In the first part of our series ahead of the Mid-Autumn Festival, we looked into the vast tapestry of Chinese moon mythology – Chang'e, the Jade Rabbit, mooncakes, stories shaped by longing, selfless acts, and the hope of reunion.

In this feature, we'll expand into moon stories across other civilizations and how this celestial body became a metaphor for love, distance, luck and ambition.

Moon stories across the world

For as long as people have looked up at the night sky, the moon has been more than a distant object glowing above them. It has been a goddess, a home for spirits, a force capable of shaping nature and human fate, or a celestial figure governing the night and the passage of time. Its unusual appearances, from blue moons to blood-red eclipses, have inspired stories, warnings and wonder.

Science has given us answers to many of the questions our ancestors once answered through myth – we now know what causes an eclipse, why the moon changes shape and what its surface is made of.

We may no longer look at a lunar eclipse and prepare an offering to appease the heavens, but as long as people remain curious about the world above them – and the vast universe beyond it – the moon will continue to inspire stories of our own.

For the ancient Greeks, the moon was embodied by Selene, a goddess who crossed the night sky in a chariot.

According to the most enduring version of the myth, Selene first caught sight of Endymion – either a shepherd or the king of Elis depending on the version of the myth – while he was sleeping in a cave on Mount Latmus. Enchanted by his appearance, she descended from the night sky every night to watch over him in her pale, silvery light. One day she asked Zeus to make him always seem this way, so he would never age, never leave and never change. Zeus being Zeus, put Endymion to eternal slumber. And from then on, every night, Selene visits him in his cave, but they can never truly share a life.

The parallel with the story of Chang'e is hard to miss. In Chinese mythology, from the moon, Chang'e watches her beloved husband Hou Yi who remains on Earth, the two separated by an impossible distance.

Persian and wider Iranian traditions believed that each night, a dragon rose from the underworld and swallowed a piece of the moon's disc, gradually consuming it until the moon disappeared completely. Then the moon-god killed the dragon from inside its belly and emerged once more, restoring the moon to the sky. People in Iran imagined that a dragon had swallowed the sun or moon and, during an eclipse, would go onto the flat roofs of their houses and beat their washbasins, praying for the celestial body to be released.

The Incas imagined a different relationship with the moon. Mama Quilla, the Incan moon goddess, was associated with women, marriage and the lunar calendar. One traditional story explains the dark patches visible on the moon through a strange tale of love: a fox fell in love with Mama Quilla and rose into the heavens to be with her. She embraced him so tightly that his form left dark marks on the moon.

The mysterious markings that people at the time didn't have a scientific explanation for became part of a story, as did the Jade Rabbit on the moon in Chinese mythology. 

In Māori tradition, Rona, a young girl in New Zealand, goes out to fetch water one night and stumbles over tree roots, hurting her feet. Annoyed, she begins to curse the moon, which should have been lighting her way. The moon goddess hears it and snatches up the young girl, taking her up into the sky. Rona manages to grab onto a branch from a ngaio-tree, holding on so hard that the whole tree comes away from the earth and went with her to the moon.

Across Slavic folklore as well, the markings were given various explanations, for example, one story coming from Bulgaria says that a pear tree once grew on the moon, its fruit eaten away by God's cow until the tree itself became part of the lunar landscape.

In Estonian folklore, the story tells of an orphan who lives with cruel people and is made to work from dawn until dusk. One evening, after finally being allowed to go to the sauna, as she crosses the yard carrying the birch whisk and pail she has used for her chores, the girl looks up at the moon and begs it to take her away. The moon takes pity on her and lifts her into the sky.

In Nordic mythology, the moon takes yet another form. Máni (moon) and Sól (sun) his sister, drive their chariots across the sky, with two wolves chasing them. The vikings believed that when the wolves catch them, the end of the world, Ragnarök, would come.

In Inuit traditions from Alaska, Greenland and the Arctic, the sun and moon are also imagined as siblings. Malina (sun) and her brother Anningan (moon) have a siblings quarrel, after which Malina flees into the sky and Anningan follows her. That's how the Inuit explained the movement of the two bodies across the sky, while Anningan forgetting to eat is used to explain why the moon grows thinner during its waning phase. When the moon appears to disappear completely, Inuit believe Anningan has gone to find food. When he ultimately catches up to his sister – a rare event – it's a solar eclipse.

Arabic tradition has given the moon a place in everyday speech. One classical proverb says إنْ يَبْغِ عليك قومُك لا يَبْغِ عليك القمر – "If your people wrong you, the moon will not." The saying comes from an old story of a dispute over whether the moon would still be visible when the sun rose. While one man complained that his own people might take sides against him, the arbitrator answered that even if his people wronged him, the moon would not. Over time, the proverb came to express the idea that something so plainly visible or certain cannot be altered by people's opinions: the moon does not take sides.

When the moon becomes a word

Chinese has an especially rich vocabulary of lunar imagery.

One of the most famous lines comes from Song Dynasty poet Su Shi's "Prelude to the Water Melody," written during the Mid-Autumn Festival in 1076: 月有阴晴圆缺 – yue you yin qing yuan que – "The moon has its dark and bright phases, its waxing and waning." Su Shi then draws a parallel with human life – people, too, experience parting and reunion, joy and sorrow.

The idea is at the heart of the Mid-Autumn Festival itself. The full moon represents completeness, and even though the people looking at it may be separated by thousands of kilometers, the poet says, "We can only hope that all our friends and families can live long lives; Looking at the moon together, across a thousand miles."

Then there is one of the most famous lines in Chinese poetry: 举头望明月，低头思故乡 – ju tou wang ming yue, di tou si gu xiang, meaning "I raise my head to gaze at the bright moon; I lower my head and think of my homeland." This is Li Bai's line from "Quiet Night Thought" that has become almost inseparable from the idea of homesickness.

Not every Chinese expression involving the moon is romantic. Consider 近水楼台先得月 – jin shui lou tai xian de yue, "The pavilion closest to the water gets the moonlight first."

Although it sounds almost like a line from a love poem, its actual meaning is much more practical and contemporary – someone in a favorable position gets an advantage first.

The moon has acquired equally colorful meanings elsewhere.

In English, someone who is "over the moon" is extremely happy. To "ask for the moon" is to ask for something impossible or unreasonable, while to "promise someone the moon" is to make an extravagant promise. Someone with enormous ambitions might "shoot for the moon."

A very long time ago was "many moons ago," while something that happens only rarely happens "once in a blue moon." And then there is the wonderfully sentimental expression "love you to the moon and back," which turns the distance to the moon into a measure of the size of someone’s love.

In French, however, "être dans la lune" – literally, "to be in the moon" – describes someone who is distracted, absent-minded or lost in thought. Your mind, in other words, has wandered somewhere far from Earth.

An Arabic saying heard in the Levant goes بتقول للقمر قوم لأقعد مطرحك — "He/she tells the moon, 'Get up so I can sit in your place.'" It is a poetic exaggeration for someone who is exceptionally beautiful. The Arabic Language Academy lists the moon قَمَرَ as a verb, as in قَمَرَتْ فلانةُ قلبَه — literally that a woman "mooned" or captivated someone's heart, meaning she enchanted him with her beauty.

One moon, many stories

On a mid-autumn night, people may sit around different tables, in different cities or even on different sides of the world. They may eat different foods, speak different languages and tell different legends of the moon, but they still look up and admire the same beauty and find in the moon a way to speak about love, loss, longing, home and hope.

For what unites us is often greater than what divides us.

Editor's note: Zaruhi Poghosyan is a multimedia editor for CGTN Digital. This article is part of China, Soft Focus – a slow journalism series that offers textured, human-centered glimpses into China through measured pace and intimate storytelling.