The Hare on the Moon

The following is excerpted from AdlerPlanetarium.org:

Many peoples see pictures on the Moon, based on the dark and light patterns on the Moon’s face. One is the Man in the Moon. Another is the Rabbit in the Moon, or Hare on the Moon. A rabbit is not immediately obvious to modern Western eyes, but to the Chinese it has been a mainstay of mythology for centuries. The Chinese also see a Toad, who is the goddess Heng O.

The hare in the moon is a common symbol for sacrifice and rebirth. This story from India is fairly typical. It runs: A monkey a fox and a hare were out walking. They encountered a beggar in very bad shape. He told them he had not eaten for days and was about to starve. Now it was a holy day, when the rich would fast and give food to the poor, so the three friends decided to hunt for some food for the beggar. The monkey found some mangoes and the fox returned with a bird’s nest, which the beggar accepted gratefully. The hare, however could hunt nothing, since humans could not eat grass. Instead he offered himself as food. The hare lit a fire and jumped in. However, he found he did not burn. Instead the beggar revealed his true face as Indra, God of the Storm. Indra rewarded the hare’s courage and self-sacrifice by placing him on the Moon, where people would see him and forever remember his story.

An Aztec story says that the Gods needed to renew the Sun and the Moon. This required a pair of willing sacrifices. The second sacrifice, called Tacciztécatl or Conch Shell Lord, became reincarnated as the Moon, so one of the gods hurled a rabbit into the Moon’s clean face. The rabbit can be seen today as the emblem of Tacciztécatl’s sacrifice and rebirth.


Image: Joanna May.