There surely is spiritual significance in ALL these things : )
"And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.
The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come.
And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the LORD shall be delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the LORD has said, and in the remnant whom the LORD shall call." Joel 2:30-32
"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also." Gen 1:14-16
Isn't it just AMAZING how God set up Creation...."the greater light to rule the Day, and the lesser light to RULE THE NIGHT"....
In the Poetic Edda account found in Grimnismal, we are introduced to the wolves that pursue the Sun and Moon:
"Skoll the wolf who shall scare the Moon
Till he flies to the Wood-of-Woe:
Hati the wolf, Hridvitnir's kin,
Who shall pursue the Sun."
We know that Sunna (the Goddess of the Sun) drives the sun forth in her chariot pulled by two horses, endlessly pursued by Hati. Mani (God of the Moon and her brother), drives the moon forth in his chariot pulled by horses and is also pursued by a wolf. To have the Sun or Moon 'devoured' was, as this story appears in its full context, one of the events prophesied to occur when Ragnarok (or the apocalypse) happened.
The visual progression of any eclipse, looks vaguely like someone is taking 'bites' out of the sun/moon.
In the Poetic Edda account found in Vaf?r??nism?l, we see mention that once Sunna is devoured, that her daughter (unnamed in the literature) will take her mother's place driving the Sun across the heavens.
What these two accounts show us is that yes indeed eclipses were viewed as significant events, and that there was a sense that even after Ragnarok some form of life would still be around. Now knowing exactly how the ancient Prue-Christian peoples acted when such events occurred remains a mystery. In part because they were primarily an oral people, and it was primarily Christian scribes a century or so after conversion that penned many of the mythologies about this ancient culture.
As a modern day practitioner of Asatru, and with my understanding of science, I view an eclipse in awe and reverence. It reminds me of the balance of life that enables us to exist at all. The Sun keeps us warm, but the Moon regulates our seasons, helps us maintain our planetary axis, and gives us manageable tides (without which the tidal forces operating on the earth would make the oceans waters bulge, so that from space instead of a sphere we'd resemble a football, and the tides would be very violently dramatic). Evolutionary scientists now say that without the Moon life may never have evolved out of the seas.
So last night I hailed and watched silver-gleaming Mani in his game of peek-a-boo. It was a wonderful spectacle for Mother's Night, the first night of Yule.
Depends on the Asatruar you talk to. I am infamous for not being a fan of the Eddas. Its seeped in Classical and Christian influence. I wish we would take it out of our "standard reading" because people put way too much stock in it.
Its just an eclipse to me. I put most of my time and energy into worshiping my ancestors, taking care of my home and family and friends, and veneration of the gods through the gifts of luck. The eclipse is pretty and I can speculate what my ancestors would have thought about it, but I don't know so I'm not going to stress it.
I know eclipses are significant to Wicca, do Asatru believe they hold any importance?
