Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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

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

Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.