Kidili- Aboriginal Australian SpiritSpirit"The Moon Man"

Also known as: Kidipapa and Kidi-kidi

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Titles & Epithets

The Moon Man

Domains

moon

Description

In the Dreamtime, Kidili pursued the Kungkarangkalpa across the Western Desert, his chase carving valleys and ridges into the land. Punished and killed for it, he became the moon, forever following the Pleiades across the night sky, waxing with each renewed chase and waning with each defeat.

Mythology & Lore

The Chase

Kidili wanted the Kungkarangkalpa, the Seven Sisters, and they did not want him. He chased them across the Western Desert. The sisters ran, hid, changed form. He kept coming.

The force of the pursuit carved the land. Valleys formed where Kidili ran. Ridges rose where he turned. C.P. Mountford documented how the dreaming track of the chase stretches across enormous distances through Western Desert country, each landmark a moment in the story: a waterhole where the sisters paused, a ridge where Kidili was beaten back.

The Moon

Other ancestral beings stopped him. They punished Kidili for his pursuit of the unwilling sisters, and he died. The Kungkarangkalpa escaped into the sky and became the Pleiades.

Kidili became the moon. He still follows them. When the moon waxes, he is recovering his strength for another chase. When it wanes, the punishment is catching up with him again. At the new moon he dies. Then he returns, and the chase resumes. It will never end.

Relationships

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