Post by ck4829 on Aug 20, 2017 11:41:45 GMT
Even though they’re a natural occurrence, the rarity of eclipses, especially solar eclipses that bring night skies to the middle of the day, have inspired a multitude of myths over human history.
While the only real danger is eye damage that can occur by watching a partial eclipse without safety glasses, mankind over the centuries has concocted a number of superstitions to explain why the moon can turn blood red, as it does during a lunar eclipse, and the sun can be blotted out at daytime, as with Monday’s solar eclipse.
Though people have known since the 700s B.C. that eclipses are a predictable part of nature, that hasn’t kept stories from becoming attached to them, more often than not portending ill events. People over the centuries have beaten drums, yelled and made other noise to scare the evil spirits away, which, in their eyes at least, always seemed to work.
The Cassell Dictionary of Superstitions notes that eclipses frequently have been seen as some type of evil attempting to steal light from the earth, and the events have been seen as omens of the deaths of prominent individuals and rulers, including Nero and Henry VIII’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon.
Eclipses have been blamed for the start of the Bubonic plague in the 1340s and outbreak of World War I in 1914. And there is often a group that figures it’s a sign that the world is coming to an end.
An event like an eclipse can give someone power over those who are superstitious. Mark Twain captured that in his book “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.” His character, Hank Morgan, finds himself sent back to the days of King Arthur and the Round Table. Merlin persuades Arthur to burn the strangely garbed American at the stake on June 21, 528, the date of a solar eclipse. Hank tells Arthur he’ll blot out the sun if he tries to kill him and, when the eclipse arrives, he bargains his way off the execution stake and into the second most powerful position in the kingdom.
While that was fiction, it borrowed from the historical account of Christopher Columbus, who was stranded in Jamaica in 1503. The native people welcomed him, but withdrew their charitable support after his crew cheated them and stole from them. In early 1504, Columbus consulted an almanac, saw a lunar eclipse was coming up and told the island chief his god was angered with his people’s treatment of Columbus and his sailors. A sign of the god’s wrath would be in shown by way an “inflamed” moon, Columbus said.
AN ECLIPSE CAN’T HARM YOUR FETUS: If you’re pregnant, your fetus’ safety isn’t a reason to skip the sky show. This myth is related to the false idea that harmful radiations are emitted during a total solar eclipse. No radiation is generated that doesn’t reach Earth every day.
AN ECLIPSE WILL NOT POISON PREPARED FOOD: This misconception also is related to the false idea of harmful solar rays being emitted during a total solar eclipse. NASA notes if that were true, that if food you prepare during an eclipse will be tainted, the same harm would come to the food in your pantry and crops in the field.
ECLIPSES ARE NOT OMENS: “A classic case of what psychologists call Confirmation Bias is that we tend to remember all the occasions when two things happened together, but forget all of the other times when they did not,” NASA says. “This gives us a biased view of causes and effects that we remember easily, because the human brain is predisposed to looking for, and remembering, patterns that can be used as survival rules of thumb.
While the only real danger is eye damage that can occur by watching a partial eclipse without safety glasses, mankind over the centuries has concocted a number of superstitions to explain why the moon can turn blood red, as it does during a lunar eclipse, and the sun can be blotted out at daytime, as with Monday’s solar eclipse.
Though people have known since the 700s B.C. that eclipses are a predictable part of nature, that hasn’t kept stories from becoming attached to them, more often than not portending ill events. People over the centuries have beaten drums, yelled and made other noise to scare the evil spirits away, which, in their eyes at least, always seemed to work.
The Cassell Dictionary of Superstitions notes that eclipses frequently have been seen as some type of evil attempting to steal light from the earth, and the events have been seen as omens of the deaths of prominent individuals and rulers, including Nero and Henry VIII’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon.
Eclipses have been blamed for the start of the Bubonic plague in the 1340s and outbreak of World War I in 1914. And there is often a group that figures it’s a sign that the world is coming to an end.
An event like an eclipse can give someone power over those who are superstitious. Mark Twain captured that in his book “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.” His character, Hank Morgan, finds himself sent back to the days of King Arthur and the Round Table. Merlin persuades Arthur to burn the strangely garbed American at the stake on June 21, 528, the date of a solar eclipse. Hank tells Arthur he’ll blot out the sun if he tries to kill him and, when the eclipse arrives, he bargains his way off the execution stake and into the second most powerful position in the kingdom.
While that was fiction, it borrowed from the historical account of Christopher Columbus, who was stranded in Jamaica in 1503. The native people welcomed him, but withdrew their charitable support after his crew cheated them and stole from them. In early 1504, Columbus consulted an almanac, saw a lunar eclipse was coming up and told the island chief his god was angered with his people’s treatment of Columbus and his sailors. A sign of the god’s wrath would be in shown by way an “inflamed” moon, Columbus said.
AN ECLIPSE CAN’T HARM YOUR FETUS: If you’re pregnant, your fetus’ safety isn’t a reason to skip the sky show. This myth is related to the false idea that harmful radiations are emitted during a total solar eclipse. No radiation is generated that doesn’t reach Earth every day.
AN ECLIPSE WILL NOT POISON PREPARED FOOD: This misconception also is related to the false idea of harmful solar rays being emitted during a total solar eclipse. NASA notes if that were true, that if food you prepare during an eclipse will be tainted, the same harm would come to the food in your pantry and crops in the field.
ECLIPSES ARE NOT OMENS: “A classic case of what psychologists call Confirmation Bias is that we tend to remember all the occasions when two things happened together, but forget all of the other times when they did not,” NASA says. “This gives us a biased view of causes and effects that we remember easily, because the human brain is predisposed to looking for, and remembering, patterns that can be used as survival rules of thumb.