Austinites and thousands of tourists stood facing the sky on April 8, hoping to catch a glimpse of the sun through the dark, looming clouds.
Several businesses sold eclipse merchandise and glasses and hosted viewing parties. The university canceled classes that would have interfered with the event and hosted 16 viewing locations around campus. In front of the tower, the Longhorn band played the iconic “Also Sprach Zarathustra” theme from Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Many savored the event. Some valued the experience for its rarity, while others expressed gratitude for the opportunity to witness the spectacle.
Though many people value eclipses for the scientific spectacle they are, some communities assign spiritual meaning to astronomical events like this.
Those invested in astrology view the eclipse as an opportunity to begin a new chapter in life. Yarrow and Sage, a metaphysical shop in the area, hosted a special edition of their monthly Witches’ Market at Jester King Brewery.
“This [eclipse] is happening with the Sun & Moon in the Zodiac sign Aries – this independent fire sign eclipse can super boost your power, confidence, and bring a huge surge of activating energy to your life,” the shop said in an advertisement for the market.
Brent Landau is an associate professor of instruction at the University of Texas at Austin Department of Religious Studies. He specializes in New Testament Christianity and is also an undergraduate teaching specialist in his department. He teaches an undergraduate studies class called “Religion and Outer Space.” He also hosted the lecture series, “Black Hole Sun: Solar Eclipses and Religion” the week before the eclipse to educate those interested in the overlap between the two topics.
“Throughout human history, eclipses have been one of those natural phenomena human beings have been most fascinated by,” Landau said. “But also, the most apprehensive because the typical way of interpreting an eclipse is bad news for somebody or an ominous sign.”
The last total eclipse over the land that would later become Austin was in 1397. While there are no records to give us insight into how the people living on this land may have reacted to the eclipse, different indigenous communities had their own interpretations for the event. Groups like the Coahuiltecans and Tonkawas that inhabited the area around that time may have interpreted the experience as spiritual or a bad omen within their community.
While an eclipse may feel supernatural, people have been able to use science to map out their paths for centuries. Historians said Edmond Halley, the namesake of Halley’s comet, made the first true prediction of an eclipse in 1715. However, there is debate over other earlier predictions, like Greek philosopher Thales and the 585 B.C. eclipse and evidence of eclipse tracking in the Babylonian and Mayan civilizations.
Today, scientists can predict the path, arrival, and duration of an eclipse down to the miles and seconds. In Austin, the April 8 eclipse started at 12:17 p.m., with one minute and 40 seconds of totality around 1:35 p.m. The entire event was over by 3 p.m.
In his lecture, Landau explained that the meaning of eclipses were usually interpreted after the fact, usually to someone of power. For example, a war was stopped in response to the 585 B.C. eclipse and resolved by treaty after an eclipse was interpreted as a bad omen from divine beings. These more ancient communities did have limited knowledge of eclipses.
“Some people heard from elders who maybe saw the eclipse themselves or heard about it from members of their community,” Landau said. “It was a combination of people who were frightened and people who were like ‘Oh, we’ve seen this before.’”
Landau said his conversations with students centered on how to maximize their chances of having a clear view of the event. He said the phenomenon also triggered several interesting conversations with colleagues and other people in the religious studies field. Today, religious groups tend to respect the eclipse for the scientific anomaly that it is.
However, Landau said there are still conspiracists jumping to conclusions. He said he came across academic writing making connections between Christian symbols and motifs and the eclipse path and cycle to suggest Jesus’s second coming. This connects to a theory that a solar eclipse may have occurred during the Crucifixion. Astronomers have disproved this, as no eclipse occurred in the region during that time and the sky allegedly darkened for three hours, while an eclipse can only last a maximum of seven and a half minutes.
“Scholars are trying to understand religious groups and texts and we really try not to resort to any sort of supernatural explanation,” Landau said.