Look how bright the moon is tonight...😲
Here’s a perfect story to go with it:
Ganesh and the Moon
One day, Ganesh’s followers showered him with all sorts of sweets. Honestly, anyone who knows him knows he’s got a bit of a sweet tooth. He didn't hesitate—he polished them all off in one go.
Later, Ganesh headed home, riding his little mouse. It was just after sunset, and in the pitch black, the mouse tripped over a snake. Ganesh went tumbling straight to the ground.
Because he had stuffed himself so much, his belly actually gave way, and those treats started spilling out everywhere.
Ganesh scrambled to gather them up and shove them back into his wide-open stomach (seriously, don't go looking for logic in this tale!). To keep everything secure, he grabbed the snake that caused the mess and wrapped it around his waist like a belt (you’ll actually see this snake-belt on plenty of statues of Ganesh).
Looking at the Moon, Chandra couldn't help but burst out laughing at the whole scene.
Ganesh was livid. Feeling insulted by the mockery, he snapped, broke off his own right tusk, and hurled it straight at the moon (which explains why Ganesh is usually shown with a broken right tusk).
In his anger, he cursed the moon, decreeing that it would stop shining every night and vanish from the sky entirely. Back then, legend says the moon used to glow every single night without fail.
With the moon gone, there was no more moonlight or even soft twilight. It was chaos. Young lovers were heartbroken, and the elderly were constantly grumbling. Nobody could get any sleep because the sun stayed bright even through the night.
without the moon, the gods found the heavenly life as unbearable as the men found on earth. They all rushed to Ganesh's house, practically begging him to fix the mess.
Ganesh is indulgent, so he eventually gave in to their pleas. However, he wasn't about to let things go back to exactly how they were.
He decreed that the moon would now follow a cycle of waxing and waning—alternating between two weeks of light and two weeks of darkness, marked by the full moon and the new moon.
That’s why some people feel it's bad luck to look at the moon during Ganesh Chaturthi (which falls on the fourth day of the waxing phase) in late summer. They say if you ignore this, you might end up facing some serious trouble...
Even today, this tradition sticks around, and people are careful to avoid glancing at the moon on Ganesh Chaturthi. Some folks are so superstitious they won't even look at the moon every fourth day of the waxing period, just to be safe!
And if someone unlucky *does* catch a glimpse of the moon on that specific day, the old trick is to immediately toss a stone at a neighbor's house—hopefully, the resulting shouting match helps distract the gods from their anger toward you!
The legend of Ganesh offers a deeper perspective: Ganesh riding his rat represents the Truth Seeker, the seeker of truth who uses his physical presence, his mind, and his intuition to chase a spiritual goal and eventually grasp the ultimate truth.
Our bodies, minds, and intellects are limited tools. They aren't quite capable of grasping the essence of the soul or the Absolute Reality—that state where a person exists without ego.
Someone truly chasing the ultimate reality knows it’s almost impossible to describe that feeling using "normal" language. That’s why the words and actions of spiritual masters often seem so strange or impossible to wrap our heads around.
If you aren't on that kind of spiritual journey, the intellect just can't grasp the ultimate Truth or Reality. Since the moon is seen as the ruler of the human mind, the image of the moon laughing at Ganesh and his mouse serves as a reminder of how the ignorant might mock a spiritual seeker's struggle to find the Truth.
It’s a similar story when people mock spiritual leaders or dismiss the wisdom shared by sages; that kind of cynicism ultimately does more harm to society than good.
There’s another old story from the ancient texts where the Moon actually lost its glow due to a divine curse.
To help restore that radiance, Ganesh placed the Moon upon his own forehead like a sacred ornament. This form, known as Bhâlachandra—meaning "the one adorned by the moon"—is especially revered by certain mystical traditions.
source:
http://ganapati.club.fr/anglais/adetmyth.html