Predicting Weather By The Moon - Xavier University Libraries

Weather By The Moon
grows thinner and thinner, eventually stopping to rest.
Dropping to earth he hunts and catches a seal which he eats,
then returns once more to the chase. This scenario is
enacted out month in and month out, explaining the New
Moon seal hunt among the Eskimo.
The ‘Man in the Moon’ idea exemplifies the
masculinity and is widespread. In Northern Europe, among
Lithuanian and Latvian peoples, it was told that the male
Moon wedded the Sun, but the Sun rose at dawn leaving the
Moon to wander alone, courting the morning star. In anger
and jealousy, the Sun cleft the Moon with a sword,
explaining the diminishment of the phases.
Aborigines of Australia call the Moon ‘The Wanderer’.
In an ancient tale, a man was chased off the edge of the
world by a dingo (wild dog).When he returned, he was so
hungry that he gorged himself on opossums. The dingo
returned, found him and once again gave chase. But the man
was now too fat to move and the dog ate him. When it had
finished, it tossed one of the man’s arm bones in the sky,
where it became the Moon-man.
Rongo was the name of the Moon god in Babylonia,
and was known by that name too in pre-European New
Zealand and Hawaii. Rongo was believed to control nature
and act as a fertilising agency, causing winds and crops to
flourish.
The Moon has always been the symbol of fertility.
Early Man made rock drawings matching crescent moons
to the horn-shapes of known animals. The ram’s horn
became an important religious symbol, just as crushed horn
persists today in Asia as an aphrodisiac. An awareness of
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