Goddess Laka

Laka wants to travel the world dancing and spreading joy to as many people as possible. Put on your best grass skirt and sway those hips! Laka loves having her photo taken with people who share her passion of the "dance".

Hawaiian Goddess Laka: Honored as the Goddess of the Hula. Laka invites us to joyfully dance upon the earth in her teachings of sacred sound and light. Laka inspires the poetry of our life experience. Laka can be seen in herbs, it's her gift of medicine for her human children. Her altars are temporary structures, built of entwined branches and decorated with forest ferns, flowers and other plants. As the alter is being prepared, the Kahu chants to her in order to receive divine powers of healing. She represents rejuvenation Restoration, and Celebration. hula [hoo' lah] "Hula is the language of the heart and therefore the heartbeat of the Hawaiian people. Reflecting many of the central ideas and events of Hawaiian history, the hula is a focal point of Hawaiian culture. Without a written language, Hawaiians used the hula and its accompanying chants as talking books of history, genealogy, and communication. The hula transcends time and space. American Protestant missionaries, who arrived in 1820, denounced the hula as a heathen dance. The newly Christianized ali?i (royalty and nobility) were urged to ban the hula—which they did. However, many of them continued to privately patronize the hula. The Hawaiian performing arts had a resurgence during the reign of King David Kalakaua (1874–1891), who encouraged the traditional arts. Hula practitioners merged Hawaiian poetry, chanted vocal performance, dance movements and costumes to create the new form, the hula ku?i (ku?i means "to combine old and new"). The pahu appears not to have been used in hula ku?i, evidently because its sacredness was respected by practitioners; the ipu gourd (Lagenaria sicenaria) was the indigenous instrument most closely associated with hula ku?i. Ritual and prayer surrounded all aspects of hula training and practice, even as late as the early 20th century. Teachers and students were dedicated to the goddess of the hula, Laka.