Eclipses and folklore

lillyjgc

Senior Member, Educational board Editor
Eclipses and Folk lore.
From a little pamphlet I found that was written for the 24 Jan 1925 eclipse:

There is no natural phenomena (sic) that grips the imagination and stirs the soul of mankind as a Total Eclipse. We ought not look at it with the eye of a dog and bark because we do not understand it. Nor ought we to look at it with the eye of a hen and tuck our heads under our wings and go to sleep because we are not interested. We must look at it with the eye of the mind. Better yet, let us soul our way up through the eclipse into fellowship with that infinite mind and heart that operates through all natural law.


Did you know that the earliest solar eclipse was recorded by Babylonian astronomers on May 3, 1375 BC?

People from all cultures have evolved their own beliefs around eclipses. Before their occurrence could be accurately predicted, it must have seemed an amazing random celestial event. No wonder it inspired imaginations, and the construction of some beautiful shrines, especially in Egypt.
EGYPT

The Egyptian sun god Ra, travelled across the sky in his sun boat, and at night he passed through the underworld, greeting the dead and facing many dangers. Ra's daily cycle was more than a journey, though—it was a daily rebirth. Dawn saw the newborn sun god rise in the sky. During the morning he was a child, at noon he was mature, and by sunset he was an old man ready for death. Each sunrise was a celebration of the god's return, a victory of life over the forces of death and darkness.
Thou risest in heaven's horizon [totality], and thy disk is adored when it resteth upon the mountain [the New Moon] to give life unto the world.
Thou risest, thou risest, and thou comest forth from the god Nun. Thou dost RENEW thy YOUTH [reborn after totality], and thou dost set thyself in the place where thou wast yesterday [totality was brief, the Sun has not moved much in the sky]. O thou divine child, who didst CREATE thyself, I am unable [to describe] thee.

The words in capital letters help to explain the following ideas:
1. The ancient Egyptians believed that through a solar eclipse the Sun (their "King of Gods") recreates her youth, i.e., a solar eclipse was a jubilee of the Sun.
2. Inspired by solar eclipses, the ancient Egyptians believed the Sun, the creator of the universe in the cosmogonies of Heliopolis and Hermopolis to have created herself and have been born through a solar eclipse.
Also, the author has shown that in the Egyptian cosmogonies the Sun was born in a solar eclipse (Aymen Ibrahem, Egyptian Cosmology Part I, The Hermoplotitan Cosmogony, www.eclipse-chasers.com/egypt1.htm, 2000, and Aymen Ibrahem, Egyptian Cosmology Part II, The Heliopolitan Cosmogony, www.eclipse-chasers.com/egypt5.htm, 2000.).

GREECE
Myths About the Sun. Some solar myths explain the sun's daily movement across the sky from east to west and its disappearance at night. Such stories often take the form of a journey, with the sun deity travelling across the heavens in a chariot or boat. Helios, a Greek solar deity later identified with Apollo, was a charioteer who drove his fiery vehicle through heaven by day. At night he floated back across the ocean in a golden bowl, only to mount his chariot again the next morning.

Herodotus wrote that Thales of Milete predicted an eclipse which occurred during a war between the Medians and the Lydians. Soldiers on both sides put down their weapons and declared peace as a result of the eclipse. Exactly which eclipse was involved has remained uncertain, although the issue has been studied by hundreds of ancient and modern authorities. One likely candidate took place on May 28, 585 BC, probably near the Halys river in the middle of modern Turkey.

An annular eclipse of the Sun occurred at Sardis on February 17, 478 BC, while Xerxes was departing for his expedition against Greece, as Herodotus, VII, 37 recorded ([Hind and Chambers, 1889: 323] considered this absolute date more than a century ago). Herodotus (book IX, 10, book VIII, 131, and book IX, 1) reports that another solar eclipse was observed in Sparta during the next year, on August 1, 477 BC. The sky suddenly darkened in the middle of the sky, well after the battles of Thermopylae and Salamis, after the departure of Mardonius to Thessaly at the beginning of the spring of (477 BC) and his second attack on Athens, after the return of Cleombrotus to Sparta.

By 450 BC, the Greek civilization was in its ascendancy. The historian Herodotus (ca 460 BC) mentions that Thales was able to predict the year when a total solar eclipse would occur. Details of how this prediction was made do not survive. The eclipse occurred in either 610 BC or 585 BC. Apparently the method used worked only once because what is known of Greek scientific history does not suggest that the method was ever reliably used again. Thales is said to have visited Egypt, and from the empirical rules in use there for land surveying, brought back to Greece the ideas of deductive geometry later codified by Euclid. Before 450 BC, Meton realized that a single period of 235 lunar months (19 years) would cause the popular lunar calendar to return to synchrony with the solar, seasonal calendar.

ROME
The foundation of Rome took place 437 years after the capture of Troy (1182 BC), according to Velleius Paterculus (VIII, 5). It took place shortly before an eclipse of the Sun that was observed at Rome on June 25, 745 BC and had a magnitude of 50.3%. Its beginning occurred at 16:38, its middle at 17:28, and its end at 18:16. Varro may have used the consular list with its mistakes, calling the year of the first consuls "245 ab urbe condita" (a.u.c.). A new study claims that the Varronian date has been superseded. Its correctness has not been proved scientifically but it is used worldwide.

According to Lucius Tarrutius of Firmum, Romulus was conceived in the womb on the 23rd day of the Egyptian month Choiac, at the time of a total eclipse of the Sun. This eclipse occurred on June 15, 763 BC, with a magnitude of 62.5% at Rome. Its beginning took place at 6:49, its middle at 7:47 and its end at 8:51. He was born on the 21st day of the month of Thoth.

The first day of Thoth fell on 2 March in that year. That implies that Rhea Silvia's pregnancy lasted for 281 days. Rome was founded on the ninth day of the month Pharmuthi, which was April 21, as universally agreed. The Romans add that, about the time Romulus started to build the city, an eclipse of the Sun was observed by Antimachus, the Teian poet, on the 30th day of the lunar month.

This eclipse had a magnitude of 54.6% at Teos, Asia Minor. It started at 17:49 and was still eclipsed at sunset, at 19:20. Romulus vanished in the 54th year of his life, on the Nones of Quintilis (July), on a day when the Sun was darkened. The day turned into night, which sudden darkness was believed to be an eclipse of the Sun. It occurred on July 17, 709 BC, with a magnitude of 93.7%, beginning at 5:04 and ending at 6:57. This eclipse data haa been calculated by Prof. Aurel Ponori-Thewrewk, retired director of the Planetarium of Budapest.

Plutarch placed it in the 37th year from the foundation of Rome, on the fifth of our month July, then called Quintilis, on "Caprotine Nones". Livy (I, 21) also states that Romulus ruled for 37 years. He was slain by the Senate or disappeared in the 38th year of his reign. Most of these have been recorded by Plutarch (Lives of Romulus, Numa Pompilius and Camillus), Florus (Book I, I), Cicero (The Republic VI, 22: Scipio's Dream), Dio (Dion) Cassius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus (L. 2). Dio in his Roman History (Book I) confirms these data by telling that Romulus was in his 18th year of age when he founded Rome. Therefore, three eclipse records prove that Romulus reigned from 746 BC to 709 BC.
The CELTS

The Celts also viewed the sun's journey as a cycle of death and rebirth but on a yearly rather than a daily cycle, with midwinter as death and spring as rebirth. The Celtic celebration called Beltane, held in spring, honored their sun god Belenus.

NATIVE AMERICAN
In some solar myths the sun is paired with the moon. The two may be husband and wife, brother and sister, or two brothers. In the mythology of many Native Americans, the sun god and moon god are sister and brother who also become forbidden lovers. The moon god's face is smeared with ash from the sun's fires, which accounts for the dark patches on the moon's surface. In some accounts, the moon flees in shame when he learns that his lover is also his sister. This is why the moon leaves the sky when the sun comes near.

The Navajo people of the American Southwest portray their sun god as a worker named Jóhonaa'éí, or sun bearer. Every day Jóhonaa'éí laboriously hauls the sun across the sky on his back. At night, he hangs the sun from a peg in the wall and rests.

JAPAN
A well-known myth about the Japanese sun goddess Amaterasu tells how she became so angry with her brother, who was misbehaving, that she retreated into a cave. The goddess's withdrawal deprived the world of light and warmth. Finally, the other gods tricked her into emerging.
CHINA
If one sun is good, are ten suns ten times better? Not according to the Chinese myth of Yi and the ten suns. Yi, a famous soldier, was an archer of great skill. At that time, ten suns lived in the Fu Sang tree beyond the eastern edge of the world. Normally the suns took turns lighting the earth, one sun at a time. The suns grew rebellious, and one day all ten of them rose into the sky at the same time. The extra light and heat pleased the people below—until their crops shriveled and their rivers began to dry up. The Lord of Heaven sent Yi, the divine archer, to handle the problem. Yi shot nine of the suns out of the sky.

BABYLON AND SUMERIA

Babylonian clay tablets that have survived since dawn of civilization in the Mesopotamian region record the earliest total solar eclipse seen in Ugarit on May 3, 1375 BC. Like the Chinese, Babylonian astrologers kept careful records about celestial happenings including the motions of Mercury, Venus, the Sun, and the Moon on tablets dating from 1700 to 1681 BC. Later records identified a total solar eclipse on July 31, 1063 BC, that "turned day into night," and the famous eclipse of June 15, 763 BC, recorded by Assyrian observers in Nineveh. Babylonian astronomers are credited with having discovered the 223-month period for lunar eclipses.

Eclipses & Saros Cycles
Eclipses occur in cycles of 18 years or so. This is based on the time it takes for the Moon to complete one entire circuit around its orbit plane. However, these eclipses also belong to a larger series or family which runs for over 1000 years (usually 1300 years) in what is known as a Saros Cycle. It was the Babylonians who first discovered this pattern and the Greeks who coined the term from “saros” which means “repetition”. Each Saros series starts at one of the poles and then slowly moves either North or South across the path of the sun (ecliptic) until it reaches the other pole where it slowly dies out, too far from the ecliptic to cast any shadows. Several eclipse series’ will run concurrently, each family ‘giving birth’ to approximately 72 eclipse events every 18 years.

In astrological terms, these Saros cycles have been linked by certain astrologers to different astrological and historical themes, based on the planetary configurations and mundane events happening at around the time during which the first eclipse in the series occurred.

BRITAIN
With regard to the Royal Family, some astrologers have asserted that the fate of the Windsors seems to be closely associated with eclipse events. With the ten year anniversary of Princess Diana's death occurring a few days before the August 2007 eclipses, it is worth looking at how intertwined her life appears to have been with eclipses. Nicholas Campion, in his analysis of the late Princess Diana’s chart, points out that she married Prince Charles two days after a solar eclipse (on July 29th 1981) and that their first born, William, was born on the day of a solar eclipse on the 21st of June 1982. Charles and Diana formally separated on the day of an eclipse (9 December 1992) and Princess Diana died on the 31st of August 1997, one day before the Solar Eclipse of the 1st of September. The Australian astrologer, Bernadette Brady, has pointed out that the previous eclipse in the same Saros cycle took place on 22 August 1979 and was followed by the assassination of Lord Mountbatten five days later. In her book, ‘The Eagle and the Lark’ she describes this eclipse series as indicating violent accidents.
Another interesting point to bear in mind is that the sun is traditionally associated with royalty, rulers and leaders. Prince William was born into the 2 Old North eclipse series, which is due to end in July 2036 - could this date herald the end of the monarchy as we know it? There has been a steady decline in interest and support for the monarchy in Britain so it will be interesting to see if this turns out to be the case.

ISLAM
Muslims recognize that everything in the heavens and on earth is created and sustained by the Lord of the universe, Allah Almighty. Throughout the Qur'an, people are encouraged to look around them, observe and reflect on the beauties and wonders of the natural world - as signs of Allah's majesty.
"Allah is He, who created the sun, the moon, and the stars -- (all) governed by laws under His commandment." Qur'an 7:54
"It is He who created the night and the day and the sun and the moon. All (the celestial bodies) swim along, each in its orbit." Qur'an 21:33
"The sun and the moon follow courses exactly computed." Qur'an 55:05
In remembrance and gratefulness for all of His favors, Muslims all over the world bow down in prayer five times each day. At a time of a solar or lunar eclipse, there is a recommended prayer (salatul-kusuf) that is performed by the Muslim community in congregation.
 

tootsie

Well-known member
Hi, That's very interesting! I read this book by Celeste Teal about eclipses, she talked about the life of eclipses & how a transist can actually reactivate an eclipse. Then, how once saturn transits over the eclipse it brings closure. Also, one should notice where an eclipse falls in the natal chart. The house where the eclipse falls will give you an idea of the changes, and if it conjunctions a natal planet, that planet will be the lord of the eclipse.
Cheers!:D
________
TS90
 
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Nice work there Lilly....thanks for sharing....I have the annular eclipse on jan 26(that will be seen from indonesia) sitting directly on my merc and 2 degrees from my natal asc.....exciting to know what it will bring....because of this i am really liking his thread:).....apparently the indonesians also have a special belief in solar eclipses...i'll see if i can find the info to add to the thread.....
 
Hi again,
I just found this bit of info that i find very interesting...http://agnosticism.tribe.net/thread/dbbe647e-fe74-4c69-a6a1-2fe620667f11
Pope John Paul II was born and buried at the time of solar eclipses!

here is the indonesian story too....from particularly Bali...(although it is the story of the lunar eclipse)

It was inspired by the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata. The malevolent Kala Rau (Rahu in the Indian version) is jealous of the immortal and the omniscient gods inhabiting Nirvana. Kala Rau lays his plans to achieve immortality. Disguised as a woman, he connives to be present at the gods' banquet, serving their magical elixir. Taking advantage of a disturbance, he furtively takes a mouthful of the drink, but Vishnu, aware of the crime, cuts off his head immediately after he has committed it. Kala Rau's decapitated body dies, but his head has been made immortal by the potion. Ever since, the head has chased the Moon and the Sun through the sky in an attempt to catch and eat them, but when it succeeds they reappear, after a brief absence, through his open throat.

In the same ancient Hindu text - the Mahabharata - there is a reference to an eclipse of the Sun, refering to the great battle of Kurukshetra, fought on the day of the eclipse, when the supreme god Vishnu revealed himself.

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