For this project I chose to focus on the Moon and the vast Mythology that surrounds it. Initially I decided to look at deities that were synonymous with the moon. This lead me to the story of The moon rabbit or moon hare. In Far Eastern folklore The moon rabbit is a mythical figure who lives on the Moon. The existence of this creature is based on the dark patches that can be seen on the moon that form the rabbit or hare. This folklore originated in China but has also been spread throughout Asia. Through the shapes on the moon’s surface the rabbit can be seen to be using a pestle and mortar, however the contents of the mortar differ among Chinese, Japanese and Korean folklore.
As I continued to look at different stories about the Moon’s relationship with gods I found a Finnish tale of Kuu. Kuu is the Finnish word for the Moon and in their mythology, it is a Moon goddess. According to their Mythology, the daughter of the air allowed a teal (a duck-like bird) to lay an egg on her knee as she floated in the abyss. When the egg fell its pieces formed the universe: the white of the egg became the Moon, and the yolk the Sun. The more I researched the moon I found that it has consistently related to magic or some type of powerful change. There is a theory that a full moon causes peoples behaviours to change and this is what may have lead to the idea of the Werewolf. A werewolf is a human with the ability to change into a wolf or half-man half-wolf hybrid. This can either happen on purpose or after being placed under a curse but in either case the transformation occurs on the night of a full moon, suggesting it possesses some magic of it own.
As I continued to search for stories surrounding the moon I came across two of the most well known (to me anyway) myths about it. The man on the moon and that it was made of cheese. The story of the man on the moon is an ancient European tale that says that the man was banished to the Moon for some crime. Christian lore commonly told that he was caught gathering sticks on the Sabbath and sentenced by God to death by stoning. Some Germanic cultures thought he was a woodcutter found working on the Sabbath and there is also a Roman legend that he is a sheep-thief. One way or another the man was sent to the moon as a punishment however I feel this idea has faded in recent years and we now feel more sympathy for the man, especially due to his portrayal in the John Lewis Christmas advert. The myth of the moon being made of cheese come from a fable in which a simpleton who sees the reflection of the Moon in water and mistakes it for a round cheese wheel. It is unknown as to why this has become so widespread but the idea of the moon being cheese now appears in many cultures and majorly in stories that are told to young children.
My investigation into the moon then lead me to discover some more factual information that I was somewhat unaware of. The dark side of the moon not actually being dark was one such thing. The ‘dark side’ of the Moon refers to the hemisphere of the Moon that is not facing the Earth. It is actually no darker than any other part of the Moon’s surface as sunlight falls equally on all sides of the Moon. It is only ‘dark’ to us, as that hemisphere can never be viewed from Earth due to ‘Tidal Locking’. A better term for the side we don’t see is the ‘far side’, rather than the ‘dark side’, which leads to all kinds of misconceptions. The idea of the dark side of the moon brings about more of an idea of mystery and as such is probably linked to the tales of its magic, I imagine this is why so many believe that the moon has a ‘dark side’.
Another fact that I learned about while looking into the moon is the amount of space pollution there is. Space Pollution (also known as space junk, space waste, space trash, or space garbage) refers to human-made objects which float in space, particularly in Earths orbit, which no longer serve a useful purpose. These include old spacecraft, abandoned launch vehicle stages, mission-related debris and broken pieces from rockets leaving the earth’s atmosphere. In addition to this, there is also anything that chips off of the ship and anything that is expelled from the ship. The idea of so many materials up there made me think that surely if there are other lifeforms up there that they could use it or potentially that’s the reason they ignore us, maybe there view the earth as one big space dump.