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The Moon Lady
Taken from: The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan.
Ying-Ying St. Clair (one of the mothers)
(…)
The Moon Lady! I thought, and the very sound of those magic words made me forget my troubles. I heard more cymbals and gongs and then a shadow of a woman appeared against the moon. Her hair was undone and she was combing it. She began to speak. Such a sweet, wailing voice!
“My fate and my penance,” she began to lament, pulling her long fingers through her hair, “to live here on the moon, while my husband lives on the sun. So that each day and each night, we pass each other, never seeing one another, except this one evening, the night of the mid-autumn moon.”
The crowd moved closer. The Moon Lady plucked her lute and began her singing tale.
On the other side of the moon I saw the silhouette of a man appear. The Moon Lady held her arms out to embrace him—“O! Hou Yi, my husband, Master Archer of the Skies!” she sang. But her husband did not seem to notice her. He was gazing at the sky. And as the sky grew brighter, his mouth began to open wide—in horror or delight, I could not tell.
The Moon lady clutched her throat and feel into a heap crying. “the drought of ten suns in the eastern sky!” And just as she sang this, the Master Archer pointed his magic arrows and shot down nine suns which burst open with blood. “Sinking into a simmering sea!” she sang rapidly, and I could hear these suns sizzling and crackling in death.
And now a fairy—the Queen Mother of the Western Skies!—was flying toward the Master Archer. She opened a box and held a glowing ball—no, not a baby sun but a magic peach, the peach of everlasting life! I could see the Moon Lady pretending to be busy with her embroidery, but she was watching her husband. She saw him hide the peach in a box. And then the Master Archer raised his bow and vowed to fast for one year to show he had the patience to live forever. And after he ran off, the Moon Lady wasted not one moment to find the peach and eat it!
As soon as she tasted it, she began to rise, then fly—not like the Queen Mother—but like a dragonfly with broken wings. “Flung from this earth by my own wantonness!” she cried just as her husband dashed back home, shouting, “Thief! Life-stealing wife!” He picked up his bow, aimed an arrow at his wife and—with the rumblings of a gong, the sky went black.
Wyah! Wyah! The sad lute music began again azs the sky on the stage lightened, And there stood the poor lady against a moon as bright as the sun. Her hair was now so long it swept the floor, wiping up her tears. An eternity had passed since she last saw her husband, for this was her fate: to stay lost on the moon, forever seeking her own selfish wishes.
“For woman is yin,” she cried sadly, “the darkness within, where untempered passions lie. And man is yang, bright truth lighting our minds.”
(…)
“Wait, everybody! The Moon Lady has consented to grant one secret wish t each person here…”
(…)
“I have a wish! I have one!” I shouted as I ran forward on my bare feet. But the young man paid no attention to me and walked off the stage. I kept running toward the moon to tell the Moon Lady what I wanted, because now I knew what my wish was. I darted fast as a lizard behind the stage, to the other side of the moon.
(…)
But now that I am old, moving every year closer to the end of my life, I also feel closer to the beginning. And I remember everything that happened that day because it has happened many times in my life. The same innocence, trust, and restlessness, the wonder, fear and loneliness. How I lost myself.
I remember all these things. And tonight, on the fifteenth day of the eight month, I also remember what I asked the Moon Lady so long ago. I wished to be found.
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The moon… in Gaelic we call the moon Gealach. Geal means bright, so our word for moon could be translated as brightness, or she who brings light.
Here’s something I found, it’s called “Moon song”
I raise my arms in greeting
As She slips up through the night,
The rounded Moon of Mystery,
A glowing silver disk of light.
My spirit answers to Her call
And longs for wings to fly
That I might seek Her secret place
Whose symbol is the sky?
A place of hidden secrets,
Of sacred Mysteries old,
A place I knew in other times,
In temple wisdom no more told.
I struggle to remember
All the things I learned before,
The forgotten Mysteries of the Moon,
The Goddess and Her lore.
Although my arms reach skyward,
I turn inward toward Her voice.
I tread the inner labyrinth,
Trusting in my choice.
"Seek not without, but deep within."
The words are soft and clear.
"Keep faith with Me for thirteen months,
The Mother's Sacred Year."
I watch Her through Her cycles,
As I did in lives before,
And follow down Her moonbeam path
To the secret, inner door.
Here’s a link you might find interesting...
http://irelandsown.net/mythmagic.htm
Have fun with it.
Lots of love.
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