The Moon

 

 

The moon has been of interest to humans for as far back as anyone can remember.  For a long time, the moon was the way that people measured their calendars.  It is also the root for words such as lunatic or loony (tunes).

However, there is a deeper level to it as well.  For some reason, the moon has more myths and legends related to it than almost every other thing that we know.  These are a few.

 

Werewolves

The werewolf, or lycaeon is a subject that has been overexplored by the media.  Thanks to phenomena like Twilight, Teen Wolf, the Vampire Diaries, Angel, Being Human, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, An American Werewolf in London, Jack & Diane, Van Helsing and so much more, the werewolf myth has been expanded far beyond its humble beginning into something romantic and almost unrecognizable.

Actually, nobody seems to know where the myth of the werewolf got started.  There are some theories that it began with a specific Native American tribe in Wisconsin.  They worshipped a god named  Wisakachek who came across two brothers from the tribe, Keme and Matchitehew.  Wisakachek pretended to be a traveler in need of food and shelter, so they offered him a deer to eat.

Wisakachek came across the two brothers again a week later and this time they were the ones in need of food.  Wisakachek had nothing to offer them, so he instead shared with them his shape shifting ability, and from that day on, they were able to turn into wolves as long as they did not use their powers to hurt humans. 

However, as these stories tend to go, that did not last long and eventually, someone ended up dead.  Keme, since he had not killed anybody, kept his ability to change at will, but Matchitehew was now forced to turn at the full moon.  He is now known as the Father of the Werewolves.

 

The first sighting of a werewolf did not occur until 1591, though.  A man named Peter Stubbe was witnessed by many turning from a wolf to a man.  The townspeople tortured him (as you do) until he confessed to the murder of thirteen children, two pregnant women, and a middle aged man.  According to him, he made a deal with the devil to get a girdle that, when worn, would give him the power to turn into a wolf.  This led to his eventual lust for the taste of blood and thus we have yet another example of pacts with the devil coming back to bite someone in the ass.

You can find the rest of the story here, if you are interested.

 

 

Aliens

 

There has been a long standing theory that aliens live on the moon.  Contrary to the werewolf legend, the origin of this story is actually quite clear.  It started around 1825, when a famous astronomer named Franz von Paula Gruithuisen (!) started telling people that he could see, through his telescope, a race of alien beings that lived on the moon.  He called them lunarians and claimed that they had a complex city and infrastructure up there.  The deal, though, was that everybody then knew he was spouting nonsense (or was he? #themoonlandingwasfakeandgay).  The real hoax did not begin until later.

In 1935, the New York Sun printed a six part story by a guy called John Herschel, who was a prominent astronomer at the time, about the race of people on the moon; the goats and the bison there and the winged beasts that bathed in the rivers! John Herschel, in fact, read it, and thought that it was hilarious. The rest of the world, though, was captivated by this vision of the moon. People believed that for, like, six straight weeks! There were other newspapers reporting on it; they were all angry at the Sun for getting the scoop on this moon story, and the Sun subscriptions went way up, and they stayed way up, establishing it as a permanent fixture in New York.

 

Modern Myths

There are lots of modern myths about the moon, so I figured that I would just spit them all out here.

• There were (and still are) a surprising amount of people who believe that the moon landing was faked by NASA and that the whole thing was actually filmed in a sound stage.  There was even a movie made based on this idea in 1977, called Capricorn One.  The persistence of these theories so frustrated the astronaut Buzz Aldrin that he punched a guy in the face in 2002 (Google that sh*t).
• For a while after WWII, due to the new information about the Holocaust that was being released to the populace at the time, there was a rumor floating around that Adolf Hitler had faked his death and fled...to a top secret Nazi base under the surface of the moon.  Conspiracy theorists linked this rumor to the famous crash in Roswell, New Mexico.  This rumor was later the foundation for the sci-fi novel "Rocket Ship Galileo" written the same year as the crash.
• Lastly, early 20th century sci-fi writers latched on to the idea that the moon was a hollow space craft.  One of the books that mentions this is the H.G. Wells novel "The First Men on the Moon".  It was speculated that it was an alien spacecraft with simply a rock-like shell.  This one definitely wouldn't work because physics.

 

Moon Rabbit

 



Oddly enough, the legend about the moon that I have found permeates through the most different cultures is the myth of the moon rabbit.

 

In Chinese culture, the rabbit on the moon shows up in two versions of the story of the Moon rabbit, which is what they believe that our "man on the moon" looks like. 

 

Version 1

 

Here, there is an immortal woman named Chang'e and an immortal man Houyi who were lovers and lived together in heaven.  One day, the ten sons of the Jade Emperor turned into ten suns.  As you can imagine, ten suns made the Earth too hot to live on, so Houyi shot down nine of them with his arrows, but spared the last.  In retaliation for the deaths of nine of his sons, the Jade Emperor made them mortal and banished Chang'e and Houyi to Earth.  They went in search of a way to become immortal again and Houyi found a pill.  If they both ate half the pill, they would be immortal.  He hid it in a chest, and told Chang'e not to look in the chest without him.  However, in the same vein as Eve or Pandora, Chang'e just could not help herself and found the pill while Houyi was away.  She swallowed it whole, overdosed, and floated up, past the heavens where she used to live with Houyi, all the way to the moon.  She was sad to be so far away from Houyi, but was kept company by a jade rabbit (space!) who lived on the moon and brewed potions, and a woodcutter named Wu Gang who had been banished there.

 

There is another legend that says that the potions that the rabbit made was the elixir of life.  One legend speaks of a horrific plague that affected Beijing.  Chang'e saw the effects of this plague from her place on the moon and sent the moon rabbit down with his elixir of life to go to each family and cure them.  The rabbit obeyed and asked for nothing but clothes.  While he was there, he did not appear as a rabbit, but instead as a mortal, sometimes make and sometimes female.  After he finished, the rabbit returned to its home on the moon.

 

 

Version 2

This story also features a couple named Chang'e and Houyi, but they start in very different circumstances.  Chang'e was an immortal who worked for the Jade Emperor.  However, she broke one of his vases (that sh*t's expensive) and was banished to a mortal life on Earth.  One day, ten suns rose instead of the usual one, and Houyi the archer stepped forward and shot the extra nine out of the sky, becoming a hero and, later, the emperor.  He married Chang'e and they were quite happy until Houyi become greedy and found a pill that would cause him to become immortal.  Chang'e found out and somehow swallowed it.  She then had to run from her angry husband and jumped out of the window.  However, instead of landing on the ground, she floated all the way up to the moon.  She, again, found the rabbit and Wu Gang.  Houyi eventually ascended to the sun and built an intricate palace there.  The couple represent yin and yang.  The sun and the moon.  The god and the goddess.

 

Buddhist version

This legend begins with an old man begging for food.  Various animals take pity on the man and brought him fruits and berries and things to eat.  The rabbit, however, did not know how to gather any food that humans could eat, for rabbits eat only grass.  He offered up his body for the man to eat and threw himself onto the fire that the man had built to keep himself warm.  For some reason, though, the rabbit did not burn.  The man then revealed himself to be a god and praised the rabbit for his generosity, drawing a likeness of him on the moon. 

 

Aztec Version

In this tale, the god of the Aztecs, Quetzalcoatl, was living temporarily as a mortal.  He started a very long journey, but eventually ran out of food and water and was about to starve to death.  Luckily for him, a female rabbit happened past, recognizing him as the god that he was, she offered herself to him as food. He was so touched by her generous sacrifice that he painted a picture of her on the moon, so that she would be remembered until the end of time.

 

Mexican Version

This is a minor story inside of a larger story which I will be skimming over.  Basically, one of the gods had just sacrificed himself to become the sun, bravely and without hesitation.  However, one of the other gods, Tecciztecatl hesitated four times before setting himself on fire in order to become the moon.  Because he was a coward, the other gods decided that he did not deserve to shine as brightly as the sun, so they threw a rabbit at his face to muffle the light.  There is also a legend, according to Wikipedia, that says that he was in the form of a rabbit when he was set aflame and so the rabbit shape on the moon is a shadow left behind.

 

Native American Version

The Canadian Cree tribe tells the story of a lonely rabbit who desperately wanted to get to the moon.  The problem was that nobody would take him but one crane.  When they were flying there, the rabbit held onto the crane's legs which stretched them out to the length that they are at now.  The rabbit was made to live on the ground, so flying through the air frightened him.  In fact, he held onto the legs of the crane so tightly that his paws started to bleed.  When they reached the moon, the rabbit patted the crane's head to say thank you, marking the crane with its blood.  This is why cranes have a distinctive red mark on their foreheads.

 

 

 

 

 

If I left out a favorite story of yours or if you have questions, leave them in comments and I will get back to you!