Selene

**Selene**, also known as **Luna**, was the Goddess of the Moon from Greco-Roman mythology. She was the daughter of Hyperion and Theia, the twin sister of Helios and older sister of Eos, and the consort of the immortal youth Endymion.

She faded sometimes in the Renaissance era, when the last of her cults finally died out.

## Overview

In Greek mythology, **Selene** (Σελήνη, meaning "Moon") is the goddess of the Moon. She is the daughter of the Titans Hyperion and Theia, and sister of the sun god Helios and the dawn goddess Eos. She drives her moon chariot across the heavens. Several lovers are attributed to her in various myths, including Zeus, Pan, and the mortal Endymion.

In post-classical times, Selene was often identified with Artemis, much as her brother, Helios, was identified with Apollo. Selene and Artemis were also associated with Hecate and all three were regarded as lunar goddesses, but only Selene was regarded as the personification of the Moon itself. Her Roman equivalent is **Luna**.

## Appearance

In her portraits, Selene appeared as a beautiful woman with a pair of bovine horns protruding from the sides of her head. She had glittering white skin, with silver-colored eyes and long pale-lilac hair styled into ancient Greek hairstyle, hidden behind a sheer veil. In most of her statues, she was portrayed as wearing a billowing cloak and stood beside her moon chariot.

## Personality

Selene was a very secretive and seclusive goddess, even by the Lunar Gods' standard, preferring to live by herself in the middle of the wild instead of among the gods on Mount Olympus. Following Helios' fading, her seclusive nature only grew worse, to the point where not even Eos or Artemis could convince her to leave her personal abode anymore.

In fact, had it not been for her monthly ride on the moon chariot, many gods would have thought she already faded alongside Helios.

Before this, she was a caring, loving, and affectionate person who cared greatly for her family and friends. She strongly believed in standing up to fight for what one's belief, even if it means having to face one's greatest fears, and that all had the potential for good inside of them. She also had a strong sense of justice and order, one born from watching crimes happening while performing her duties.

She had shown herself to be a romantic at heart, having many dreams of a fairy tale love between her and her "chosen one", as strange it may sound for a goddess like her. As such, she was devoted in turning her lover Endymion immortal, so that he would be with her forever, even though this decision was without his consent. In addition, despite claiming him to be her true love, she had no problems cheating on him with other men, such as Zeus, Pan, or Emolpus.

Like the majority of deities, she had a preference for gossip and rumors of all kinds, especially ones revolving around the misfortune of others. In addition, she also had a darker and more violent side to her, as she was known for cursing mortals with madness if they displeased her. Not to mention, she was also responsible for rearing many dangerous monsters that preyed upon mankind.

In the later parts of her life, she had displayed herself to possess a depressive, melancholic aura because of the tragedies befallen upon her. She was angry and bitter, though instead of working through her emotions, she chose to become apathetic by indulging herself in wine and opium, which only further deteriorated her mental state.

According to Artemis, as the Roman Empire came to an end and Christianity began to gain popularity, she began to display severe paranoia, fearing that this would mean the end of the heathen gods' reign. Though considering the end of the Age of Gods, it seemed like she was right with her paranoia.

## History

### Early Years

Selene was born as the daughter of the Elder Titans Hyperion and Theia, Her twin brother was the Sun God Helios and she had a younger sister Eos who was the Goddess of Dawn. As she grew up, she took on the mantle of the [God of the Moon], becoming the personification of the Moon in the Greek cosmos.

### The Titanomachy

During the Titanomachy, she and her siblings originally decided to remain neutral throughout the war, never leaning toward either side. However, as time went on, it began to show that their decision was not a standing one, as the politics of Mount Othrys started to divide itself into two factions: One led by their father who supported Kronos, while the other led by Rhea who supported Zeus and his siblings.

Eventually, all three of them were persuaded by Prometheus into siding with Zeus, though officially, they still remained neutral, if not leaning toward in the Kronos Faction's favor because of their father. Throughout the war, they worked as spies for Zeus’ Faction and provided them with many crucial information that helped turn the tides of war toward their favor. And as such, when the Elder Olympians won the Titanomachy, they became some of the few Titans who kept their old domains and authorities, as well as escaping an eternity locked in Tartarus.

### Endymion of Elis

During one of her nightly trips across the sky, Selene caught the beauty of the sleeping mortal Endymion, a King of Elis and a renowned astronomer who was the first to observe the movements of the moon. So enthralled by him that she wanted to make him her immortal consort, but due to the stigma between taking a mortal lover, much less making one a god's head consort, not just a concubine, she couldn't officially do it.

As such, she went to Zeus to ask him advice, as he was the High King of Mount Olympus and Endymion's own father. Hearing her say her case, he could hear the love he had for his son, Zeus allowed her to give him ambrosia, thus transforming him into a minor god serving directly under her court of night. However, unknown to both of them, their conversation was heard by Hera. Infuriated that *another* bastard of her husband was going to become a god, she decided to interfere in the arrangement and gave a... slight change to Endymion's *apotheosis*.

She contacted Hypnos, the God of Sleep, who she discovered from Aphrodite to also harbor unrequited love for Endymion, and told him about Selene and Endymion's marriage under the guise of thinking he and Hypnos were great friends. Heartbroken, Hypnos decided to get a little revenge for himself, messing with the *apotheosis* ritual and causing Endymion to fall into an eternal slumber, where he would remain youthful for eternity but would never be able to wake up.

According to Hera, she felt bad... for Hypnos and Selene, as she believed this to be something the demigod had brought onto himself just because of his parentage.

#### Children of the Moon

Even though he was now in an enchanted sleep, this didn't stop Selene's love for him one bit, which combined with him now a physical god and her official husband, resulted in him being "visited" by Selene every night. The result of this were the Menae, fifty minor goddesses who each represent a month within the Olympiad calendar.

This, however, didn't mean she remained faithful to her husbands. She had many lovers, and with them, sired many children. With Zeus, she had the two goddesses, Pandia ("All-brightness") and Ersa ("Dew"). With Pan, she had Nemea, the eponymous nymph of the Nemean region. After a threesome, she became one of the parents of Narcissus, his other parents being Cephissus and Liriope. And with the legendary seer Eumolpus, she had Musaeus, a legendary poet who was credited as founder of priestly poetry.

### Ampelus' Death

Ampelus was a very attractive satyr youth, a close friend and lover of the godling Dionysus. One day, while Ampelus was riding on a bull, he jokingly compared himself to Selene, saying that he was her equal, having horns and riding bulls just like her. Offended by the joke, the goddess cursed the bull he was riding on with madness, causing it to throw Ampelus on the ground and gored him to death.

### The Gigantomachy

During the Gigantomachy, she was among the gods who personally fought against the Gigantes on the battlefield. When Gaia created a special herb that would grant the Gigantes true immortality, Zeus had her, Helios, and Eos not to shine so the Olympian gods would destroy them before the Gigantes could even locate where they grew.

When Typhon arrived and began his rampage across Greece, Selene was among some of the gods attacked by him. While she was able to escape the battle with slight burned marks, her chariot was heavily damaged by Typhon's attacks, though it was later repaired by Hephaestus to be more beautiful than ever. The ancient Greeks, when they saw these marks and heard the tale, believed it to be the explanation for the craters on the Moon.

### Roman Empire

When the Greek gods came to Rome and synchronized themselves with the native Roman gods, Selene became known as **Luna**, a Sabine goddess whose cults dated back to the Roman Kingdom. In Rome, she was known as one of the 20 principal deities of the Roman Pantheon, having a vital role in agriculture. During the Roman Empire, she was widely worshiped by Roman sorcerers as a [God of Magic], with a special temple dedicated to her on Palatine Hill, which Varro described as shining or glowing by night.

At first, she was ecstatic as she started to gain more and more power. However, when Sol faded and Apollo took over his domains and titles as the new Sol Invictus, her entire world crumbled into despair. Too depressed and mentally unstable to even perform her duty as the [God of the Moon], she passed the position and duties down to her "apprentice" Diana and spent her time drinking away her sorrow.

As time went on, she became more and more paranoia, believing there were "enemies in every corner and every shadow". She started to rant about death and destruction, of the inevitable end by "heavenly spirits of white winged, corrupted spirits of corvid wings, and demonic spirits coming from down below", which all gods thought nothing of... until the Great War came and her mad ramblings turned out to be true, being the prediction of an apocalypse brought by the angels, fallen angels, and the demons and devils.

### The Renaissance

In the Renaissance period, while the rest of the gods saw it as a revival, Selene's depression reached its limits. And as the last of her true cults died out, so did the last will to live on in her. After not seeing her for many decades, Hecate decided to visit her in her personal abode, only to see her suicide note and a half-faded corpse of her old friend, hanging before her family's portrait with a smile she hadn't had since a long, long time.

## Equipment

**Moon Chariot** (月の戦車, *Tsuki no Sensha*): The divine chariot of Selene. It was a Roman *biga* made of silver and ivory, engraved with images of the Titans in glimmering gold. The chariot was pulled by two white bulls with feathered wings. Before passing the mantle of [God of the Moon] down to Artemis, she used to ride it across the night sky to bring forth moonlight across Greece and Rome.

## Trivia

* She is possibly one of the few gods who has control over both light and darkness.
* She has a lot in common with Artemis in terms of personality, powers and respective twins. The only major differences are:
	+ Artemis is an Olympian and Selene was a Titan.
	+ Artemis is a virgin goddess while Selene was married.
* In modern times, her name is the root of "selenography", the study of the geology of the moon.
	+ 580 Selene, a minor planet, is named after her.
	+ The chemical element selenium is named after her.
	+ The famous Cleopatra VII named her only daughter after Selene: Cleopatra Selene.
	+ *Selene*, a species of fish, is named after her.
* The name of her Roman form, Luna, literally means “moon” in Latin.
	+ The term *lunacy* was named after her Roman incarnation Luna, since it was thought that a full moon rendered people insane.
* Dionysus often accompanied Selene as she made her away across the night sky, inducing lunacy/madness on nights of the full moon.
* In ancient Greece, Monday was called "day of the Moon" after her.
* According to Claudian, she and Helios were raised by Tethys since infancy.
* In Orphism, the Moirai were considered to represent the three divisions of Selene, "the thirtieth and the fifteenth and the first" (i.e. the crescent moon, full moon, and dark moon, as delineated by the divisions of the calendar month).
* In Modern Paganism, she, Artemis, and Hecate are considered to be aspects of the Triple Goddess. She represented the Full Moon phase and played the role of the Mother of the Maiden-Mother-Crone trio.
	+ As Luna, she was paired with Proserpina and Hecate instead.