concrete and glass, suspension bridges snapping like crossbows, casting cars and pedestrians into the ocean.

But it’s not enough to make me want to live anywhere else. I mean, we’re all going to die somehow, right? It’s not our fault that the gods chose to make the most dangerous places on earth the most enticing to our human brains. We want to live by the water, but the water sometimes takes a sacrifice. The goddess of fire and earth does the same.

This week, make a sacrifice to Pele and ask for her protection. Roast a pig, or some summer squash, over an open flame. Get a tattoo honoring the symbolic power of art and ideas over the impermanence of skin.

Sing and dance around the fire as our ancestors have for millennia. Celebrate everything that matters now that will be one day be lost to the sands of time.

Thanks for reading, everyone!

Art & Astrology

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