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View ProfilesPublished April 2, 2024 at 10:00 a.m.
Two men and a woman walk into a Burlington bar. It's Sunday, April 7, the day before a total solar eclipse casts its shadow over northern Vermont.
"Whaddya like?" the barkeep asks.
"Do you know," the first man says, "that tomorrow a crocodile will take a bite out of the sun?"
The second gent chimes in, "And they say it's best to be wearing red underwear."
The woman sighs. "Enough with the moonsplaining," she says. "My poor pregnant sister was told to place safety pins on her belly to protect the baby."
The bartender pours himself a stiff one.
Few natural phenomena can compete with a solar eclipse of the sun when it comes to myths and superstitions. Witnessing the moon block out the sun is a rare and beautiful thing that, through the ages, has also scared the bejesus out of otherwise rational people. On Monday, April 8, when a swath of the Earth is shrouded in darkness during the day, there will be rejoicing and apprehension, wonder and fear — in short, polar opposite emotions among millions from Mexico to the Canadian Maritimes.
"Eclipses, a long time ago, were a perfect phenomenon to generate superstitions," said Joanna Rankin, astrophysics professor emerita at the University of Vermont. Because ancient humans didn't move around much, she explained, and because eclipses almost never repeat their exact same viewing locations, seeing one was accidental, shocking and seemingly unexplainable.
"The sudden going away of the sun and the blunting of nature was pretty dramatic," added Rankin, who taught a course on ancient astronomy. As a rough parallel to the innate spookiness our ancestors may have felt, ask any of the tens of millions in the northeastern U.S. if they have fond memories of the 2003 electrical blackout.
"It was virtually impossible to paint [an eclipse] as a good omen when the single most important source of life on Earth disappears for a while," Rankin said. "How could that not be a bad sign?"
In English, the word "eclipse" is derived from the Greek ekleipsis, which means an omission or an abandonment. As in, "The sun has left — woe is us!"
How, then, to summon back the sun's light and cosseting warmth?
Some of our early ancestors would shoot flaming arrows at the sun in an attempt to reignite it. Others, Rankin explained, "took to making loud noises to awaken the sun and bring it back again."
Over the years, this developed into a tradition of banging pots and pans, she said: "One had to make a big, big noise to persuade the sun to come back again." In some cultures, it was believed that beating cookware helped drive away the demons brought on by the sun's departure.
Centuries ago, Indigenous peoples the world over developed folklore to account for solar aberrations. Many explanations involved animals with rapacious appetites attacking the sun, such as a giant frog. (Some languages even use the same words for "eat" or "bite" as for an eclipse.) In parts of Zimbabwe, the former Rhodesia, the belief centers on a crocodile expressing his displeasure with human behavior. One tribe in South America blames a jaguar.
Abenaki communities in Vermont and Québec have no particular eclipse myth or shibboleth, according to members of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation, the School of Abenaki at Middlebury Language Schools and the Odanak First Nation. Their language, however, indicates a fear of solar eclipses. The word tsakwat means "dawn," or the division of light and darkness, and is the word most associated with "eclipse." Sakwi and sokwit share the same root and can be understood to mean "something in pain" or "broken off." Pain represents the idea that the sun is sick and, if it doesn't recover, the world is doomed to perpetual darkness.
Many myths and superstitions about eclipses concern pregnancy and childbirth. In Mexico, women placed safety pins on their swollen bellies; others wore red underwear or ribbons. If such precautions were not taken, legend said, a miscarriage would occur or the child would be born blind or with a cleft palate.
According to Rankin, pregnancy-related eclipse myths are tied to astrology. Astrologers were employed by queens and princesses, she said, particularly during pregnancy. "The astrological prediction was regarded as a statement on the continuance of the current regime," she said, noting that "the most important thing in human life for continuance is successful births."
More modern misconceptions around eclipses and pregnancy abound. Namely, that eclipses emit harmful radiation that could disrupt pregnancy. Those fears are unfounded, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
"Deep in the solar interior where nuclear fusion takes place to light the sun, particles called neutrinos are born, and zip unimpeded out of the sun and into space," the space agency explains on its website. Eventually these neutrinos pass down to Earth and through your body, where every few minutes a few atoms are transmuted into different isotopes. "This is an entirely harmless effect and would not harm you, or if you are pregnant, the developing fetus."
NASA also debunks several other bogus eclipse myths. Among them:
The notion that harmful eclipse rays cause blindness is based on a sometimes greenish electromagnetic radiation visible around the brilliant corona. According to NASA, "Scientists have studied this radiation for centuries. Being a million times fainter than the light from the sun itself, there is nothing in the coronal light that could cross 150 million kilometers of space, penetrate our dense atmosphere, and cause blindness."
Of course, viewing an eclipse without proper eye protection can cause retinal damage. But misinformation abounds there, too. In 1963, when a total solar eclipse could be seen in Alaska, Canada and parts of Maine, "Peanuts" cartoonist Charles M. Schulz produced a widely distributed strip that pictured Linus, the smart one, saying, "There is no safe method for looking directly at an eclipse. And it is especially dangerous when it is a total eclipse."
Linus' statement is false: One can look directly at an eclipse with the help of solar eclipse glasses. And when the moon fully covers the solar disk, observers can remove their eye protection and view the event with their naked eyes. In fact, NASA asserts that the light emanating from totality is "one million times weaker" than the light coming from viewing just the sun itself.
That "Peanuts" strip drew many spirited rebuttals — some emphasizing the second syllable of the comic's name. There was even a children's book that essentially called Linus' assertion horsepucky. No record exists of its effect on red underwear sales.
The original print version of this article was headlined "Waking Up the Sun"
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