Eclipses of the Sun and of the Moon have been described by nearly every culture. In cultures without an astronomical explanation, eclipses were often attributed to supernatural causes or regarded as bad omens.
While solar and lunar eclipses are today understood astronomically as one celestial body shadowing another, their appearance from Earth does not intuitively belie a similar cause for each.[1] Mark Littmann, Fred Espenak, and Ken Willcox classified solar eclipse mythologies into four distinct genres:
In the Talmud, solar eclipses are described as ill omens and several events in the Hebrew Bible are said to have occurred during eclipses.[2] Judaism at large has been accepting of the modern astronomical explanation of eclipses and today many rabbis consider eclipses to be reminders of divinity and a time for prayer and introspection.[3]
The periodicity of lunar eclipses been deduced by Neo-Babylonian astronomers in the sixth century BCE[4] and the periodicity of solar eclipses was deduced in first century BCE by Greek astronomers, who developed the Antikythera mechanism[5] and had understood the Sun, Moon, and Earth to be spherical celestial bodies[6] since Aristotle.[7] The astronomical understanding of eclipses was thus well understood in the Ancient Near East in which Christianity developed. The New Testament describes the sky as darkening for hours during the crucifixion of Jesus.[8] As the event's lengthy duration and occurrence on the day of a full moon made it clear to contemporary believers that it could not be an eclipse, early Christians interpreted this as an omen and sign of Jesus's divinity.[9] In 12th-century Christian Europe, eclipses were thus connected to earthly rule, where the deaths of Charlemagne and Henry I were preceded by solar and lunar eclipses.[10] Saints were often also connected with eclipses, with a solar eclipse at their death a sign of their holiness.[11] Christian eschatology makes mention of eclipse-like phenomena, where Revelation 6:12 describes how "the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood."[12] A minority of modern Christians believe eclipses to portend the Second Coming.[13]
Astronomy in the medieval Islamic world was well-developed, and contributions included Al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf ibn Maṭar's translation of Ptolemy's Almagest, in which he corrected Ptolemy's method for predicting eclipses.[14] Theologically, the Quran explicitly rejects notions of the sun and moon's divinity:
In one hadith, Muhammad objects to followers' treatment of an eclipse as an omen and states that eclipses have no bearing on earthly life and death:Because Muhammad instructed his followers to pray during eclipses as reminders of God's power, many Muslims today consider it sunnah to conduct a special prayer during solar eclipses, known as Arabic: salat al-kusuf.[15] With modern eclipse prediction techniques, Muslim congregations today announce solar eclipse prayers in advance[16] [17] as Islam places a great theological weight on communal prayer.[18]
See main article: article and Grahana.
According to Hindu mythology, solar and lunar eclipses, known in Sanskrit as Sanskrit: grahana, occur when the celestial gods Rahu and Ketu swallow the Sun and Moon respectively.[19] [20]
Hindus generally believe that a Sanskrit: grahana is a bad omen, and is considered the best time to chanting mantras that ward against evil.[21] Fasting is practiced for up to six hours before an eclipse. Food is often prepared only after the passing of the eclipse, and conventions regarding consuming meals at given hours in the context of the event are prescribed in the Kurma Purana.[22] During an eclipse, Hindus are considered unclean. They bathe and offer prayers to ancestors. Pilgrimage sites situated adjacent to a river throng with devotees during the onset of a Sanskrit: grahana in some regions.[23] Pregnant women are considered to be especially at risk to the effects of an eclipse and are expected to adhere more strictly to rituals to prevent birth deformities in their children.[24] It is regarded to be a bad omen to be born during an eclipse, and Brahmins are often called upon to ritually bless such babies.
The Indigenous peoples of the Americas have very diverse cultural practices and beliefs about eclipses.
Since the sixteenth century, Western scholars have been interested in "eclipse glyphs" recorded by the Maya civilization in the Dresden Codex, thought by historians to be predictions of solar and lunar eclipses.[25] As there is no evidence for Maya understanding of heliocentrism or celestial orbits, it is likely that such eclipse predictions were made entirely from observed periodicity.[26] However, some scholars argue that the glyphs in the Mayan codices refer to skies darkened from heavy rainfall, and not to eclipses.
In Aztec mythology, solar eclipses occurred when the jaguar god Tepēyōllōtl consumed the sun and threatened to swallow it completely, according to Eduard Seler's analysis of the Codex Vaticanus B.[27] A 16th century passage from the Florentine Codex gives an account of a solar eclipse:There is no record of lunar eclipses in Aztec mythology or recordkeeping, as noted by an observer who wrote in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis about a lunar eclipse in 1510.[28] The Aztec records of solar eclipses, when present, are tied directly to historic events; it is likely that they chose to record such events only when they coincided with social or political events.[29]
Navajo people consider the time during an eclipse to be a sacred moment of renewal, and refrain from all activities including eating and drinking. During an eclipse, the Sun or Moon is believed to be dying and reborn. Members of the nation should be silent in prayer and it is considered forbidden to look anywhere except down on the ground. Before modern eclipse prediction methods, Navajo people believed they could predict oncoming eclipses through their traditional songs. During the solar eclipse of October 14, 2023, the offices of the Navajo Nation, including its parks, were closed out of reverence for the eclipse.
The Hopi people, whose reservation is an enclave of the Navajo Nation, consider eclipses to be a time of ceremony.[30] [31]
Some New Age and Wicca practitioners view solar and lunar eclipses as important spiritual events.[32] As decentralized religious practices, there are no set prescribed rituals and adherents are free to explore their own exercises, which can include crystal charging,[33] imbuing water with energy,[34] and tarot card reading.[35] For some Wicca practitioners, the spiritual nature of the solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 was an opportunity for political activism, casting spells against the administration of Donald Trump.[36]
According to Norse mythology, a wolf named Fenrir lives in constant pursuit of the Sun. When Fenrir consumes the Sun, the end times events of Ragnarök will ensue. Historians consider it likely that the Golden Horns of Gallehus artifacts, which contain eschatological iconography, were made in response a lunar eclipse of November 4, 412 and a solar eclipse of April 16, 413.
Other Norse tribes believe that there are two wolves named Sköll and Hati that are in pursuit of the Sun and the Moon, known by the names of Sol and Mani, and that an eclipse occurs when one of the wolves successfully eats either the Sun or the Moon.
See main article: Eclipse chasing. A dedicated group of eclipse chasers have pursued the observation of solar eclipses when they occur around Earth. A person who chases eclipses is known as an umbraphile, meaning shadow lover. Umbraphiles travel for eclipses and use various tools to help view the Sun including solar viewing glasses, also known as eclipse glasses, as well as telescopes.
Solar and lunar eclipses are often used by educational institutions as events for public outreach about astronomy. Lunar eclipses, which are visible by about half the planet at once, are relatively small-scale events for individual organizations and simple to plan for. In areas with extreme levels of light pollution, stargazing may be impossible and so educational stargazing is necessarily restricted to lunar eclipses.[37] By studying lunar phases and eclipses, students can learn about the sizes and relative distances between the Sun, Earth, and Moon.[38]
Solar eclipses happen at midday in narrow visibility bands, which allows educational organizations to plan daytime outreach events that will naturally reach large crowds. Astronomy educators often feel an obligation to ensure eclipse viewers use solar viewing glasses, and utilize outreach events to distribute glasses and encourage compliance.[39] [40] Where both a total and annular solar eclipse can be seen in relatively quick succession, outreach events can discuss the effect of the elliptical shapes of the Earth and Moon's orbits on the magnitude of eclipse.[41] As solar eclipses trace indiscriminately across swaths of continents, rural and impoverished areas in their path can benefit from greater attention paid to educating on astronomy and science in the area.[42] [43]
Eclipses have also been opportunities for citizen science. As brief but geographically diverse events, it is difficult to organize traditional experiments across the entire viewing area. Crowd-sourced experiments have included a test of radio wave propagation, plant and animal reactions, and air temperature measurements.
Solar eclipses are best visible in a narrow band across the planet, which places a significant logistical burden on organizations and towns in the path of totality. Southern Illinois University Carbondale found themselves at the center of the solar eclipse of August 21, 2017, for which the university had to spend three years planning for the anticipated 30,000 additional visitors on what was originally scheduled as new-student move-in day.[44] Traffic congestion before and after a solar eclipse can be severe, with crowds numbering in the hundreds of thousands filling highways and spilling off into secondary roadways.[45]
Eclipses are opportunities for large civic gatherings outside the educational sphere. For the solar eclipse of April 8, 2024, a rural portion of Texas had planned to hold a multi-day music and arts festival.[46] During the solar eclipse of August 21, 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump made an appearance outside the White House visible to onlookers from across the South Lawn to view the eclipse.[47]
"Taking the view of an uninformed person, the phenomenon of a lunar and solar eclipse presents itself very different in nature: different in frequency, different in daytime, different in length, different in the visual conditions. It is not obvious at all to comprehend that an eclipse is nothing more than an interplay of shadows caused by the bodies of earth or moon."
"For those interested in deeper study, events in the books of Joshua, Amos, and Jonah are often explained as having been accompanied by solar eclipses, and rabbinical scholars have even drawn upon science to date these eclipses with some specificity to the times when these events are thought to have taken place"
"Judaism has longstanding interconnections with astronomy"
"Babylonian use of this eclipse period, which is known as the 'saros' to modern historians and astronomers, may go back to the earliest systematically recorded eclipse observations, which commence in the mid-eighth century BC. It was certainly in use by the sixth century BC, as seen from a cuneiform list of lunar eclipses"
"To each of these months was assigned a separate cell, which in the case of an eclipse month carried an inscription composed of small glyphs and an index letter. The glyphs were there to differentiate between a lunar and a solar eclipse "
"An aspect of the mechanism that seems distinctly non-Babylonian is the idea of factoring parallax into eclipse predictions, which rests on an understanding of eclipses as involving the interplay of three spherical bodies (Sun, Earth, Moon)"
"if the eclipses are due to the interposition of the earth, the shape must be caused by its circumference, and the earth must be spherical"
"Those who were not aware that this had been predicted about Christ, no doubt thought it an eclipse"
"The miraculous solar eclipse associated with the death of Christ in the medieval period offered a framework for Christian writers for a similar association of the cosmic phenomenon with earthly rulership"
"The saints are presented as martyrs, a solar eclipse marking their moment of death or its prefigurement, completing the imitation of Christ and drawing on the same understanding of the darkness at the crucifixion in Luke's gospel"
"The upcoming solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, which will be visible over parts of North America, has brought with it a slew of predictions that Jesus might be returning sooner rather than later."
"Remembering that al-Ḥajjāj was apparently conscious of the environment of competition that we just spoke about, he could not afford to have what looked like a mistake in the translation, and took it upon himself to correct the Greek text"
"The hadith above stating that eclipses are one of the signs of God (Arabic: ayat Allah) makes the Arabic: salat al-kusuf a kind of communal remembrance of divine power and sovereignty. The prayer is not supplicatory, in the sense of a prayer being made to achieve a specific end; but, rather, it becomes used as a vehicle for the community to remember their place in the universe, the sovereignty of God, and God’s authority over all created things"
"More than a thousand people gathered at the East Plano Islamic Center Monday to watch the total solar eclipse and pray Arabic: Salatul Kusoof, a special prayer observed by some Muslims during eclipses"
"Imam Imran Salha of the Islamic Center of Detroit said that prayers for the eclipse will be held at 2 p.m. Monday"
"The role of 'coming together' serves as a theological reminder that all Muslims are part of the Arabic: umma and should respond as one in certain situations"
"With the generality of the Hindus the eclipse is the swallowing of the sun and the moon for a time by a demon called Rahu"
"In Hindu mythology Rahu and Ketu are regarded as celestial bodies that swallow the Moon and the Sun thus causing lunar and solar eclipses respectively"
"The eclipse time is considered a most auspicious time for mastering the incantations for exorcising the evil effects of serpent bite, or scorpion-sting, and of devils, and many specialists in these directions would be seen standing in water and muttering these incantations"
"It is held that everyone is unclean during an eclipse, and should bathe and wash away that uncleanliness"
"Pregnant women are in special danger from eclipses, because eclipses may bring on deformities in the children they bear"
"Westerners have been interested in Mesoamerican interpretations of eclipses since thesixteenth century A.D."
"Interestingly enough, the Maya mapped out the entire eclipse program for the future with neither knowledge of nor interest in the concept of the nodes of the lunar orbit or the 19-year nodal regression period that has been given so much attention in megalithic astronomy of the Old World"
"For the Mexicans the jaguar was the animal that devours the sun, at the time when the sun was devoured, that is, when a solar eclipse; occurred. Hence for the Mexicans he denoted darkness, and his image, the god Tepeyollotli, is a god of caves, of the dark interior of the mountains"
"Spanish; Castilian: nunca hazian cuenta de los eclipes de la luna sino de los del sol por q dezian q el sol se comia a la luna quando acaecia aver eclise de luna"
"Aztec chronologists selectively recorded visible eclipses that served as 'punctuation marks' bracketing real historical events spaced at intervals determined by the Nahuatl languages: xiuhmolpilli cyclic framework"
"The Hopi in Arizona believe an eclipse is a time to pray and for ceremony, such as presenting traditional sacred names"
"During the last eclipse, our nieces and nephews were given their sacred Hopi names"
"To adherents of nontraditional spiritual movements like Wicca — which has grown in popularity as more Americans leave organized religion — it's an opportunity to tap into energies that flow throughout the natural and spiritual world"
"There is no need for protective stones during the solar eclipse, but that it’s a good time to charge your crystals as well"
"My mom says there a chance an eclipse can grant powers, wisdom, and positive energy. The purpose of eclipse water is to bottle up all that energy and be able to use it for months after the event has passed."
"For Gonzalez, tarot is a way to navigate the individual experience of this cosmic event."
"Activists like the members of the #MagicResistance, who use carefully structured, symbolically loaded rituals to 'bind' Donald Trump (often represented by whimsical items like a Cheeto or a carrot), see in the solar eclipse an opportunity to direct their spiritual energy toward an administration they see as the embodiment of evil"
"The second outreach program conducted by the STEM ambassadors was a public stargazing activity at the National Planetarium, Kuala Lumpur. Since this location suffers from extremely high light pollution, the stargazing activity was restricted to bright objects which were planetary and lunar eclipse observations"
"by observing lunar phases and eclipses from the ground, students could also determine, following Aristarchus of Samos in the 3rd century BC, 4 length ratios involving moon and sun distances to earth, and radii of all three, moon, sun, and earth"
"I felt it would be worthwhile to organize free public viewing of both eclipses so that as many people as possible could enjoy viewing them safely"
"Through these mechanisms, we were able to collaborate with K-12 teachers and informal educators to distribute over 30,000 eclipse glasses and reach over 50,000 West Virginians, with a primary focus on middle-school-aged youth."
"Besides the enjoyment and pleasure associated with viewing a solar eclipse, there are a variety of astronomical concepts that can be discussed. For example, the angular size of an object versus its physical size, and the fact that an object's angular size decreases with increasing distance from the observer."
"The enthusiasm was shown by the students and teachers. Some of them have low awareness about the solar eclipse in Sorong Regency. The public outreach did not only increase the knowledge of the students and teacher but also gave the opportunity for the physics education student to start practicing his knowledge in teaching"
"in recent years there has been a significant effort to enhance STEM education to combat this statistic and bring prosperity to the state. For rural Appalachian students in particular, the impact of STEM experiences can be enhanced when they are integrated into their community, as rural students often place a high value on community and family relationships"
"August 21, 2017 was set to be the first day of classes for Southern Illinois University (SIU) Carbondale. This date had been on the academic calendar for several years prior to any discussions to modify the class and move in schedule to accommodate not just the thousands of returning students, faculty, and staff, but an estimated additional 30,000 campus visitors traveling to campus to see the great American eclipse"
"Kentucky DOT expected traffic only on primary roads, but congestion was observed on many of the secondary roads as people tried to avoid the traffic on the primary roads. Traffic counts showed an immediate jump as people headed home from their eclipse adventure, with the most significant single jump of a 222% increase in traffic"
"What organizers are calling a 'celestial creation,' the Texas Eclipse Festival at Reveille Peak Ranch in Burnet will be an entire experience where you will not just watch the total solar eclipse in the path of totality but also have access to a series of events featuring live music, impactful speakers, and exhibits unlike anything you've seen before."
"The president was joined by wife Melania, son Barron and top aides Monday afternoon to view the spectacle from the portico overlooking the South Lawn"