SYMBOL DICTIONARY: THE MOON

 

There is in my mind a link between frogs and the forest goddess Artemis. The moon is that link, because both of them are associated with the moon.

The moon is symbolic of things female. They have it wrong in Kubo and the Two Strings – if there is a Moon King, she will identify as Female.

I could wax lyrical about the moon for months. I’ll leave you with this beautiful passage from Sindiwe Magona’s book, Chasing the Tails of my Father’s Cattle:

Her neighbour’s’ unseen, all-seeing eyes burned holes into Miseka’s shoulders. As she made her way to and from the river, the field or the village shop, her ears burned from the whispers, the wounding words of their mouths. And her heart bled. But even had non breathed a word of her condition, none shook head or clucked tongue in disgust or empathy, Miseka’s heart would still have weighed heavily in her anxious breast. Of course, she rejoiced when her moon time ceased. Weeks after Jojo had returned to the gold mine in faraway Johannesburg, her moon time did not come. And so, cautious, anxious, she waited. The moon changed from fingernail to cow’s horns. Her moon time did not come. The moon showed itself the rounded loaf of bakpot bread. Her moon time did not come. Thrice, the moon did its ever-changing, never-ceasing, from-this-to-that rotation. And through all those eternal changes Miseka felt her heart beat loud as a witch-doctor’s drum during a dance. Her moon time paid her no visit. Finally, the woman allowed herself exceeding joy, drunken and unrestrained joy. Rapturous delight! She was glad – very glad indeed. The month’s leave the mines gave their men was too short a time, especially as a week of that would be eaten up by the train ride home and then back to the mines. Men were not birds that can transverse the skies as fast as the wind. Moreover, the men’s time at home was not only short, but nature also didn’t always work for them – for  Miseka and husband Jojo. Often he would go back only for her moon time to run down her legs a few days or weeks after he’d left.

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