moon worship

moon worship Although the moon has not had great prominence in the history of religion, the worship of it has been known since earliest recorded time—in the oldest literatures of Egypt, Babylonia, India, and China—and still exists today in various parts of the world, particularly among certain African and Native American groups. Moon worship is founded on the belief that the phases of the moon and the growth and decline of plant, animal, and human life are related. In some societies food was laid out at night to absorb the rays of the moon, which were thought to have power to cure disease and prolong life. Among the Baganda of central Africa it was customary for a mother to bathe her newborn child by the light of the first full moon. The moon was frequently equated with wisdom and justice, as in the worship of the Egyptian god Thoth and the Mesopotamian god Sin. In general, however, the moon has been the basis for many amorous legends and some superstitions (madmen were once considered to be moonstruck, hence the term lunatic ) and is particularly important in the practice of astrology .

moon The Hebrews attached special significance to each new moon, which was the occasion for sacrifices (Num. 28: 11 ff.), and on the first day of the seventh month no work was to be done (Lev. 23: 24 f.). The moon was a celestial object of awe (Job 31: 26) and moon-worship was practised by Israel's neighbours. The modern superstition that the moon affects the mind (‘lunatics’) can be discerned in the OT (Ps. 121: 6) and in the Greek word translated ‘epileptics’ (Matt. 4: 24; 17: 15) in modern translation but ‘lunatics’ by AV.

moon The moon is the most ‘human’ of the heavenly bodies, since its phases and the shadows on its surface give it a face, encouraging the popular lore about the ‘Man in the Moon’. Belief that the moon has a special influence on human affairs has been universal. Because of its phases, it has been linked to the rhythms of life and to nature's cycles: water, rain, and fertility. ‘The moon has great influence in vulgar philosophy’, observed Samuel Johnson, touring the Scottish Highlands, ‘In my memory it was a precept annually given in one of the English Almanacks, to kill hogs when the moon was increasing, and the bacon would prove the better in boiling.’

Many religious beliefs have been woven around the moon, which has commonly been personified as a goddess. She is Ishtar to the Babylonians, Asthoreth to the Phoenicians, and, to the Greeks, Artemis (Roman Diana), the chaste huntress who cruelly punished those who failed to worship her.

Three main connotations have been ascribed to the moon. It has stood for the feminine principle. Being smaller than the sun and reflecting its light, the moon has been taken to represent female dependence and passivity. In Taoist terms, the moon is thus yin, being receptive, relative to the sun's yang. Amongst the Inca, the moon was the sun's wife, and hence the goddess of women. Its waxing and waning has also served as an analogue for supposed female fickleness.

The moon has also been regarded as controlling menstruation. According to the eighteenth-century physician, Richard Mead, ‘everyone knows how great a share the Moon has in forwarding those evacuations of the weaker sex.’ The very word menstruation means ‘moon change’, while in France it is called ‘le moment de la lune’. In Saibai and Yam, two islands off Australia, it was believed that menstruation was caused by the moon, who came as a man to seduce the pubescent girl.

Menstrual seclusion rituals are thus commonly governed by the lunar phases. The Juluo of East Africa believe that menstruation comes with the new moon and that only then can women become pregnant. There have been evolutionary speculations that since the lunar and the menstrual cycles each are of approximately 28 days' duration, menstruation is causally related to the action of the moon on the tides, somehow dating back to the time when we were all sea creatures.

Finally, the moon has been judged to be the cause of madness, the term ‘lunacy’ deriving from the Latin luna, meaning moon. Hippocrates, Pliny the Elder, Plutarch, and the Bible all affirmed its harmful influence. Aretaeus of Cappadocia and Rhazes held that epileptic seizures were governed by the moon, while Hildegard of Bingen deemed that ‘a male born on the seventeenth day of the Moon will be an idiot.’ Shakespeare affords many references to the Moon as the ‘sovereign mistress of true melancholy’:It is the very error of the moon,
She comes more near the earth than she was wont
And makes men mad. (Othello)


As late as 1791, the French psychiatrist Joseph Daquin wrote in his Philosophie de la Folie that ‘it is a well established fact that insanity is a disease of the mind upon which the moon exercises an unquestionable influence.’ His younger contemporary, Jean Esquirol, concluded that the moon affected the insane through its light, which excited some and terrified others. Although such beliefs have waned, many modern studies have investigated the significance of the phases of the moon in relation to suicide, murder, mental hospital admissions, violence, migraine, anxiety, childbirth, and marital breakdown.

Roy Porter