Australian Aboriginal Astronomy: The Sun and Moon Many traditions have stories of a female Sun and a male Moon. The Yolngu people of Arnhem Land in the far north of Australia tell of how each morning Walu, the Sun-woman, lights a small fire. We see this as the dawn. Walu paints herself with red ochre, some of which spills onto the clouds, creating the sunrise. She then lights a torch and carries it across the sky from east to west, creating daylight. At the end of her journey, as Walu descends from the sky, some of her ochre paints again rubs off onto the clouds, creating the sunset. She then extinguishes her torch, and throughout the night travels underground back to her starting camp in the east. The Yolngu also tell of Ngalindi, the Moon-man. Once, he was young and slim (the Waxing Moon). He grew fat and lazy (the Full Moon), and so his wives chopped bits off him with their axes (the Waning Moon). In order to escape his wives, Ngalindi climbed a tall tree towards the Sun, but died of his wounds (the New Moon). After remaining dead for three days, he rose again to repeat the cycle. He continues doing so until this day. thesmartwitch/ [Images: Sun and Moon found at atnf.csiro.au/research/AboriginalAstronomy/Examples/SunMoon.htm. This page also seems to be the source of the information in this post, which is also found at en.wikipedia.org.]
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 06:15:00 +0000
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