The Moon - Mythology, Mystery and History

This is our solar system. I find we don't usually take the time to really appreciate how active of a system we find ourselves in. Solar flares, the asteroid belt, Jupiter's red spot. If you're a bit of an optimist, you may even believe places like Europa hold extraterrestrial life underneath its thick layers of ice. Despite all this activity, our solar system is relatively quiet compared to what it was during its infancy, when the planets were forming about 4.5 billion years ago. Earth, for example, was extremely volcanic and active, looking more akin to hell than the blue planet we know today. We were not alone, either. Many different objects of various sizes were forming around us, chaotically moving through space. But how did our moon form? The most popular theory is that a Mars-sized object crashed into Earth, sending materials from both objects into space to form what we know as Earth's one and only moon. As both Earth and moon cooled and formed, they started a synchronous rotation, meaning they rotate the same way the moon revolves around us. Actually, this is the reason as to why the moon always faces us, giving its iconic look and cycles. Of course, we did not always have these answers, and as ancient humans, we had to work towards these explanations, supplementing them with our own over thousands of years. This was mostly done through fiction and mythology, which is what we will be exploring today. In this video, we will be going over a brief history of the moon's presence through human history and its impact on pop culture in the modern day. Our ancestors had a much different view of the night sky than people do today. This is because of light pollution, a reduction in the visibility of space from Earth due to the large amount of light given off from cities. Instead of the moon and a few stars, the common person would look up and see the Milky Way in all its glory, with its closest and most prominent feature being the moon. In terms of practicality, the moon was used by ancient humans to keep track of time. Due to its consistent appearance and the shadows cast upon it, the moon became a very easy way for people to keep track of how long time has passed. Once practicality had been achieved, it was time to do what humans do best, apply meaning. There are many different interpretations of what the moon means and represents throughout history. Most major mythologies and cultures throughout history involve the moon within their creation myths, and if not, they tend to at least be part of the more important deities and stories within the society. In order to get a good picture of the extensive era of the moon's placement in humanity's consciousness, here is a highlight reel of some of our favorites. Japan. The name of the moon god in Japanese mythos is Tsukuyomi, or shown as these kanji. Tsukuyomi was born of Izanami, alongside Amaterasu and Susanoo. Tsukuyomi was the moon god, Amaterasu was the sun goddess, and Susanoo the god of the sea and storms. Tsukuyomi and Amaterasu married each other. Once the goddess of food, Ukemochi, had invited Amaterasu to a feast, but she couldn't make it, so she sent Tsukuyomi instead. During the feast, Ukemochi created her food by pulling it out of every orifice of her body. Tsukuyomi found this Upon learning this, Amaterasu left him, and ever since, Tsukuyomi chases her, thus creating our day-night cycle. In the modern age, during the fall in Japan, there are traditional moon viewings, or tsukimi. The timing of these moon viewings are based upon the lunar calendar. This tradition of moon viewing was carried over from the Tang Dynasty China. This tradition is associated with harvesting prayer. Another interesting point is that instead of the man in the moon, it's the The Mayans. The Mayans saw the night sky in both a mythological, religious way, and a scientific, measuring way. They used the moon as a means to record the months of the year, in what is known as the lunar series. The moon's place within the Mayan mythology changes from the classic to the post-classic era. In the classic era, the moon was seen as both a masculine and feminine god. During a full moon, it would be seen as masculine, and described as a second sun, as it would appear in full as the regular sun was passing through the underworld. The full moon was also associated with the jaguar. In other phases, it would be seen as feminine, and would have various different names. In the classic period, it was also mostly associated with the maize, the harvesting god, and also rabbits. Opposition to Venus was also common, with the moon representing the north and Venus being the south. In the post-classic Mayan culture, the moon was separated into two goddesses, the younger god, Ixik-Kab, who represented the waning moon, and the older goddess, Chok-Shel, or Ix-Shel, who represented the waxing moon. There was also an association between moon goddesses and caves or water. Ancient Greece. In Greek mythology, the main goddess that represents the moon is Selene. Selene is the daughter of Titans Hyperion and Thea, and sister of the sun god Helios. She is known for her silver moon chariot, which is driven by two horses as opposed to the four used to pull the sun chariot. One of the most famous stories of Selene in Greek mythology is that of her and Endymion. Endymion was a shepherd prince who was given eternal youth by Zeus, the context of which varies between each rendition of the story. But by obtaining this youth, he was put to sleep forever and placed within a cave. Selene, being in love with Endymion, visited him every night. The two eventually had many children together, around like 50, according to legend. There are other deities that are associated with the moon in Greek mythology as well, including Hera, Bendis, Hecate, Lucipus, Aletheia, Artemis, and Pasiphae. The moon is vitally important to how humanity has viewed its place within the universe, and often stood as both a visual representation of the gods and a means to calculate time. Bringing us into the modern age, the moon has also found its place as an important aspect of key religions as well, such as Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. In terms of modern literature, it's interesting to see how the moon takes different forms and styles to the types of stories it's shown in. In gothic horror, the moon will be seen as a bringer of madness and a signifier that the night has created a twisted version of the waking world. Werewolves also come to mind. For noirs, the moon is all but the dark, brooding look casting a mysterious shadow over the city, hiding crime and emphasizing neon lights. Romances find the moon a calming and intimate figure. Think of a cool breezy night in Paris, France. In sci-fi, the moon is either the next frontier or a display of humanity's overambition and hubris. For fantasy, it represents the occult and magic, often calling back to ancient mythologies. With this fascination in Our Rocky Friend, it was only a matter of time before someone said, hey, let's land something on that. During the relatively rapid discovery of space objects beginning in the 17th century and into the modern day, we realized that space had a lot more things in it. In fact, not only did we discover a new planet known as Uranus, but we also discovered other planets have moons. Our moon was not the only one. It was actually one of more than 200. Although this may have made Luna a little bit less special, it didn't stop her intrigue. And when the Cold War came around, it was go time. Enter the space race. By the Cold War, technology and the drive to start exploring space had finally reached the point where it became possible to start realizing our dreams of landing on the moon. The two countries spearheading this were the USA and the USSR. And what can be described as the largest scale dick measuring contest of all time, the two nations raced to be the first to the moon and other space firsts. This was mostly done in the name of propaganda rather than science. Although the USA claims to be the winner of the space race, the vast majority of the major accomplishments during this period was actually achieved by the Soviets. These include first artificial satellite, first animal in space, first humans in space, first spacewalk, and that's just naming a few. Nevertheless, NASA and the American government on July 16th, 1969, it finally happened. Humans finally landed on the moon and it was beautiful. Then we wanted more. Mars looks quite appetizing, don't you think? Fuck it. Let's put a car up there too. Our drive to explore the moon led us to some of the most amazing technological breakthroughs humankind has ever seen and had unlocked the population's curiosity for what lies even further beyond. There is a reason sci-fi was so popular during the space race period, after all. Even going into the present day, when I find myself looking up at the moon in the night sky, I find myself amazed at how far we have come as a species. That we had conquered the confines of earth and found ourselves exploring environments unimaginable just a few hundred years ago. That up there, on that cold, gray rock, there sits a few footprints that will never, ever fade away. That is if you believe the landing wasn't just a government constructed myth, however. So we have landed on the moon, but where does that land us today? With its demystification over the period of the space race, most people today see the moon as nothing more than a rock in the sky. It looks cool during an eclipse and gives us something to observe for space enthusiasts, but other than a passing thought now and then, most of what we see from the moon nowadays comes from fiction and the occasional plan to visit from countries starting to increase their space programs, such as China. For the time being, it seems we have stepped on the brakes a bit on our interest in the moon. I don't believe this will last long, however. Turns out, launching rockets from earth is a very difficult task. Who could have guessed? And although there are many reasons for this, one of the main things is that our atmosphere is very dense. This is great for keeping important things in, like air, but bad for getting heavy objects out, like rockets. This is a major limiter if humanity wishes to expand into the final frontier. However, if we were to, say, build a pit stop on a place close by with hardly any atmosphere, it would become a lot easier to relatively rapidly expand into our solar system. I believe that once we see the moon used for this purpose, its importance within our civilization will be like anything we've seen in the past. It will be seen as the key that unlocks the door to the next chapter in humanity's story, and that is pretty damn cool. For now, however, we will have to settle for laying in the grass, looking up to the night sky, at the most unique object still visible amongst our light pollution, the moon. Hey, I'm Don, and thanks for sticking by and watching the second video for Androsif, and it's been a fun one to record and work on and research, and just everything. It's been an absolute blast, and thank you to Andrew for doing all the visuals again, just like last video, and a welcome to Jonathan, who's now helping us out with audio and doing a fantastic job at that. So also, I'd ask you guys to please subscribe, like, and comment, especially comics. I love reading those. Everyone who works on these absolutely loves reading those. And yeah, we got lots of great content coming up in the future, and I think you'll really enjoy it. Alright, thanks for watching.