Eclipses

When something is eclipsed, it is blocked or obscured. Sometimes one’s feelings are eclipsed.  There are famous songs about the total eclipse of the heart.  A sense of desperate loss or oppressive void.

Fortunately, most of what we experience as eclipses arises beyond our personal worlds, beyond our own planet.  What is written about and witnessed relate to the partial or total eclipse of the moon or the sun.  Just yesterday, the earth partially blocked the rays from the sun, taking a little divot out of the moon’s usual reflective splendor.  This site was seen across the Asia subcontinent, the Middle East, and Europe, with many excellent photographs obtained to memorialize this natural phenomenon in our little solar system.  And, if that is not enough, in about 10 days, there will be a total eclipse of the sun, by the moon, which will best be seen in a line running from northwest to southeast across the USA.  It will only last, in fullness, for about 3 minutes.  But it reminds us of the incredible dynamics of planetary systems.  It also reminds us of how much these natural events would have scared people in the early civilizations on this planet.  How mystical and potential “witch-crafty” these sudden darkenings must have seemed. Even though we know how they happen now, they are still humbling, in that they are completely beyond our jurisdiction, except perhaps for the few heroes who set foo on the moon along time ago.