iMahina is an interactive starting point. What it shows is a piece of Hawaiian time, or a piece of a piece. Hawaiian time holds the movements of the moon, the sun, and the stars, the seasons, and our ties to the ancestors who came before us, to the genealogy of people and place. We hope it widens your sense of time beyond the clock, toward the intergenerational and the interdimensional.
The Kaulana Mahina names every night of the month. Naming every night is rare among the world's calendars, and it's widespread across the Pacific. Each of its thirty pō has its own name, and the name tells you both the night's place in the month and the moon's light. Hilo, the first crescent after the dark, opens each malama, or month. Muku, the dark moon, closes it. Most years have twelve malama, and every few years an added month keeps the lunar and solar years in step. Each pō carries associations with planting, fishing, rest, and ceremony, learned by reading the sky, the land, and the sea over many lifetimes. Alongside them, the app offers its own interpretation of each pō, for working with the moon in your own life. In iMahina, each pō begins at sunset. Sources differ on when a Hawaiian day began, and sunset is the choice we've made for now.
