Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is the
Speaker 2: Monster Fact, a short form theories from Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind, focusing on unmithical creatures, ideas and monsters in time.
Speaker 2: In celebration of the lunar New Year, I thought today
Speaker 2: it would be a great time to consider the lunar rabbit. Now,
Speaker 2: exactly what you see in the dark splotches of the
Speaker 2: full moon will depend on your individual and or cultural priming.
Speaker 2: You may see a face, a man with a cane
Speaker 2: or a fork, a frog or toad, or some other
Speaker 2: animal reel or imagined. But the rabbit has been a
Speaker 2: popular choice since Time out of Mind, and why not.
Speaker 2: Indigenous rabbit or hair species exist on every continent except
Speaker 2: Australia and Antarctica. The rabbit also boath's a great deal
Speaker 2: of character, inspiring numerous and varied tales that detail just
Speaker 2: how that rabbit made it to the Moon, or from
Speaker 2: the Moon to the Earth in the first place. Author
Speaker 2: Randolph S. Albright recounts several of these in his twenty
Speaker 2: twenty book House of the Three Rabbits. According to Albright,
Speaker 2: the Yoruba people of Nigeria and the Woloff people of
Speaker 2: Senegal recount legends of a rabbit sent down from the
Speaker 2: moon with the secret of immortality, but the rabbit got
Speaker 2: the message backwards or mangoled in one form or another,
Speaker 2: and instead bestowed mortality upon human beings. Oops the moon
Speaker 2: punished the rabbit by splitting its nose and forcing it
Speaker 2: to accompany each dying mortal into the afterlife. The Siberian
Speaker 2: moon goddess caltes Uku sometimes takes the form of a rabbit.
Speaker 2: The Mayan moon goddess Excel often carries a rabbit. The
Speaker 2: Cree people of North America telle of a rabbit who
Speaker 2: traveled up to the moon with the help of a
Speaker 2: passing crane, and the Celtic goddess Ostra took on the
Speaker 2: form of a hare during the full moon. In Buddhist teachings,
Speaker 2: Albright shares the rabbit's image appears on the moon because
Speaker 2: the rabbit offered up its own body to feed a
Speaker 2: starving beggar who was actually Sakra, lord of Davs in disguise.
Speaker 2: The Aztecs told a similar tale concerning the god quetzalkotal.
Speaker 2: As Victoria Dickinson explores, in her book Rabbit from the
Speaker 2: excellent Rakotan Animals series. The Aztecs associated the rabbit with
Speaker 2: drunkenness as well as the moon, and held that the
Speaker 2: rabbit must first pass through fire on its way to
Speaker 2: the lunar's surface. And of course, the lunar rabbit has
Speaker 2: an important place in many East Asian traditions, often as
Speaker 2: a lunar zodiac animal, and Chinese traditions invoke the creature
Speaker 2: in the myth of Chenga. We discussed various versions of
Speaker 2: this myth in great detail in our Stuffable your Mind
Speaker 2: episode Chinese Mortality, which you can find in our archives.
Speaker 2: But the simple version is as follows. The hero Ye
Speaker 2: the archer, receives the elixir of immortality from the Queen
Speaker 2: Mother of the West, and then, while her reasoning varies
Speaker 2: depending on the telling. Sometimes it's to protect the potion
Speaker 2: from theft by an enemy, Yi's wife shang A, drank
Speaker 2: it instead and was instantly transported to the moon. In
Speaker 2: some earlier tellings, she is then transformed into a toad
Speaker 2: who pounds the elixir of immortality there, and it's of
Speaker 2: course the very toad we might see when we gaze
Speaker 2: up at the full moon other times, and certainly in
Speaker 2: later tellings, she retains her human form and is accompanied
Speaker 2: by the jade rabbit, who pounds the elixir of immortality instead.
Speaker 2: Thus we see the rabbit on the moon. Dickinson writes
Speaker 2: to Chinese alchemists the pale jade moon rabbit embodied the
Speaker 2: yin or female principle that was associated with the moon,
Speaker 2: not only in Asia, but in the West, where the
Speaker 2: moon is often referred to as feminine. She also pointed
Speaker 2: out that in Japanese traditions, the rabbit doesn't pound the
Speaker 2: elixir of immortality, but instead pounds the rice that will
Speaker 2: be used in lunar New Year mochi cakes. Tune in
Speaker 2: for additional episodes of The Monster Fact, The Artifact, or
Speaker 2: Anamalia Stupendium each week. As always, you can email us
Speaker 2: at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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