A Circle of Beauty, Intention, Relationship, and Aloha

There are gifts we purchase, gifts we select, and gifts we make with our own hands.

And then there is the lei.

A lei may be woven from flowers gathered at sunrise, fragrant leaves clipped carefully from a garden, ferns carried home from the forest, shells collected over many seasons, seeds polished until they gleam, or feathers painstakingly arranged by an accomplished artisan. Yet whatever its material, a lei becomes more than the sum of the things from which it is fashioned.

Someone has gathered.

Someone has prepared.

Someone has sat quietly—or perhaps laughed and talked with family and friends—while the materials passed repeatedly through the hands.

Someone has thought of the person who will eventually wear it.

This is one reason the art of lei making cannot be understood merely as floral design. Within Hawaiian culture, the making and giving of lei is a continuing cultural practice, associated with relationship, celebration, remembrance, hospitality, affection, and aloha. Kamehameha Schools describes the making and giving of lei as significant both to Hawaiians and to the wider community of people who call Hawaiʻi home, emphasizing the importance of good intention in the process. (Kamehameha Schools)

To make a lei, therefore, is to create something beautiful.

To give a lei is to give something more.

It is to say:

I see you.

I honor this moment.

I have prepared something for you.

Carry this beauty with you.

And sometimes, without speaking a word:

You are loved.

Lei Is a Verb as Much as It Is a Thing

We tend to think of a lei as an object: a garland placed around someone’s neck.

But the deeper beauty of lei emerges when we begin thinking relationally.

There is the person who gathers.

There is the land from which the materials arise.

There is the plant.

There are the hands of the maker.

There is the person who receives.

There is the occasion.

And there is the relationship connecting them all.

A University of Hawaiʻi cultural-resource description of hana lei—the practice of lei making—beautifully explains that lei can be made from many kinds of materials, including flowers, leaves, ferns, limu, shells, feathers, and other natural materials. It describes the lei as adorning the wearer with the kinolau of the land: the embodied forms or manifestations present within the natural world. (University of Hawaii)

That idea deserves contemplation.

When a person receives a lei of flowers, leaves, seeds, or other natural materials, the person is not simply being decorated.

Something of place has been placed upon them.

The fragrance of the garden accompanies them.

The greenery of the mountain rests upon their shoulders.

The colors of the blossoms surround their body.

The labor of the maker rests against their skin.

The lei becomes a meeting place between land, maker, receiver, and occasion.

This is why intention matters.

Before Making the Lei: Gathering

The making of a lei begins long before the first flower touches the needle.

It begins with gathering.

For the thoughtful lei maker, gathering is not simply an act of taking. It is an act of relationship.

One looks at what is available.

What is flowering?

What is abundant?

What belongs here?

What may appropriately be gathered?

What should be left alone?

Contemporary conservation guidance has emphasized that growing lei plants in home gardens can help perpetuate lei traditions while reducing gathering pressure on remaining native vegetation. (Hawaii DLNR)

This creates an important principle for anyone learning the art:

Beauty should not require careless taking.

Gather with permission.

Gather sustainably.

Learn which plants are culturally significant.

Learn which plants are native, rare, protected, cultivated, or invasive.

Take what is appropriate.

Leave enough for the plant, the ecosystem, and those who come after you.

In this way, the lei begins with gratitude rather than possession.

Preparing the Materials

Once gathered, the materials must be prepared.

Flowers may need to be sorted.

Leaves may need to be cleaned.

Stems may need trimming.

Certain materials benefit from being cooled, hydrated, wrapped, softened, or allowed to rest.

Damaged blossoms are set aside.

Leaves are examined.

Colors are arranged.

Textures are considered.

And gradually a pattern begins to reveal itself.

This is where lei making becomes meditative.

The hands repeat movements.

Select.

Place.

Pierce.

String.

Braid.

Wrap.

Turn.

Tighten.

Continue.

One cannot hurry certain kinds of beauty.

A beautiful lei teaches rhythm.

The Traditional Arts of Lei Construction

There is no single way to make a Hawaiian lei. The particular method often depends upon the material being used, and Hawaiian lei traditions include a rich vocabulary of techniques. University of Hawaiʻi resources identify styles including kui pololei, kui poepoe, wili, haku, hili, humupapa, and hilo, among others. (University of Hawaii)

Several fundamental techniques are especially useful for understanding the art.

Kui — Stringing

Kūʻi or kui lei are among the forms most immediately recognizable to beginners.

The materials are pierced and strung together. A University of Hawaiʻi description defines kui in this context as stringing pierced objects such as flowers. (University of Hawaii at Hilo)

There are variations.

In kui pololei, materials are strung in a relatively straight orientation.

In kui poepoe, materials are arranged so that they radiate around the cord, producing a fuller, rounded lei. Kapiʻolani Community College describes kui construction as stringing plant materials either through the center (pololei) or from the sides (poepoe). (Kapiolani Community College)

Plumeria, orchids, pīkake and other flowers may be used in forms of stringing lei, depending upon availability and the desired effect. (Hawaii Airports)

For many beginners, kui is an excellent doorway into lei making because the basic principle is simple while the possibilities for color, rhythm, fragrance, spacing, and pattern are nearly endless.

Haku — Braiding and Arranging

The word haku carries meanings associated with composing, arranging, inventing, and braiding. (University of Hawaii at Hilo)

That alone tells us something important.

The maker is not merely attaching flowers.

The maker is composing.

In lei haku, plant materials are incorporated through a braiding or plaiting technique. Kapiʻolani Community College identifies haku as the braiding of plant materials, while other University of Hawaiʻi educational resources distinguish it from methods involving only a single material. (Kapiolani Community College)

A haku lei can become wonderfully complex: blossoms, greenery, texture, shape, fragrance, and repetition appearing together like botanical music.

And an important distinction is worth remembering:

Haku describes a method.

It is not simply another word for every lei worn upon the head.

A head lei may appropriately be called a lei poʻo—literally a lei associated with the head—while haku refers to a particular construction technique.

Wili — Winding

Wili is the art of winding or wrapping materials securely around a foundation.

Kapiʻolani Community College describes this technique as placing plant materials against a backing and winding fiber or cord around both the material and the backing to bind them together. (Kapiolani Community College)

Wili allows the maker tremendous freedom.

A leaf.

Then a blossom.

Then fern.

Then another blossom.

Wrap.

Turn.

Add.

Wrap again.

Patterns gradually emerge.

From the front the viewer sees abundance.

Behind the beauty lies structure.

There is a lovely metaphor here.

What appears effortless often rests upon invisible discipline.

Hili — Braiding a Single Material

Hili involves braiding or plaiting and is particularly associated with lei created from a single kind of material. University of Hawaiʻi educational material distinguishes it from haku on this basis. (Leeward Community College Library)

Fern, vine, leaf, or another flexible material may become a continuous braided form.

Here the beauty does not necessarily arise from contrast.

It arises from repetition.

One material.

One rhythm.

One evolving line.

Hili demonstrates that simplicity can possess tremendous elegance.

Hīpuʻu — Knotting

Another fascinating technique is hīpuʻu, the joining of suitable plant materials through knotting.

Kapiʻolani Community College defines it as creating a chain by knotting plant stems together without cordage or a needle. (Kapiolani Community College)

Here the material itself becomes its own fastening.

The plant provides both beauty and structure.

Humupapa — Sewing to a Foundation

Humupapa involves sewing materials onto a backing. Kapiʻolani Community College describes the process as attaching plant materials to a foundation, and Bishop Museum documents humupapa as an important technique in Hawaiian featherwork as well. (Kapiolani Community College)

This method reminds us that the category “lei” reaches well beyond the familiar strand of tropical flowers.

Lei may represent extraordinary levels of craftsmanship.

Some are ephemeral.

Some may endure for generations.

A Simple Beginner’s Lei Kui

For someone learning lei making for the first time, a simple lei kui offers a beautiful introduction.

You will need fresh, suitable flowers; lei cord or strong thread; a lei needle; scissors; and a clean working surface.

Begin by examining your flowers.

Do not immediately start stringing.

Notice them.

Which are large?

Which are small?

Which have opened fully?

Which colors naturally belong beside one another?

Arrange them before you.

Then decide upon a rhythm.

Perhaps:

white — yellow — white — yellow.

Or:

three blossoms of one color followed by one blossom of another.

Or perhaps no formal pattern at all.

There is beauty in ordered repetition, but there is also beauty in organic variation.

Thread the lei needle carefully.

Pierce each blossom in a manner appropriate to that particular flower and gently guide it along the cord.

Do not crush the blossoms together.

Allow them to rest naturally.

Continue.

Flower after flower.

Movement after movement.

Soon something remarkable occurs.

Individual blossoms cease appearing as isolated flowers.

They become lei.

Multiplicity becomes unity.

One flower could never create the whole pattern.

Each flower contributes something.

This, too, is part of the teaching.

Make the Lei With the Receiver in Mind

There is a profound difference between making a lei and making a lei for someone.

When the receiver is known, every decision acquires another layer of meaning.

Perhaps you remember their favorite color.

Perhaps the fragrance reminds you of their childhood.

Perhaps a flower comes from a plant grown by their grandmother.

Perhaps greenery comes from your own garden.

Perhaps the lei is being made because a child has graduated.

A friend has arrived.

A loved one is departing.

A couple is marrying.

An elder is being honored.

A teacher is being thanked.

A life is being remembered.

Now the lei becomes biography.

Memory enters the pattern.

Relationship enters the pattern.

Intention enters the pattern.

The lei becomes a message that does not require paper.

Giving the Lei

Then comes the moment for which the lei has been created.

The giving.

A lei should never become merely an accessory tossed toward someone as though it were party decoration.

The meaningful act is relational.

You approach the person.

They receive you.

You receive them.

The lei passes from your hands to their body.

Across Hawaiʻi today, lei continue to mark welcomes, graduations, celebrations, commemorations, family occasions and other important transitions. The tradition is visible everywhere from community lei-making workshops to airport greetings and public memorial observances. (University of Hawaii)

The lei says:

Welcome.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

I honor you.

Remember us.

Carry our affection with you.

Depending upon relationship, family custom, and occasion, an embrace or honi may accompany a presentation, while in other circumstances a respectful offering is more appropriate. Cultural practices are best learned from the people and communities who carry them rather than reduced to a single rigid rule.

The central principle is simple:

Give with respect.

Receiving Lei

There is also an art to receiving.

Sometimes receiving gracefully is harder than giving.

We may instinctively say:

“Oh, you shouldn’t have.”

“This is too much.”

“I don’t deserve this.”

But imagine the hours represented by a handmade lei.

Someone gathered those flowers.

Someone prepared them.

Someone sat with them.

Someone used their hands to make something for you.

Receiving the lei respectfully honors that labor.

The gift is not merely the physical garland.

The gift includes the time.

And time, once given, can never be recovered.

That makes handmade gifts precious in a way money cannot measure.

Lei and the Great Passages of Life

Perhaps this explains why lei so naturally accompany thresholds.

Arrival.

Departure.

Graduation.

Marriage.

Achievement.

Birthday.

Reunion.

Commemoration.

Death.

Remembrance.

These are moments when one identity gives way to another.

The student becomes the graduate.

Two individuals become a married couple.

The traveler arrives.

The visitor departs.

The living gather around the memory of someone who has crossed from physical presence into ancestry and remembrance.

Lei making and giving therefore participate in something much larger than decoration.

They mark transition.

They say:

This moment matters.

May Day Is Lei Day

The modern public celebration of Lei Day began in Hawaiʻi in 1928, and May 1 subsequently became officially recognized in Hawaiʻi as Lei Day. (City and County of Honolulu)

Over the decades, Lei Day has helped celebrate both the artistry and cultural significance of lei through exhibitions, competitions, music, hula, ceremony, and community participation. (City and County of Honolulu)

Yet perhaps the greatest lei celebrations remain the quieter ones.

A grandmother teaching a grandchild.

Friends sitting around a table.

Hands sorting flowers.

Stories being told while fingers work.

Someone arriving with boxes of blossoms.

Someone else preparing food.

A lei slowly lengthening across a table while conversation flows around it.

Here culture is not merely being remembered.

It is being practiced.

The Spiritual Lesson Hidden in the Lei

There is a metaphysical teaching within the making of lei that need not be imposed upon Hawaiian tradition to be recognized.

Consider what happens.

Separate things are gathered.

Each retains its own identity.

The fern remains fern.

The flower remains flower.

The leaf remains leaf.

The shell remains shell.

Yet through relationship they become something greater.

The lei does not destroy individuality.

It creates harmony among differences.

And so the lei becomes an extraordinary image of community.

Every person is a blossom.

Every life carries its own fragrance.

Every individual possesses a color, shape, history, strength, and season.

None need become identical.

They need only discover how to belong together.

This may be one reason the image of the lei possesses such emotional power.

A lei is a circle made from many.

A family is a circle made from many.

A community is a circle made from many.

A lineage is a circle made from many.

Even memory becomes a lei: moment joined to moment, person joined to person, generation joined to generation.

Lei as Prayer

There is historical evidence that lei making was accompanied by mele and prayer. Bishop Museum preserves, for example, a pule kui lei—a lei-making prayer—within its collections of Hawaiian mele. (Bishop Museum Blog)

This should cause us to reconsider what the hands may be doing while they work.

Perhaps making something beautiful can itself become prayer.

Not because every lei must be treated as ritual.

But because focused human attention transforms ordinary actions.

Threading flowers can become gratitude.

Braiding leaves can become remembrance.

Gathering can become stewardship.

Giving can become blessing.

Receiving can become humility.

And so the lei teaches that sacredness is not always found far away.

Sometimes sacredness is sitting at the kitchen table with flowers scattered everywhere.

The Lei Eventually Fades

There is one final teaching.

A fresh lei will not remain fresh forever.

Its perfume fades.

Its blossoms soften.

Colors change.

Leaves dry.

And eventually the physical form that seemed so vibrant begins returning toward the earth from which it came.

This does not make the lei less valuable.

It makes it more valuable.

Its beauty was never based upon permanence.

Its beauty existed because, for one particular moment, someone gathered living things and fashioned them into an expression of relationship.

That moment existed.

The lei was made.

The lei was given.

The lei was received.

And afterward, even when the flowers disappeared, the giving remained.

To Give Lei Is to Say: You Belong Within My Circle

Perhaps this is the heart of the entire tradition.

A lei surrounds.

It encircles without imprisoning.

It rests upon the body without demanding anything in return.

It adorns the receiver while simultaneously revealing something about the giver.

The lei says:

I gathered this.

I made this.

I carried this to you.

I place it around you.

And for this moment, I surround you with beauty.

That is why the art of lei making deserves to be preserved not merely as craft, but as relationship.

Learn the names of the plants.

Learn where they come from.

Learn the proper ways to gather.

Learn kui.

Learn haku.

Learn wili.

Learn hili.

Learn the stories.

Learn from practitioners.

Teach the next person.

Grow the plants.

Share the flowers.

Sit together.

Make lei.

And when the lei is finished, do not think only about whether it is perfect.

Look instead at the person for whom it was made.

Place it into their hands or gently around them.

And let the lei speak.

Because perhaps the deepest meaning of giving lei has always been very simple:

I remembered you while my hands were working.

And now I give that remembrance to you.

Aloha kekahi i kekahi.

May we love and care for one another.

The Spiritual and Metaphysical Symbolism of Lei

There is another dimension of lei that becomes visible when we move beyond asking, “What is the lei made from?” and begin asking:

What is being joined together?

What is being transferred?

What relationship is being created?

Traditional Hawaiian sources already give us a foundation for approaching these questions carefully. The University of Hawaiʻi’s Kahoʻiwai cultural knowledge resource describes lei as adorning the wearer with the kinolau of the land—the embodied forms of the ʻāina represented in flowers, leaves, ferns, shells, feathers, limu, and other materials.

The City and County of Honolulu’s description of Lei Day goes further, explaining that as a lei is gathered, prepared, and fashioned, the mana of the maker becomes woven or sewn into it; therefore giving a lei is, symbolically, giving something of oneself.

This gives us an important doorway into the spiritual meaning of lei.

But a distinction should be made.

The interpretation that follows is a comparative metaphysical contemplation inspired by Hawaiian lei traditions. It should not be taken to mean that Hawaiian spirituality is simply another form of Hermeticism, Qabalah, chakra theory, or Western occultism. Hawaiian concepts deserve to be understood first within their own cultural and linguistic world. The Hawaiian term mana, for example, carries meanings of supernatural or divine power, authority, potency, and efficacy; reducing it merely to the Western esoteric idea of “energy” would flatten a much richer concept.

With that respect firmly established, the lei can nevertheless become a profound object of metaphysical contemplation.

The Lei as Sacred Circle

The most immediately apparent symbolic feature of a lei is its circularity.

It has no obvious beginning and no obvious end.

For the contemplative mind, the circle naturally suggests continuity, relationship, return, completeness, and the joining together of what was previously separate.

A flower by itself is a flower.

A leaf by itself is a leaf.

A shell by itself is a shell.

But when these individual forms are gathered and joined intentionally, they become lei.

The mystery is not that individuality disappears.

It does not.

Each blossom remains itself.

Each leaf preserves its shape.

Each shell retains the marks of its own formation.

Yet together they participate in another identity.

This makes the lei a beautiful image of unity without uniformity.

A family functions this way.

A community functions this way.

A lineage functions this way.

The ancestors, the living, and those yet to be born may likewise be contemplated as individual lives threaded upon a greater continuum.

Seen in this way, the lei becomes an image of relationship itself.

The Thread as the Invisible Bond

Most people notice the flowers.

Few notice the thread.

Yet without the thread, the lei falls apart.

This hidden cord offers one of the most compelling metaphysical images within the craft.

The visible blossoms may be compared to the visible circumstances of life: bodies, personalities, places, events, relationships, and memories.

The thread remains largely unseen.

Yet it passes through everything.

Metaphysically, we may contemplate that hidden thread as aloha, memory, intention, ancestry, relationship, or spiritual continuity.

One could even ask:

What is the invisible thread running through my own life?

What joins childhood to adulthood?

What joins student to teacher?

What joins grandparent to grandchild?

What joins one generation to another?

What joins those who have departed with those who continue to speak their names?

Like the cord inside the lei, these bonds may not always be visible.

Yet they hold the pattern together.

Lei as Embodied Intention

The making of lei requires repeated acts of attention.

A flower is selected.

A stem is prepared.

A leaf is folded.

A blossom is pierced.

A cord is tightened.

Another element is added.

Then another.

And another.

Through repetition, intention becomes physical form.

This gives lei making a quality familiar to many contemplative traditions: the hands eventually begin expressing what the mind and heart have been holding.

A lei made hurriedly and carelessly is physically different from one made attentively.

But there is also a relational difference.

The maker has spent time with the gift.

Time has entered the lei.

Attention has entered it.

Thought of the receiver has entered it.

The Honolulu Lei Day tradition explicitly speaks of the maker’s mana becoming incorporated into the process of creating the lei. Bishop Museum also preserves a traditional pule kui lei—a lei-making prayer—in which the gathering, piercing, stringing, and assembling of flowers appear within a sacred poetic context.

The act of making can therefore become more than production.

It can become devotion embodied through the hands.

Gathering as Communion With ʻĀina

Before there can be a lei, there must be material.

And before there is material, there is ʻāina.

Flower.

Fern.

Leaf.

Seed.

Shell.

Fiber.

All arise from a world that existed before the maker touched them.

The University of Hawaiʻi description of lei as adorning the wearer with the kinolau of the land is especially significant here.

From a metaphysical perspective, this changes the relationship between maker and material.

The flower is not merely “craft supply.”

The leaf is not merely decoration.

They originate within a living network of place.

Rain touched them.

Sunlight fed them.

Soil sustained them.

Wind moved across them.

Human hands eventually gathered them.

The resulting lei therefore brings together place and person.

When the lei is placed upon the receiver, something gathered from the landscape has quite literally been placed upon the human body.

The person becomes adorned by place.

This is one reason lei can communicate belonging so powerfully.

The land is no longer merely beneath one’s feet.

It rests upon one’s shoulders.

The Metaphysics of Giving

There is a profound difference between possessing a lei and giving one away.

The lei reaches completion through relationship.

The maker has gathered and assembled it, but the gift has not yet fulfilled its purpose.

Then comes the encounter.

One person stands before another.

The lei passes between them.

The giver releases possession.

The receiver accepts.

Something changes.

The lei becomes a bridge.

The Hawaiian dictionary tradition itself identifies lei not merely as garland or ornament but also as something given as a symbol of affection. Contemporary Hawaiian cultural sources likewise continue to associate lei with aloha, connection, honor, celebration, and relationship.

Seen metaphysically, the giving of lei creates a threefold movement:

Intention becomes form.

Form becomes gift.

Gift becomes relationship.

This is why a handmade lei possesses a quality that cannot be measured by the monetary value of its flowers.

The giver has transferred time.

Attention.

Labor.

Memory.

Beauty.

And intention.

The physical lei carries an invisible offering.

Lei and the Mystery of Blessing

To place something around another person’s shoulders is an intimate act.

The lei surrounds without binding.

It rests without imprisoning.

It beautifies without obscuring the wearer.

In this sense, the lei offers a compelling image of blessing.

A blessing does not possess another person.

It surrounds them with a wish.

May you prosper.

May you travel safely.

May you remember where you came from.

May you know that you are loved.

May you carry the affection of those who cannot accompany you.

May this threshold in your life be marked with beauty.

The lei therefore becomes almost like a visible circumference of goodwill around the receiver.

Not a wall.

A circle of aloha.

Lei as Memory and Ancestral Continuity

Lei are also given in remembrance.

At Honolulu’s Lei Day observances, lei from the annual contest are taken to Mauna ʻAla, the Royal Mausoleum, and Kawaiāhaʻo Church and placed upon the resting places of Hawaiian aliʻi as expressions of mahalo and aloha.

Here the lei crosses another boundary.

It is no longer simply a gift between two living people.

It becomes an offering of memory.

The deceased cannot physically return the gift.

Yet the relationship remains.

This reveals something profound about remembrance:

Love continues to make offerings even when reciprocity is impossible.

The lei becomes testimony that relationship can extend beyond physical absence.

For the metaphysical contemplative, the circle again becomes significant.

Birth and death.

Arrival and departure.

Presence and memory.

Ancestor and descendant.

The circle does not erase death.

It places death within continuity.

The Lei as a Living Mandala

In comparative metaphysical language, one might describe a carefully made lei as a kind of living mandala.

Not because this is a traditional Hawaiian designation, but because the comparison illuminates its contemplative structure.

A mandala gathers many elements around relationship and order.

So does the lei.

Color follows color.

Flower follows flower.

Pattern repeats.

Difference enters harmony.

The maker moves gradually from fragments toward wholeness.

The finished lei may therefore be contemplated as a physical representation of a fundamental metaphysical principle:

the Many becoming One without ceasing to be Many.

One lei.

Many flowers.

One family.

Many persons.

One community.

Many voices.

One ancestry.

Many generations.

One living world.

Countless forms.

The Impermanence of the Flower

Perhaps the deepest teaching of the flower lei is that it will die.

A fresh lei is extraordinarily beautiful precisely because its beauty cannot be permanently possessed.

The blossom opens.

It releases fragrance.

It begins to fade.

Eventually it returns to the elements.

This gives the lei a contemplative relationship with impermanence.

The gift cannot be preserved exactly as it was.

Neither can the moment.

The graduation ends.

The wedding day passes.

The visitor eventually leaves.

Children grow.

Elders become ancestors.

Photographs remain, but the moment itself moves onward.

The lei quietly teaches:

Do not demand permanence before allowing something to be sacred.

Some sacred things are sacred precisely because they occur only once.

The flowers fade.

The giving remains.

The Lei as a Teaching of Aloha

Ultimately, the metaphysical symbolism of lei returns us not to abstraction, but to relationship.

The circle is meaningless without the flowers.

The flowers do not become lei without the thread.

The thread serves no purpose without the maker.

The maker’s work remains incomplete without the receiver.

The receiver eventually returns the organic materials to the earth.

And the earth produces flowers again.

So the pattern continues:

ʻĀina → material → maker → lei → receiver → memory → ʻāina.

A circle.

Perhaps this is why lei can carry such extraordinary emotional power.

It gives physical form to something ordinarily invisible.

Affection becomes flowers.

Gratitude becomes leaves.

Memory becomes fragrance.

Honor becomes a circle.

Aloha becomes something that can be placed gently upon another person’s shoulders.

And for one beautiful moment, the unseen becomes visible.

Annotated Bibliography

Bishop Museum. “He Pule Kui Lei.” Welo Hou, June 10, 2019.

This Bishop Museum resource presents a lei-making prayer from the Roberts Mele Collection, with translation by renowned Hawaiian scholar Mary Kawena Pukui. The composition describes Hiʻiaka gathering flowers, piercing them, stringing them, and assembling a lehua lei. It is especially valuable for this blog because it demonstrates that lei making appears within Hawaiian poetic and prayer traditions and therefore cannot be reduced merely to decorative handicraft. The Museum also identifies mele as an important primary resource for Hawaiian scholarship and cultural connection.

City and County of Honolulu, Department of Parks and Recreation. “Lei Day.”

This official cultural resource provides one of the clearest explanations of the relational spirituality associated with making and giving lei. It describes the lei as a symbol of aloha and states that the mana of the maker becomes incorporated into the lei through gathering, preparation, and construction. It also documents the continuation of lei traditions through Honolulu’s Lei Day celebration and the offering of lei at Mauna ʻAla and Kawaiāhaʻo Church in remembrance of Hawaiian aliʻi. This source is particularly important to the blog’s discussion of intention, reciprocity, remembrance, and ceremonial giving.

Kahoʻiwai, University of Hawaiʻi. “Hana Lei.”

Kahoʻiwai identifies lei making as an enduring Hawaiian cultural practice and catalogs numerous forms, including kui pololei, kui poepoe, wili, haku, hili, humupapa, and hilo. Most important for the spiritual interpretation developed in this blog is its description of a lei as adorning its wearer with the kinolau of the land. This idea provides an important Indigenous Hawaiian foundation for understanding the relationship among lei, wearer, natural material, and ʻāina.

Kamehameha Schools. “Nā ʻAno Hana Lei: Types of Lei-Making.” 2021.

This accessible educational article gives practical descriptions of major lei-making methods, including kui, haku, wili, hili, hīpuʻu, and humupapa. It is especially useful for readers who wish to move from cultural appreciation into actual practice, because it discusses construction methods and appropriate materials while situating lei making within the living culture of Hawaiʻi. It supports the technical portions of the blog and demonstrates the diversity hidden behind the English phrase “making a lei.”

Pukui, Mary Kawena, and Samuel H. Elbert. Hawaiian Dictionary: Hawaiian-English, English-Hawaiian. Revised and Enlarged Edition. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1986.

Pukui and Elbert’s Hawaiian Dictionary remains a foundational linguistic reference for serious study of Hawaiian words and concepts. University of Hawaiʻi Press describes the revised edition as containing nearly 30,000 Hawaiian-English entries together with material relating to folklore, poetry, and ethnology. For this blog, the dictionary is essential because terms such as lei, mana, aloha, and the vocabulary of lei construction possess meanings that cannot safely be reconstructed from English translations alone.

Pukui, Mary Kawena, E. W. Haertig, and Catherine A. Lee. Nānā I Ke Kumu: Look to the Source. Volume 1. Honolulu: Hui Hānai / University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2014 edition.

Nānā I Ke Kumu is a major source for understanding Hawaiian cultural practices, concepts, beliefs, family relationships, spirituality, healing, dreams, symbolism, and social values. The work grew from years of study by the Culture Committee of the Queen Liliʻuokalani Children’s Center, with Mary Kawena Pukui serving as kumu. Its greatest value for the present blog is methodological: it reminds the student to understand Hawaiian concepts from Hawaiian cultural foundations rather than forcing them prematurely into foreign philosophical categories.

Wehewehe Wikiwiki / Hawaiian Dictionaries. “Lei” and “Mana,” drawing upon Pukui and Elbert.

The online Hawaiian dictionary collections make foundational lexical material readily accessible. The entry for lei includes meanings associated with garland, wreath, ornament, and a gift expressing affection, while the Pukui-Elbert material for mana includes supernatural or divine power, authority, potency, and power. These entries are especially useful in guarding against overly simplistic translations. In a metaphysical discussion, they help prevent mana from being casually equated with an undifferentiated New Age concept of “energy.”

A Note on Metaphysical Interpretation

Readers approaching lei through Western Mystery traditions, Hermeticism, Qabalah, Reiki, ceremonial magic, or other metaphysical systems may naturally perceive parallels: the circle as wholeness, the thread as an invisible bond, the act of construction as intention made manifest, and the giving of the completed lei as transmission or blessing.

Such comparisons can be fruitful when they remain comparisons.

The more respectful approach is:

first Hawaiian understanding, then comparative contemplation.

Rather than claiming that Hawaiian lei traditions secretly encode Hermetic, Qabalistic, or other Western doctrines, we may allow each tradition to remain itself while noticing where human spiritual experience produces resonant symbols.

The lei then becomes not evidence that all traditions are identical, but something much more beautiful:

a meeting place where distinct spiritual languages can recognize one another without losing their own names.