‘The gods’ wrath’: The ancient folklore of the eclipse

CLEVELAND (WJW) — In 1502, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus became stranded without supplies in the Bahamas, his ship rendered unseaworthy by hole-boring marine worms.

His chance of rescue was remote, so he relied on help from the indigenous people, according to Jay Reynolds, a research astronomer at Cleveland State University. But they eventually got fed up with the freeloading Europeans and cut them off, he said.

“[Columbus] had an almanac with him and he knew there was gonna be a total lunar eclipse,” Reynolds said. “He said, ‘If you don’t provision us … my God will demonstrate his displeasure and you’ll see [the moon] turn blood red.’

“Sure enough, a couple days later, there’s the red moon up there. … He never had to worry about food again.”

Everything you need to know about the 2024 total solar eclipse

Eclipses have captivated sky-watchers for millennia. Some of the earliest-known writings on them date back about 5,000 years, according to NASA.

But our ancestors’ lack of scientific understanding about eclipses gave rise to superstition, folklore and mythologies intended to explain a phenomenon that was, at the time, as unexplainable as it was dreadful.

Those stories are somewhat similar across different cultures, Deepak Sarma, a professor of religious studies at Case Western Reserve University, told FOX 8 News.

“Overall, we can say a lot of these ancient cultures … a great many of them, interestingly, across the world understand the [solar] eclipse in terms of an animal … or mythic figure consuming the sun,” they said.

What’s a total solar eclipse like?

A total solar eclipse will bring 4 minutes of dusk to Northeast Ohio this coming April 8.

During the last solar eclipse in 2017, the path of totality missed Ohio, so those in the state only saw a partial eclipse.

But even at 85% coverage, the loss of sunlight seemed to drain the world of color, and the air grew cooler by several degrees, said Reynolds.

Reynolds was young when he witnessed a total solar eclipse for himself, and he remembers what it was like:

“Everything was becoming grayer. That was at 85%. At 90%, 95%, you’re gonna see massive changes,” he said. “And finally, at 99% to 100%, you’ll see a dark shadow, a little sparkly light. That’s the sun going through the valleys and mountains of the moon itself.”

Most eclipses last 10 to 30 seconds, Reynolds said, but April 8’s eclipse will be about 4 minutes long in some parts of Northeast Ohio.

Return of the ‘Devil Comet’ to align with 2024 eclipse

Swallowing the sun

More than 4,000 years ago, Chinese people believed eclipses were caused by a dragon devouring the sun.

“One ancient Chinese solar eclipse record describes a solar eclipse as ‘the sun has been eaten.’ It was a tradition in ancient China to bang drums and pots and make loud noises during eclipses to frighten the dragon away,” reads the NASA article.

The concept of a mythical or mundane being eating the sun is not unique to any one culture, Sarma said. Rather, the story changes depending on who’s telling it, to include a creature relevant to their people.

South Americans imagined the sun-eater as a leopard, and would shout and loose arrows at the sun to scare the beast off, they said. In Norse mythology, doomsday kicks off when the sun is swallowed by the giant wolf Fenrir (or one of his children, depending on the story).

The Hindu faith interprets eclipses as an “enduring battle” between Surya, the sun, and the decapitated head of the demigod Rahu, whose mortal body fell away but whose head — having drank of an immortality-bestowing nectar — has returned to devour the sun in vengeance, Sarma wrote for HuffPost before the 2017 eclipse.

“A great question to ask is, ‘Where do these stories come from?’ Is it something like a ‘human’ story, that all humans develop and they modify according to their particular perspective?” they told FOX 8 News.

Is it a type of shared consciousness that manifests as common myths, adapted for the audience? “Brave New World” author Aldous Huxley believed that is something humans can subconsciously tap into. He called it the “Mind at Large.” Grateful Dead rhythm guitarist Bobby Weir once said it was the inspiration for his music, Sarma said.

But more practically, tidings of sun and weather could spell weal or woe for ancient agrarian cultures, whose peoples counted on the sun’s rays to be able to feed themselves, Sarma said.

“If the sun disappears, you better have a good explanation as to why that happens,” they said. “Whatever worldview or delusion that you have, you need to understand and explain that one, because it’s a big one for sure.”

28 Ohio parks with the best view of the eclipse

‘The gods’ wrath’

The last time a total solar eclipse plunged Northeast Ohio into darkness in 1806, it was foretold by a deadly prophecy.

That year, a Native American woman in Hinckley Township, Medina County, predicted a “darkness would come over the earth.”

Her people accused her of witchcraft and put her to death for “having invoked the powers of the evil one,” wrote Charles Neil in “History of Medina County and Ohio,” published in 1881.

But the following June after her execution, the moon shrouded the sun and her prediction came true. It’s unclear how she foresaw the eclipse, but Neil wrote “it was probably based on premonitions induced by events of a similar kind,” which Native Americans viewed “with a sort of mystical terror.”

Next to nothing is known about the woman locally. Medina County Historical Society’s only record of the woman is Neil’s entry in that 1881 historical text, said the society’s former curator Joann King.

How did she know the sun would disappear in June? Reynolds said she may have made certain assumptions by closely following the moon’s cycle. There are at least two solar and two lunar eclipses in any given year, he said.

“The idea about the moon moving — people understood about the moon and that it probably went around the Earth, but they didn’t have the evidence,” Reynolds said.

Though ancient cultures didn’t have hard scientific explanations for eclipses, they were able to predict them with some accuracy.

Clay tablets dated about 1700 B.C.E. suggest the ancient Babylonians “kept careful records of celestial events,” including the movements of the sun, moon and nearby planets, wrote NASA educators in a 2016 article. They determined solar and lunar eclipses repeated about every 18 years and were able to make 61 accurate predictions after 800 B.C.E. — “a remarkable achievement,” educators wrote.

Their culture considered eclipses to be evil omens representing a threat to the monarchy. So before a forecasted eclipse, they’d simply appoint a stand-in ruler “who would bear the brunt of the gods’ wrath,” reads the article.

“The real king would remain unharmed and the continuity of the state’s policy was guaranteed. (The poor man who was appointed as a substitute king was killed. In this way, the omen was always right),” reads the article.

Ancient Greeks also kept track of eclipses, and the astronomer Thales of Miletus was able to predict one that happened about 600 B.C.E., according to NASA. It’s believed he used land-surveying rules that he picked up while in Egypt, but it doesn’t appear the method “was ever reliably used again.”

The ancient Greeks are also believed to have been the first to deduce the Earth is round. And in about 400 B.C.E., Eratosthenes calculated the Earth’s circumference fairly accurately — to within 300 miles — by looking at the shadows of sticks he had stuck in the ground. “Think about that,” Reynolds said.

Columbus knew of Eratosthenes’ work, but he didn’t believe the world was as big as he posited, according to Reynolds. That hubris left him stranded in 1502.

Telescopes weren’t invented until the early 17th century. They allowed scientists to “deduce a lot of good information” just by making observations, Reynolds said.

It wasn’t until the Italian astronomer and telescope pioneer Galileo made his foundational observation that our planet orbited the sun that our understanding of heavenly movements started coming into focus, Reynolds said. But that discovery was deemed blasphemy by the church, which at the time viewed Earth as the center of the universe.

“What did that get him? House arrest for the rest of his life,” Reynolds said.

Can a solar eclipse poison your food? Debunking 5 popular myths

A human experience

There are many ways for humans to tell a story, Sarma said. They encouraged April 8 eclipse viewers to share their thoughts and interpretations with others.

“One thing is for sure: When it happens, it’s going to bring everyone together in some way. People are going to gather together, no matter what their political belief is, no matter what their religion is,” Sarma said.

They said they last saw a total solar eclipse about 20 years ago, in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood.

“There were thousands of people out on the Midway — some people were juggling, others were praying; other people were wearing whirling dervishes, swinging; women wearing burqa,” Sarma said. “Thousands of people stopped, came outside and watched the eclipse and experienced the eclipse and had this wonderful shared-consciousness experience. It was one of the few moments as an adult where I felt I was connected with every other person out there.

“It was kind of like being at a Grateful Dead concert,” they laughed.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to Fox 8 Cleveland WJW.