Io dwelt within the breathing-space of immensity. // The universe was in darkness, with water everywhere. // There was no glimmer of dawn, no clearness, no light.

And he began by saying these words,

That he might cease remaining inactive:

'Darkness, become a light-possessing darkness.' And at once a light appeared. He then repeated these self-same words in this manner,

That he might cease remaining inactive:

'Light, become a darkness-possessing light.' And again an intense darkness supervened. Then a third time He spake, saying:

'Let there be one darkness above. Let there be one darkness below. Let there be a darkness unto Tupua. Let there be a darkness unto Tawhito. A dominion of light. A bright light.' And now a great light prevailed.

Io then looked to the waters which compassed him about, and spake a fourth time, saying:

'Ye waters of Tai kama, be ye separate. Heaven be formed.' Then the sky became suspended.

'Bring forth thou Te Tupua horo nuku.' And at once the moving earth lay stretched abroad.

(Tiwai Paraone, New Zealand, c. 1880, and translated by Hare Hongi.)

More than fifty years after Christianity reached New Zealand it was suddenly disclosed by certain Maori elders that the pantheistic mythology hitherto revealed was not in fact the full story, and that according to an esoteric or 'higher' learning - withheld till then because of its sanctity - the Maori did have a single, Supreme Creator, whose name was Io.

The first reference in print to Io seems to have been made in 1876, by C. O. Davis, who said a member of the Ngapuhi tribe had told him 'that the Maoris in olden times had worshipped a Supreme Being whose name was so sacred that none but a priest might utter it at certain times and places ... The only complete account was given much later, in a manuscript dictated by the Maori elder Te Matorohanga and published in 1913 ... But both this elder and his scribe Te Whatahoro were converted to Christianity long before the manuscript was composed.

The little word 'io' or 'kio', as Buck points out in an amused survey of the principal evidence and claims ... can sometimes mean the squeak of a rat or bird, at other times muscular twitches of the body that were regarded as omens by the Maori. Even so, Io-Jehovah caused some excitement in an age which wished to persuade itself that primitive peoples had really been Believers all along, and His revelation soon led to further discoveries elsewhere in Polynesia - notably in the Tuamotu, where Stimson believed as late as 1933 that he had unearthed a cult of 'Kiho'.

(Antony Alpers, Legends of the South Seas.)