Is the Sun angry or madly in love? A review of how eclipses were interpreted in the past

Human beings have few certainties: we are born, we die; the Sun rises in the morning and sets at night. The darkness that a solar eclipse generates in broad daylight "touches one of those certainties in a very profound way," and has provoked all sorts of emotions throughout history.

Until science described the movement of celestial bodies, made reliable predictions of eclipses, and that scientific knowledge permeated the population, civilizations devised innumerable myths and legends "to find answers to a phenomenon that directly touches one of the great human certainties," explains Eva Villaver, deputy director of the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands, in an interview with Efe.

"No event is now unexpected, nor incredible, nor marvelous; when Zeus, Father of the Olympians, turned midday into night, hiding the light of the bright Sun. Since then, anything is credible and expected by humans," wrote the Greek poet Archilochus of Paros in the 7th century BC, in verses preserved on papyrus at the University of Oxford.

Abandoned by the stars  

The term eclipse comes from the Greek ('ékleipsis') and means 'abandonment,' because that is how our ancestors felt: abandoned by the Sun and the Moon (and terrified by it). 

In the Gospels themselves, a solar eclipse is used to describe the apocalypse: "The Sun turned black like a sackcloth of hair, the Moon turned blood-red." 

One of the most common mythological explanations in different cultures is that a hungry and evil animal tries to eat the Sun. To scare it away, some groups made all sorts of noises or threw arrows or sand at it.

The devouring species chosen by each culture says a lot about local biodiversity: a jaguar for the Aztecs, a wolf for the Norse, a giant frog for the Vietnamese, a puma for the Andeans, a black squirrel for some Native Americans, and a fearsome dragon in China.

Villaver recounts one of the legends that she found most striking in her research for the book on eclipses of which she is co-author: that of the demon Rahu Ketu in India (Phra Rahu, in Thailand), who stirred the ocean in search of the elixir of immortality. 

The Moon and the Sun noticed and betrayed him to the god Vishnu, who punished him by cutting off his head before the elixir had finished passing down his throat. 

The body of Rahu Ketu was divided in two right where the taking of the elixir was interrupted. Since then, the immortal head Rahu pursues its informants (the Sun and the Moon) to swallow them, but when it succeeds (and an eclipse occurs) it lasts little: the two celestial bodies end up escaping through its decapitated neck.  

The fear of eclipses has also caused many violent offerings. In Mexico, they sacrificed sick and disabled people, and some North American natives beat dogs or made children howl.

Passionate encounters 

But not everything has been violence. Many societies have attributed eclipses to encounters and disagreements in the love story that the Sun and the Moon maintain, with the Sun generally being feminine and the Moon masculine.

“Most cultures have interpreted eclipses as a violent process or one of love. The latter makes perfect sense, since the dawn of time people – when it gets dark – have dedicated themselves to falling in love and surely these legends have been the most common, even if there is less record of them,” says Villaver. 

In Tahitian mythology, the Sun and the Moon are two lovers who unite when an eclipse occurs. The euphoria of that amorous encounter causes them to get lost and have to create the stars to illuminate their return. 

The Batammariba people, in northern Togo and Benin, “think that eclipses indicate that the Sun and the Moon are fighting, and when they happen they sit together as a community to resolve their conflicts and try to set an example for the celestial bodies,” says Villaver. 

Divine signs 

Another common belief in ancient societies was to associate eclipses with messages from the gods: “Understanding them was vital because it meant knowing what God wanted to say,” Alejandro Sánchez, a researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia, tells EFE.

The Aymara, in South America, thought that solar eclipses occurred when the Sun was sick, so they lit bonfires on the hillsides to warm the Earth during the star's 'sick leave'.

The Incas, the ancient Greeks, or the ancient cultures of Transylvania associated solar eclipses with the anger of the gods for something they had done wrong.  

In Christian chronicles, the solar eclipse that occurred in Spain in the year 939 was "an epic omen that the battle of Simancas was going to be won," whose victory was a milestone in the Reconquista. 

The paradox, Sánchez points out, is that it is an example that "fake news" were already spreading then, because that solar eclipse did not occur during the battle but 20 days earlier, as the Muslim chronicles relate more accurately, since this phenomenon had no transcendent meaning for the latter culture.

"Even though today we understand very well what happens during an eclipse and we have a great capacity for prediction and precision of what will happen every minute, emotion is not detached from science," claims Villaver, who is sure that, on August 12, those who see the eclipse accompanied will appreciate the astonishment of those around them.

"We have replaced an emotion like fear with another, which is fascination," she concludes.