Badz

Badz is the personified Moon of Dargin cosmology and the counterpart of the sun Berhi. In the best-known myth the moon loved the sun but boasted of being the more beautiful and the more admired; in anger the sun cast unwashable dirt upon her face, and its marks remain as the moon's spots. Wounded, Badz fled and keeps fleeing, so that sun and moon never overtake one another. The moon's sex and kinship vary between Dargin communities: the Myuregi called the moon a boy and brother to the sun-girl, whereas the Akusha made the moon a daughter meeting her mother the sun but once a year. Sources thus differ on whether the tie between the two luminaries is one of lovers, of siblings, or of mother and child.

Domains

• moon
• night

Powers

• flees the sun across the sky
• bears the unwashable spots on her face

Relations

• lover: BerhiThe moon and sun loved one another before the quarrel over beauty.Mifologicheskie personazhi traditsionnykh verovaniy dargintsev-tsudakhartsev. Tambov: Gramota, 2013. (secondary)

Sources

• Badz is the Dargin deity embodying the Moon, whose facial spots are explained by a myth of quarrel with the Sun.: Mifologicheskie personazhi traditsionnykh verovaniy dargintsev-tsudakhartsev // Gramota. Tambov, 2013. No. 10 (36). Part 1. (secondary); Seferbekov R.I. Mifologicheskie obrazy solntsa i luny v verovaniyakh narodov Dagestana. Makhachkala. (secondary)