Old Man Moon: Renewal and Transformation in Batek Cosmologies

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.