![]() The tradition of making as much noise as possible during an eclipse is at least 2,000 years old and continues to this day in many parts of the world, Krupp said. A few send fiery arrows, and they're trying to rekindle the by sending it light and heat again." "You also find people firing guns in historic times or shooting arrows into the sky to scare off or kill the beast. "There are plenty of other stories of that kind of thing taking place in historic times and from around the world," Krupp said. Members of the Kwakiutl tribe of the Pacific Northwest perform a ritual dance during a lunar eclipse. In the Kwakiutl lunar eclipse dance, doing something meant building a fire and creating a lot of noise in hopes of driving away the "sky creature" that was thought to be devouring the moon. And third, we've got to do something about this." "Second, it's compromised by something that appears to be taking a bite. "First, the world order is compromised - and that's trouble," he said. Such rituals reflected an almost-universal response by traditional cultures to the phenomenon of eclipses, he said. Eclipse ritualsĪ famous photograph by the pioneering American photographer Edward Curtis, taken between 19, shows Kwakiutl people of the Pacific Northwest performing an "eclipse dance." The photograph was taken during an eclipse of the moon, and similar ceremonies would be held during much rarer eclipses of the sun, Krupp said. "Suddenly, something that shouldn't be there is there, usually in the vicinity of the sun - and so some of those people in central Mexico assigned the responsibility to" the planets. "What they were referring to was the appearance of the planets when the sky grows dark enough in an eclipse for those objects to appear," Krupp said. Mayan records make clear that the "star demons" were in fact the other planets, such as Venus or Mercury, which could briefly become visible in the darkened daytime sky. In Mayan legends from central Mexico, the monsters responsible for devouring the sun during an eclipse are described as "star demons," which were often portrayed as giant snakes or insects, he said. (Image credit: Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian) Mayan glyphs from the Dresden Codex showing a dragon-like "star demon" about to devour the sun during an eclipse. In China, where the devouring beast is traditionally a "heavenly dog," ancient observations of eclipses also describe the sun as "being eaten," while today's Mandarin words for eclipses are derived from the root "shi," which means "to eat," Krupp said. "That's part of the traditional lore that comes down to us that reflects what people see in the sky," Krupp said. This is actually the reflection on the face of the full moon of the ring of sunsets that surround the eclipsing Earth. In a lunar eclipse, the moon was said to bleed, which was the explanation given for its red color. An eclipse of the sun or moon occurred whenever one of the wolves caught and tried to eat the object that the animal was hunting, he said. One of the best-known traditions comes from the Norse culture of Scandinavia's Vikings, which described two supernatural wolves - Sköll and her brother, Hati - who were said to chase the sun and moon across the sky. This idea stems from the sun's appearance during the first stages of an eclipse, which resembles an orb with a "bite" taken out of it.īut the variety of beast responsible for eating the sun depended on local traditions it was a frog in Vietnam, for example, and a mountain lion or puma in the Andes region of South America, Krupp said. He said that many traditional explanations of solar eclipses suggest that the events occur because a mythological beast of some description is devouring the sun. Krupp is a respected authority on ancient astronomical lore, and the author of several books on the topic, including "Beyond the Blue Horizon: Myths and Legends of the Sun, Moon, Stars and Planets" (Oxford University Press, 1991). "But then, in the case of an eclipse, the unexpected happens for no good reason, and the sun goes black, which is the exact opposite of what it should be doing." Devouring sky beasts "The sun comes up every day and goes down every day, while the moon each month goes through these very familiar phases," Krupp said. "The sky is this zone that is out of reach, yet visible to all, and occupied by what appear to be powerful, and therefore supernatural, beings of one sort or another," he said.
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