Man in the Moon

In many cultures, several pareidolic images of a human face, head or body are recognized in the disc of the full moon; they are generally known as the Man in the Moon. The images are based on the appearance of the dark areas (known as lunar maria) and the lighter-colored highlands (and some lowlands) of the lunar surface.

There are various explanations for how the Man in the Moon came to be.

A longstanding European tradition holds that the man was banished to the Moon for some crime. Jewish lore says that the image of Jacob is engraved on the Moon. Another held that he is the man caught gathering sticks on the Sabbath and sentenced by God to death by stoning in the Book of Numbers XV.32–36. Some Germanic cultures thought he was a woodcutter found working on the Sabbath. There is a Roman legend that he is a sheep-thief.^{[citation needed]}

One medieval Christian tradition claims that he is Cain, the Wanderer, forever doomed to circle the Earth. Dante's Inferno alludes to this:

For now doth Cain with fork of thorns confine
On either hemisphere, touching the wave
Beneath the towers of Seville. Yesternight
The moon was round.

This is mentioned again in his Paradise:

But tell, I pray thee, whence the gloomy spots
Upon this body, which below on earth
Give rise to talk of Cain in fabling quaint?

John Lyly says in the prologue to his Endymion (1591), "There liveth none under the sunne, that knows what to make of the man in the moone."