Moon Mythology

[Indilwen]

Moon Mythology

"This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary."

-Sylvia Plath
The Moon and the Yew Tree



The urge to explain and understand the world of natural phenomena cannot properly be seen as particularly scientific, but must be seen, rather, as generally human. It is well known that long before Copernicus described his radical and revolutionary picture of a helio-centric universe that human beings, from around the world, were giving form to the origins, motions and motives of the vastly complex and depthless sky above them. Through mythic narratives of super-human heroes and anthropomorphic goddesses and gods, pre-scientific societies placed order among the cosmos.

The Moon has always held a place of particular fascination in our earthbound lives, provoking the imagination to escape its limits and, as we look outwards, moving us towards an understanding of our inner selves, in all our human complexity. Monuments and shrines have been built to her; calendars follow her motion; ancient Gods and Goddesses mimic the Moon's gentle and unending pull on the forces of life. Myths, as Carl Jung has described, bring us back in touch with ourselves and, to that effect, can never be replaced by science. In this sense, it would be detrimental to completely dissolve these mythic narratives into an archaic and unsophisticated past.

Is it not possible, on one hand, to deny the factual accuracy of these stories while, on the other, appreciating their import in our socio-political world, to see them as "facts of the mind," which, when projected, take on a worthwhile reality unto themselves; to understand them, not as the antitheses of science but, instead, its antecedents; to understand, not only their dangers, but also their power to free the human imagination, enabling us to envision new worlds, overcome old boundaries, and eventually move us all forward to a better understanding of ourselves and the universe around us.