What it Feels Like to be Watched by the Moon

(and why the moon's gaze matters)

Photo by Gabriel Tovar on Unsplash

In honor of the full moon, I wanted to offer some lunar reflections. I’m thinking especially about what it feels like to be watched—perhaps even judged—by the moon.

Even if we know, with the full power of our rational minds, that the face on the moon is an illusion, the face still affects how we relate to the moon. The great bulging eyes and yawning mouth may be nothing but plains left behind by ancient volcanic eruptions. Nevertheless, the biomythology of the moon’s face is too powerful to discount. It makes our relationship with the moon feel intimate, and personal. 

Because the moon has a face, it feels like we can be in conversation with it. We have an intimacy with the moon that we can’t possibly have with the sun, which we can’t even look at directly. Facing the sun we are like lesser beings, shrinking before its burning, scalding power. We might agonize over its absence. But we also agonize when we get too much of it. The moon is different. We can stand below it for hours and stare right into its eyes. 

My daughter refuses to believe that the face in the moon is that of a man. Rather, she argues, it’s the face of a rabbit. This, more than the face of some leering man, is one of intimacy and magic for her. I’ve been trying to see it, but I have to admit that my mental image of the moon has been overdetermined by patriarchy. I always see a man. At least I’ve always thought of it as a very ancient, wise, and gentle one?

I remember, as a kid, how animated the moon always felt. Some of this, no doubt, was because my mother encouraged me to see the moon this way. I remember riding in the passenger’s seat of her car, watching the moon from my little window. We’d be barreling down the road and she would ask me, “is it still there? Is it still following us?” I would watch for a moment, trying to discern whether it was staying in place and growing smaller, or whether it was still traveling alongside us. I remember always feeling so shocked that it never stopped journeying with us. I think my mother kept this game going for as long as it could last. And I spent most of my childhood believing that the moon had chosen to shadow and protect my mother and I, for some mysterious reason. I suppose I’ve never completely stopped feeling a little blessed by the moon. 

Maybe this is why I felt so surprised by a portrayal of the moon that I recently came across.

I’ve been reading various ancient accounts of journeys to the afterlife. Not long ago I was reading a translation of the Apocalypse of Paul,  an apocryphal (non-canonical) Christian text that scholars believe to be from the 4th century CE. It claims to be an account of the apostle Paul’s journey to heaven and hell. It is, perhaps, one of greatest influences on developing Christian views of the afterlife. Biblical texts don’t describe the heavens, especially not  as a space that can be occupied by humans (although many people read the visions of Revelation in this way). But this text does. It gives the reader a sense of what the heavens might look, and feel, like if people could get up there. 

Like other ancient accounts of travel to the afterlife, there are a number of scenes that take place in the world of clouds. Paul looks down on the earth with sadness and disdain, observing the chaos and wreckage from his peaceful and angelic perch. He also informs the reader that other heavenly beings—like the moon—have been doing something similar. As he puts it: 

“Sometimes the moon and the stars have appealed to the Lord, saying, ‘O Lord God Almighty, you have given us rule over the night. How long shall we look upon the ungodliness and fornications and murders that the children of humanity commit? Allow us to deal with them according to our powers, so that they may know that you alone are God.”

The first thing I thought, when I read this was, “the moon would never say that.” I found it impossible to believe that the moon would look upon us with anything but gentleness and pity, or that the moon would somehow want to “deal with” us. Or that the moon cares about monotheism. That’s how fixed my sense of the moon’s agency is, I suppose. The reading gets under my skin. It feels as if the moon is being misrepresented.

It’s not as if Christianity has any fixed perspective on the moon. This figuration of the moon feels different, to me, than Francis of Assisi’s figure of Sister Moon that I write about in Sister Death. But it does seem to me that this antagonizing figure of the judging moon may be one that’s survived, even into 20th century pop culture.

I was curious to know who else had written about this judgement of the moon, and I stumbled upon an old Joni Mitchell song, “The Judgement of the Moon and Stars”, from her 1972 album “For the Roses”. I don’t know that I’ve listened to this album, or that I recall ever having heard this song. And it’s not entirely clear that she’s referring to this passage from the Apocalypse of Paul. But with that title, how could she not be? “You're too raw,” she sings in one of the lines. “They think you're too raw. It's the judgement of the moon and stars.” Is this rawness the “ungodliness and fornications and murders” that the moon and stars see, according to Paul, when they look down on us? 

Joni, like me, didn’t seem to react well to this judgement. But rather than question the narrative of judgement, she seems to counsel something else. Get mad at the cosmic agents that would judge us so harshly, she seems to say. Here are the lines:

You've got to shake your fists at lightning now

You've got to roar like forest fire

You've got to spread your light like blazes

All across the sky

They're going to aim the hoses on you

Show 'em you won't expire

Not till you burn up every passion

Not even when you die

It’s not as if any of this matters, right? The volcanic cavernous plains on the moon will continue to be the volcanic cavernous plains on the moon, whatever illusions we have, or stories we tell, about them. If we think this assemblage of geographical features is blessing us, or judging us, it’s all just in our heads.

And yet, we do look up at the night sky. It’s not easy, for most of us, to see the stars through the polluted urban haze anymore. But we can still look up at the moon, just as other people have been doing for tens of thousands of years at least. We can still, as we look up, feel like we are being watched by a great beaming cosmic giant. We can choose to feel ashamed or burnished by its glance. That intimacy, in all its complexity, is there to be felt whether we choose to see it or not. If we don’t, if we decide that our intimate relationship with the moon is a stupid illusion that doesn’t matter to anyone, then there are always space billionaires like Elon Musk who will be ready to exploit and occupy that raw and meaningless cosmic matter we call the moon. But for me, whatever someone like Musk wants from the moon will inevitably be a fundamental violation of a wise and gentle protector who watches us, with a little pity for the chaos we’re all learning to navigate down here. I feel like we could all use a little more of that sort of gentleness.