Another full moon is upon this week, lighting up the Butler night sky and making it tough on stargazers.

I have to admit that I’ve been called on the carpet, but several readers to this column and even some of my bosses say that I’m way too tough on the full moon. They say I whine too much about how it screws up the darkness of the sky, making it tough to find celestial treasures like distant galaxies, star clusters and such.

The full moon is truly a celestial treasure all by itself and has been celebrated by all cultures throughout the ages. I’ve been reminded by one woman in an e-mail that the night sky is for everybody, not just for guys and gals with telescopes. Point well taken, and as a matter of fact, this week in Skywatch I want to touch on some of the many, many moon mythologies from cultures all over the world.

There’s no way I could cover it all. The editors want a column from me, not a book. So the following is just a very small sampling of the lore of the moon from a few cultures.

If you want to, and your eyes are up to it, try to read this column by the light of the moon, although you might need a few more lumens than that. Just like Mom and Dad said, “You need more light to read, you’ll wreck your eyes!”

The lunar mythology that’s probably best known is from the Greeks.

Artemis was the goddess of the moon whose job it was to drive a flatbed cart across the sky every night pulled by magical flying horses. On the flatbed was the moon.

Her twin brother, Apollo, was the god of the sun, who had the job of steering the sun with his flatbed with his horses across the daytime sky. Their father was Zeus, the king of the gods.

There are many stories about Artemis, but one of the ones that I’ll go into more detail about when I feature the constellation Orion is how Artemis fell in love with the hermit hunter Orion.

It was a definite no-no for gods and goddesses to fall in love with mortals, so Zeus arranged for Orion to be killed by a giant scorpion. In similar Roman mythology, Artemis is known by her Roman name, Diana.

According to ancient Aztecs mythology from the Valley of Mexico, Coyolxauhqui was the daughter of Coatlicue, the goddess of the Earth. Coatlicue, according to lore, was also the mother to 400 or so other gods and goddesses. Talk about the old woman in the shoe with all her children!

Anyway, Coatlicue, for reasons I don’t have the time to go into right now, became heavily wrapped in corruption and all her children became very disgusted with her. Coyolxauhqui was so incensed she encouraged many of her siblings to murder their own mother.

They all signed on to this except for Huitzilopochtli, the goddess of the sun. She was well armed and thwarted any attempt on her mom’s life.

When Coatlicue learned that Coyolxauhqui was the ringleader of the plots against her, she snuck up on her moon daughter while she was napping and cut off her head. She then flung the cranium of her dead daughter in the night sky and it became the moon. Don’t mess with this mama!

In ancient Hindu mythology, as it is with many other cultures, the day and nighttime sky were controlled by one god or another. Soma was the god of the moon. Similar to Artemis, Soma rode across the night sky in a chariot pulled by four white horses.

But in the Hindu story the moon was also seen as a storage chamber of a magic elixir that energized all the gods. As the moon wanes in its monthly cycle and becomes smaller, it’s said the gods were depleting the potion.

Somehow, as the moon waxed and became full again, the supply of the magic fluid became restored. How that happened is not exactly clear. Maybe little green men? Who knows?

Shinto, which means the way of the gods, is one of, if not the oldest Japanese religions. Tsuki-Yomi was the moon god and his sister was Amaterasu, the goddess of the sun.

Tsuki-Yomi and his sister had a distant cousin, Uke Mochi, who served as the goddess of food. Uke — as I refer to her — had it in for Tsuki. We really don’t know why. Maybe it was jealousy. After all, Tsuki-Yomi was a much higher ranking god than the goddess of eats.

Anyway, Uke invited her cousin Tsuki for dinner one night and told him that she had prepared a very special new dish from a recipe she just came up with. After dinner, Uke laughed in Tsuki’s face and told him that he actually finished a meal made up of ingredients so gross that I can’t even tell you what they are. You may be eating your breakfast as you read this.

Tsuki lost it right then and there. He choked his cousin on the spot! Amaterasu heard of her brother’s overreaction and never wanted to see him again!

She had it arranged that they never be together in the sky at the same time.

The sun, controlled by Amaterasu, would only be seen at night and the moon, controlled by Tsuki, would be restricted to the night shift. Actually, you can see the moon during the daytime depending on where it is in its monthly cycle of phases. You can’t let reality get in the way of a neatly packaged mythological yarn!

As I said before, there’s many more moon tales and in a few more moons I’ll share some more with you! Happy moon bathing!