23 September 2014
The Short Answer (TSA)
Traditional Face of "The Man
in the Moon"
“Looked at in just the right way”?
Yes. Since the beginning of time people and, most often, artists have noticed that if you look at a group of random shapes, your mind will often “recognize” the image of something in the shapes. The renaissance artist, Leonardo da Vinci, explains in his journal how a person can, sometimes, see figures and scenes just by relaxing and looking at water stains on a wall.
This natural human tendency was used by Swiss psychologist Hermann Rorschach to develop a famous psychological test using inkblots. Using a set randomly shaped ink blots, the patient is asked what each shape reminds them of. Often, the images “seen” by individual patients are believed to refer to the patient’s mood or mental state.
A pareidolic image is the technical term for an image you or I might “recognize” in a billowy white cloud in the sky . . . or . . . getting back to our subject, on the face of the moon.
The Woman in the Moon?
But “The Man in the Moon” wasn’t always a face. In old traditions, “The Man in the Moon” was seen as a figure walking across the moon. Sometimes, the “Man” crossing the moon wasn’t a man, but a woman. Sometimes, the figure on the moon was seen as a rabbit.
In Norse mythology, Máni, a male moon god is said to cross the sky in a carriage. In Chinese mythology, the goddess Chang'e is stranded on the moon with a few rabbits. (Rabbits?) Anyway, a Talmudic tradition says that an image of Jacob is engraved on the moon.
Naturally, legends grew up about how “The Man in the Moon” (either a face or figure) got there. In Christian Europe, the story was told of a man who was banished to the moon for gathering sticks on the Sabbath. In Germany, the man was banished to the moon for stealing bushes from a neighbor’s border hedge to repair gaps in his own.
By the European Middle Ages, “The Man in the Moon” was Cain of the Cain and Abel story. Cain, it was supposed, was doomed to circle the Earth forever for his biblical crime.
In later Europe, the importance of the crime and criminal faded a bit. “The Man in the Moon" suffered from . . . a tendency to drink a bit to much and was called the god of drunkards. Capitalizing on “The Man in the Moon’s” new image as a heavy drinker, numerous English taverns adopted the name or variations of the name “The Man in the Moon.
A couple of final notes.
Not to be left out, people in the Southern Hemisphere have their own, different, version of “The Man in the Moon.”
Why different?
The Moon circles around the middle of the earth. So, if you are in the United States, the moon in the evening sky is never directly above your head but crosses the sky to your south. But, if you went to Australia, in the Southern Hemisphere, the moon would cross the sky to your north – making the moon appear to be upside down. Of course, if an Australian came to the U.S., they’d say the Northern Hemisphere's moon was upside down.
“The Man in the Moon” has been a popular name in the arts given to no less than three films and a number of popular songs.
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