My Superstitious Story with the Solar Eclipse

Taroudant- A rare ‘hybrid’ solar eclipse, considered ‘the most interesting eclipse of the year,’ occurred on Sunday afternoon in Morocco. This was a natural phenomenon followed and observed by a team of scientists and common people who gathered in the plaza of “la Bibliothèque du Royaumethe” (Library of the Kingdom).

This rare natural phenomenon occurs when the moon comes between the sun and the earth, blocking light from the sun. Although it is a natural event strongly supported by scientific explanations, some people around the world still attach the event to beliefs and practices that can be simply described as superstitions.

When I was a little child, a famous solar eclipse was observed in my region. Before the event took place, a lot of rumors spread widely among people and most of them were very scared, especially children. We were already in school, but we had not learned any rational or scientific explanation of the event, so we were easily convinced by the superstitious beliefs that dominated the way of thinking of the majority in my small village.

On the morning of the eclipse, the whole village was weary. Therefore, streets were vacant and nearly everybody was indoors. However, the curiosity drove me and some other interested friends of mine to the street just to know what will happen. There we learned that Amghar, a person in charge of leading the village and reporting every single event to the authorities in the city, arrested two women in the graveyard for digging the tombs and exercising witchcraft.

Under a paramount shock, I quickly ran back home and told my family what happened. Ridiculously, some of the villagers claimed that the two spiteful witches were behind the shade that covered the whole village for some time. The rumors went viral and children my age, and specifically women, believed that those anonymous witches cast magical spells on the sun that caused this ominous and unexplained abnormal sight in the sky.

That event and other cultural superstitious beliefs I heard about women made me surrender to their “magical power” and consequently kept a distance from them. Culturally, a widow, who didn’t respect the required time of bereavement, can turn into a violent mule at nights. These ungrounded practices are believed to thrive at the occurrence of a solar or lunar eclipse.

From that time, seeing a woman in the graveyard strikingly scares me to death, for it is difficult to get rid of those illogical thoughts from childhood.

However, it is not only my village that had such irrational explanations to the solar eclipse. It is not only African and Asian cultures that predict social disorder after the occurrence of a solar eclipse.

“If you do a worldwide survey of eclipse lore, the theme that constantly appears, with few exceptions, is it’s always a disruption of the established order,” said E. C. Krupp, director of theGriffith Observatory in Los Angeles, California.

In Hindu mythology, it is believed that the two demons, Rahu and Ketu, swallow the sun causing eclipses, snuffing out its life-giving light and causing food to become inedible and water undrinkable.

Some pregnant women who believe in superstitions believe that they should stay indoors during an eclipse to protect their baby from developing abnormalities.

In the time of the Emperors of China, eclipses were ranked among the portents of disaster. The greatest eclipse that swept across China in 2009 was explained and discussed at length in the news and scholarly articles, and some related it to the fall of the communist party in China.

This kind of thinking in today’s world is not acceptable at all. Although solar eclipses can be harmful if observed directly with naked eye, there are no relations between the event and the social chaos and disorder that is taking place in certain areas in the world.