Moon Eclipse

Last night, when I was cycling and watching the Moon eclipse, I recalled the first time when I observed it, in October 2004, and that unforgettable first impression of the amazing phenomenon.

I remember well how the perfectly bright full Moon started being dimmed with that pale shade, and the first tiny bit of darkness corrupted its beautiful circle. Suddenly, all the living beings around (I was cycling in the fields on the edge of Tel-Aviv), all the beings got silent: no bird singing, no insect chirring – no sound around, just dead and disturbing silence. I got so sincerely horrified, as probably my ancestors did facing the same awesome omen: staying in an open field and feeling the nature around, one can see how real and powerful is the celestial influence.

They say, okay, Moon is close to Earth, and this is just gravitation; the influence of the planets is negligible. But is the true meaning of eclipses just in cracks in the crust causing earthquakes (like it happened yesterday in Greece, 6.5 magnitude)? Should we interpret such omens only in the physical context?

Famous English astrologer of the XVII century William Lilly wrote the following:

“Signs or apparitions which are seen in Heaven and do appear without motion and against the course of nature, such prodigies as these never appear unto men without a great change or mutation of the kingdoms of that climate in which they were visible”.

One can see that the ancient wise men considered natural phenomena symbolically and directly connected what happened above with what happened below. Indeed, this required the faith: it unifies the nature and philosophy, the observed and the felt.

Whether it is a right approach… Well, read today news about the troubles in Serbia…

Those who vigorously reject the above “superstitions”, I would like to ask what is the statistical probability of the existence of such a peculiar system Earth-Moon-Sun, where three bodies are all placed at arbitrary distances from each other, perform complex orbital movements – and yet sometimes manage to align into a perfect triple, so that their size and distances are just right for them to cover each other and cause an eclipse… This is what science calls “coincidence”. I call it Divine Will.