Ngā kete o te wānanga

Tāne is the one who pushed. That is what he is known for. But the story I want to tell you is what he did afterwards, once there was light and the world had room in it.

He went up.

There are twelve heavens in the tellings that count them, and the knowledge of the world was kept at the very top, in Te Toi (art)-o-ngā-rangi (sky), with Io — the supreme one, in those traditions that name Io at all. Tāne set out to climb, and he did not go unopposed. His brother Whiro wanted the same knowledge, and Whiro is not a villain in the cartoon sense; he is the one who believed the eldest should have it, and he had a case. Whiro sent insects and birds to attack Tāne on the way up — the pekapeka (bat), the ngārara (reptiles / creeping things), biting things sent into his face while he climbed.

Tāne kept going. He took the form of Tāne-te-wānanga for the ascent, and at the top he was given three kete (basket):

Te kete tuauri — the basket of sacred knowledge, the things beyond ordinary sight. Te kete tuatea — the basket of ancestral knowledge, of ritual and of the makutu (harmful spell) that harm. Te kete aronui — the basket of knowledge before us, the world you can see and study and use.

And with them, two stones: ngā whatu kura, set down at the whare wānanga (house of learning) so the knowledge would hold.

He brought them down. That is the whole point. He did not keep them up there. Knowledge in te ao Māori descends — it comes down through whakapapa, from tūpuna (ancestors) to mokopuna, and it is meant to be carried, not hoarded. But note the other half of that: it was still guarded. Not everything in those kete was for everyone. There were houses of learning, and there were people entrusted with particular knowledge, and there were things you did not repeat outside them. Open-handed and careful at the same time.

Now, why does a story about baskets sit under the Atua of the forest?

Because Tāne is the one who makes things stand up. He stood his parents apart. He stood the trees up out of the ground, which is why the great trees are his children — the kauri (great forest tree), the tōtara (tall forest tree), the rimu — and the birds in them are his. And he stood knowledge up where people could reach it. Growth, uprightness and learning are the same act to him.

That is why a tree is not timber until something is said. When a tōtara was taken for a waka (canoe), there was karakia, and there was a reason given, and there was an offering, because you are taking one of his children. There is a well-known telling of Rātā, who felled a tree for a waka without doing any of that, and came back the next morning to find the tree standing again, whole, and the forest people telling him exactly what he had failed to do.

So the first step here is very simple, and you can do it today. Before you cut, prune, pick or clear anything that is growing, stop for two seconds and say — out loud or not — what you are taking it for. That is a complete tikanga. It costs you nothing and it changes the relationship from use to exchange.

And the second step: whatever it is you have been meaning to learn, begin it. Tāne climbed twelve heavens with insects in his eyes to bring learning down to where you are standing. The least you can do is open the thing.