Macrobius, Solar Eclipsxe

A dramatic Total Solar Eclipse occurred on 8 August 1496 with maximum eclipse at 20:36 UT. It must have been frightening for the indigenous people  The eclipse plunged the Sun into darkness for 5 minutes and 30 seconds at maximum, creating an extraordinary spectacle for observers in a broad path up to 236 km wide. The dramatic quality fo this eclipse means that to a great extent it speaks for itself.

First, we do well to put ourselves in the position of the observers. The Maya, for example, were sophisticated astronomers time-keepers and interpreters of eclipses.  This eclipse had dire implications for several cultures in the region, but it behoves us to focus on one for the time being.

Pyramid dedicated to KuKuulKaan”a Universal Solar Calendar. tracking the five movements of our Planet in relation to the sun, namely Equinoxes, Solstices, and the Zenith of the Sun.

Ethan Watrall provides a succinct comment on Mayan culture: “The Mayans religion involved several aspects of nature, astronomy and rituals. Most Gods represented a form in nature, for example, Sun God, Kinih Ahous, or Maize God, Yum Kaax. The Mayans were known for their calendars and astronomical buildings. These were used during their religious rituals. Similar to the Egyptians, the Mayans built Pyramid like temples for religious reasons. The main difference in shape being [sic] that the Mayan pyramids have a flat top to build temples on top. The best-known pyramid is El Castillo or Temple of Kukulkan in the archaeological site Chichen Itza, in the Mexican state of Yucatan.” Mayans Religion: Gods, Animal Spirits and Pyramids

.The first encounter with the Yucatec Maya themselves may have occurred in 1502, when the fourth voyage of “came across a large trading canoe off Honduras. The eclipse appears as a tidal wave of death for the inhabitants of the region. Keeping in mind that all these cultures held a special place for the Sun as a source of life itself, it must have a profound effect and would no doubt be taken as a bad omen.

I managed to recreate the chart, using Cancun as the location. However, the eclipse path continued through Mexico, Central American through what is now Venezuela and beyond.Cristobal Colon (Christopher Columbus), whose name means “Christ-bearing colonizer was the catalyst that changed the world of ancient American civilisations forever.

New Sun God Temple Reveals Maya Beliefs – Courtesy National Geographic

Most immediately, we can see that the eclipse is in the Fixed Sign and Leo, with Mars and a Venus ahead of the Sun. This is all happening in the Eighth House, associated with Death. Even Jupiter and Saturn are disposited by Mars. Moreover, according to Bonnati, the Sun is Hyleg, giving a stronger sense of the loss of life.

In a Fixed Sign and of above average duration, at 5 minutes and 30 seconds, we can expect the full force of this to be felt more than five years into the future. In fact, in the same region, the concerted plan to exterminate as many natives as possible and sieze both lands and resources was well underway, just a few short years after contact. We can say that even by the time of the eclipse, there was no realistic option of reversal and the Spanish used everything at their disposal, including germ warfare in the form of smallpox-infected blankets. The natives had no resistance to these diseases and were reduced by as much as 90% For these people, the events of the late 15th C. to the mid 16th C. in particular, were like an apocalypse.

Sanderson Beck tells us that by the end of 1499 Columbus had discovered “that there were extensive gold fields in Española. Columbus had already written to the Spanish sovereigns saying he planned to take as many slaves as he could; now he told them of the rebellion and asked them to send a competent judge. Meanwhile, they had authorized Ojeda to visit the mainland Columbus had discovered and which Ojeda named Venezuela, where he found valuable pearl fisheries.”  Spanish Conquest 1492-1580 By the time of the eclipse, the seeds were already being sown and an apocalypse was unleashed on the indigenous population of what are now several countries.,

Map of America by Sebastian Munster

The eclipse of May 28, 585 B.C is of interest to a variety of disciplines such as history, astronomy, philosophy and not least because, as  Isaac Asimov noted, this would be the earliest recorded eclipse the date of which was accurately determined in advance of its occurrence. ” I doubt the veracity of that very much because there were civilizations in the Middle East and Central Asia who appear to have understood Saros cycles earlier than this. Nevertheless, it is true that it was the first accurate prediction of its kind in Classical antiquity. Recent scholarship has provided a wider view of the transmission of ideas from Egypt and the Middle East

This eclipse is known by a few names and one of these is The Eclipse of Thales because he us the one credited with the prediction. Panchenko writes:

“While doubt has been cast on the truth of the story, there are other accounts of it besides that of Herodotus. Diogenes Laertius says that Xenophanes, who lived in the same century as Thales, was impressed with the prediction, and he also gives additional testimonies from the pre-Socratics Democritus and Heraclitus. …  If the account is true, it has been suggested that Thales would have had to calculate the timing of any eclipse by recognizing patterns in the periodicities of eclipses.

It has been postulated that Thales may have used the Saros cycle in his determination, or that he may have had some knowledge of Babylonian astronomy” Panchenko, D. (2004). “Thales’s Prediction of a Solar Eclipse”. JHA. p. 275– If this is the case, we have an earlier Greco-Babylonian exchange of knowledge of celestial prediction than is usually accepted.

AristarchusOn the Distances and Sizes of the Sun and Moon 10th C. Reproduction

Thales is said to have visited Egypt and studied forms of mathematics, such as those used in land surveying, [he} “brought back to Greece the ideas of deductive geometry later codified by Euclid. Before 450 BC, Merton realized that a single period of 235 lunar months (19 years) would cause the popular lunar calendar to return to synchrony with the solar, seasonal calendar. At this time, the same lunar phase would be recorded at the same time of the solar calendar year. This period also gives a rough guide to when a lunar eclipse will recur at the same geographic location.” (2009). Solar Eclipses: Ancient Greece. Retrieved from http://www.trunity.net/cosmos/view/article/51cbeab47896bb431f685660

Contact with the Medians (today’s Kurds) would have given him an opportunity to learn star lore from the Persians and Babylonians, if not the Medians themselves.

According to the historian Herodotus, a Total Solar Eclipse occurred in the late afternoon during a battle between the Lydians and Medes at Kirzilmak in what is now Turkey. The battles for the hegemony of Anatolia had been ongoing for years. This is what he tells us that they “were still warring with equal success, when it happened, at an encounter which occurred in the sixth year, that during the battle the day was suddenly turned to night. Thales of Miletus had foretold this loss of daylight to the Ionians, fixing it within the year in which the change did indeed happen. So when the Lydians and Medes saw the day turned to night, they stopped fighting, and both were the more eager to make peace. The Histories Book 1 Chapter 74

At what must have been approximately 4.17 PM. the sky suddenly turned dark as the Sun was eclipsed by the Moon.  The warring parties took this as an omen that the heavens commanded peace. The battle and the war ended on the spot.

I managed to recreate the time of the eclipse for the specified location. This has more than one function. Not least is the doubt that the eclipse occurred on the specified date. See this rebuttal to Panchenko.

The eclipse is well into the last degree of Taurus. This degree is referred to by a few names, the best known is the Anarectic degree. It is the degree in which the Sign is said to be exhausted. In effect, the sign is ended and the transition to the next is about to take place. Venus is the Lady of the Eclipse.  How fitting this appears to be at the end of a war! It is as if the eclipse spelt out the end and the fighting turned to awe and mutual surrender.

The sight of the eclipse precipitated an unexpected and immediate ceasefire between the Lydians and the Medes, who had been fighting for control of Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) for five years. Both sides of combatants interpreted the eclipse as a sign to reconcile. More often than not, eclipses have been seen as either a harbinger of some form of evil or a judgment of some sort. The latter would be a case such as an eclipse that occurred prior to the death of Richard III in the War of the Roses.

According to NASA, .in a solar eclipse, the Moon’s shadow falls across the Earth in a relatively narrow path, and the maximum duration of totality at any given place is often about 7½ minutes. However, the duration of eclipses is usually taken as the length of time between the first sight of the eclipse to the last, which includes all phases of the eclipse. This is not helpful and is often virtually impossible to reconstruct in the case of a historical eclipse.

The astrological community, past and present,  either makes no mention of either magnitude or duration, often making a vague suggestion that it might last for about six months or so. To begin with, this doesn’t take into account the relative strengths of mutable, cardinal and fixed signs. To be fair, many astrologers who make such claims are only interested in natal astrology and not mundane.

One of the clearest and most plausible guide was published by Sam Bartolet in a booklet “Eclipses and Lunations in Astrology” and has an introduction by Llewellyn George. My copy is showing signs of advanced age, but I believe the publication may still be available by special order.

Bartolet states that with regard to predicting the period of influence, or indeed when the effect will be noted at all, is a year for every hour of the eclipse. This is impossible for obvious reasons, so I take it that this is a typographical error (its typed by hand) and that minutes and not hours was intended.

Please note that I do not imply an influence of the eclipse, except for the initial shock, but instead consider all celestial events as signs.

In the case, of the Eclipse of Thales, the effect was virtually instant. The fact that the eclipse was in a Fixed Sign and third decan of Taurus, which is sub-ruled by Saturn would auger for a longer period of influence. Nevertheless, there appears to have been a civilizing effect and seven years after the eclipse, we have events such as the building of the Ishtar Gate and throne room wall from Babylon, Iraq is made.

The Hour is Saturn and the Almuten is Venus. This all seems to tie in well with the events of day.- a mighty judgement resulting in peace!

A bird flies in front of a partial solar eclipse in Jerusalem photo credit REUTERS

Luke 23:44&45 “It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, for the sun stopped shining.”

This a short piece which constitutes little more than a footnote. The interested reader will find it easy to reconstruct the events surrounding the crucifixion. I have not gone into the reported events narrated by Mark: ” And Jesus uttered a loud voice, and gave up the ghost. [39] And the veil of the Temple was rent in two, from the top to the bottom.  [Mk 15:37].  But no doubt some will wish to refer to this also.

As is the case of many biblical and ancient narrative, it is often difficult to separate literary convention or what might now call propaganda from historical fact. It has proven to be often the case that a given narrative requires more than a bit of effort to discover the intended message and the facts of the matter. Religious texts are,  as often as not, metaphorical. Indeed, the idea of a completely objective history is a fairly modern invention and not without its own problems. It has yet to be seen whether humans are capable of perfect objectivity.

Nevertheless, there are some physical, astrological events such as we saw in the Star of the Nativity, that can be verified, albeit with a pinch of scepticism. The story, told in three of the four Gospels, of the darkness that came upon Jerusalem when Jesus was on the cross, fits nicely with other biblical tropes of a celestial darkness as a symbol of a spiritual reality. I’m not a biblical scholar and have little interest in the minutiae of the text at this time, as it does not serve our immediate purpose.

Many scholars have fallen victim to the expected date of the crucifixion,m which we associate with Passover and sure enough, there was an eclipse in that general temporal vicinity. That was the Total Eclipse of March 0033 March 19 (Saros 59)

Naturally, ancient and medieval Christians considered this to be a miracle and there was a widespread belief that this event was one of a few in the New Testament were confirmed by non-Christian sources;. However, modern scholars have discovered no contemporary references to it outside the New Testament. itself. 

The Total Eclipse of the Sun in 0029 November 24 was quite a spectacle as shown by the image below. The path of totality, shown by the red swath, crossing from the Near East to the Straights of Hormuz and beyond couldn’t be missed. However, it is almost four years prior to the estimated date of the crucifixion.

It becomes increasingly apparent that this is the eclipse referred to, but that was not as an actual event in 0033. It is a widespread convention in Eclipse lore that momentous events are ‘foreshadowed’ four years prior to the cataclysm. This is a misconception based, I think, on two famous eclipses that were in fact approximately of 4 mins duration. The great eclipse of 1910 is case in point and was said to have been a presage of the onset of WWI.  However, the eclipse in May of that year which is credited was only visible from the Southern Hemisphere and with the exception of Austrailia was not seen in any of the of countries associated with the war that broke out in 1914. 90 was one of the years that Halley’s comet visited us and perhaps the significance of the eclipse was later conflated with that.

If this is the case, and it is difficult to argue with on the grounds of the eclipse itself, the fact that none occurred anywhere near Passover, the passage wherein the light is extinguished may very well have been a literary convention looking back to the eclipse of 0029. This merging of physical events with spiritual significance is by no means rare in ancient narratives. The core symbolism of the eclipse of the luminaries, particularly of the Sun, is the death of a great light. That would certainly include the “light of the world.”