Myths & Culture
A man, a rabbit, a goddess and a werewolf
Every culture has looked up at the Moon and seen a story. Faces and animals in its dark patches, gods who drive it across the sky, calendars that follow it, festivals that celebrate it, and a few legends that refuse to die.
Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, Tamausagi: Son Goku, from One Hundred Aspects of the Moon (1889). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
What do you see in the Moon?
The dark patches on the near side are old lava plains, the maria. Our brains are wired to find faces and shapes in random patterns (this is called pareidolia), so people everywhere have seen pictures in them:
The man in the Moon
In much of Europe, people see a face, or a man carrying a bundle of sticks. One medieval story says he was banished to the Moon for gathering firewood on the Sabbath.
The rabbit in the Moon
In China, Japan, Korea and Mesoamerica, the same patches look like a rabbit. In East Asia it is pounding something in a mortar: the elixir of immortality in China, rice cakes (mochi) in Japan.
The woman, the frog and the crab
Others see a woman reading or weaving, a toad (in ancient China a three-legged toad lived on the Moon), a crab, or a buffalo. In parts of Polynesia it is Hina, a woman who climbed to the Moon with her gourd and tapa-beating tools.
In the Southern Hemisphere the Moon appears "upside down" compared with the north, so the same patterns turn into different pictures.
Chang'e and the jade rabbit
The best-known Chinese Moon story tells of Chang'e, wife of the archer Hou Yi, who shot down nine of the ten suns that were scorching the Earth. As a reward he received an elixir of immortality. In most versions Chang'e drank it (to keep it from a thief, or out of curiosity) and floated up to the Moon, where she still lives with the jade rabbit, who pounds herbs in a mortar.
The legend is so loved that China named its lunar exploration program after her: the Chang'e landers and the Yutu ("jade rabbit") rovers.
A Buddhist Jataka tale explains the rabbit another way: a hare with nothing else to offer a hungry old man threw itself into the fire to become his meal. The old man was a god in disguise, and he drew the hare's image on the Moon to honour its kindness.
Moon gods and goddesses
- Selene and Artemis (Greece), Luna and Diana (Rome): Selene drove the Moon's silver chariot across the night sky. In one myth she fell in love with the shepherd Endymion and asked that he sleep forever so she could visit him each night. NASA's Moon program Artemis is named after Apollo's twin sister.
- Thoth and Khonsu (Egypt): Thoth, god of writing and time-keeping, wore a crescent Moon; Khonsu's name means "traveller", for the Moon's journey across the sky.
- Nanna or Sin (Mesopotamia): one of the oldest known Moon gods, worshipped at Ur more than 4,000 years ago.
- Chandra (India): the Moon god who rides a chariot pulled by antelopes; his name lives on in Chandrayaan, "Moon vehicle".
- Tsukuyomi (Japan): the Moon god, brother of the Sun goddess Amaterasu.
- Coyolxauhqui (Aztec): a Moon goddess defeated by her brother, the Sun god, a story that may echo the Moon fading at dawn.
- Māni (Norse): a Moon god chased across the sky by a wolf. When the wolf catches him, there is an eclipse.
Calendars that follow the Moon
The Moon was humanity's first calendar: its cycle of about 29.5 days is easy to watch. The word month comes from moon.
- Lunar calendars follow only the Moon. The Islamic (Hijri) calendar has 12 months of 29 or 30 days, about 354 days a year, so Ramadan moves around the seasons, starting about 11 days earlier each year. Months traditionally begin when the first thin crescent is seen.
- Lunisolar calendars keep months in step with the Moon but add a 13th month every few years to stay in step with the seasons. The Chinese, Hebrew and Hindu calendars work this way. Lunar New Year always falls on a new moon between 21 January and 20 February.
- Easter is set by the Moon: in Western churches, the Sunday after the first full moon on or after 21 March (using church tables rather than the real Moon).
- Full moon names like Harvest Moon, Wolf Moon and Strawberry Moon come from North American and European traditions; see Phases & Orbit.
Moon festivals
- Mid-Autumn Festival (China, Vietnam and across East Asia): on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, at the full Moon of September or early October, families gather to admire the Moon, eat round mooncakes and light lanterns.
- Chuseok (Korea): a harvest festival on the same full Moon, with family visits and half-moon-shaped rice cakes called songpyeon.
- Tsukimi (Japan): "moon viewing", with rice dumplings and pampas grass displayed for the autumn full Moon.
- Diwali (India and beyond) falls on a new moon in October or November, and lamps light up the darkest night.
- Eid al-Fitr begins with the sighting of the new crescent at the end of Ramadan.
- Loy Krathong (Thailand): floating candle-lit baskets on rivers under the November full Moon.
Werewolves and "lunacy"
Stories of people turning into wolves are ancient. The Greek myth of King Lycaon, turned into a wolf by Zeus, gave us the word lycanthropy. In 16th- and 17th-century Europe, people were even put on trial accused of being werewolves.
Surprisingly, the link between werewolves and the full moon is fairly modern. Older folklore rarely mentions it. It became fixed in popular culture through 19th-century fiction and 20th-century films like The Wolf Man (1941), which also popularised the silver bullet.
The Moon's reputation for driving people mad is older: the words lunatic and lunacy come from luna. Careful studies have not found that the full moon makes people behave strangely; see Moon & Life for the evidence.
Moon words and sayings
- Once in a blue moon: something rare. A "blue moon" is an extra full moon, about every two to three years. The Moon can occasionally look blue after big volcanic eruptions or forest fires.
- Honeymoon: possibly from the idea that the sweetness of marriage, like the Moon, waxes and then wanes.
- Monday is "Moon day" (in French lundi, in Spanish lunes, from luna).
- Moonshine once meant foolish ideas, then illegal whisky made at night.
Quick answers
Why do people see a rabbit in the Moon?
The dark lava plains on the near side form a shape that many cultures in Asia and the Americas see as a rabbit, often pounding a mortar. In Europe the same patches are usually seen as a face.
Who is Chang'e?
Chang'e is the Chinese Moon goddess. In the legend she drank an elixir of immortality and floated to the Moon, where she lives with the jade rabbit. China's lunar missions are named after her.
Why is NASA's Moon program called Artemis?
In Greek mythology Artemis is the twin sister of Apollo and a goddess linked with the Moon, so the name follows on from the Apollo program.
Do werewolves come from full moon folklore?
Werewolf legends are ancient, but the idea that they change at the full moon mostly comes from 19th-century fiction and 20th-century films.
Why does Ramadan move each year?
The Islamic calendar follows the Moon only, giving a year of about 354 days, roughly 11 days shorter than the solar year, so each month drifts through the seasons.
Sources and credits
- NASA Science, Moon.
- Royal Museums Greenwich, Moon mythology and folklore.
- Smithsonian, articles on the Mid-Autumn Festival and the moon rabbit.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Werewolf or the Cannibal (Open Access, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons).
- Detroit Institute of Arts, Nicolas Poussin, Selene and Endymion; Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, One Hundred Aspects of the Moon (via Wikimedia Commons, public domain).
Photos credited to NASA, NOAA and other public-domain sources are used with thanks; BotBuhdy adds a small botbuhdy.com mark. Pictures labelled AI-generated illustration are artist-style illustrations made for this page, not photographs.