All mythologies contain two levels of understanding. On the one hand, there are the stories themselves, and they are what they are. It is easy to dismiss them as fairy tales for children, or the product of uneducated minds attempting to explain such things as Creation. Maori refer to this interpretation as tales of the lower jaw. In fact most mythologies are symbolic, psycho-spiritual understandings encoded in story form. Each of the characters in the story is an archetype, a symbol for an aspect of the human psyche and its journey. These works are an exploration of the teachings of Io Matua Kore, the encoded wisdom of my ancestors.