[132-3]
Very different is another aspect of the moon goddess, and well might the
Mexicans paint her with two colors. The beneficent dispenser of harvests
and offspring, she nevertheless has a portentous and terrific phase. She
is also the goddess of the night, the dampness, and the cold; she
engenders the miasmatic poisons that rack our bones; she conceals in her
mantle the foe who takes us unawares; she rules those vague shapes which
fright us in the dim light; the causeless sounds of night or its more
oppressive silence are familiar to her; she it is who sends dreams
wherein gods and devils have their sport with man, and slumber, the twin
brother of the grave. In the occult philosophy of the middle ages she
was "Chief over the Night, Darkness, Rest, Death, and the
Waters;"[133-1] in the language of the Algonkins, her name is identical
with the words for night, death, cold, sleep, and water.[133-2]
She is the evil minded woman who thus brings diseases upon men, who at
the outset introduced pain and death in the world--our common mother,
yet the cruel cause of our present woes.
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