The Moon

The Moon is the Sun's counterpart in Angan cosmology, joined to it in the sun-and-moon myth as spouse, sibling, or twin emanation depending on the telling. The Moon is closely tied to women, to menstruation and to the reckoning of months, its waxing and waning read as a bodily cycle. Among the Baruya, as described by Maurice Godelier, and the Ankave, described by Pascale Bonnemere, the lunar body figures in accounts of the origin of female bleeding and of the separation of the sexes.

Parentage

• paternal: Omalyce

Domains

• sky
• menstruation

Powers

• waxes and wanes to mark the months
• binds the cycle of women's blood

Relations

• spouse: The SunThe Baruya sun-and-moon myth casts the two as a married couple.Godelier, Maurice. The Making of Great Men: Male Domination and Power among the New Guinea Baruya. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. (secondary)
• sibling: The SunAs twin emanations of the primordial being the Sun and Moon are also siblings in Iqwaye cosmogony.Mimica, Jadran. Intimations of Infinity: The Cultural Meanings of the Iqwaye Counting System and Number. Oxford and New York: Berg, 1988. (secondary)

Sources

• The Moon is the Sun's counterpart in Angan cosmology, joined to it in the sun-and-moon myth as spouse, sibling, or twin emanation depending on the telling.: Godelier, Maurice. The Making of Great Men: Male Domination and Power among the New Guinea Baruya. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. (secondary); Mimica, Jadran. Intimations of Infinity: The Cultural Meanings of the Iqwaye Counting System and Number. Oxford and New York: Berg, 1988. (secondary)
• The Moon is closely tied to women, to menstruation, and to the reckoning of months.: Bonnemere, Pascale. Le pandanus rouge: Corps, difference des sexes et parente chez les Ankave-Anga. Paris: CNRS Editions / Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, 1996. (secondary)