Moon
the first calendar, and the first excuse
The only celestial body that visibly changes shape on a reliable schedule — which made it the first clock, and then the standing metaphor for everything that will not hold still.
- Instances
- Sin / Nanna (Mesopotamian, male) · Chandra (Vedic, male) · Tsukuyomi (Japanese, male) · Selene and Artemis (Greek, female) · 月 (the character, carrying “moon” and “month” at once) · the Hijri calendar
- The flip
- The body praised for regularity is the one blamed for irregularity in people. Lunatic and moonstruck take their sense straight from luna: the same dependable timekeeper became the standing explanation for undependable behaviour. A second flip runs underneath — the moon is confidently described as universally feminine, and is grammatically and mythologically masculine across Germanic, Mesopotamian, Vedic and Japanese tradition. The archetype is real; the gender attached to it is local and gets mistaken for the archetype.
Sources · 4
- documented Oxford English Dictionary, s.vv. lunatic, moonstruck — the derivation from luna.
- documented Grammatical gender: German der Mond; and the male lunar deities Sin, Chandra and Tsukuyomi in their own textual traditions.
- documented The Hijri calendar as a working lunar reckoning still in civil use.
- folk That the moon is a universally feminine symbol. Repeated everywhere, including in design and branding writing, and contradicted by several of the largest traditions on the list above.