Hau Maka had a dream. The dream soul of Hau Maka moved in the direction of the sun (i.e., toward the East). When, through the power of her mana, the dream soul had reached seven lands, she rested there and looked around carefully. The dream soul of Hau Maka said the following: 'As yet, the land that stays in the dim twilight during the fast journey has not been reached.'

Easter Island will come later than land number 7, we can read, and the Eighth Land as a name for the island is here explained.

Beyond Saturn (7), the last phase, there should be a jump to the beginning again, with Sun as a little newborn baby - given that the background structure is formed according to our own concept of a week. A 'Sun type of week' with only 5 days it cannot be. To measure the path of Sun you need a yardstick of another kind to compare with, and Moon provides it, she is the natural candidate for a producer of time. The journey of the dream soul goes through the 'night' and it is primily a voyage in time.

If the week was used to map the path of Sun from his birth far away in the north, then the tropic of Capricorn could mark the end of his path and the '7th land' ought to lie close to the tropic of Capricorn. Easter Island lies further ahead, even more south, and so it should be an '8th land'.

But where in time can that possibly be? The answer is delivered by the text, viz. 'in the dim twilight'. The border line between daytime (when the position of Sun in the sky determins what time it is) and nighttime (when the phase of Moon is used) is a time of twilight ('2 lights'), a transitional zone when it could be said that time cannot be defined properly. The uncertainty is similar to what we experience when we try to divide a number by 0. Or even worse, if we try to imagine what 0 / 0 can possibly be.

However, uncertainty was not desirable - uncertainty means the unknown and the unknown is feared. Instead the 'twilight zone' (8) was probably regarded as a time when Sun and Moon cooperated and ruled together, the upper oval representing Sun and the lower Moon. If uncertainty is an undesirable trait then number 8 should be the opposite, a perfectly determined time.

"Easter Island (te pito o te kainga) is the last of all known islands. Seven lands lie before it, but these do not recommend themselves for settlement. Easter Island is the 'eighth land' (te varu kainga). Actually, we are dealing here with a figure of speech because 'seven' and 'eight' used as qualifying quantities play a traditional role in Oceania (Barthel 1962a). While the number seven is known as a topos in MQS., HAW., and MAO., the topos of the number eight goes far beyond eastern Polynesia (MQS., HAW., TAH.). In TON., the number eight is 'a conventional term signifying many or a well-balanced number' (McKern 1929:17), and on Malaita in the southern Solomon Islands, the physical world in its entirety is referred to as 'eight islands (wālu malau) (Ivens 1927:400).

The number eight not only means 'many' but also denotes perfection. Thus, when Easter Island was called 'an eighth land', the expression contained first of all the idea of a 'last' island - an island farthest away from the rest of the islands that make up the oceanic world. At the same time, the expression indicated a special position among the other islands. The idea of groups of seven, which are surpassed by an eight element, seems to belong to the cosmology of Asian high cultures. For example, there are seven planets circling the world axis, which represents the eighth, and therefore central, position." (The Eighth Land)