Hëna (Albanian paganism)

In Albanian traditions the Moon's cyclical phases have regulated many aspects of life, defining agricultural and livestock activities, various crafts, and human body.

[9] Albanian beliefs, myths and legends are organized around the dualistic struggle between good and evil, light and darkness, which cyclically produces the cosmic renewal.

[9] Of the Albanian mythological figures, Zana – usually associated with mountains, springs and streams, forests, vegetation and animals, human vital energy and sometimes destiny – is thought to have been originally a pre-Roman deity, and an Illyrian goddess equivalent of the Ancient Greek Artemis and Roman Diana.

There is also an exceptional frequency of ancient inscriptions of the Roman era dedicated to the cult of Diana in Albania and the rest of the Balkans, which gives reason to think of an interpretatio romana of an indigenous pre-Roman goddess.

So, the patterns of Catholic tattoos in Bosnia, which until then were known as "circles, semicircles, and lines or twigs", eventually were clearly explained as compounds of rayed (emanating light) suns, moons, and crosses, from an expression of Nature-worship and hearth-worship.

[23] In Albanian traditions the different phases of the moon have determined influences on agricultural and livestock activities and on those related to various crafts, but also on several human aspects.

[27] The most famous Albanian mythological representation of the dualistic struggle between good and evil, light and darkness, is the constant battle between drangue and kulshedra,[28] a conflict that symbolises the cyclic return in the watery and chthonian world of death, accomplishing the cosmic renewal of rebirth.

[29] The legendary battle of a heroic deity associated with thunder and weather – like drangue – who fights and slays a huge multi-headed serpent associated with water, storms, and drought – like kulshedra – is a common motif of Indo-European mythology.

Those celestial divine heroes are often drangue (the most widespread culture hero among Albanians), but also E Bija e Hënës dhe e Diellit ("the Daughter of the Moon and the Sun") who is described as pika e qiellit ("drop of the sky" or "lightning") which falls everywhere from heaven on the mountains and the valleys and strikes pride and evil,[12] or by other heroic characters marked in their bodies by the symbols of celestial objects, including in particular the Moon.