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asterism OP wrote
Maui's encounter as recorded here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81ui_(M%C4%81ori_mythology)
After his early exploits, Māui considered himself ready to win immortality for humankind. His father tried to dissuade him, predicting that he will fail because of the mistakes in his baptismal ceremony. His father says to him, "My son, I know that you are a brave fellow and that you have done all things. Yet I am afraid that there is someone who will defeat you."
"Who could that be?" asked Māui.
"Your ancestress Hine-nui-te-pō (Goddess of the Night). You can see her flashing there on the horizon."
"Is she as strong as the sun?" asked Māui. "I trapped him and beat him. Is she greater than the sea, which is greater than the land? Yet I have dragged land from it. Now let us see whether we will find life or death."
His father answered, "You are right, my last-born and the strength of my old age. Go, find your ancestress who lives at the side of the sky."
"What does she look like?" asked Māui.
"The red flashing in the western sky comes from her," said the father. "Her body is like a human being, but her eyes are greenstone, her hair sea-kelp, and her mouth is like a barracouta's mouth."[2]: 449
Māui, undaunted, set out westward, with his companions, to the home of Hine-nui-te-pō. In some versions, his companions are the smallest birds of the forest, the tomtit, the robin, the grey warbler and the fantail. In other versions, his companions are his brothers. He finds Hine asleep with her legs apart, and he and his companions see sharp flints of obsidian and greenstone between her thighs. "Now," Māui tells his friends, "when I go into the body of this old woman, do not laugh at me. Wait until I come out again from her mouth. Then you may laugh as much as you want."
"You will be killed!" was all the companions could say.
"If you laugh I will indeed be killed. But if I pass right through her body I will live, and she will die."
Then he readied himself, winding the cord of his battle club tightly around his wrist and casting aside his garment. As Māui began his task, the cheeks of his watching friends puckered with suppressed laughter. As his head and arms disappear, one of his brothers - or the fantail bird - cannot hold back any longer and burst out in laughter. The old lady wakes, opens her eyes, claps her legs together and cuts Māui in two. Now Māui has become the first being to die and, because he had failed in his task, all human beings are mortal. The goddess keeps her position at the portal to the underworld through which all humans must travel
Sid_Knee wrote
you from aotearoa bro?
asterism OP wrote
Related and equally fascinating is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rarohenga
The maori afterlife