Pele's curse

Pele's curse is the story that anyone who takes rocks or other natural items from Pele's island will suffer for it. Every year visitors post such items back to Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park, blaming them for bad luck.

Wikipedia calls Pele's Curse a legend that Pele's anger falls on anyone who takes things from her island. It says tourists post many small natural items back to the park service each year to ask her forgiveness, and that people believe the curse was made up around the middle of the 20th century to stop tourists removing them.

Julie Cart reported in the Los Angeles Times in 2001 that thousands of pounds of these parcels reach the park each year, many addressed to Pele as queen and sent from around the world. The senders often describe a run of misfortune and ask for the item to go back to Pele so that the curse will lift.

Pele herself belongs to living Hawaiian religion. Martha Beckwith wrote in 1940 that Hawaiians believe Kīlauea is home to Pele and her family of fire deities, with Pele ruling the lava flows. She names Pele's brothers Ka-moho-aliʻi and Kamakaua and her sister Hiʻiaka. The Honolulu Advertiser reported in 2003 that the park was looking for a new portrait of Pele, to show that Native Hawaiians hold the volcano sacred.

The park's 1953 Nature Notes record an earlier offering. On the night of 5 September 1934 a man called Lycurgus, known as the Spartan, who believed firmly in Pele, walked to Halemaumau with Alec Lancaster, a Cherokee guide who had shown visitors the area since 1885. They prayed to the volcano goddess, threw an ohelo berry lei Lancaster had made into the fire pit, then added a bottle of gin they had partly drunk on the way.