The Moon is a masculine celestial being in Gimi cosmology. Sources differ on whether it arose from the first woman's menstrual blood or from a firstborn son whom she hid and secretly nursed until he rose into the sky. In either telling the moon and menstruation are the same substance transposed to the heavens: women's monthly bleeding is read as the moon's continuing intercourse with them, so the lunar being governs the female cycle. The strong incest motif of the cosmogony recurs here, the moon being simultaneously son and phantom lover of the first mother.