(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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