Consumed by rage, he continually seeks revenge on the sun and moon for informing Vishnu about his nectar theft. The decapitated head became the undying Rahu.ĭivine comeuppance left Rahu with something of a chip on his shoulder-and also with no shoulders. Lord Vishnu wouldn’t stand for this, however, and decapitated Svarbhānu, before the liquid could pass down his throat. Originally known as Svarbhānu, the wrathful demigod sought to live forever by drinking Amrita, the nectar of immortality. Public Domain Rahu the Beheaded Asura Hinduismįew eclipse myths can match the horror of Hinduism’s Rahu. A depiction of the god Vishnu beheading Svarbhānu, whose disembodied head became known as Rahu. Luckily, Ra and the defenders aboard his sky barge always manage to fight free of the serpent’s shadowy coils. Every so often, Apep nearly consumes the sundisc, resulting in an eclipse. The serpent pursues Ra pulls the burning sundisc across the sky, lighting the world. Thus, Ancient Egyptian cosmology gives us Apep, the cosmic world serpent.Īpep (or Apophis) embodies chaos and death, making the monster a natural adversary for the sun god Ra.
As you might imagine, that puts a rather nefarious spin on the sudden obstruction of the midday sun. Many solar eclipse myths revolve around the duality of light and darkness, good and evil. Hajor/ CC BY-SA 3.0 Apep the Moon Serpent Ancient Egypt Apep displayed in a tomb in Deir el-Medina, Luxor, Egypt. Meet a few of them now, and remember their audacity the next time you gaze up at an eclipse. Global eclipse mythology features a rogues’ gallery of moon thieves and moon-hungry behemoths. Certainly, generations of tradition allowed mythology to evolve and fulfill various cultural purposes. We often don’t know to what extent ancient cultures created stories to explain eclipses or saw their existing myths reflected in the movements of sun and moon. While it’s tempting to interpret such tales as purely explanatory, the relationship between natural phenomena and myth isn’t always so clear. Without a full understanding of planetary motion and celestial alignment, we attributed the disruption of solar and lunar cycles to cosmic monsters.
Public DomainĪrmed with a little science, modern humans can relish in the celestial mechanics of an eclipse without fearing the end times-but it wasn’t always that way.īefore we recognized the moon’s potential to block out the sun and vanish into Earth’s shadow, we sought answers from the gods.
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