Hi everyone, and welcome to episode three sixteen of the Medieval Podcast.

I'm your host Danielle Sebowski.

Since time immemorial, people have looked up to the sky and found solace in the idea that were watched over by the same moon that watched over our ancestors.

In the last century, we've witnessed people actually set foot on the moon and seen even the dark side in hi res images.

And yet the moon still evokes a sense of romance and mystery, just as it did in the Middle Ages.

This week I spoke with doctor ro Yush La Zakhani about the Medieval Moon.

Ayush's a lecturer at Oxford University and the author of Cultivating the Heart and Emotion in Christian and Islamic Contemplative Texts eleven hundred to twelve fifty, as well as being an associate editor of the Paul Grave Encyclopedia of Medieval Women's Writing in the Global Middle Ages.

Her new book is The Medieval Moon, a History of Haunting and Blessing.

Our conversation on what and who medieval people believe the moon to be is coming up right after this.

Well, Welcome a USh, It's so nice to meet you.

And we've just been having a great chat before we turned on the microphone.

So thank you so much for being here and talking to all of us about the moon.

Welcome.

Thank you so much, Danielle.

It's such an honor and pleasure to be here.

And yes, thank you so much for inviting me.

Well, the pleasure is online because this is a beautiful book and I really enjoyed it and I can't wait for people to learn more about the moon.

So, as you know from studying the moon, people have all sorts of different perspectives on it.

So what made you decide that you wanted to take a global view of it?

Considering it's already a complex topic.

What made you decide to take on the world when you were studying the.

Yeah, So my research before working on this book looked at Christian and Islamic medieval texts in dialogue, and as I was doing that, I kept coming across the moon, and it was so central to both bodies of literature, both the Christian and the Islamic.

I worked particularly on Christian contemplative and Islamic contemplative work, and I thought it would be so interesting to do a comparative study of the moon.

Across those particular cultures.

And then the more I read, the more I realized the moon was so central to so many medieval literatures and cultures like Chinese and Japanese and Korean literature, really central.

It comes up so much in Italian literature, in French literature, and I thought it would be so fun to do a project that looks at the moon from a global perspective and just takes into account as many of these traditions as I.

Can well, and we've brought them all together in one book, one podcast today.

So one thing that I wanted to ask you to tell us a little bit more about is the way that you look at these things, because I think you described it very beautifully.

People talk about a bird's eye view, and you really talk about an avian perspective, and the way you describe how a bird might see things is absolutely beautiful.

Can you tell us a little bit about what you mean by an avian perspective?

Absolutely?

Again, going back to my previous work on Christian and Islamic literature, particularly contemplative or mystical literature, the bird as a symbol for the soul is really prevalent in a lot of that literature, and so I explored that a bit, and then I thought, it's actually also quite an interesting way of thinking about comparative study, like a bird's flight.

The bird is so central to these texts, and in reading them comparatively, we become a bit like birds and fly from one region to the other and explore these different regions while being sensitive to their similarities as well as their differences.

So that's really where the idea of an avian perspective where comparative study came from, and I thought it would be relevant for any kind of comparative work that seeks to take different cultures into one reading well.

I loved this the idea of being sensitive to the air currents of each place that you're going across, because that very much feels like the way that you need to do it when you're looking at a comparative study of anything.

So I wanted to make sure that I pulled that out because the way you describe it is just so beautiful and very sensitive about the way that we have to look at things when we're compared them to each other, be sensitive to the air currents that existing.

So I wanted to pull that out.

But we are here to talk about the moon.

So what did medieval people actually know about the moon scientifically?

First, well, a lot of different medieval people, for example in Christian European and Islamica regions across Asia, Africa and Europe, actually believed the Moon was a planet and that it was the closest planet to the Earth, differently from other planets like Jupiter that are further away.

They saw the Moon as being the closest planet to the Earth, and scientifically, they believed the Moon to be moist and phlegmatic.

Those were the qualities they particularly associated with the Moon.

But that idea of the Moon as a planet was particularly important, and medieval people clearly had a lot of ideas about how the Moon impacted Earth.

So the fact that it impacts the tides, that was very prevalent in medieval thinking.

There were other ideas about the moon that it, for example, affects the growth of trees.

There was the idea that it affected aquatic creatures and all creatures really, And there was also the idea that the moon impacted the health of people, that the position of the Moon at any given point could really impact what sort of illness a person had, how bad the illness was and what sort of treatment regimen would work best for them.

So those are some of the scientific ideas, if we can call them that of the medieval world.

About the moon, it's pretty spectacular when you think about it, or maybe when I think about it, because when I look at the Moon, I don't know that I would have been able to figure out that this was, you know, a celestial body in the way that planet's our celestial body.

The idea of figuring out astronomy is always mind blowing to me.

It's just not the way that my mind works.

So the Moon is fixed in one of its celestial spheres, and this makes it very powerful because of its proximity.

Right, So can you tell us a little bit about how this works in terms of the celestial spheres, just so we get an idea of how concentrated its effect is.

Yes, So we've got Earth, which was believed to be at the center but was believed to be round.

People often mistakenly believe medieval people thought the Earth was flat, but actually a lot of people were aware of its spherical shape.

And then there were concentric circles or spheres beyond the Earth.

So we have Earth.

Then we have the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, which were known as the seven planets, and beyond that were what we call the fix stars, and so that was the order.

So Moon, then Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, with the Earth at the center.

So because it's so close and we're thinking about these sort of they're almost like crystal spheres, I think in some people's thinking about it at the time, it creates almost this magnifying effect.

No matter where the planets are right, if the moon is wherever the moon's position is, it has an increased or decreased effect with this sort of magnifying quality, which I think is fascinating.

In a lot of Middle English moon books or texts that talk about the moon's position and the impact that this has on various human activities.

One of them actually says that the moon is the closest to human nature and has the most intense kinship with humanity.

So really the moon has a profound was seen to have a profound impact act on medieval people for sure.

Well.

And the last thing I think is worth mentioning when we're talking about science in the moon is that people had actually figured out how eclipses work.

Right.

This is incredible because you know there are things that you have an idea that people must have known about, but to see them written down and you have the quotes in this book.

They understand how eclipses work in terms of where the Sun and moon are positioned, right, they really did.

Yeah, they had very detailed understanding of both solar and lunar eclipses.

I mention in particular John of Sacrobosco, who wrote extensively on eclipses.

But he's just one author.

We have many Islamic and Jewish astronomers who, inspired by ancient learning, studied the eclipses and have a lot to say on them.

Islam in particular has an eclipse prayer, so knowing the eclipse was partly important, not more so than when other cultures, but had that particular importance in Islam.

Yes, one of the things that I thought was interesting was you mentioned Saint Augustine as well, saying does the light come from the moon or is it reflected on the moon.

So there's even discussions about the way that the light is reflected, which is just again completely sophisticated and always something that I find fascinating about the scientists of the pre modern period.

Absolutely, Yes, And Augustine talks about as you've summed up.

He puts forward two arguments, whether the moon emits its own light or whether it reflects the light of the sun.

And many other authors clearly acknowledge that the moon reflected the light of the sun.

So there was that real understanding about that.

Well, I love all of this part of it.

And so one of the things that you mentioned in the book is there's an understanding of what the moon is, but maybe the better question is who is the moon?

So tell us a little bit about what people thought in terms of who the moon might be or what people might see on it.

Yes.

On the one hand, we get the moon embodied as various deities.

Particularly important in Eurochristian culture is the figure of Diana or Artemis, who's so deeply associated with the moon, and there are other associated deities like Celene.

With the Chinese tradition, we get sean Gei, who is a moon goddess who was believed to have drunk a elixir of immortality and descended to the moon.

We get other gods and goddesses depending on the cultural region we're thinking about.

Also, as you alluded to, people often thought they saw something on the moon.

So in a lot of different East Asian cultures, they often saw a rabbit or hair on the moon, which was sometimes under nderstood to be a companion of the goddess Shangai.

In European cultures, there was this idea that there was a man on the moon, and we have an English poem that deals with that idea.

In one of the poems in the manuscript known particularly as that as Harley, there was this idea that the man there was a man on the moon who was exiled there for various crimes, different crimes depending on the region.

So in the English poem, it's because he stole thorns to make hedge growth.

In other stories it's because someone prevents people from going to church, or someone works on a Sunday.

But there was this idea that they could see a man on the moon, differently from East Asian traditions where they could see a rabbit or hair.

Well, this is really interesting because there's at least one author that you have in the book that says people say that there's a man carrying thorns on his back on the moon, but I can see it.

I keep trying to see it, and I can't see it.

Yeah, and it suggests that it was quite a widespread idea because he is clearly quite frustrated that he can't see this man on the moon carrying a bag of thorns.

So it suggests that many other people could.

Yes, well, it seems to you have been a place of exile, as you're talking about.

If there's a man there, he's there for a reason.

And one of the reasons that he might actually be Cain, from the biblical story of Cain and Abel.

So why would Kine have ended up there for the people who didn't go to any sort of holy school.

Yeah, So Dante alludes to this story.

Because of Cain as the first supposed first murderer in history murdering his brother, there was this idea that he was exiled there to suffer kind of eternally condemned.

Dante alludes to it, and there are other various sources who mention that.

And this idea of Cain is of course so prevalent in a lot of medieval literature.

I mean, listeners might be aware of the idea of Grendel and boul for example being Cain's kin, and so Cain is a resting presence even on the Moon.

Yes, well, it makes sense that you would want to put someone so disagreeable as far away from Earth as you can.

And it's interesting to me because if people are conceiving of the Moon as being a planet like Earth, then it is a place, and so you have to think about what sort of people are there.

And people did think about who might possibly be living on the Moon, and sometimes it was a whole civilization, right absolutely.

In a Japanese story from the late ninth or early tenth century known as the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, we have a really I find quite poignant story about a moon princess who comes from the Moon to stay on Earth for a while and is looked after by human parents and grows attached to them, and they grow attached to her, and in the end she has to go back to the Moon because she's got a whole family there.

And so there's this, yeah, this interesting idea that there is this whole civilization of people living on the Moon and they might come to see us for a while, but inevitably we lose them again.

Yes, I like this story because it is a beautiful civilization up there, and it's meant to be marvelous and better than here, which is not the same as the way that some other people have considered the moon as being a place of exile, place where you put the bad people.

This one is such such a beautiful story about these luminous beings who are so much better than the people on Earth.

That's right.

And the Moon King when he comes to take the Moon princess back, he says to her, why have you lingered in this filthy place for so long?

So he calls the earth this filthy place, But from caaguahimas the princess's perspective, the Earth has been very beautiful and very good to her.

I read the text in different ways.

I read the story in different ways.

A part of me thinks that it's almost about even how disappointing the world can be, how there's still a lot of joy and beauty to be found, because despite the Moon being so much better in this story, Kagwahima still wants to stay on the Earth because of the bonds she's formed with the people there.

Yes, that is a good story.

I like reading it that way.

I think it would be very tempting to have the end of the story be Wow, Earth is terrible, the moon is so much better.

But the way that you read it, where it's still a place of beauty and joy, I think, yeah, it's probably a way that you are meant to be reading it.

Maybe at the same time.

Maybe, yes, they are the coexistence of the good with the bad.

Where you mentioned a moonking in this story, and there's actually a moonking in other cultures as well.

Tell us about this other moonking.

Yes, so in South Asian stories, in various cultures, including Tibetan texts, there's the story of a moon king who suffers from a wasting disease, a kind of consumptive illness, and this is because he neglects his marital and lunar duties by focusing on just one particular star.

He's meant to visit all the stars, and he's figured as having a relationship with all the stars, but he becomes obsessed with this one star, and that leads to him having a consumptive illness.

And it's only until what's known as his dharma is restored that he can again light up the sky and fulfill his maritime and lunar obligations by visiting all the stars.

I like this story because of the relationship that the Moon has to the other stars.

It's one of those things where when we can subtulize the Moon as a planet and a person or a figure, then it has all of these jobs to do that explain in some ways what the Moon is actually doing and tells it in a way that I think is so relatable and so human at the same time.

I love the way that these things can work together so that you're talking about a person and a planet at the same time.

This is something that humans just love to do, and I love to come across these stories.

Yes, yes, it really humanizes the moon, and the idea that the moon itself or himself can suffer from an illness due to an obsessive love is to some people who'd be quite perhaps quite relatable, whether the illness or of feeling an obsessive love towards someone or something and going at to Shangei, the Chinese goddess of the Moon.

In a lot of literature, for example, the tangednessity her loneliness is described in a lot of detail.

Her solitude, her loneliness is really emphasized.

So again the moon is given all these complex emotions and states.

I do want to come back around to that, because I think that's such an important part and maybe in a way a consistent part of the way that people are looking at the moon.

But I do want to mention one last Moon civilization, which I think you said was ancient Greek in the book, and this time it's not an Amazon community, it's Amen and they they're in a war with the people from the time.

That's exactly right.

So this is a pre medieval story, Lucian of Sammasota.

In this some travelers through a storm are blown upwards and they land on the Moon, and they discover a whole civilization called moon Night who are at war with the sun Nights and they are fighting over who gets to own the morning Star, and in the end it's the sun Nights who win.

They force the moon Nights into a beast treaty after they affect a kind of eclipse of the moon.

So that's yet another civilization that may well have inspired various medieval models.

I love this one as well because the men they don't need women, They procreate through their calves.

Yeah, it's pretty impressive.

Yeah, extraordinary detail.

I mean this text True Story by Lucien Off Sammasota, it's so interested with ideas of truth but also of gender performance and gender roles.

Yeah, so for people who are interested in Moon civilization, there's a lot of places to go when you're looking into.

This, absolutely, Yeah, lots of different stories and cultures associated with the Moon.

Well, I wanted to come back around to what we were talking about just a second ago, which was that idea of loneliness, and there it's almost consistent in the way that people will have thoughts of loneliness or sadness or something at night, and there's this idea of discussing this with the moon or telling the moon your problem.

So where did you find this when you were looking at the way people have talked about the moon.

A key example would be Toiless in Choices poem Toiless and Crusade, because he actually speaks to the moon all of his sorrows.

He tells the moon all of his pain about not being with Crusade.

So there the moon is a kind of companion.

And we see that also in the life of a thirteenth century Japanese nun abutsu who on a journey.

The moon is kind of her companion on that jour, and she speaks to the moon, she speaks of the moon.

She cites various poems poems about the moon, and we also have medieval Chinese poetry that talks about the moon as a kind of companion or a drinking friend, a drinking body.

There's a sense in which the moon, in the loneliness which might be felt during night, the moon offers a kind of companionship and solace.

Yes, I like this idea because I think that what may be speaking to is that at night there aren't a lot of people walking around.

It canot often just be you.

And the only other thing that is so relatable that's not dark for one thing is the moon.

And so I think that people connect to it a lot in this idea of their solitude and their loneliness.

And this is definitely something that you saw as a threat.

Definitely, as I mentioned as Shangei herself, the Chinese goddess, was the idea that she suffered from loneliness or solitude is explored.

We've also got the idea of the man on the moon in that English poem being entirely on his own and suffering.

So the moon can be both a place that offers companionship and yet also a place of kind of harsh exile and loneliness.

In the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, Khagawahima also understandably keeps looking to the moon because that's where she comes from.

But it happens in particular in a way that suggests she is feeling a terrible loneliness and a terrible concern at having to be separated from her adoptive human parents.

Yes, she knows she's going to have to leave.

It's interesting in that particular story that that's spelled out, because you would think that she was looking at the moon and wanting to go back, But in her case, it's because she doesn't want to go back, and there is a reminder all the time in front of her.

Exactly.

Yes, she develops a genuine attachment to her parents, her adoptive human parents, as opposed to her parents on the moon.

Yet you think again, like with the moonking calling the earth a filthy place, you think she would want to rush back to the moon.

But that's not the case at all.

All right, So you had mentioned Troylist a moment ago, and there is definitely a connection between the moon and love, and some people love having the moon around when they're on their midnight trist and some people don't.

It is always something that I've come across in chivalric literature is like, you want to go on a moonless night because the moon might reveal what you're doing.

Right, How does the moon connect and love in your work?

Yes, so the moon I discovered was really central to different kinds of love.

In the case of that, the Welsh poet Daffetabwillhelm, he expresses this idea that, as you've just mentioned, a moonless night is preferable because the moon is so revealing.

So he wants to go see his lover, but the moon is kind of showing them up, and he says at one point the moon is as revealing as the sun in frustration.

But in other texts we find the moon is much more really a friend to love.

So in the Persian epic Leila and Mashnun, for example, we get this repeated trope of the loved one being as beautiful as the moon.

Both Mashnun and Layla, two doomed lovers, are always described as being as beautiful as the moon, and the moon really punctuates their whole narrative.

It describes how time moves in their love story.

It also describes them as they change.

So Layla is when she's happy because of her love for miss Moon, she is described as a full moon, but when she loses him, she becomes like a crescent moon in her despair.

And then we find that the moon is also important in describing devotional love in both Sufi or Islamic mystical and Hindu literature.

And I explore explore that in my book the idea that the moon can represent our love for the Sufis or represent Krishna for the woman.

Mirabi writing in the sixteenth.

Century, Well, go ahead and elaborate on this, because this is a beautiful aspect of the way that certain people of faith are looking at the moon.

So tell us more about this.

Yes, absolutely so.

With Sufi poets like Alshushtari or Ibin Arabi who were from Islamic Spain, the moon represents their beloved one who is God, so God becomes like a loved object.

And for ibn Arabi, for example, he imagines the moon exceeding all human frameworks of time and circuits and thought and language.

It's a moon that doesn't move through the zodiac, he says, so he imagines God surpassing all human frameworks of knowledge and time and being.

We also find the moon important in the work of Persian Sufi poets and Ibn Arabian Tristari are writing in Arabic, but poets like Artar and Rumi are writing in Persian, and the moon again that stands for or symbolizes the divine.

And then we get Mirabai, who was a woman writing in the sixteenth century with many poems that have been attributed to her, which are outpourings of love for Krishna.

And she describes, for example, life without Krishna as being a night without a moon, or she imagines herself as being like a moon bird, a bird consumed with longing for the moon.

So we find the moon is central to love in both a secular and a devotional sense.

Well, it's making me think about how the moon is bright like the sun, but it's not the brightness that burns your eyes like the sun.

So it is a way of looking at this brightness of the sun without hurting yourself.

And this is something that again we're talking about faith was sort of the impetus for Augustine's writing that we talked about before.

Where is it its own light or is it reflecting the sun's light?

And both of these are good menphors for the church and the way that people are thinking about faith, in his case, in the Christian tradition.

So it's nice to think about the way in which people are looking at this beautiful object in the sky, there's beautiful light, and bringing it back to the things that are most beautiful in their lives, which is the faith that they have.

Yes, I think there's a real gentleness to the moon and a lot of Sufi poetry, well, a lot of traditions, not just Sufi poetry, but I bring up Sufi poetry because there's the idea that encountering the divine directly would be too overwhelming, almost like encountering the sun directly would be too overwhelming, and the moon provides a kind of mediating way of encountering the divine.

Yes, And there's so much complexity to that, which you do get into in the book.

So I'm not sure we'll be able to get out all of it sort of off the cuff here.

So I really hope that people will read.

This aspect of the book is one of the most not complex, and that it's not difficult to understand, but one of the most perhaps nuanced bits of the book is where you're talking about people relating to the moon in terms of faith and so well, this, obviously, from what you've said today, comes from that work that you've done on faith, earlier contemplative literature and thinking about the way that people are interacting with the moon as that aspect of it.

Yes, definitely, it certainly was influenced by earlier work I've done.

I was really interested in thinking about how the moon might be important both for secular and more religious contexts.

With the Christian context, as you mentioned, the moon is frequently presented as a symbol for the Church, and different writers explore this in more depth.

They say, just as the Church reflects the true Sun, which s Un, which and s o n Christ, just so the moon reflects the sun, and so the Church reflects Christ.

One of the chapters with the book deals with perhaps the sadder sides of them, where the moon is associated with inconstancy and change, and we see this in a devotional dream vision the English Pearl, where as scholars generally believe if father is grieving his dead infant daughter, and there there's this constant emphasis on a sublunary world, a world beneath the moon that is subject to painful change in a way that life beyond is not.

So the moon is invoked in both positive and negative ways in religious context for sure.

To put it simply here.

Well, I was going to head in this direction as well, because this is one of the things that sort of stands out as well when we're looking at the moon, is it's inconstancy.

It's trickery the way that people can't trust it.

And the thing that always sticks out to me was reading Romeo and Julia even as a teenager and having Romo was about to swear by the moon, and she says, swear not.

Julie's I swear not by the moon.

The inconstant moon.

It's like I can't remember the entire thing, but like it changes daily and you can't swear by the moon.

And you found this as well in charge.

So don't swear by the moon, because that is a bad idea if the moon does not stay the same the way love is opposed.

To absolutely and yeah, thank you for making that parallel because I couldn't cover Shakespeare as much as I would have wanted to do in the book, because I kind of wanted to focus on less well known authors.

But I think readers may well see a lot of connections between the material in this book and Shakespeare.

Yeah.

We find in Troyless and Crusade, for example, Crusade swearing by the moon, and that is a very problematic foreshadowing of how she will leave Troyless.

We have the moon in Choices, Franklin's Tale and the Legend of Good Women, where again it's associated with illusion and inconstancy.

We have it as well in Robert Henderson's Animal Fables, where a fox tricks a wolf by a reflection of the moon.

And we see that in another animal fable or series of fables, Khalila wa Dimna, where a rabbit tricks the elephants, again through a reflection of the moon.

So there's a lot of emphasis in traditions.

As much as there is an emphasis on the moon's beauty and solidity and friendship, there's also an emphasis on it being inconstant and somehow illusory and deceitful.

Yes, and it's interesting that it occupies both of those places because you have this absolute constancy like in the example from China, and then you have the example of it constantly changing and not being trustworthy as what we're talking about with these animal fables.

For example.

In the book I early on I talk about thinking of the moon in terms of the plural moons rather than moon, because there are so many different ways of understanding it.

And as we were talking about at the start, in being sensitive to other cultures, part of it is, I hope the book achieves is being aware of differences and contrasts and contradictions.

And so in a way we're in exploring the medieval moon, we're exploring medieval moons in the plural because of the wealth of ways in which it was understood and the wealth of ways in which people interacted with it.

Yes, and while we're talking about I was going to say the dark side of the moon, not the album, but we're talking about the dark aspects of the moon.

We definitely need to dive into the idea of the lunatic because this is something that comes out of the Middle Ages, something that is still a word that we use today.

So can you tell us a little bit about that association between the moon and maybe mental illness or the way that people are expressing behavior that is seen to be not in the norm.

Yes, so very early on, really from pre medieval times, but definitely in medieval times, there is the link made between the moon and various kinds of mental illness.

In medieval English texts, we even have a phrase passion lunatic or lunatic passion described as people's moods and emotional and psychological states being impacted by the moon.

And there was also the idea separate but connected to this, that the moon was linked to epilepsy as well.

So we have this abiding association both with mental illness and with epilepsy.

And I mentioned a few different texts that foreground this idea of people's psychological state varying with the moon.

And people were also interested in different cues, so there were various precious gems that were suggested, or various kinds of immersion in water or magnets or other other kind of treatments for people who were believed to suffer from this lunatic passion or this link between the moon and kinds of mental illness.

Today, when we think about this idea of a moon being connected with abnormal behavior in people who may not have abnormal behavior the rest at the time, we're always thinking the context of a full moon.

Right, there's the full moon.

People are going to start howling, There's going to be werewolves and things like that.

Did you find in your work that this idea of that lunatic passion again in air quotes as breezing has to do with the full moon always or is it different phases?

I think it's more to do with different phases of the moon.

Different phases of the moon have different impacts both on mental health and on physical health, and the different phases and also the moon's different position.

So many of the English moon books that I mentioned earlier are interested in this idea of the moon's position at various points in the zodiac as influencing someone's physical or mental health.

Well, this is where I wanted to go, sort of as we are getting to the end of our time, is thinking about the way that the moon has such an influence on people and their behavior and their thinking and even things like luck.

And I think we often associate that with zodiac as you're saying, but it also has to do with every day of the moon.

Has some sort of influence on humans, and so to figure this out, people started writing it down.

So what kind of stuff do people write down in these moon books in order to help keep people safe from the influence of the moon or to use the moon influence to their best advantage.

Yes, so a big aspect, as we've discussed, is hell.

So people writing down the position of the moon and how that might affect both the kind of illness someone might get and the prognosis of that illness, and also when it's a good time to undertake blood letting as a treatment.

But we also get people writing down the position of the moon and the phases of the moon for understanding whether or not it's good to go on a journey.

Even for people suffering imprisonment, there was the idea that if you were imprisoned when the moon was in a certain position, it affected when you would be freed or whether you would be freed.

And also I should have mentioned there's emphasis on people's various activities, so building a house, whether or not to buy new clothes, all of that was linked to the moon's position and fail.

I love that you brought up the jail example, because I think there was one in there that says like, if the moon is in Pisces, forget it, you're just never getting Could you imagine somebody says that to you, You're like, well, I guess that's it.

Yeah, it's not a cheering thing to tell someone.

So I need to ask the question, then, how many people would have been familiar with this sort of moon lore.

I mean, I think it would be difficult to memorize the entire book of all the things that could happen each day.

But how widespread do you think this moon law is in terms of this is what you should do on this day or shouldn't do on this day?

Is it in the hands of academics and academically trained doctors or where do you see it?

Yes?

I think often they would be highly educated academic doctors and clergy.

At least the texts.

In so far as we can judge from the text themselves, they seem to have been people who would have had the privilege of extensive education.

Whether or not people passed on this knowledge through word of mouse, I'm speculating, but it's very possible that this sort of moon law did transmit into different walks of life just by people sharing that knowledge, but that's really just speculation in terms of what we know about the text themselves.

Yet it would have been confined to quite a small segment of the population.

Well, it's relatable in that I think there are still people that if they're going to go on a big voyage or undertake some business, they do go and see a psychic for example, that might be or an astrologer or a tarot reader, because that's sort of the closest analogy that we have to this moon or where is the zodiac going to be on this day?

Is this a good day to undertake it?

And so something relatable.

I think people are still doing this or checking their horoscopes to see what's going on, because you know, when these are big cosmic events, you want to feel I think, like you have a little bit of control over your life.

Absolutely, And I think that's the way in which we can really relate to medieval people.

That sense of wanting to control things that might be out of our control, but that desire to want to be able to take our futures into our own hands perhaps very related to it is at least for me, I find it very relatable.

Yes, And you have several of these excerpt from moon books at the back of your books, so people can go and find out on which phase of the moon they should be doing things.

Was there anything in there that surprised you, as in, this is a thing that I didn't think that the moon would have any control over, but there it is.

The moon has control over this.

Did you find anything that really surprised you.

Yes, there are examples of the moon influencing the temperament of people, which I found quite surprising.

So, for example, if the moon is at a certain position, then someone born on that day one of the moon books says he will be a brawler, assuming the baby is male.

That really surprised me that it could influence the temperament of people.

And there's for example Mandeville as well.

He talks about how people under the influence of the moon are given to much movement and activity because the moon goes through its circuits so quickly.

So that surprised me as well.

So there we go.

If you get arrested, you can say it's because of my moon sign.

I was born under this moon exactly.

I can't help it.

This is my destiny.

So having looked at the moon from all of these different perspectives from an Avian perspective, which I love and I'm going to keep in the way that I look at things from now on.

Where do you think or what do you want to tell people about when they spark the moon in medieval from around the world.

What would you like them to think about or consider?

Yeah, that's such an interesting question.

Well, all your questions have been so interesting.

Thank you.

I would say keep an open mind as to what the moon might represent in medieval text because there's such a range of potential ideas.

So I would say to keep in mind that idea of the plural moons and to search out different texts and what the moon meant to different cultures depending on your interests.

But that the moon, I think could instigate a range of different thoughts and feelings for medieval people as today.

Which is I think a perfect way to sum it up.

It's constant, it's always there, but it's always changing exactly.

Well, thank you so much, I used for coming on and telling us all about the moon.

I hope that people will pick up your book and read even more about it.

Thanks for being here, Thank you, Thank.

You so much for having met Danielle it's been such a trait.

To find out more about Ayusha's work, you can visit her faculty website at Oxford University.

Her new book is The Medieval Moon, A History of Haunting and Blessing.

Before we go, here's Peter from medievalist dot net to tell us what's on the website.

What's going on, Peter, yay.

Hey, I'm going to be in Greece next week, so I'm very excited about that, you know, a little pleasures of being a medievalist.

Yes, I mean for you.

I haven't been to Greece as a medievalist, but I'm excited for you.

You have to go work on your tan.

Why are you going to Greece.

Well, I'm going specifically to Crete, to the Orthodox Academy of Crete, and they're hosting a conference called Entangled Christianities.

It's a small conference, a boy like, you know, thirty people or so.

But I get to talk about monks and churches being bad in the Middle Ages.

WHOA, I didn't realize that's what you were talking about.

We're going to have to have words later about monks being bad.

Come on, now, how could they?

How could they?

Well?

That's exciting, good luck to you.

I hope that the paper goes well.

Indeed, I hope so too.

I hope the conference goes really well.

And I hope if you'll follow me on social media, you'll probably seen lots of pictures of like Byzantine stuff.

Nice.

Yeah, well I'll have to follow which what is your Instagram account?

Is it at medievalist net?

Yes, that's it?

Yeah, yeah, and that I mean you can find it.

I mean all the social media's right, I'm even on TikTok?

Are you doing the dances on TikTok?

All right, we're getting distracted.

All right, So you're going to Greece.

It's going to be amazing.

What's happening on the website this week.

So we have this new research that hints that the first cru Stade could have actually happened thirty years earlier.

Okay.

Jonathan Harris of Royal Halloway, he recently did this article, and I remember a couple of years ago he gave this as a paper at a conference I was at, and he looked at this letter that was supposedly written by a Byzantine emperor to an anti pope named on Arius the Second in ten sixty two and like the latyer's full of weird stuff and kind of doesn't make sense, but he thinks there's like a little Kerninal truth in there because this Byzantine emperor is trying to get the anti pope and his patron, which shoos the German Emperor Henry the Fourth to ally with him, and he kind of suggests that they all take their armies to Jerusalem to fight off against those Normans and Pagans.

It's a little mix up there, but he thinks it's probably based on a real effort by the Byzantine Empire at the time, and they may have been dangling the prospect of you know, retaking the Holy Land for those Western Europeans.

Eh.

So very interesting stuff.

I really like that paper.

Awesome and now everyone else can read about it too.

Yes, I love getting a report on EU research and stuff like that.

So we've got that.

Plus we also have a lot of the new research about medieval English carpenters.

Nice.

I think that there's a lot of interest in carpentry and Middle Ages actually, so people are going to be super thrilled to read all about it.

Indeed.

Indeed, well thanks Peter for stopping by and safe travels.

Thanks.

Thank you, as always to all of you for being here and supporting indie history.

Whether you're letting the ads play, sharing episodes with your friends, or becoming patrons on Patreon dot com, it's your support that makes all of this possible.

And speaking of Patreon, make sure you tune in next week for a big announcement about changes coming up on Patreon.

In the meantime, to find out how to become a patron, please visit patreon dot com.

Slash Medievalists for everything from the moon to doubloons.

Follow Medievalist dot net on Instagram at medievalist net or blue sky at Medievalists.

You can find me Danielle Sebolski across social media at five in Medievalist or five minute Medievalist, and you can find my books at all your favorite bookstores.

Sick is by Christian Overton.

Thanks for listening, and have yourself a wonderful day.