Meaning & Analysis
Refers to someone born during the lunar phase when the moon's visible light is decreasing. This period was astrologically considered unlucky, predisposing the person to a life of misfortune, weakness, or failure.
Insights
Innate Misfortune
Symbolizes a person believed to be inherently unlucky or predisposed to failure from birth, as if their destiny were sealed by unfavorable circumstances beyond their control.
Declining Potential
Represents a life or character marked by diminishing potential, weakness, or a lack of vitality. The individual seems to be on a perpetual downward trajectory, unable to achieve growth or success.
A Deterministic Worldview
Reflects a fatalistic or deterministic worldview, where individual agency is seen as secondary to the powerful, unseen forces (like celestial events) that shape one's life and character.
Source of Weakness
Can be used to explain or excuse a person's perceived lack of spirit, passion, or effectiveness. It frames their shortcomings not as personal faults but as predetermined, astrological flaws.
Astrological Determinism
The proverb is a direct reflection of the widespread historical belief in judicial astrology, where celestial events at birth were thought to dictate one's entire life path. The waning moon, symbolizing decay, was a powerful omen of a difficult life, contrasting with the promise of a waxing moon.
Psychological Externalization
Psychologically, the proverb serves as a mechanism for externalizing failure or misfortune. By attributing bad luck to an unchangeable event like one's birth, it absolves the individual (and society) of responsibility, framing hardship as an inescapable fate rather than a result of choice or social conditions.
Pre-Scientific Causality
Embodies a pre-scientific mode of explaining human fortune and character. Before modern genetics and psychology, astrological narratives provided a comprehensive, if fatalistic, framework for understanding why some people succeeded and others failed. The cross-reference to being 'born under an unlucky planet' reinforces this shared conceptual model.
Rhetorical Devices
Symbolism
The 'wane of the moon' is a potent symbol for decline, decay, bad fortune, and diminishing energy. It powerfully condenses a complex astrological belief into a simple, evocative image.
Metaphor
The proverb functions as a metaphor, equating the astronomical event of a waning moon with a person's entire life trajectory, suggesting their existence is one of perpetual decrease and misfortune.
Allusion
The phrase is a direct allusion to astrological and cosmological beliefs prevalent from antiquity through the Renaissance. Its meaning is fully unlocked only with an understanding of this historical, fatalistic context.
Transcription
Quotations
Quarta luna nati, dicuntur qui parum feliciter nati sunt.
O infortunate Philautus, born in the wane of the Moone.
I was begotten and borne in the wane of the Moone, when everie thing as saith Lactantius in his fourth book of Constul-tations dooth say, goeth asward.
Are you so coy? Thou art a man of snow, And thy father got thee in the wane of the moon!
A younger brother, sir; born at the latter end of the week, and wane of the moon.
Men not borne to doe themselves good. Quarta luna nati.
Born under an ill planet; in the wain (arse) of the moon; curs'd in his cradle.
Cross References
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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