Before the firmament was cut by telescopes or spacecraft had mapped its craters, our moon was a profound idea in human thought. It wasn't a rugged piece of rock that orbited a planet, but a resolute presence in the planet's story. To see the place of the moon in human history, one has to go beyond Earth science to rich myth in which it was a god, creator, trickster, and timekeeper. The myths and legends of our nearest stellar neighbour reveal a larger truth: its most significant power was not gravity, but the power it wields in calendars, cultures, and even fantasy. There was no electric light, and darkness at night was unbroken, impenetrable darkness, lit only by the soft glow of stars and the shining, changing light of the moon.

This was the world of our ancestors. The most noticeable thing in the sky was the moon, whose constantly changing shape was from a thin crescent of silver to an enormous full circle to blankness. This all-pervasive movement could not help but be noticed. It was the first man's calendar and clock. Even the word "month" is derived from the word "moon." Men shaped their life rhythms into time through it. They knew when to plant, when to hunt, when to hold ceremonies, and when to expect the tides to shift, all from the moon. It was a certain, silent direction in an alien world. This functional relationship was even more intense, a spiritual one. The old civilisations of the world looked upwards and perceived, not a rock, but a face.

They accounted for its presence and variations in terms of myths. The moon in the majority of civilisations was an individual, a god or goddess with emotions as a human, and apocalyptic events happened. In Greece, goddess Artemis was imagined as a ferocious huntress roaming the forests with her bow of silver, her light shining far in the interiors of the forests. To the Romans, she was Diana, protector of women and animals. To them, the woman, protecting the moon. To others, man moon. The Norse god Máni, for example, was chased through the skies by a wolf, a myth remembered as an explanation for lunar eclipses. The cyclical pattern of disappearance and return of the moon made the moon a rich symbol of death and resurrection. It was one that, despite all vanishing, could be reformed. It held out hope and promise during the time of death. The most common myth, in every form, is the "man in the moon" legend. Various cultures saw a rabbit, a frog, or a buffalo.

But the idea was the same: the craters on the moon's face were not random placement impact craters, but an animal shape put there for a reason. In one of the Native American myths, a mischievous rabbit was shot into the moon by an angry god as punishment, and his face remains evidence for us. In an Asian myth, a rabbit mixes ingredients to brew on the moon an elixir of magic. They were primitive attempts at explaining the mysteries, making otherworldly brilliance in the sky a domesticated, comprehensible presence. They brought the universe down to the heavens and brought heaven down to everyday life and moral teaching. The power of the moon was also immediately equated with the human mind and with magic.

The word "lunatic" comes from the Latin word "luna," since the moon was thought to influence sanity and make a person mad. Stories of werewolves are linked with the full moon, and during this time, ordinary men would become beasts. This link between the moon and the unconscious, the wild, and the irresistible forces of nature is a leitmotif that is repeated in boundless myths. It was not a light; it was a force that could change people and the world. Supernatural magic and witches were called on to cast spells under a full moon, calling upon its mysticism to draw magical power. It was also symbolic of dreams, intuition, and our own secret self, which we hide from the world. Besides that, the moon was also the central figure in myths of creation.

The moon, to most societies, was there from the very start and shaped the world. The moon and the sun are husband and wife and brother and sister and chase each other around the heavens in some mythologies and constitute day and night. The Egyptians also enjoyed a successful soap opera family with the god Thoth, who was also linked to the moon and who allegedly won at a game of chance so that he could create the five extra days required to fit the solar year. This is an early episode of organising time and even life itself. The moon wasn't inactive; it was a willing participant in things. Even its existence as moonlight was sufficient to make men into poetry and passion.

It glowed sufficiently so that there might be sight, but took away the harshness and the blemishes, leaving behind a world of wonder and loveliness. It was the light for evening festivities, for secret meetings between lovers, and for contemplation. It is a poetic and aesthetic motive, always being something other than the harsh, raw light of the sun. It was the light of the promise, of the secret, of the future. We can see now the terminus of the journey of the moon.

We identify its craters as having been caused by asteroids, its phases as the product of its orbit, and its light as merely a reflection from the sun. We have walked upon its surface and brought back chunks of its rock. We have explained it. And yet the power of the ancient myths remains. We still have a sympathy for a full moon. We still employ its face in fiction to represent magic and mystery. We still sing and write poetry about it. Mythic moon is not gone; it lives on in our words, paintings, and the shared imagination. It reminds us that our ancestors looked up at the same sky and experienced the same wonder, and they employed the myths they fashioned to make their mark on an immense, wonderful universe. The most that our moon could have done is not to have ever failed, but to have succeeded in inspiring it—the innumerable cultures that it spawned, the tales that it created, and the eternal human bond that it established between the earth and sky.

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