Moon Myth in Medicine1: The Moon as Libido Symbol

If the average man of today were questioned about the mythology of the moon his mind might revert to the beautiful Greek story of Selene, the moon goddess pausing in her nightly course across the heavens to stoop and kiss sleeping Endymion, the setting sun. This would very likely be about the extent of his information, and his idea of both the imminence and the importance of moon myth would be correctly inferred from such an example —moon myths belong to the period of the pretty stories of Greek mythology.

A little effort, however, addressed to discovering the extent and importance of moon myth would soon serve to disclose the fact that the moon has been of the very greatest importance in the thinking of all peoples from long before the dawn of history. Not only the Greeks had their moon goddess, but so did the Egyptians; the Chaldeans were moon worshipers; the Phoenician “queen of heaven,” Astarte or Ashtaroth, was a moon goddess; the Romans had Luna, and only recently we see a dispute over the interpretation of certain inscriptions on clay tablets of the time of Hammurabi (2250 B. C.) and his father. The noted Assyriologist,