They're doorways to scientific discoveries. They've inspired myths both modern and ancient. And, if not viewed properly, they can cause blindness.
—"What does a solar eclipse symbolize?"—Rachel Levin (today.usc.edu)
**********************
Does the world get weird when it's preparing for an eclipse?
********************
On Monday, at about 1:53 p.m., from where I stand, the moon will pass between the sun and the earth. This will affect people across a swath of North America. For us, the daylight will be sucked away, and a weird, unwarranted nighttime will descend.
At about 4:30 p.m., the moon will slip fully past its celestial counterpart, and the sun will be free again,—free to light the world, to warm the soil, to beckon forth the crops.
**********************
It's an interesting time for a total solar eclipse. For at least three of the world's religions, the eclipse takes place at a significant juncture.
Christians celebrate the Easter season, the risen Christ, until Pentecost Sunday, May 19, which takes place 50 days after the resurrection and ten days after Jesus was assumed into heaven, body and soul. Then ordinary time will begin again, on Monday, May 20th. But meanwhile, this is the Easter season in Christian churches, and the solar eclipse falls within it.
Jews will celebrate Passover (according to chabad.org) between April 22nd and April 30th, remembering the passing by of the Angel of Death when their people were enslaved in Egypt. This celestial event will be a prelude to that celebration.
And for Muslims, the eclipse falls within Ramadan, which began on March 11 and will end on April 10. Laylat el-Qadr, the night that the prophet Mohammed received the first holy words of the Quran, is Saturday, April 6th. (This, the Internet tells me, is the most sacred night of the year for Muslims.)
Two days later, the moon will hide the sun's light from a broad swath of North America.
I don't know about other religions; I bet there are many more significant spring rites of worship. Here in central Ohio, the sun is already coaxing leaves to bud on trees, daffodils to bob, and the splendid magenta flowers to thrust forward on our old magnolias; it's a time to celebrate the sun, for sure.
It's coincidental, I am sure, that this celestial event takes place during important religious observances.
*************************************
Also, the weather leading up to the eclipse has been just plain weird.
On Tuesday night, after a day and a half of unremitting rain, thunder began crashing, and the tornado warning siren sent us into the basement, books, phones, and flashlights in our hands. We were lucky; the worst of that storm passed by us, but farms and buildings not so far away did not fare so well. And further away, the storm's jagged edge caused even more serious harm.
And still it rained. And the temperatures dropped. On Thursday, I woke up in the early dark, and snow was eddying. Later, it rained, and the rain turned to sleet, then hail.
Then the sun came out.
Then it rained.
Thursday's weather, the supermarket cashier said dryly, was kind of a sampler plate of all the effects one can taste in Ohio.
Today, the weather app told me, the rain would be gone, but the skies would be gray. Good, I thought; things can dry out. Swollen waterways can settle down a bit.
But when I woke up, rain, against all sage advice, was pouring downing again.
Weird, weird, weird. Maybe the very air we inhabit senses the celestial event to come, and rises up to do…something.
***************************
I ordered my eclipse glasses, and they are waiting on my computer desk.
Our work hours have been curtailed so we can reach home before the onset.
*****************************
It's been 200 years since a total solar eclipse happened in Ohio. That event took place on June 16, 1806. In "Fear, awe and Tecumseh: What was life like in Ohio during the 1806 total solar eclipses?" (Sheridan Hendrix, Cincinnati.com), I learn that in 1806…
- Ohio was a very young state (admitted to the Union in 1803);
- Thomas Jefferson was in his fifth year as President;
- Lewis and Clark had reached the Pacific Ocean, turned around, and headed home;
- The National Road, which runs through Zanesville, had been approved;
- Noah Webster published his first American English dictionary;
- The population of Ohio was surging;
- Columbus, though, was not yet the state's capital.
And also in those days, Tecumseh and his brother, Tenskwatawa (the Prophet) were trying to unify native tribes. This, Tecumseh thought, was the indigenous people's only hope of stopping the relentless sweep of white settlers across the surging United States.
He was having trouble accomplishing this goal.
And then William Henry Harrison, governor of the Indiana Territory, mocked the Prophet in an unwise way. He wrote, asking why Tenskwatawa didn't "…cause the sun to stand still—the moon to alter its course—the rivers cease to flow—or the dead to rise from their graves. If he does these things you may then believe that he has been sent from God." (Cincinnati.com)
Well, said the Prophet. Okay then. In fifty days, that's exactly what will happen.
And in fifty days, the total solar eclipse descended, and just the things that Harrison had mockingly proposed occurred.
Tecumseh garnered great credibility, but, still, his plan to unite the tribes ultimately failed.
**************************
Was Tenskwatawa divinely inspired? Who can honestly say? But Hendrix writes that there were scientists in those days who could discern when celestial phenomena were going to happen. They predicted the eclipse.
Eclipse chasers followed these scientists, and the chasers headed toward Ohio. They may have spread the word, and the word they spread may have reached the Prophet.
Or his words, and his accuracy, may have come from another source entirely.
************************
My dreams lately have been as vivid and unsettled as the weather. Last night, I dreamed that Mark and Jim and I were traveling some place on foot. When we stopped at a lodging for the night, Mark got a phone call. He talked for a long while, then suddenly handed the phone to me, and said, "Say hi to Bob."
Thinking he meant our nephew, I took the phone, but I did not know the person on the other end. "It's Bob COATES," Mark whispered, but I had no idea who Bob Coates might be. And Bob talked in a rumbly low whisper that I couldn't hear.
"I'm sorry,"I said; "I can't hear you. Let me give you back to Mark."
But Mark shook his head and ran away, and I stood there holding the phone, while Bob Coates rumbled unintelligibly on and on.
When I woke up from THAT dream, I was mightily annoyed with my husband.
And I dreamt, too, that right outside our kitchen window was a ledge, and on that ledge were two birds' nests. Momma birds were hatching over hatchlings in those nests, but, as I stared out at them, one of the unfeathered babies lost its perch and tumbled away.
In the dream we were high up in an apartment building; there was nothing to be done.
I called Mark and Jim to look at the nests, and they did. And then I closed the curtains.
When I opened them again, two red foxes were circling the nests.
There was no way I could help. I closed the curtains and ran off.
**************************
Dreamglossary.com reassures me that dreaming of nests with baby birds is a GOOD thing; it symbolizes joy. (Maybe not for the little guy who plummeted, but still. I'll take this interpretation.) And unraveling dreams.com says dreaming of foxes can have many different interpretations. They can warn of deceit or manipulation; they can gently suggest I be more adaptable; or they can signal that a major change is coming.
Foxes can also, the site says, be a sign that the dreamer is in need of creative inspiration.
And dreamlibrary.org says that dreaming of unexpected phone calls shows a thirst for change, or a look forward to something major that will be happening. The dreamer, the site suggests, may be searching for something new and exciting, or an opportunity for growth. (For…creative inspiration?)
This week's dreams are etched in memory, unlike those others that evaporate wispily.
What causes vivid dreams—weather? Dinner? Books and movies?
The atmospheric disruption caused by a coming eclipse of the sun?
************************
Humans, an article at today.usc.edu ("What does a solar eclipse symbolize?") tells me, assign 'profound meaning' to both the sun and the moon. They were our earliest deities, seen either as partners or opposites. Some cultures labeled one masculine and the other feminine.
When they came together, when there was a solar eclipse, that was seen as a deeply meaningful joining.
In Navajo (or Dine') culture, for instance, the sun is a father. And when he disappears in the middle of a day, that is a sacred time, a time to stop, to meditate.
The Great American Eclipse took place in August of 2017. It was not visible in Ohio, although we could have traveled to nearby Kentucky to witness the totality, but it did blanket the entire United States in a band that swept from coast to coast. It was the last year of Donald Trump's presidency. Trump was born during a LUNAR eclipse, and there were those who posited that the solar eclipse signaled the end of his time as president—the sun perhaps, eclipsing the moon.
I haven't seen any current political interpretations to the coming eclipse.
**************************
And here's a very odd thing that happened. I was out running errands, and one of them was to drop off a DVD at the John McIntire Library. I parked in the very furthest spot, so as to get just a few extra steps in, and I jog-walked to the entrance. Once there, I followed a family in and put the DVD in the return spot.
I'd noticed a young person sitting on the retaining wall outside the library. She was pretty, well-dressed, unassuming. As I hurried past her, she said, "Wait."
I stopped and turned.
"Are you my MOTHER?" she asked.
"What?" I said, not because I didn't hear, but because I didn't understand.
"Are YOU my MOTHER?" she asked again.
"No," I told her.
She paused. "Are you sure?" she asked.
"I'm sure," I said. "I've never been blessed with a daughter."
She looked infinitely sad, but just said, "Oh."
"I hope you find her, though," I said. "I hope you find your mother."
"Thank you," she whispered, and I went back to the car, strangely troubled. Was she an adoptee who'd arranged to meet her birth mother, someone who never showed? Was some emotional turmoil at work?
*******************************************
But anyway. On Monday, the moon will block the sun. I'll come home from work early; I'll put on my solar eclipse glasses, and I'll carefully see what I can see.
And it might be cloudy in my Ohio corner; there may not be very much to really look at except to experience the darkening and lightening of the sky.
And what does it really mean, anyway? The sun and moon are bound to align like this once every so often, aren't they? This eclipse is just one of those times, not a portent, not a sign.
It's just a very interesting scientific thing.
But we of the human persuasion, —well, we look for meaning. And if we want to see, in the period of alignment, a symbol of darkness, and then, if we want to interpret the return to light as a bright and positive thing, what's to stop us?
Who's to say it isn't true that we've lived through dark times of illness and war and controversy, of climate disasters and chaos and confusion, but that, against all odds and beliefs, we're rotating toward a sunlit, happier future?
And what's to say these weird times heading up to the eclipse might all wrap themselves together in the darkening of the skies, snap themselves up tightly, and evaporate in the return of the warmth of the sun?
By next Tuesday morning, I am sure, my whole life will be refreshingly normal, all weirdness dissolved.
******************
Be careful in your eclipse viewing, if viewing can be done near you. And may its aftermath see us all walking, evermore determinedly, into a lighter, brighter time.
What's
Happening Before the Moon Hides the Sun
They're
doorways to scientific discoveries. They've inspired myths both modern and
ancient. And, if not viewed properly, they can cause blindness.
—"What
does a solar eclipse symbolize?"—Rachel Levin (today.usc.edu)
Does the
world get weird when it's preparing for an eclipse?
********************
On Monday, at
about 1:53 p.m., from where I stand, the moon will pass between the sun and the
earth. This will affect people across a swath of North America. For us, the
daylight will be sucked away, and a weird, unwarranted nighttime will descend.
At about 4:30
p.m., the moon will slip fully past its celestial counterpart, and the sun will
be free again,—free to light the world, to warm the soil, to beckon forth the
crops.
**********************
It's an
interesting time for a total solar eclipse. For at least three of the world's
religions, the eclipse takes place at a significant juncture.
Christians
celebrate the Easter season, the risen Christ, until Pentecost Sunday, May 19,
which takes place 50 days after the resurrection and ten days after Jesus was
assumed into heaven, body and soul. Then
ordinary time will begin again, on Monday, May 20th. But meanwhile,
this is the Easter season in Christian churches, and the solar eclipse falls
within it.
Jews will
celebrate Passover (according to chabad.org) between April 22nd and
April 30th, remembering the passing by of the Angel of Death when
their people were enslaved in Egypt. This celestial event will be a prelude to
that celebration.
And for
Muslims, the eclipse falls within Ramadan, which began on March 11 and will end
on April 10. Laylat el-Qadr, the night that the prophet Mohammed received the
first holy words of the Quran, is Saturday, April 6th. (This, the
Internet tells me, is the most sacred night of the year for Muslims.)
Two days
later, the moon will hide the sun's light from a broad swath of North America.
I don't know
about other religions; I bet there are many more significant spring rites of
worship. Here in central Ohio, the sun is already coaxing leaves to bud on
tress, daffodils to bob, and the splendid magenta flowers to thrust forward on
our old magnolia trees; it's a time to celebrate the sun, for sure.
It's
coincidental, I am sure, that this celestial event takes place during important
religious observances.
*************************************
Also, the
weather leading up to the eclipse has been just plain weird.
On Tuesday
night, after a day and a half of unremitting rain, thunder began crashing, and
the tornado warning siren sent us into the basement, books, phones, and flashlights
in our hands. We were lucky; the worst of that storm passed by us, but farms
and buildings not so far away did not fare so well. And further away, the
storm's jagged edge caused even more serious harm.
And still it
rained. And the temperatures dropped. On Thursday, I woke up in the early dark,
and snow was eddying. Later, it rained, and the rain turned to sleet, then
hail.
Then the sun
came out.
Then it
rained.
Thursday's
weather, the supermarket cashier said dryly, was kind of a sampler plate of all
the effects one can taste in Ohio.
Today, the
weather app told me, the rain would be gone, but the skies would be gray. Good,
I thought; things can dry out. Swollen waterways can settle down a bit.
But when I
woke up, rain, against all sage advice, was pouring downing again.
Weird, weird,
weird. Maybe the very air we inhabit senses the celestial event to come, and
rises up to do…something.
***************************
I ordered my
eclipse glasses, and they are waiting on my computer desk.
Our work
hours have been curtailed so we can reach home before the onset.
*****************************
It's been 200
years since a total solar eclipse happened in Ohio. That event took place on
June 16, 1806. In "Fear, awe and
Tecumseh: What was life like in Ohio during the 1806 total solar eclipses?" (Sheridan
Hendrix, Cincinnati.com), I learn that in 1806…
·
Ohio
was a very young state (admitted to the Union in 1803);
·
Thomas
Jefferson was in his fifth year as President;
·
Lewis
and Clark had reached the Pacific Ocean, turned around, and headed home;
·
The
National Road, which runs through Zanesville, had been approved;
·
Noah
Webster published his first American English dictionary;
·
The
population of Ohio was surging;
·
Columbus,
though, was not yet the state's capital.
And also in
those days, Tecumseh and his brother, Tenskwatawa (the Prophet) were trying to
unify native tribes. This, Tecumseh thought, was the indigenous people's only
hope of stopping the relentless sweep of white settlers across the surging
United States.
He was having
trouble accomplishing this goal.
And then
William Henry Harrison, governor of the Indiana Territory, mocked the Prophet
in an unwise way. He wrote, asking why Tenskwatawa didn't "…cause the sun to
stand still—the moon to alter its course—the rivers cease to flow—or the dead
to rise from their graves. If he does these things you may then believe that he
has been sent from God." (Cincinnati.com)
Well, said
the Prophet. Okay then. In fifty days, that's exactly what will happen.
And in fifty
days, the total solar eclipse descended, and just the things that Harrison had
mockingly proposed occurred.
Tecumseh
garnered great credibility, but, still, his plan to unite the tribes ultimately
failed.
**************************
Was
Tenskwatawa divinely inspired? Who can honestly say? But Hendrix writes that
there were scientists in those days who could discern when celestial phenomena
were going to happen. They predicted the eclipse.
Eclipse
chasers followed these scientists, and the chasers headed toward Ohio. They may
have spread the word, and the word they spread may have reached the Prophet.
Or his words,
and his accuracy may have come from another source entirely.
************************
My dreams
lately have been as vivid and unsettled as the weather. Last night, I dreamed
that Mark and Jim and I were traveling some place on foot. When we stopped at a
lodging for the night, Mark got a phone call. He talked for a long while, then
suddenly handed the phone to me, and said, "Say hi to Bob."
Thinking he
meant our nephew, I took the phone, but I did not know the person on the other
end. "It's Bob COATES," Mark whispered, but I had no idea who Bob Coates might
be. And Bob talked in a rumble low whisper that I couldn't hear.
"I'm sorry,"I
said; "I can't hear you.. Let me give you back to Mark."
But Mark
shook his head and ran away, and I stood there holding the phone, while Bob
Coates rumbled unintelligibly on and on.
When I woke
up, I was mightily annoyed with my husband.
And I dreamt,
too, that right outside our kitchen window was a ledge, and on that ledge, were
two birds' nests. Momma birds were hatching over hatchlings in those nests,
but, as I stared out at them, one of the unfeathered babies lost its perch and
tumbled away.
In the dream
we were high up in an apartment building; there was nothing to be done.
I called Mark
and Jim to look at the nests, and they did. And then I closed the curtains.
When I opened
them again, two red foxes were circling the nests.
There was no
way I could help. I closed the curtains and ran off.
**************************
Dreamglossary.com
reassures me that dreaming of nests with baby birds is a GOOD thing; it
symbolizes joy. (Maybe not for the little guy who plummeted, but still. I'll
take this interpretation.) And unraveling dreams.com says dreaming of foxes can
have many different interpretations. They can warn of deceit or manipulation;
they can gently suggest I be more adaptable; or they can signal that a major
change is coming.
Foxes can
also, the site says, be a sign that the dreamer is in need of creative inspiration.
And
dreamlibrary.org says that dreaming of unexpected phone calls shows a thirst
for change, or a look forward to something major that will be happening. The
dreamer, the site suggests, may be searching for something new and exciting, or
an opportunity for growth. (For…creative inspiration?)
This week's
dreams are etched in memory, unlike those others that evaporate wispily.
What causes
vivid dreams—weather? Dinner? Books and movies?
The
atmospheric disruption caused by a coming eclipse of the sun?
************************
Humans, an
article at today.usc.edu ("What does a solar eclipse symbolize?") tells me,
assign 'profound meaning' to both the sun and the moon. They were our earliest
deities, seen either as partners or opposites. Some cultures labeled one
masculine and the other feminine.
When they
came together, when there was a solar eclipse, that was seen as a deeply
meaningful joining.
In
Navajo (or Dine') culture, for instance, the sun is a father. And when he
disappears in the middle of a day, that is a sacred time, a time to stop, to
meditate.
The
Great American Eclipse took place in August of 2017. It was not visible in
Ohio, although we could have traveled to nearby Kentucky to witness the
totality, but it did blanket the entire United States in a band that swept from
coast to coast. It was the last year of Donald Trump's presidency. Trump was
born during a LUNAR eclipse, and there were those who posited that the solar
eclipse signaled the end of his time as president—the sun perhaps, eclipsing the
moon.
I
haven't seen any current political interpretations to the coming eclipse.
And here's a
very odd thing that happened. I was out running errands, and one of them was to
drop off a DVD at the John McIntire Library. I parked in the very furthest
spot, so as to get just a few extra steps in, and I jog-walked to the entrance.
Once there, I followed a family in and put the DVD in the return spot.
I'd noticed a
young person sitting on the retaining wall outside the library. She was pretty,
well-dressed, unassuming. AS I hurried past her, she said, "Wait."
I stopped and
turned.
"Are you my
MOTHER?" she asked.
"What?" I
said, not because I didn't hear, but because I didn't understand.
"Are YOU my
MOTHER?" she asked again.
"No," I told
her.
She paused. "Are
you sure?" she asked.
"I'm sure," I
said. "I've never been blessed with a daughter."
She looked
infinitely sad, but just said, "Oh."
"I hope you
find her, though," I said. "I hope you find your mother."
"Thank you,"
she whispered, and I went back to the car, strangely troubled. Was she an
adoptee who'd arranged to meet her birth mother, someone who never showed? Was
some emotional turmoil at work?
*******************************************
But anyway.
On Monday, the moon will block the sun. I'll come home from work early; I'll
put on my solar eclipse glasses, and I'll carefully see what I can see.
And it might
be cloudy in my Ohio corner; there may not be very much to really look at
except to experience the darkening and lightening of the sky.
And what does
it really mean, anyway? The sun and moon are bound to align like this once
every so often, aren't they? This eclipse is just one of those times, not a
portent, not a sign.
It's just a very
interesting scientific thing.
But we of the
human persuasion, —well, we look for meaning. And if we want to see, in the
period of alignment, a symbol of darkness, and then, if we want to interpret
the return to light as a bright and positive thing, what's to stop us?
Who's to say
it isn't true that we've lived through dark times of illness and war and
controversy, of climate disasters and chaos and confusion, but that, against
all odds and beliefs, we're rotating toward a sunlit, happier future?
And what's to
say these weird times heading up to the eclipse might all wrap themselves up
together in the darkening of the skies, snap themselves up tightly, and
evaporate in the return of the warmth of the sun?
By next
Tuesday morning, I am sure, my whole life will be refreshingly normal, all
weirdness dissolved.
******************
Be careful in
your eclipse viewing, if viewing can be done near you. And may its aftermath
see us all walking, evermore determinedly, into a lighter, brighter time.
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