Each winter, the North Shore of Hawaii transforms into a three-ring circus, from a sleepy tropical haven, as thousands upon thousands of surfers and tourists descend to witness, or test themselves against, the most powerful waves the Pacific Ocean can heave landward. And each year those same people retreat to their urban homes to tell tall tales of their experiences. The surf media loves to play up the rough and tumble aspect of daily life, where if the ocean won’t kill you, the natives surely will. Apocryphal tales of rampant “localism” abound, painting a place where the beaches are roamed by mad dog psychopaths, xenophobic thugs who will happily beat a visiting surfer into the ground and retire to the shade of softly swaying palm trees to laughingly recount instances of their degradation of the human spirit. Fortunately, this notion is far from the truth of daily existence, Hawaii’s denizens are as warm, kind and welcoming as the land, and only rarely as tough and unforgiving as the ocean that surrounds it.

Hui O He’e Nalu, translating as “the wave sliding club,” and known colloquially as Da Hui, was formed in 1976 by a group of North Shore surfers wanting to deal with the exploitation of the surrounding area, and almost immediately began to lose the subsequent PR battle that would define its continued existence. Driven at least partly by a racist tendency of a media establishment to frame Da Hui as group of thugs wanting to deny access to a shared natural resource, what were commonly overlooked were the transgressions of the supposedly aggrieved parties. Despite a popular perception, shared by surf culture and those outside it, of surfers as laid back, happy-go-lucky, sun-tanned and salt-toned pacifists, the reality of surfing is one of self interest, greed and, often, near pathological levels of arrogance.

The “Busting Down the Door” generation of Australian professionals, by and large, created their own misfortune. Fueled by adolescent levels of testosterone, and encouraged by a national media which hailed them as conquering heroes, their behavior, a me-first mentality that is firmly at odds with the Hawaiian ideal of aloha, lead to multiple conflicts in and out of the water. Further exacerbating the situation was a burgeoning competitive system, one that, in addition to enriching the pockets of its proponents, served to effectively privatize many of the best breaks during the winter season. While Da Hui’s actions in regulating and discouraging said privatization were decried as mafia-esque, it was, in actuality, an effort to retain some control of their own backyard. And, in the end, it was an effort that, ultimately failed, as demonstrated by the Triple Crown’s decision to reduce the prize money that local wildcards to surf at their own breaks.

But most of this took place decades ago, and in the following years, the North Shore changed drastically. Multi-million dollar rental properties sit beachfront, languishing, empty, until the tourist rush fills them out. Tour buses create traffic jams on Kam Highway, and limousines hired by Japanese tourists gleefully double-park in their quest to wring more tip money out of their clients. Gentrification has displaced the majority of the original inhabitants, and the lineups are filled with a nasal Californian twang. And these changes, occasionally, cause problems. A common inability on the part of visitors to affect a temporary change in demeanor all too often takes the form of discordant behavior that strikes at the heart of some of that which embodies the Hawaiian culture.

Kala Alexander, a legendary big-wave surfer who has recently found success as an actor and model, does a good job of expressing what it’s like to deal with rampant tourism. “For one, it’s necessary, the tourism. But some people seem to bring some of their stresses here, which is crazy, because you’d think that’s why they’re coming here, to let that shit go, to relax and chill. But, some people can’t do it. So they drive fast, and aren’t very friendly. But, you know, it’s not really their fault. They grow up in a place that isn’t so friendly, or maybe where it’s not wise to be friendly, and you kind of need to be more guarded. Hopefully, what we do here, the way we are, and our aloha spirit, rubs off on them.”

It’s nearly impossible to consider Da Hui without having three men called to mind. Despite being comprised of dozens of members whose societal standing cross racial and economic boundaries, Eddie Rothman, his eldest son, Makua, and their lifelong friend, Kala, are, rather unintentionally, the face Da Hui presents to the outside world.

Oahu has treated the Rothman clan well. Their compound, located near Velzyland, on the east end of what is generally considered the North Shore proper, is a gorgeous place, decorated in hardwoods, blending into the surrounding environment in a way that the current wave of newly built McMansions do not.

A stereotypically beautiful Thursday afternoon finds three of the Rothman men at home, lounging about on a day when the surf is firing, exhibiting a surfed out air that is familiar with anyone who has spent a decent amount of time in the water. Koa, the middle son, lies on a long bench fronting a panoramic window that dominates the room, offering a view of the huge surf, the roar of which nearly drowns out conversation. An excellent surfer in his own right, with a professional career that is showing a huge amount of promise, already gracing magazine covers and fast becoming a dominating presence in the Pipeline lineup, Koa had, just hours before, undergone surgery for a broken collar bone, and was obviously in the grips of post op nausea. Makua, the eldest, had flown in from Australia the previous day, spent the morning surfing big Haleiwa, and was enjoying a moment of home before returning to his lifestyle as a globe-trotting musician and hellman big wave charger. A presence in the surf world for years, he gained notable notoriety in 2003, when at the age of eighteen, he won the Billabong XXL contest by riding a 66-foot wave at a terrifying North Shore outer reef. The patriarch himself, Mr. Rothman, is in attendance, providing guidance and experience. Though reluctant to speaking on the record, perhaps understandably so, considering past treatment at the hands of the mainstream media, his presence casts a shadow over the proceedings. Kala was otherwise occupied running errands in Town, chauffeuring his daughter. He is the owner of a fearsome reputation among the uninformed, due to an unfortunate series of well publicized, though under investigated and largely justifiable, incidents in his past. Despite a public perception that often paints him as the poster child for surf rage, he is, in fact, an intelligent, articulate, and sensitive individual.

The Rothmans are an imposing presence. Eddie, shirtless and barrel-chested is a man who, in his early sixties, still looks to possess the strength to crush coral in his bare hands. His sons, who share Hawaiian blood with their mother, are more slender. But they all share a similar burning intensity, and a familial bond so strong as to be unbreakable.

Says Makua, “My immediate family is fucking amazing. My dad, my brothers, my grandma, but my family around the world, my whole family, all my friends, everybody that I’ve spent time with, that’s awesome. I’m blessed. And if all else fails, fuck it, I had fun.”

One can’t overestimate the importance of family in Hawaiian culture, nor the rather unique definition of such. Notions of togetherness, and what that engenders, in terms of duty and respect and love, provide a concrete basis for an interpretation of the world. And the Hawaiian definition of family is markedly fluid, demonstrated by the idea of hanai family, in which a person is, rather casually, adopted. The hanai system, while difficult to define, creates a world which transgresses traditional notions of family, far reaching connections from which people can draw strength, safe in the knowledge that each individual is well loved and has a strong support structure they can depend on.

Kala sheds light on the subject, “You can attribute the amount of respect people show, it’s almost directly related to the size of the population. When you go some place with a smaller population, you have an identity, you see people, you know everybody in the community. If you’re an asshole, it really stands out, and everybody knows you’re an asshole. On the other side of the coin, if you’re in a place with high population, everybody’s used to getting stepped on. Everybody’s hustling, trying to make a dollar out of fifty cents, really just on a mission, because it’s so competitive. I think being in a small country town, it’s laid back, people are friendly, you can borrow stuff from your neighbors. I noticed, on the mainland, people live next to their neighbors for years, and have no idea what they do, or who they are. The thing about here with our kids, you know, my neighbors watch out for my kids, I look out for theirs, it’s more of a sense of community.”

Hawaii has, historically, suffered greatly at the hands of exploitative outside interests. Prior to attaining statehood, the Hawaiian people were treated as a slave race by plantation owners who controlled the majority of resources. While inclusion in the warm embrace of American hegemony has brought some small degree of self determination for local Hawaiians, the sad truth is that mainland corporations continue to view the islands as a captured state, one that, by nature of its isolation, can be used as a way of generating income without suffering undue pressure to behave in a responsible manner.

The latest battlefront is Monsanto Hawaii’s presence on the island, and what are seen as dangerous, and irresponsible methods of agriculture. While the PR flacks for Monsanto would like to portray a growing movement against GMO as an attack on agriculture in Hawaii, the truth is that this is just the latest battle in a fight that’s lasted over a century.

When asked, if he could make one change in Hawaii, Makua’s answer is definitive: “I’d get all the genetically modified food, and those big ass, multinational corporations, and get them the fuck out of here so we can grow our good food, and not have them poison our water, our kids, and our land. Fuck those guys. That’s the biggest change I want to see. All the houses, whatever. The guys planting all these genetically modified crops around here, they’re out of here, brah.”

Kala affirms the stance: “Monsanto, the seeds crops they grow, and all the pesticides they use, because it’s a seed crop, they don’t give a fuck what they spray that shit with.”

There is a saying that can, occasionally, be seen emblazoned on T-shirts and bumper stickers in Oahu. It reads, “Don’t mistake aloha for weakness.” Aloha, like many Hawaiian words, is a vague concept, defying a single definition. “It’s a lifestyle, it’s a culture, it’s everything, it’s how I live,” Makua says. “As long as you embrace the spirit, be kind, say hello to everybody. At the same time, you’ve gotta be firm, too, sometimes.”

Aloha doesn’t necessarily make things much more concrete. But, at heart, it’s an ideal wherein each and every individual has the right and duty to show warmth and respect to others, while at the same time, it does not necessarily demand a capacity for pacifism. With aloha comes a duty to protect family and the island that is as much a part of a person’s identity as one’s own name. ♠

The history of the scorpion, much like its tail, is long and segmented, its origins dating some 430 million years to the Silurian period. They dwelled on the bottom of shallow tropical seas and during the Paleozoic era were known as sea scorpions and had gills. Often described as deformed lobsters and mistaken for insects, the 111 fossil species of scorpions currently known have given us a rich understanding of exactly how they evolved. But it’s the tale of the scorpion documented since ancient times that has provided the most intriguing impression of this mysterious creature.

Associated with evil and the wicked, the scorpion, originally rooted from the Greek word skorpíos, is easily recognizable by its pair of grasping pincers (chelae) and narrow, segmented tail which curves forward over its back with the telson (stinger), always ready to strike. They are found on all continents except Antartica and have a history steeped in folklore.

One of the oldest surviving works of literature, Epic of Gilgamesh (2150-2000 BC), mentions scorpions. In the epic poem, Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, heads to the Land of the Dead to visit Utnapishtim in search of immortality. When he reaches the mountains of Mashu, entrance to the Sun God Shamash and also to Kurnugi, the Land of Darkness, he finds it guarded by Scorpion men, whose “terror is awesome” and their “glance is death.” Created by the goddess Tiamat to wage war against her ungrateful offspring for betraying her partner Abzû, Scorpion men are featured in several Akkadian myths and are described to have the head, torso and arms of a man but the body of a scorpion. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s CGI Scorpion King character in The Mummy Returns is based off of this description.

Scorpions are mentioned in the Book of the Dead, the Talmud and the Bible, where they are mentioned alongside serpents, found in the wilderness and used figuratively to denote the wicked, “scorpions of the earth,” in Revelation. They’re also mentioned in one of the oldest Egyptian scripts, the Ebers Papyrus, in a how-to section entitled, “How to Rid the House of Scorpions.”

In ancient Egypt, the scorpion stands for Set, the God of Chaos, also known as the Trickster. Out of jealousy and spite he tricks his brother Osiris before killing and dismembering him. For protection, Osiris’s wife/sister Isis, is given seven scorpions by the god Thoth, who oversees battles between good and evil, to defend and guard her from the vengeful Set. Another depiction of scorpions in Egyptian mythology is that of the goddess Serket. A beautiful woman with a scorpion on top of her head, Serket, Egyptian for “she who tightens the throat or causes the throat to breathe,” strikes down the wicked with her scorpion minions but can also intervene to save the lives of the innocent. Also the Goddess of healing poisonous stings and bites, she was the protector of Scorpion Kings as well as Tutankhamen, where evidence of Serket was found in his tomb.

Scorpion images adorn artworks of many cultures, from tombs and monuments in ancient Egypt to woodblock prints in Himalayan cultures. It is also a significant motif in the art of Islam in the Middle East. One of the earliest occurrences of the scorpion in modern culture is its inclusion in the Dendera zodiac, an Egyptian bas-relief found in the chapel dedicated to Osiris and now housed in the Musée du Louvre. It dates back to 50 BC and is the first known depiction of our current zodiac with twelve signs.

Perceived as an embodiment of evil as well as a protective force that counters evil, the scorpion is sometimes viewed as a magical guard. In Mekeo of Papua, a scorpion charm is used to protect your house whilst in Tibetan Buddhism, the scorpion is associated with Dorje Dröllö — the wrathful side of Guru Rinpoche (Padmasambhava) and with his companion, Tsogyel Tröllö. Scorpion in Tibetan (digpa ratsa) is negative. Even the hand sign for the scorpion known as tarjini mudrā is a threatening gesture. Made by making a fist and extending the forefinger and little finger, it was used to conjure scorpion apparitions. In Italy, this gesture is used to ward off the evil eye and was popularized in heavy metal by Ronnie James Dio when he became the front man for Black Sabbath.

Much like the duality that scorpions have in myths (good versus evil), out of the 1,752 known species of scorpions only 25 have venom capable of killing a human being. The majority of which belong to the family Buthidae, the largest family of scorpions with more than 800 species. Their venom has also been used to combat malaria, treat cancer, autoimmune disorders and even rheumatoid arthritis.

Even the origin of the constellation Scorpius, also known as Scorpio, is shrouded in myth. The eighth astrological sign in the Zodiac located between Libra and Sagittarius, it is made up of a large collection of stars located in the southern hemisphere near the center of the Milky Way, and can be seen by the naked eye due to a close group of eighteen bright stars. It resembles a longshoreman’s fishing hook, with a multi-pronged barb coming out of it. Known by Babylonians are MUL.GIR.TAB, the signs are literally translated to “(creature with) a burning sting,” while the Akkadians called it Girtab, meaning Stinger. The Claws of the Scorpion, a part of the constellation Libra, were also known as the Scales in Babylonia. The Javanese refer to Scorpius as Kalapa Doyong, “the leaning coconut tree” due to the similarity in shape.

According to Greek text from 8 BC to 1AD, everyone from Aratus to Pseudo-Hesoid and even Ovid wrote about the origins of the ancient constellation Scorpio. The giant son of Poseidon, the handsome Orion was the hunting partner to the goddess Artemis. One day he boasted that he would kill every animal on earth. Although a hunter herself, Artemis also offered protection to all creatures and had her mother, Leto, send a giant scorpion to kill him. Reminiscent of the classic stop motion battle scene in Clash of the Titans between Perseus and the giant scorpions that form from the blood of Medusa’s severed head, the epic battle, which Orion lost, caught Zeus’s attention. Zeus placed the scorpion in the heavens, and afterwards at the request of Artemis, he did the same for Orion as a reminder for mortals to curb their overzealous pride, and because he was handsome. Now every winter Orion hunts in the sky to the west, but every summer he flees as Scorpio rises in the east. They are never seen in the sky at the same time.

For those who lived along the Euphrates River in ancient times, Scorpio stood for darkness as its appearance indicated the autumnal equinox and the end of summer. According to Richard Hinchley Allen’s Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning, “the Maya also saw this constellation as a scorpion.”

In both astrology and astronomy, the zodiac is a circle of twelve 30° divisions into zodiacal signs of celestial longitude centered upon the ecliptic, the path of the Sun over the course of a year, which originates during the Chaldean period (“Neo-Babylonian), first millennium BC. It was here that Scorpio was included into the zodiac by their astronomers. The classic zodiac is a modification of the Babylonian MUL.APIN catalogue, the conventional title given to their compendium of astronomy and astrology; star catalogues. Some constellations trace back even further to the Bronze Age (Old Babylonian) including Gemini and Cancer. Greek astronomers used the compendium in fourth century BC.

Scorpio in astronomy soon moved on to horoscopic astrology which first appeared in Ptolemaic Egypt. The terms and names of the twelve signs associated with horoscopic astrology in modern times was a way to interpret the inherent meaning of the alignment of the planets and stars. Appearing somewhere in second century BCE, analyzing birth charts was used to read character, define psychological traits and in certain cases, reveal destinies. Important in these developments was astrologer and astronomer Ptolemy who lived in second century AD and whose work, Tetrabiblos laid the basis of the Western astrological tradition. The planets, houses and signs of the zodiac were now rationalized and their functions set down in a way that has changed little to present day.

In Western astrology, people born under Scorpio, the eighth sign of the zodiac, born between October 23 and November 21, are said to be strong, lustful and reminiscent of Glenn Close’s character in Fatal Attraction, jealous, possessive and vengeful. But the same qualities take on corresponding positive aspects such determination, the ability to love passionately, ambitiousness and loyalty, correlating with the idea of duality. It is a sign of extremes and the most misunderstood of all astrology signs. Often described as intense, obsessive and turbulent, they are all about contradictions. A water sign, Scorpios are very emotional and unstable. And because it was traditionally ruled by Mars, the Roman God of War, and is now ruled by Pluto, the God of the Underworld, the planetary combination of the two makes for an interesting mix, akin to Drake’s Scorpio-tic career that includes the role of Jimmy the Wheelchair Boy on Degrassi: The Next Generation and rap phenomenon.

The key to a Scorpio’s success is their adaptability, versatility and ability to control a situation. But a Scorpio with no control, much like Charles Bronson in Death Wish, is very dangerous indeed.

Whether eaten alive on reality shows for ratings or used in films like surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel’s 1930 classic film, L’Age d’or (The Golden Age) as a symbol of the aggression that lies ahead in the movie’s protagonists, the scorpion is something that draws us in. The mystery that surrounds them is for some, intoxicating. ♠