Ngalindi- Aboriginal Australian GodDeity"The Moon Man"
Description
Moon Man of the Yolngu. Ngalindi was once a fat, lazy husband until his wives attacked him with axes, chopping him thinner and thinner until he wasted to nothing. He comes back, growing fat again each month before dying anew: his eternal cycle of death and return is the waxing and waning of the moon.
Mythology & Lore
The Moon Man
Ngalindi was a fat, lazy man who lived with his wives in the Dreamtime of the Yolngu people of northeastern Arnhem Land. His laziness provoked them beyond patience. They took up axes and chopped him. He did not die all at once. The blows thinned him, night after night, until he was reduced to nothing. That is the waning of the moon.
But Ngalindi does not stay dead. He swells back, thin and scarred at first, then fatter, then full again. The dark markings on the moon's surface are the axe scars his wives left on his body, still visible even when he is at his roundest. And when he grows fat and lazy again, the wives take up their axes. Mountford documented this cycle as told by the Yolngu, who tracked Ngalindi's body to know when the tides would shift, when shellfish could be gathered along the Arnhem Land coast. The moon governed the water, and the water governed the day.