N.A.S.A.’s MAN IN THE MOON?
Arguably, the most significant event in twentieth century history
was on the 20th July 1969, when man first walked on the moon. The
defining moment of what has become known as the Space Age, science
had finally eclipsed superstition, showing a heavenly body that
had embodied mystery and magic for countless millennia to be nothing
more than a huge, lifeless rock. Can it be mere coincidence that
the great expeditions to the moon were named after Apollo, the Greek
god of the sun, whose powers of rationalism and logic are often
contrasted with the lunar characteristics of intuition and madness?
When Apollo conquered the moon, did the harsh light of reason finally
dispel the shadows of superstition forever?
But the sorcery woven by Luna, queen of the night, has proven tenacious.
Some still believe the Apollo Moon Landing itself was a hoax, staged
by the American government using Hollywood trickery rather than
aerospace know-how. Traces of delusion, enchantment and the unknown
– traditional attributes of lunar power – continue to surround even
this most scientific of modern achievements. Astronaut Edgar Mitchell,
the sixth man on the moon, conducted experiments in ESP while in
space. (Mitchell retains his interest in the more esoteric aspects
of space travel, and is now one of the most high profile figures
in the UFO community, lobbying for more open research into extraterrestrial
intelligence by the US government.)
FATE’L ATTRACTION
The Moon retains a central position in those esoteric disciplines
that have weathered the onslaught of modern scepticism. Astrology,
still a part of everyday life for many today, studies the heavens
for wisdom. The horoscopes most of us are familiar with from newspapers
and magazines relate to what is known as our sun sign. But for those
wishing to make a serious study of the topic, other planetary factors
must be considered, most importantly our moon sign, which reflects
a deeper, more intuitive, side of ourselves than its better known
solar equivalent. The Tarot, another mystical legacy of our past,
includes as two of its major arcana, cards representing the sun
and moon. In a familiar pattern, the sun is a card representing
rational brilliance and clarity, in contrast with the moon’s subtler
more elusive, even deceptive influence.
THE LORE OF THE MOON
Ancient tradition often compares the differing currents to masculine
and feminine forces. Many have speculated that the sun and moon
were the first natural forces embodied as deities by our ancient
primordial ancestors. Some have speculated that the conflict between
these two forces can be traced in the earliest calendars, a struggle
reflected in prehistoric monuments like Stonehenge which many believe
were sacred calendars. The sun and moon proved invaluable to early
man in measuring the passage of time. We now work to a solar calendar,
centred around the regular, stable figure of twelve. But was there
once a more intuitive, lunar calendar, which pivoted on the less
rational number thirteen, a figure which still has sinister overtones
in modern culture?
Numerous remnants of ancient traditions, fragments of lost moon
lore, survive in quaint legends to this day. The Man in the Moon,
is now a whimsical fancy, found in fairytales and cartoons. In a
surprising number of diverse traditions the Man in the Moon was
thought to be an unfortunate imprisoned in the moon for the crime
of stealing rushes or thorns, or picking them on a Sunday when work
was forbidden. Could this be a dim echo of an older early medieval
belief held by some that the moon was the destination of lost souls?
It is tempting to speculate whether this, in turn, reflects an even
older classical tradition that the moon was in fact some kind of
celestial underworld. As the first century Greek author and philosopher
Plutarch explained ‘Of these souls the moon is the element, because
souls do resolve into her, like as the bodies of the dead into the
earth’. In the even more ancient document, the Egyptian Book of
Respirations, Isis (queen of the gods) breathes the wish for her
dead brother Osiris (king of the gods) ‘that his soul may rise to
heaven in the disc of the moon’.
However, many experts are dubious that Isis was a moon goddess,
and other Egyptian gods are more strongly associated with the moon.
Most notable among these is Thoth, the ibis or baboon-headed god
of time and magic. Among the Ancient Greeks there were a number
of goddesses believed to have a lunar aspect. Hecate, arguably the
most sinister deity in the Greek world, embodied the dark side of
the moon and was associated with blood, the underworld and sorcery.
A less eerie, though in her own way no less deadly, Greek moon goddess
was Artemis (known to the Romans as Diana). Brother to Apollo the
sun god, virginal Artemis was a fierce goddess of hunting and wild
animals who took a special interest in the welfare of young girls.
Goddesses like Isis, Hecate and Artemis are still worshipped today
in the modern western world as aspects of the Great Goddess. These
worshippers style themselves Wiccans and claim to be the inheritors
of an ancient nature religion, libelled as witchcraft by its Christian
enemies. The moon has always played a large part in sorcery, and
Wiccan magic is no exception, with the moon occupying a prominent
position in the Wiccan calendar and cosmology. Much of the appeal
of this modern pagan creed to many of its liberal adherents is its
strong feminist slant, and a number of Wiccan theorists draw attention
to connections between the lunar cycle (the full moon appears every
29.53 days), and the menstrual cycle (around every 28 days). Tradition
has long preached that there was a link between the powers of the
moon and human fertility, though recent research projects attempting
to show a statistical correlation between the full moon and birth
rates have failed to do so.
Overall, Wicca is a movement with a strong New Age character, and
they typically emphasise positive aspects of their creed, while
glossing over the more sinister aspects of the lunar goddesses they
revere. While she was a goddess of feminine strength, Artemis was
also a bloodthirsty huntress who showed her quarry little mercy.
Though she embodied feminine wisdom, Hecate also demanded blood
sacrifice. Just as there is something enchanting and mysterious
about the moon, so she has a dark and bloody aspect. The full moon
following the autumnal equinox is still known in many northern traditions
as the hunter’s moon. The moon at this time shines unusually brightly,
a boon for those of our ancestors who wished to hunt by night.
Whether man was originally a herbivore, carnivore, or has always
been omnivorous, remains a contentious point, one with intriguing
implications for our development as a species. Some theories on
the lifestyle of early man have postulated fascinating links between
fertility, bloodlust and lunar cycles. One of the most compelling
of these can be found in Christopher Knight’s 1991 book Blood Relations.
Knight speculates that there is an ancient connection between the
lunar cycle and menstrual cycle, one which explains why human females
have such frequent and heavy periods relative to most comparable
species.
According to Knight, early man worked to a lunar calendar which
dictated when they should embark upon dangerous hunting expeditions.
The women of the tribe also had their menstrual cycles attuned to
the lunar cycle. Thus when the women were least likely to conceive
during their period, which coincided with the full moon, the flow
of menstrual blood was a signal for the men to go on their monthly
hunt. The men that survived were rewarded by mating upon their return,
this use of rewards allowed early women to ensure the tribal hunters
returned and shared the bounty of the hunt. Thus a primal link between
blood, the moon and fertility was established at a time when society
was still ruled by women, a link that later evidenced itself in
bloodthirsty moon goddesses like Artemis.
BE WERE OF THE WOLF
Perhaps the best-known connection between bloodshed and the lunar
cycle that has survived in modern folklore is the legend of the
werewolf. Ironically, while the idea of a man driven to wolf-like
bestial outrages of murder and cannibalism is an old one, the idea
that these outrages are inspired by the full moon is largely a modern
Hollywood invention. (The idea that a werewolf transformed every
full moon was chiefly first popularised by the 1941 film The Wolf
Man, a movie which also initiated such modern innovations of werewolf
lore as the idea that the condition was a disease passed on by a
bite or that werewolves were associated with the magical symbol
of the pentagram.)
Perhaps it’s surprising that werewolves were not associated with
the full moon – after all wolves were linked to the moon as was
hunting and mystery. But according to our ancestors during the European
werewolf epidemics which reached their height during the seventeenth
century, werewolves changed voluntarily due to black magic and Satanic
pacts, not as the involuntary victims of the lunar cycle. Nevertheless,
there are a number of traditional connections between the moon and
irrational behaviour, specifically madness. Somebody who had lost
their wits was traditionally referred to as ‘moonstruck’, while
the term ‘lunatic’ derives directly from the Latin word for moon.
LUNATIC TENDANCIES
To this day many remain convinced that the full moon has a strange
effect on human behaviour. This conviction has proved sufficiently
strong to inspire a number of researchers to try and determine whether
there was a link between cycles of the moon and the incidence of
a variety of phenomena, such as suicides, murders and mental breakdowns.
(Some of the more whimsical academics have taken to referring to
the phenomenon as ‘the Transylvania Effect’.) The results of these
studies have been inconclusive and most sceptics within the scientific
community remain unconvinced to say the least.
A 1978 article in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry entitled Human
Aggression and the Lunar Synodic Cycle started a minor controversy
by suggesting the link: ‘Data on five aggressive and/or violent
human behaviors were examined by computer to determine whether a
relationship exists between the lunar syndoic cycle and human aggression.
Homicides, suicides, fatal traffic accidents, aggravated assaults
and psychiatric emergency room visits occurring in Dade County,
Florida all show lunar periodicities. Homicides and aggravated assaults
demonstrate statistically significant clustering of cases around
full moon. Psychiatric emergency room visits cluster around first
quarter and shows a significantly decreased frequency around new
and full moon. The suicide curve shows correlations with both aggravated
assaults and fatal traffic accidents, suggesting a self-destructive
component for each of these behaviors. The existence of a biological
rhythm of human aggression which resonates with the lunar synodic
cycle is postulated.’
However, these conclusions have since been challenged by numerous
other scientists and scholars, some of whom criticised the research
methods. For every subsequent academic study published that has
re-enforced the conclusions of the Dade County experiment, several
have appeared suggesting no such connection between the full moon
and destructive or irrational behaviour. Indeed, a number of studies
came to the conclusion that such behaviour was actually less common
during the full moon, and that there was more violence and madness
during the nights of the new moon. Perhaps the most rigorous (and
sceptical) analysis of the question was undertaken by three scientists
named James Rotton, Roger Culver and Ivan Kelly in 1996. They made
a ‘meta-analysis’ of the relevant literature, combining the results
of over a hundred different papers on the topic. They concluded
‘phases of the moon accounted for no more than 3/100 of 1 percent
of the variability in activities usually termed lunacy’ a figure
too small to be of any real interest or significance.
For all that many remain convinced that the full moon presides over
a brief period of madness. Interestingly, prominent among these
believers in the curious powers of the full moon are those at what
you might call the front line - such as police officers, hospital
receptionists, and psychiatric nurses - professionals who witness
the immediate results of human irrationality on a daily basis. Sceptics
say such people are swayed by folklore and expectation, that their
conviction that the full moon is a literal herald of lunacy is contradicted
by the rational results of scientific research. But logic and reason
have never been the province of the moon. Staring at its silver
magnificence in a cloudless sky, surely even the most ardent rationalist
must concede that there is still something about the moon that promises
a world of dark mystery that will never be fully dispelled by the
cold light of day.
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