When people hear of Maui, they mainly think of the island named after him in the Hawaiian archipelago. In Polynesia, Maui is best known as a superman, a demigod who performed incredible feats of strength like fishing up islands and capturing the sun. His timeless stories are still shared throughout the Pacific Islands as they have been for countless generations. Some islands claim him to be a god, others a semi-divine man, but many count this bold adventurer as an ancestor. For more than two centuries, western scholars have worked to record the tales of this mythic hero from around the Pacific. However, these anthropologists have overlooked and largely ignored the traditions of the Philippine Islands. Yet, hidden within the ancient mythology, extinct tattoos, and dying rituals of the Philippines, lays the powerful impact of a man well known in Polynesia, but nearly forgotten in the Philippines. Lane Wilcken, the author of Filipino Tattoos: Ancient to Modern, deciphers the fragments of the Maui tradition of the Philippines and compares them with what is known in the Pacific Islands to restore a holistic understanding of Maui and the traditions surrounding him. In this groundbreaking work he reveals the actual life history of a world changing progenitor hidden in the metaphors of mythic traditions that still affect us today.
About the Author: Lane Wilcken is also the author of Filipino Tattoos Ancient to Modern. He is an artisan of ancient technology & art, Co-Director of the Center for Babaylan Studies, & the Editor-in-Chief of 808ink, Hawaii's premier tattoo magazine. Lane was born from a native Ilokana mother from the both Ilocos regions in the Philippines and an American father of English and Scandinavian descent. Lane's maternal family was well acquainted in the traditional spiritual practices of the Philippines, his grandmother was a mangngilut (midwife and healer) and communicator with ancestral spirits. His great-great grandmother was a mangnganito or spirit medium. His grandfather understood the oral traditions & practices of the past. At an early age Lane was interested in mythology & other cultural practices. In his childhood Lane was taught by his parents through metaphors and analogies. His related interest in symbolism was expanded while attending Southern Utah University where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Sociology with a focus in Symbolic Interactionism and a Minor in Communications. Lane's unique heritage, upbringing, and schooling have given him an uncommon insight into various aspects of his ancestry, such as oral traditions, spiritual belief systems and tattoos. Lane has been researching the indigenous past of the Philippines and the Pacific Islands for nearly two decades. His methodology incorporates oral tradition; written history, linguistics, personal experience and cross-cultural analysis with other Austronesian peoples to bring a fuller understanding of the origins and culture of the peoples of the Philippines. His interests in cultural tattooing and mythology were borne out of a desire to strengthen cultural pride among Filipinos and to reunite Filipinos symbolically and spiritually with their estranged ancestors. Lane has given presentations and lectures on the tattooing and other cultural traditions of the Philippines at several universities and private forums. His audience has included: cultural organizations, social clubs, university professors, students, and scholars.