Going….
going…
Gone (almost).
We drove to Manitou Beach under the full moon around 2 AM, so tired I shouldn’t have been behind the wheel. But I woke up as we watched the moon redden into eclipse, awed by its beauty and darkness.
The physical science is fascinating. The NASA website, for instance, says that a lunar eclipse can only occur during a full moon. During an eclipse, the Earth passes between the sun and the moon, and the moon’s reflected light from the sun is temporarily in the Earth’s shadow. The moon appears red because of the filtering and refracting effects of our atmosphere.
An eclipse stirs more than intellectual curiosity. The hour we spent watching the clear, black sky, listening to the waves on the beach, wrestling with the camera, and exchanging quiet greetings with a couple on the porch of a nearby house, spun the moon’s magic of romance and madness, tides, danger and the supernatural. It suspended my disbelief in things unknown. All things seemed possible, even probable, under that devoured moon.
In Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the effects of our actions are multiplied by 1000 during a lunar eclipse, for good or for ill.
Another tradition has it that the eclipsed moon resembles a more human face than when it fully reflects the light of the sun, a symbol of how we are diminished when we see only our own intellect and achievements, rather than the greater light of the truth reflected within us.
The mystery of the moon, as it’s swallowed into blood-red shadow and then emerges anew, makes poets of us all, if only in the silence of our hearts.
althea, this is lovely. I missed the eclipse — thank you for bringing it to me in all its mystery and magic.