The beast who devours the sun origin5/7/2023 (As the priests likely knew - they were sophisticated astronomers - there would be no solar eclipse on 4 Ollin until the 21st century.) Solar eclipses on other dates were also met with human sacrifices. For the Native American Tewa tribe, an eclipse meant that the angry sun was leaving the sky to go visit his home in the underworld.Īztec priests predicted that if there was a solar eclipse accompanied by an earthquake on the date 4 Ollin, the world would end, so every year on 4 Ollin they would perform a ritual human sacrifice. The Inca viewed eclipses as a sign that the sun god Inti was angry, and required appeasement with offerings. In Transylvania, people believed an eclipse was caused by the sun turning its back on the sins of humanity, creating a poisonous dew. Often, that meant that in order to appease them, you had to kill someone. In many cultures, the darkening of the sun meant the gods were very, very angry with humanity, and about to inflict some punishment. The gods are angry with us Photo by Clive Mason/Getty Images Here’s a rundown of some of history’s most pervasive eclipse folklore. It means buying specialty glasses and building pinhole boxes and preparing to see “the most beautiful sight you can see in nature,” as one cartographer put it.īut for much of human history, that’s not how people reacted to eclipses, even after they were able to predict them accurately ( around 206 AD for the Chinese and 150 BC for the Greeks). In the 21st century, a solar eclipse means eclipse parties. On Monday, a solar eclipse is coming to America. For others, it was a random and chaotic act by a trickster or a mischievous boy, causing trouble just for the sake of it. For some cultures, the eclipse was an act of creation: The sun and moon were coupling, and would create more stars. Yet not everyone thought of the eclipse as a horrible threat. It meant that the king would fall, that terrible misfortunes would rain down on the world, or that demons had swallowed the sun. ![]() The ancient Greeks thought of a solar eclipse as an act of abandonment, a terrible crisis and an existential threat. ![]() A solar eclipse is the moment in which the sun disappears, abandoning the world. ![]() The English word eclipse comes from the Greek ἔκλειψις, ekleípō: disappearance, abandonment.
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