tittle@ics.uci.edu (Cindy Tittle) (06/19/89)
[This article was crossposted. I have no idea of what happens in this case (i.e., if the article appears in the other groups anyway or if it gets held up because of a moderated group in the list). Our policy is to NOT crosspost from this group, hence the other groups were deleted. --Cindy] In article <SHELMREI.89Jun13101937@hades.nmsu.edu> shelmrei@nmsu.edu (Stephen Helmreich) writes: >A friend of mine did a small study of various mythologies and reported >to me that overwhelmingly the deity of the sun was male and that of >the moon was female. > >The only exception I've found is in Tolkien's "Silmarillion" where the >Vala in charge of the sun is female and that of the moon is male. > Lakoff's 1987 book, "Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things" takes its title from the noun-category system of Dirybal (sp?), a native Australia language from the northeast coast between Townsville and Cairns. In that language, each noun is preceded by one of four particles used to mark the four categories. The central idea from category 2 is "woman". Fire is also in category 2, not because women and fire have anything in common, but through a radial extension from woman -> sun (female) -> fire. At least, that's what I recall. dmark@cs.buffalo.edu
HUXTABLE@kuhub.cc.ukans.EDU (Kathryn Huxtable) (06/20/89)
In article <18183@paris.ics.uci.edu>, tittle@ics.uci.edu (Cindy Tittle) writes: [Well, it wasn't me, it was someone else... --Cindy] In article <SHELMREI.89Jun13101937@hades.nmsu.edu> shelmrei@nmsu.edu (Stephen Helmreich) writes: >>A friend of mine did a small study of various mythologies and reported >>to me that overwhelmingly the deity of the sun was male and that of >>the moon was female. >> >>The only exception I've found is in Tolkien's "Silmarillion" where the >>Vala in charge of the sun is female and that of the moon is male. I would also add that Amaterasu, the solar diety in Japan's Shinto religion is female. This is who the imperial line is supposed to be descended from. -- Kathryn Huxtable huxtable@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
trudel@caip.rutgers.EDU (Jonathan D. Trudel) (06/21/89)
>>A friend of mine did a small study of various mythologies and reported >>to me that overwhelmingly the deity of the sun was male and that of >>the moon was female. True, but did you ever know why? If observed from an anthropological perspective, the relation does make sense. Consider the moon. It waxes and wanes on a monthly basis. Women go through a similar "monthly" event - menstruation. It is believed (and from what I've heard, generally accepted) that the Female/Moon link was made in many cultures because of this synchronicity, and of course, the Sun/Male relation followed. Pretty wild stuff, eh? Jon
randolph@sun.com (Randolph Fritz) (06/21/89)
In Finnish mythology (which Tolkien drew on -- "vala" is Finnish) the sun is female & the moon is male. There are probably others. I suspect that the mythologies most easily available to English-speakers have the sun as male & the moon as female because those are the mythologies which we feel comfortable with. ++Randolph Fritz sun!randolph || randolph@sun.com