Aeons have passed since man first looked up at the dark night skys, but throughout time we have seen a fragile sliver of silver that grows to it’s fullness and then mysteriously fades back into darkness.
No wonder that the moon has inspired more myths and legends than any other heavenly body. Every culture throughout the ages is rich in Moon myth and legend.
Bil and Hjuki
A Norse legend tells of a man who named his children Sun and Moon. This angered the Gods, and they took the children up to the heavens where the girl became the Sun’s Coachman, and the boy was made to guide the moon’s waxing and waning. In time the boy carried off two more children, Bil and Hjuki who had been carrying water from a well.
It is said that to this day the children can be seen on the Moon’s Face… hence the rhyme :
Jack and Jill went up the hill
to fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown
and Jill came tumbling after.
There is significance in the ‘pail of water’. Old legends tell of the ability of the reflection of the moon to steal the soul. There are also many references in legend suggesting that the ‘stolen soul’ is what we see in the face of the moon. The ‘Man in the Moon’ face and the ‘watery’ nature of the moon has found its way into most of the moon myths.
A Christian Myth
In the Book of Numbers there is a myth about a man who gathered sticks on a Sunday, the day of the Sabbath. The children of Israel were so enraged by this that they stoned the man. The tale emerged that the man was then thrown up to the Moon for his punishment where he and his sticks can still be seen.
The man in the Moon was
caught in a trap,
For stealing the thorns from
another man’s gap,
If he had gone by and let the thorns lie,
He’d never been man in the
Moon so high.

This is also seen in some of the early Tarot imagery: the figure of a man carrying a bundle of sticks.
In the earliest of these, the Sola Busca, this is the Seven of Batons, in the more modern Waite-Coleman Smith (aka Rider-Waite), it is best seen in the Ten of Wands.
But what has this to do with the moon?
‘But tell me, what are the dark spots
on this body that make those down on earth
repeat their preposterous tales of Cain?’
Dante, Paradiso ii
John S. Carroll (1904), Paradiso 2.49-63


Cain
The Man In The Moon
They would know, wouldn’t they? After all, back in 1970 or so, ‘Catholic Weekly’ rated Paul Huson’s Mastering Witchcraft as a genuine vade mecum (do-it-yourself guide), and if they know anything, it’s real witchcraft, right?