Domain: The moon Symbol: The crescent and full disc, the silver chariot, the torch, the veil Roman Equivalent: Luna
Overview
Selene is the Titan goddess of the moon itself — not a symbol of it but the thing in the sky. Daughter of the Titans Hyperion and Theia, she is sister to Helios the sun and to Eos the dawn, the three of them the great lights of the day and night. Each evening she rises as her brother sets, driving a silver chariot drawn by pale horses across the dark, a crescent crown on her brow and a trailing veil behind her. Where later Greeks folded lunar associations into Artemis, Selene remained the older, purer thing: the moon as a face, a body, a light that waxes and wanes.
She is gentle and luminous, the softest of the sky-powers — but constant, pulling the tides of night after her without fail.
Key Myths
Endymion. Selene's great love was Endymion, a mortal shepherd of extraordinary beauty. Unwilling to lose him to age or death, she arranged that he sleep forever, ageless and unchanging in a cave, so she could descend to him each night. By him she was said to bear fifty daughters — the fifty lunar months of an Olympiad. It is the tenderest of the moon myths: a goddess who chose eternal, quiet devotion over a love that would fade.
The lights of the sky. Selene, Helios, and Eos divide the whole of time between them — dawn, day, and night — the children of Hyperion carrying the three great lights in turn. When Selene rides, the world sleeps beneath her; her waxing and waning became the measure of the month itself.
The lunar triad. In later worship Selene took her place as the shining, heavenly face of the moon alongside Artemis on earth and Hecate in the underworld — one power seen from three vantages, full and bright in the sky above.
Related
- The Moon — The Major Arcana card of her domain: the night light, the tides of the unconscious, dream and reflection
- Helios — Her brother, the sun to her moon
- Hecate — The dark face of the moon to her bright one; the lunar triad
- Moon — The luminary she personifies
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