From the Man in the Moon to Rabbits Making Mochi - Pareidolic Images on the Luner Landscape

When you look at the moon, what do you see?

Depending on its phase it could be a carefully cut fingernail clipping, a slice of lemon, or the eye of a giant raven looking down at us. But when the moon is full, the darker spots on its circular shape prompt a number of interpretations. In Western culture it is the famous "Man in the Moon" people talk about a lot. Throughout my childhood I have heard him mention numerous times... but whenever I looked at the full moon, I never once saw a face. No matter how many times people have tried to point out its features. Eventually I stopped caring alltogether... until very recently.

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Finding Out Once And For All

As I got inspired to this post, I decided to finally see what the images on the Internet could tell me about this pareidolic interpretation of the lunar surface. Where is that face supposed to be? Of course, people tend to see faces in all kinds of things, reminding me of the "fucked up face" the protagonist in the brilliant movie My Private Idaho sees in a road, before he falls narcoleptic. (If you don't know, it's a movie worth checking out.)

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Sure it Looks Like a Face! Why Not?

So in this landscape you could certainly claim that the two trees on the horizon would be the eyes, and the road the nose merging into the mouth... but honestly, I'm sure many interpreters would agree with me that it's pretty far fetched. Right? Okay, so what about the moon?

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Is This Supposed to be the famous man in the moon? (...talking about fucked up...) But for real??? I mean, if this is seriously that famous moon face, then it would make that Idaho road face positively handsome! How don't children get scared of this? (Probably because they haven't been able to see it either!) Fortunately, there are better interpretations out there.

Asian and American Moon Rabbits

The neat thing about pareidolia is that you can make up your images as you like. This is why it's so hard to get others to see what is so clear and obvious for you. Though in some cases, when the image is really obvious, people may see the same things. In some truly spectacular cases, this may even be true on different continents. Enter the rabbit!

When I was living in Japan I heard the folkloric tale that there were two rabbits on (or in) the moon, making mochi. By then I was quite familiar with these delicious candies made of pounded sweet rice. And I even saw cartoons of the two bunnies smashing the rice in a mortar, in carefully timed tandem moves, when one rabbit lifted its wooden hammer, the other one would hit the rice, and so on. I really liked this cute legend, but back then I never even thought that it was conceived from looking at the moon's appearance.

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Quetzalcoatl Elevating the Rabbit to the Moon

It wasn't until years later, that I remembered this Japanese tale when I heard a very similar legend from Aztec mythology. It had to with one of the most important deities, the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl, who once walked the earth in human form. At one point he found himself quite tired, hungry, and far away from civilization. He was about to starve to death, when a rabbit offered itself as his nourishment. He accepted (presumably), but first he lifted up the small rabbit into the moon, to make sure it would be honored and remembered forever. ... and as a result, you can still see the rabbit in the moon today. Thus ends the story.

Really? So you can still see the rabbit, kinda like the weird images of the stellar constellations? I knew I had to check for myself. And lo and behold, the next time I gazed at the full moon, the rabbit revealed itself to me! There was its round little body, its pointy nose, and its two long ears! I was ecstatic. What was even better, is when I told other folks about this, and tried to point out the rabbit, they actually saw it! Or maybe they were just too polite to say no.

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The Rabbit is the Cultural Winner

I got my inspiration to this post from a comment @heroldius wrote me about my last post, where I already mentioned the lunar rabbit in the myth of the Mexica. Now that I actually looked into it, I'm realizing that it's not just the Japanese and Mexicans who see a rabbit in the moon. According to Wikipedia, the moon rabbit is part of the Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Khmer, Indian, and Sri Lankan traditions. As for the Americas, there is a similar Cree tale of a rabbit wanting to ride the moon, and a crane who helped to put him there.