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- Convenors:
-
Helena Tuzinska
(Comenius University in Bratislava, Faculty of Arts)
Chris Knight (University College London)
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Short Abstract
This panel explores the shifting roles of the Moon and Sun in folk narratives, focusing on how their dynamic relationship structures enchantment, disenchantment, and representations of other transitions. We examine lunar and solar symbolism as narrative pendulums across diverse cultural contexts.
Long Abstract
This panel investigates the symbolic and structural interplay between the Moon and the Sun in folk narratives. We examine how lunar and solar figures function not only as motifs but as temporal and moral pendulums that mark rupture, renewal, and transformation in storytelling. We position this inquiry at the intersection of folkloristics and symbolic anthropology, drawing on the legacy of structural and interpretive approaches to myth and wondertales (Lévi-Strauss 1955; Knight 1997; Cardigos 1991, 1996; Vaz da Silva 2002, 2023). We consider myths and fairy tales as symbolic forms of communication, grounded in cosmological systems and shaped by evolving social imaginaries. By integrating insights from evolutionary linguistics and structural analysis, this panel contributes to the reconceptualization of taxonomic and interpretative models in folklore studies. In doing so, it highlights the relevance of wondertales for understanding human cooperation, imagination, and social adaptation.
We invite contributions that address topics such as:
• How do celestial agents relate to magic transformations of nature?
• How do lunar and solar cycles structure narratives of enchantment/disenchantment?
• What gendered representations are associated with the lunar and solar pendulums in narrative templates?
• What kinds of symbolism are inscribed in the Moon – Sun dynamic in relation to kinship terms?
• How the concept of wilderness is represented in the nature(s) within the narrative?
Accepted papers
Session 1 Saturday 13 June, 2026, -Paper short abstract
Drawing on ethnographic research, the paper explores how a vernacular spiritual healer’s engagement with Scottish megaliths illuminates the Sun–Moon dynamic as a pendulum of enchantment, gender, and wilderness, while offering insights into cosmology, symbolism, and narrative transformation.
Paper long abstract
The paper, based on ethnographic research, explores a local spiritual healer’s engagement with Scottish megaliths, where the Sun and Moon function as symbolic pendulums of enchantment, gendered mysticism, and renewal. Grounded in the healer’s storytelling and ritual practice, stone circles are (re)interpreted as cosmologically attuned architectures, animated by celestial cycles that delineate thresholds of fertility, wilderness, and kinship.
Building on this foundation, the analysis investigates how celestial agents, envisioned in dualistic harmony, shape narratives of gendered balance, cosmic reciprocity, and spiritual reclamation. These perceptions emerge at the intersection of local folklore, archaeoastronomy, and contemporary spiritual practice, and are articulated through ritual engagement, embodied experience, and mythopoetic imagination.
The paper argues that, at the heart of contemporary vernacular spirituality, prehistoric monuments are not framed as static relics but experienced as dynamic presences—sites where cosmic movements inscribe a kinship between land, body, and sky. Within this framework, megalithic landscapes become canvases for personal spirituality and ongoing negotiation between enchantment and disenchantment through celestial symbolism.
Through ethnographic insight into the Sun–Moon dynamic within modern spiritualities, the paper thus contributes to Folklore studies by illuminating broader themes of cosmology, gender, and sacred wilderness.
Paper short abstract
This paper explores the relationship between lunar periodicity and gender in a very wide-spread indigenous American myth dealing with the origin of the moon’s spots. This is done by comparing it to structurally related myths as well as by drawing on cognitive evolution theory.
Paper long abstract
Focusing on what is perhaps the most widespread of all indigenous American myths, which explains the origin of the spots on the moon, this paper treats this set of myths as part of an even larger set of myths that explain the cosmogony, in structural terms, as the differentiation of primordial wholeness. Moon’s incestuous nature and androgyny are treated as homologous motifs. Seen against this wider backdrop, gender moves between a normative, differentiated state and a primordial, undifferentiated state – androgyny. Likewise, lunar, solar, and menstrual periodicity are set in opposition to a primordial undifferentiated state characterised by a sheer lack of periodicity. This is explained in terms of cognitive evolution theory, specifically the evolution of language. Language, through its power of differentiation, imposes normative structures on the human cosmos that are potentially divisive and can be exploited as such, if the material conditions are right, to gain political power and privilege. Ritual androgyny is a major feature of rites of inversion and can be seen as part of a general anti-structural ritual/artistic process in which the normative structures of the established social order are dissolved and boundaries are transgressed in order to return to a “primordial” state of communitas. The human limbic system is thus temporarily liberated from the alienating strictures of the differentiated cosmos demarcated by language-based thought. The moon, for various reasons, plays a central role in these liberating ritual/aesthetic processes.
Paper short abstract
Revisiting ritual syntax theory (Knight et al. 1995) and wondertale symbolism (Cardigos 1996; Vaz da Silva 2023), this paper explores how silver Moon and golden Sun attributes in Slovak fairy tales signal kinship reconfigurations aligned with cosmic rhythms.
Paper long abstract
This paper investigates the role of lunar and solar attributes in Jiří Polívka’s Inventory of Slovak Fairy Tales (1923). Particular attention is given to motifs of moon-silver and sun-gold garments and radiant hair, which operate as transformative bodily devices. This symbolic language mediates transitions in kinship relations, justified through life-giving cosmic cycles.
Employing the concept of the time-resistant syntax of ritual and myth (Knight, Power & Watts 1995), together with the interpretive work of Isabel Cardigos (1991, 1996) and Francisco Vaz da Silva (2023), the analysis explores how silver and golden qualities function within narrative metamorphoses. Rather than representing decorative or static signs, these attributes act as ritual markers, defining thresholds where kinship bonds are disrupted, concealed, or reconstituted. The Moon and the Sun thus appear not merely as celestial beings but as organizing principles of transformation and alignment.
The author proposes that the silver Moon and the golden Sun embody ritualized kinship transitions that reconfigure blood relations in correspondence with cosmic rhythms. Finally, by situating these tales within a comparative framework, the paper highlights the Moon – Sun dynamic as a symbolic pendulum of enchantment and disenchantment in the broader repertoire of European wondertales.
Paper short abstract
With this paper, I aim to analyse the charged relationship between Christian religious moral and pagan cosmogony in the Romanian-Moldovan folkloric portrayal of the Sun and the Moon in relation to the incest taboo, Adam and Eve, and symbolic bridges built through the godly manipulation of nature.
Paper long abstract
Romanian and Moldovan folk narratives very often rely on the dichotomy of Christian good and heathen evil in order to offer a moralising punchline. The folk ballad “Soarele și luna” tells the story of the prince Sun, who wants to wed his sister Ileana Simziana. Despite being absolutely indignant by the prospects of marrying her brother, Ileana seems to be willing, but only after the Sun builds two bridges across the Black Sea. In doing so, he meets the 'original' parents Adam and Eve who warn him against the incestual relationship. When the copper bridge gets built and Ileana goes across it, it trembles so fiercely, that she falls into the water. She then gets rebirthed as Moon, positioned as far away from the Sun so that she never meets him again.
The specific impossibility of love from Sun-Moon narratives is here owed to the incestual relationship of two sibling Gods. I intend to examine the depiction of ‘norm-defying’ sexuality and its role in creating an enchanting cosmogenesis, while disenchanting its sexual libertine nature: What is the ballad communicating about gender norms and forbidden desire? The symbolic function of Adam and Eve as unforgiving parents ready to civilise the wilderness of their children will also be given thought: How do they mould the social imaginary of Romanian-Moldovan culture? At last, I would like to examine the ekphrasis, the symbolic materiality and the uniting/dividing trait of the two bridges in this narrative: How do astral agents control nature through their magic?
Paper short abstract
The presentation examines the Komi mythological beliefs about the Sun and the Moon, analyzes the semantic and symbolic meanings of these celestial bodies and their expression in folklore and ritual texts, as well as in language.
Paper long abstract
In the mythological and narrative tradition of the Komi people, the images of the Sun and the Moon occupy a central place, reflecting ideas about the duality of the world, temporal cycles, and human nature. The aim of our presentation is to analyze the semantic and symbolic meanings of these celestial bodies and their expression in Komi folklore and language.
According to cosmogonic myths, the world was created by two brother-demiurges who embody opposing principles. The Sun (šondi) is the creation of the light En, while the Moon (tölys’) is associated with the dark brother Omöl. The creators’ antagonism forms stable semantic series of oppositions—light/darkness, day/night, warmth/cold—which are widely realized in various folklore texts through the representations of these celestial bodies.
In Komi narratives, the Sun is endowed with pronounced feminine symbolism, while the Moon carries masculine symbolism, which emphasizes the uniqueness of the Komi symbolic system compared to other traditions where the gender associations are often reversed. The celestial bodies are presented either as brother and sister or as a romantic couple. In several narratives, we encounter motifs such as the Sun’s motherhood, the Moon’s marriage to a human woman, and his role as a godfather to a poor stepdaughter. Gender symbolism is also expressed through color codes. The “silver Moon” and “golden Sun” are stable expressions widely represented in folklore and ritual texts. The epithets “silver” and “golden” are traditionally associated with male and female beauty, respectively, and find expression in both the Komi language and folklore.
Paper short abstract
Among the Batek of Malaysia, the moon embodies renewal, rebirth, and transformation. This paper shows how moon myths and sun–moon oppositions form part of a deep, universal pattern of myth and ritual, evidence of an ancient culture-forming event inscribed in human consciousness since prehistory.
Paper long abstract
This paper examines the role of the moon in the cosmologies of the Batek Dè’ and Batek Maia, neighbouring gender-egalitarian hunter-gatherer groups of Peninsular Malaysia. While often overlooked, the moon occupies a central place in their myth and ritual life, serving as a key metaphor for renewal, rebirth, and transformation. Drawing on Batek Dè’ origin myths, practices of health and well-being, ritual prohibitions, and the thermic and olfactory codes linked to celestial bodies, I trace the structural oppositions between sun and moon. These are then compared with Batek Maia narratives of bidan don (Old Man Moon). To interpret this ethnographic material, gathered during long-term fieldwork in Malaysia over a twenty year period, I engage with structural approaches to myth and ritual developed by Knight (1991), Cardigos (1991, 1996), Vaz da Silva (2002, 2023), and Belaunde (2006). I argue that Batek moon myths form part of a time-resistant syntax of myth and ritual which is ubiquitous across human cultures worldwide, offering evidence of an ancient culture-forming event inscribed in human consciousness since prehistory.
Paper short abstract
This paper examines how WitchTok creators use moon and sun symbolism to frame enchantment, transformation, and identity. It argues that celestial aesthetics form a digital narrative where lunar-solar cycles guide spiritual creativity and belonging.
Paper long abstract
This paper explores the role of celestial aesthetics in structuring enchantment, transformation, and identity within the online witchcraft community known as WitchTok.
Lunar motifs, such as phases, eclipses, and moonlight, often embody intuition, mystery, and emotional authenticity, resonating with themes of concealment and cyclical renewal. Solar symbols, by contrast, convey illumination, empowerment, and revelation, aligning with narratives of clarity and order. Together, these motifs function as a dynamic "pendulum" that organizes temporal, moral, and aesthetic dimensions of vernacular spirituality online.
The paper situates this celestial symbolism within broader discussions of digital folklore and vernacular religion, suggesting that WitchTok constitutes a contemporary "mythic" environment where enchantment and disenchantment coexist. By tracing how lunar-solar dualities are visualized, remixed, and presented in TikTok videos, the study aims to reveal how practitioners use symbolic and aesthetic forms to negotiate identity, creativity, and belonging. Ultimately, WitchTok’s celestial imagery offers a glimpse into how digital media enable new narratives and meaning in online magical practice.