When he shuts his eyes it is night

Good footage last week of the solar eclipse that swept northeast across swaths of Asia. Online videos showed worshipers observing the occasion in Varanasi, directly in the path of the shadow of the moon, where 2,500 folks gathered at the Ganges to watch a total eclipse for 3 mins 48 seconds, the longest time until 2132.

A scientific world paints eclipses as extravagantly, in its way, as poetically gorgeous mythology. One commentator enthused that scientists wait a lifetime for an opportunity like this to see the delicately streaming sun's corona, 2 million degrees centigrade. They describe the beading of light from the reflected irregularities of the moon into a gemlike ball of light perched on the corona as a wedding ring, which it exactly resembles.

In Vedic astrology an eclipse is a sun-eating dragon that swallows the moon. Being Indian mythology, there are different versions. In one, the culprit is Rahu, a frightening dragon who is all head. Rahu diguised himself so as to sneak a drink of the forbidden nectar of immortality churned during the Samudra Manthan, the famous churning of the ocean of milk. The Sun and Moon spotted him and told Vishnu, who lopped off Rahu's head before he could swallow the divine nectar. But the part that had touched the nectar, his head, became immortal. Rahu swore vengeance on the Sun and the Moon, and whenever he sees them he tries to gobble them up. Since, being bodiless, he can hold neither very long, they come safely out the other side, but their power is distressingly weakened.

Above is a Tibetan vision of Rahu as a demon with multiple heads. (There's a reason, of course, he has them all, but that will have to be the subject of another post.) When Rahu swallows the sun, the precaution of fasting prevents one from ingesting malefic influences afoot. Pregnant women must stay indoors and parents do not want their babies born on this day. To ward off the effects of the eclipse, folks undertake ritual bathing in purifying rivers and streams to cleanse their sins.

Something so momentous, ominous and beautiful as stealing the sun needs a story big enough to convey awe and respect for the impact on us of the primal powers of Nature. Religiously, this is huge. Divine space visibly invading and transforming human space for all to see. We don't treat phenomenal Nature so profoundly in the West. Man walking on the moon is, after all, human space invading the divine. Rainbows, maybe. We are able to see them as auspicious omens, as in this wedding story in last Sunday's New York Times.

There was plenty of science on the ground in India, but some were not impressed. In Taregna, some folks believed that the obstruction of the sight of the eclipse by overcast skies (it's monsoon season) happened for a reason. " The scientists have made a mockery of this divine thing. It is because of this that no one here could watch the eclipse," a devotee explained.

The title above comes from a Chinese legend about the celestial dragon—

When he shuts his eyes it is night

When he opens his eyes it is day

Heat lightning in the summer sky brings dragons to mind.