Moon gods and goddesses

The moon is a goddess in some traditions and a god in many others. Selene in Greece and Chang’e in China are goddesses; the Mesopotamian Nanna (Sin), the Egyptian Khonsu and Thoth, the Norse Máni, the Japanese Tsukuyomi and the Hindu Soma are gods.

Symbols across cultures. Also called goddess of the moon, god of the moon, lunar deity, moon god, moon goddess.

Meaning

“Moon goddess” is the common search, but the record does not make the moon female. Jean Rhys Bram’s article in the Encyclopedia of Religion (1987) says the moon “is personified as a male or female divinity”, and gives both: as a male god, “the Strong Bull of Heaven who cares for his cows, the stars”. The Greek Selene and the Chinese Chang’e are goddesses, and the Maya Ixchel is called a moon goddess by Britannica. The moon god of Ur, Nanna, was male, as were Khonsu and Thoth in Egypt, Tsukuyomi in Japan and Soma in India. In Norse myth the moon is a boy and the sun his sister. Chang’e’s festival, the Mid-Autumn Festival on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, is kept today.

Origin and history

In Mesopotamia the moon god was called Nanna in Sumerian and Su’en or Sin in Akkadian. He was the city god of Ur, and Adam Stone, writing for the Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses project, explains his main symbol: the waxing crescent, lying on its back, looks like a bull’s horns, so the moon god was a bull and then a cowherd. Britannica describes Sin as an old man with a flowing beard wearing a headdress of four horns topped by a crescent, and calls him father of the sun god Shamash. Birth incantations asked his help: one ends “may this woman give birth as easily as Geme-Sin”, his pregnant cow. The crescent moon page follows his emblem further.

The Greeks gave the moon a goddess, Selene, sister of Helios the sun and Eos the dawn. The Homeric Hymn to Selene describes her driving “her long-maned horses at full speed, at eventime in the mid-month”, when her orbit is full, “a sure token and a sign to mortal men”. Bram notes that the Greeks had only one myth about her.

Egypt had two moon gods. Khonsu, son of Amun and Mut, was drawn as a young man with a side lock of hair and a lunar disc on his head; Thoth, god of writing and reckoning, was also a moon god, and Bram tells how the sun god Re appointed him to take Re’s place in the underworld as the moon. The baboon was sacred to Thoth, and Britannica says it belonged to Khonsu as well.

In Japan, the Nihongi tells how Izanagi washed his right eye and produced “a Deity who was called Tsuki-yomi no Mikoto”, after his left eye had produced the sun goddess Amaterasu. In this version Izanagi sent him to rule “the eight-hundred-fold tides of the ocean plain”. Britannica gives a story of the split between sun and moon: Amaterasu grew angry when Tsukuyomi killed the food goddess Uke Mochi, and he withdrew to the night.

In India, Soma was first the god of a pressed sacred drink and later the moon. W. J. Wilkins, writing in 1882, quoted the late Vedic prayer “May the god Soma, he whom they call the Moon, free me” and noted that how the change came about is not known.

When the moon is male and the sun female

Norse myth reverses the pairing many readers expect. In the Prose Edda, a man named Mundilfari had two children so fair “that he called his son Moon, and his daughter … he called Sun”, and the gods set them in the sky to drive the sun and moon. The older poem Vafthruthnismol says the same: “Mundilferi is he who begat the moon, And fathered the flaming sun”; its translator Henry Adams Bellows noted in 1923 that “curiously enough, Mani is the boy and Sol the girl”. Japan pairs a sun goddess, Amaterasu, with a moon god, Tsukuyomi. Bram adds an example from the Andaman Islands, where “the waxing moon is male and the waning moon female”. The sun gods page has the sun goddesses.

Chang’e and the harvest moon

Chang’e stole the drug of immortality given to her husband Hou Yi, the archer, and took refuge in the moon (Britannica). E. T. C. Werner, writing in 1922, described the Chinese pictures of her moon palace: Chang’e “who stole the pill of immortality and flew to the moon”, the fragrant tree, and “a hare pestling medicine in a mortar”. At the full moon of the eighth month, Werner wrote, each family burns incense to the moon, and Britannica describes the Mid-Autumn Festival held that day in her memory, with moon cakes given to friends and neighbours.

Was Ixchel the Maya moon goddess?

Britannica says yes: Ixchel is the “Mayan moon goddess”, patroness of women’s crafts, sometimes shown as an evil old woman, and possibly a form of the god Itzamná. The identification is not where the study began. When Paul Schellhas classified the gods of the Maya codices in 1904, he called the old, toothless god D “The Moon- and Night-God”; his goddess I is a water goddess.

Sources

Moon (Encyclopedia of Religion), Jean Rhys Bram (1987), “Moon”, Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd edition, ed. Lindsay Jones (Macmillan Reference USA, 2005), on Encyclopedia.com, Encyclopedia of Religion (Macmillan Reference USA), via Encyclopedia.com, introduction; Mesopotamia; India; Greece; Egypt
Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica (tr. Hugh G. Evelyn-White), Hesiod, Theogony; Shield of Heracles; The Homeric Hymns, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White (Loeb Classical Library, 1914), Project Gutenberg eBook #348, Project Gutenberg, Homeric Hymn 32, To Selene; Hymn 31, To Helios
Nanna/Suen/Sin (god) (Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses), Adam Stone, “Nanna/Suen/Sin (god)”, Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses, Oracc and the UK Higher Education Academy (2019), Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses (Oracc, University of Pennsylvania Museum), introduction; functions
Sin (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Sin”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 27 April 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
Khons (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Khons”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 7 April 2022), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
Thoth (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Thoth”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 28 September 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
The Younger Edda (Anderson translation), Snorri Sturluson, trans. Rasmus B. Anderson, 1880, Project Gutenberg, Gylfaginning, ch. 11
The Poetic Edda (Bellows translation), Henry Adams Bellows (trans.), 1923, American-Scandinavian Foundation (Project Gutenberg), Vafthruthnismol, stanza 23, and Bellows’s note
Tsukiyomi (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Tsukiyomi”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 27 August 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan, vol. 1 (tr. W. G. Aston), Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697, translated by W. G. Aston, vol. 1 (1896), Internet Archive full text, Internet Archive, Book I, p. 28
Chang’e (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Chang’e”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 7 August 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
Myths and Legends of China (E. T. C. Werner), E. T. C. Werner, Myths and Legends of China (1922), Project Gutenberg eBook #15250, Project Gutenberg, ch. VI, “The Sun-king”
Ixchel (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Ixchel”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 14 September 2025), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts (Paul Schellhas), Paul Schellhas, Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts, Papers of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, vol. 4, no. 1 (2nd edition, 1904), Project Gutenberg eBook #18013, Project Gutenberg, D. The Moon- and Night-God
Hindu Mythology, Vedic and Purāṇic (W. J. Wilkins), W. J. Wilkins, Hindu Mythology, Vedic and Purāṇic (Thacker, Spink & Co., 1882), Internet Archive full text, Internet Archive, pp. 62–63, “Soma”

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Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research

Added October 10, 2026.

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