Almost every culture saw in an eclipse something that broke the order of things, and many explained it with someone eating the Sun: a dragon in China, the demon Rahu in India, a pair of wolves among the Vikings, a jaguar god among the Mexica. Others saw it as a fight between the Sun and the Moon that had to be calmed, or as a moment to stop and keep silent. E. C. Krupp, director of the Griffith Observatory, summed it up for National Geographic: if you go through the eclipse folklore of the whole world, the theme that comes up again and again, with few exceptions, is the disruption of the established order.
Four ways of telling it
English Wikipedia gives the classification by Mark Littmann, Fred Espenak and Ken Willcox, who group solar eclipse myths into four types: a sky creature, usually a monster, tries to destroy the Sun; the Sun quarrels with its lover, the Moon; the Sun and the Moon make love and discreetly hide in the darkness; or the Sun god gets angry, sad, ill or careless.
Not every culture experienced it as something bad. Jarita Holbrook, a cultural astronomer at the University of the Western Cape, told National Geographic that for some it is a time of terror, for others part of the natural order that deserves respect, and for others a time for reflection and reconciliation.
China, Korea and Vietnam: the Sun gets eaten
In Chinese mythology, Wikipedia notes, the eclipse was sometimes imagined as a dragon devouring the Sun. Krupp adds that the oldest Chinese word for “eclipse”, shih, means “to eat”. In Korea, according to him, it was fire dogs that tried to steal the Sun or the Moon on a king’s orders; they never managed it, but each bite was an eclipse. In Vietnam, it was a frog or a toad that ate the Sun or the Moon. Nancy Maryboy, president of the Indigenous Education Institute, told National Geographic that in many cultures people banged pots or played drums to scare off whatever was swallowing the Sun or the Moon.
India: Rahu, a head with no throat
It is one of the most colourful, in Krupp’s view. The demon Rahu disguises himself as a god to taste an elixir that grants immortality, the Sun and the Moon see him and denounce him to Vishnu, and Vishnu cuts off his head before the elixir gets past his throat. The head remains immortal and chases the Sun and the Moon across the sky; every now and then it catches them and swallows them, but since it has no throat, they come out again.
Wikipedia says that in the Hindu tradition eclipses (grahana) happen when Rahu and Ketu swallow the Sun and the Moon, and that they are usually seen as a bad omen: it is a time to recite mantras, people fast from a few hours beforehand, food is prepared once it is over, people bathe and pray to their ancestors. Pregnant women follow the rites more carefully. Some of the ideas we go through in eclipse myths come from here.
The Vikings: two wolves chasing the Sun
Krupp told National Geographic that the Vikings saw a pair of sky wolves chasing the Sun or the Moon. When one of them caught its prey, there was an eclipse.
The Mexica and the Maya
Among the Mexica (the Aztecs), according to Eduard Seler’s analysis of the Codex Vaticanus B, which Wikipedia cites, a solar eclipse happened when the jaguar god Tepeyóllotl ate the Sun and threatened to swallow it whole. The Florentine Codex of Friar Bernardino de Sahagún tells how it was lived: shouting and weeping, sacrifices of captives, people offering their own blood and songs in the temples, and the fear that, if the eclipse became complete, darkness would last for ever and demons would come down to eat people.
With the Maya there is debate. The Dresden Codex has glyphs that many historians interpret as predictions of solar and lunar eclipses, made from the observed repetition of the phenomena, because there is no evidence that the Maya knew about orbits. Some scholars argue, instead, that those glyphs refer to skies darkened by heavy rain, not to eclipses.
Those who stop: the Navajo, the Batammaliba and the eclipse prayer
For the Navajo, an eclipse is a sacred time of renewal. According to Wikipedia, all activity stops, including eating and drinking; the Sun or the Moon dies and is reborn, people pray in silence and may only look at the ground. During the solar eclipse of 14 October 2023, the Navajo Nation’s offices, and its parks too, closed out of respect. Maryboy told National Geographic that for them the eclipse is part of natural law, a time to stop and reflect on the order of the cosmos, and that some spend it at home with their families, singing and without eating, drinking or sleeping. They don’t look either: they say that anyone who looks at the Sun during an eclipse will feel it in their eyes later on.
Holbrook’s favourite myth is that of the Batammaliba, in Togo and Benin. During the eclipse the Sun and the Moon fight, and people urge them to stop; for them it is a time to come together and settle old quarrels, a tradition that, according to Holbrook, survives to this day.
In Islam, Wikipedia cites a hadith in which Muhammad says that the Sun and the Moon are not eclipsed because of anyone’s death and that, when an eclipse is seen, people should pray until it ends. That is the origin of the eclipse prayer (salat al-kusuf), which many Muslims still pray together.
What we know today
Today eclipses are predicted to the second: the Moon passes in front of the Sun and its shadow sweeps across the Earth, as we explain in our learn section. On 2 August 2027 that shadow will cross from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, over southern Spain, North Africa, Arabia and Somalia: the route is in the shadow’s journey and the countries in countries in the 2027 path of totality. The eclipses that changed history are in famous eclipses in history, and those seen in Spain, in the history of eclipses in Spain (in Spanish).
Sources: Wikipedia (EN) — Eclipses in mythology and culture (the classification by Littmann, Espenak and Willcox; Rahu and Ketu and the Hindu rites; Tepeyóllotl, Seler and the Florentine Codex; the Maya glyphs in the Dresden Codex and the debate; the Navajo and the October 2023 eclipse; the hadith and the eclipse prayer); National Geographic — Solar eclipse myths from around the world (Krupp and the disruption of order; the Vikings’ wolves; Vietnam’s frog; shih, “to eat”; Korea’s fire dogs; Rahu and Vishnu; the noise to scare off the devourer, from Maryboy; the Batammaliba, from Holbrook; Navajo customs); Wikipedia (EN) — Solar eclipse (the dragon devouring the Sun in Chinese mythology); the countries in the 2027 path: eclipseando data (Wikipedia’s list and our own calculation).
If you would like something to keep from the eclipse, the shop prints T-shirts, mugs and posters with the name of your town, the time of its maximum and its seconds of totality. See the merchandise →
Remember: never look at the Sun without proper eye protection (filters made to EN ISO 12312-2). The official reference for safe viewing in Spain is the IGN (in Spanish): eclipses.ign.es.