Man in The Moon - Origin Stories

Origin Stories

There are various explanations as to how there came to be a Man in the Moon.

A longstanding European tradition holds that the man was banished to the moon for some crime. Christian lore commonly held that he is the man caught gathering sticks on the sabbath and sentenced by God to death by stoning in the book of Numbers XV.32-36. Some Germanic cultures thought he was a man caught stealing from a neighbor's hedgerow to repair his own. There is a Roman legend that he is a sheep-thief.

One medieval Christian tradition claims him as Cain, the Wanderer, forever doomed to circle the Earth. Dante's Inferno alludes to this:

"For now doth Cain with fork of thorns confine

On either hemisphere, touching the wave

Beneath the towers of Seville. Yesternight

The moon was round."

This is mentioned again in his Paradise:

But tell, I pray thee, whence the gloomy spots

Upon this body, which below on earth

Give rise to talk of Cain in fabling quaint?”

There is also a Talmudic tradition that the image of Jacob is engraved on the moon, although no such mention appears in the Torah.

John Lyly says in the prologue to his Endymion (1591), "There liveth none under the sunne, that knows what to make of the man in the moone."

In Norse mythology, Máni is the male personification of the moon who crosses the sky in a horse and carriage. He is continually pursued by the Great Wolf Hati who catches him at Ragnarok. The name Máni simply means "Moon".

In Chinese mythology, the goddess Chang'e is stranded upon the moon after foolishly consuming a double dose of an immortality potion. She is accompanied by a small group of moon rabbits.

In Haida mythology, the figure represents a boy gathering wood, who was taken up from the earth as a punishment for disrespect.