The Moon:"The light that shines over all lands."🌙

 

I often wonder how many secrets the moon has already heard whispered into the night. How many stolen kisses, silent goodbyes, desperate prayers, and promises meant to last forever have risen towards her pale light? How many secret encounters has she witnessed? And how many forgotten creatures has she watched emerge from the darkness before disappearing again with the dawn?

No matter where we wander, she follows without judgement, illuminating forgotten roads, abandoned cemeteries, lonely rooftops, and restless souls. She reminds us that even in our most solitary moments, we are never truly alone. Someone or something has always been watching. Perhaps that is why the moon has become one of the oldest symbols in folklore. She has inspired lovers, poets, witches, and monsters alike. Under her glow, ordinary people have imagined impossible things, and legends have been born, out of fear, out of hope. 

      Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms And the autumn moon is bright.
-   Maria Ouspenskaya's  ("The Wolf Man" 1941)

The oldest Moon myth

Around 2100 BC, the Sumerians wrote myths explaining why the Moon waxes and wanes.

They believed Nanna sailed across the night sky every evening before disappearing into the underworld during the new moon. This is one of humanity's oldest recorded explanations for the Moon's phases.

🌙 Wear the Moon with you.

This is an ancient Moon passage that comes from a Sumerian hymn:

"Father Nanna, whose radiance fills the heavens, whose light covers the land."

Someone wrote those words over 4,000 years ago, and every night we are looking at the same Moon they were.

This is the oldest surviving photograph of the Moon,

It was captured on March 26, 1840, by American scientist and NYU professor John William Draper. He used the early daguerreotype process with a 5-inch reflecting telescope on a New York City rooftop, capturing the lunar image with a 20-minute exposure.

Before Draper’s success, French inventor Louis Daguerre (the pioneer of photography) reportedly attempted to capture the Moon on January 2, 1839. However, his attempt was blurry, and his entire laboratory burned down a few months later, destroying all of his original images. This left Draper's 1840 daguerreotype as the oldest one left in existence. Sorce: HERE

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Last night I met the Moon because she, too, seemed lonely. I stayed with her for a while, and we spoke in silence. She told me she had seen you.She refused to tell me where you were.

Instead, she smiled and whispered that you were searching for me beneath the very same sky. That somewhere, under the same ancient Moon, you were looking upward, hoping the stars would answer the questions we have been asking for decades.

Pale ✝ Angel 

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