Total Eclipse of the Sun (visible at 55% in San Diego)
on Monday, April 8, 2024—Michael J. Christensen, Ph.D.
“The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood,
before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.”—Joel 2:31
The first time I saw a sun eclipse was in Lake Jackson, Texas, when I was seven. My father helped me put a pin hole in cardboard box to view the event without burning my eyes. This time, I have two pairs of 100% UV protection sunglasses. Like the ancients, I tend to view eclipses, comets, and planetary conjunctions are portends of bad stuff to come…
In preparation for today’s dramatic, possibly 'apocalyptic' (revelatory) eclipse of the Sun, I pulled from my Bookshelf a couple of volumes of what I had written back in the late 1990’s about why cosmic signs and wonders in the sky tend to be interpreted apocalyptically in popular religious culture. We seem to be living through another apocalyptic moment around the world, given the clustering of ‘wars and rumors of war’, earthquakes and famines, terrorism and ethnic cleansing, cultural civil wars, signs in the heavens, not to mention the current rush on gold and Bitcoin as a hedge against some kind of economic collapse.
For me it’s instructive to remember how earlier cultures interpreted their ‘signs of the times’ and coped with their cultural anxiety and insecurity by projecting meanking onto astronomic and astrological events. Signs and wonders--like eclipses, conjunctions, and comets overhead—interpreted by many as portends of terrible things to come--also brought hope by daring to believe in divine intervention.
In my doctoral dissertation of 1997, I studied apocalyptic interpretations of the Chernobyl Disaster of April 26, 1986, popularly interpreted in the Soviet Union at time as the “Wormwood Star” of Revelation 7:11 as signaling the end of an era, sickness, and death of a generation of children, and the collapse of the old Soviet Union. (“The Chernobyl Apocalypse”, 1996).
In my book, Children of Chernobyl, we tell a tragic yet inspiring story of how young people in Belarus, exposed to Chernobyl radiation as children, are coping as adults in post-Soviet Belarus. And why they still view the Wormwood Star apocalyptically (Children of Chernobyl: Raising Hope from the Ashes, 1997). My essays In the Encyclopedia of Millennialism, I explain why and how astronomic events are interpreted apocalyptically by so many in trouble times, and offer a theory—‘Marking Millennial Moments’—on how to predict and interpret the beginnings and ends of eras in apocalyptic history. (Encyclopedia of Millennialism, Richard Landes, editor.2000).
Which prepares me for today’s special ‘sign and wonder in the heavens’—a dramatic eclipse of the Sun by the Moon—which Apple News says is a day to remember. Why?
- Solar activity is peaking in its 11-year cycle—producing spectacular sunspots and solar flares.
- Jupiter, Mercury, Venus, Saturn, and Mars will align for a moment with the Eclipse. Astrologists say that cosmic conjunctions like this mean something…
- The feared “Devil Comet” may reveal itself between Jupiter and the Eclipse for a fleeting moment. “Bailey’s Beads” and the “Diamond Ring” will appear around the moon’s edge to dazzle discerning observers.
- Finally, according to Apple News, “appearing as a delicate, ethereal halo of pearly white light surrounding the dark silhouette of the Moon, the sight of the Sun’s corona promises to be spectacular.” (“11 reasons why April’s total eclipse will be the cosmic event of the century” by Holly Spanner, April 6, 2024).
My daughter Megan traveled with friends to Monterrey, Mexico to experience the Holy Eclipse on its “path of totality”—causing serious FOMO in her father. This time I will be content to see the partial eclipse from my deck in San Diego. But next time, I hope to travel to wherever I need to be to see the "Sun blotted out by the Moon before the great and awesome Day of the Lord.'
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