Today we’re having a solar eclipse here in the UK and in other parts of the world, and from a British Folk Magic point of view, it’s far more interesting than all the modern talk about manifestation portals, sudden transformation and whatever else somebody has managed to fit onto a colourful graphic this morning. Eclipses have an enormous history in Britain, but it isn’t a history of special eclipse spells or convenient lists of things to attract. It’s a history of omens, warnings, religion, astrology, fear, politics and people looking up at the sky and wondering what on Earth was going on.
The eclipse will be partial throughout Britain, although more than 90% of the Sun will be covered here in Lancashire. It begins shortly after 6pm, reaches its greatest point at around 7.10pm and ends shortly after 8pm. We won’t experience total darkness, but the light may become noticeably dimmer and stranger, the temperature may fall and birds and animals may react as though evening has arrived rather unexpectedly. That’s assuming the Lancashire clouds allow us to see any of it, of course. They do enjoy inserting themselves into every astronomical event as though they’ve been personally invited.
Now, before we get into the omens, there’s something important we need to clear up. People in the past weren’t all wandering around believing that something had eaten the Sun because nobody understood eclipses. Educated people in medieval Britain knew that a solar eclipse occurred when the Moon passed between the Earth and the Sun. Bede explained the cause of both solar and lunar eclipses in the early 8th Century, and astronomers were calculating and recording them centuries before the invention of the telescope.
Understanding how an eclipse happened didn’t stop people asking what it meant, though. Those were 2 different questions. You can know exactly how thunder is produced and still consider a storm appearing at an important moment to be an omen. British Folk Magic has always been full of that kind of thinking. The natural cause of an event doesn’t prevent it from carrying meaning.
Solar eclipses were recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle because they were considered significant events. They appear beside accounts of battles, invasions, royal deaths, church affairs, famine and changes of power. That doesn’t mean the chroniclers believed every eclipse directly caused the event written beside it. Chronicles weren’t diaries in the modern sense, and entries were sometimes written or copied years later. What their placement tells us is that unusual events in the sky were considered part of the history of the land, not something separate from it.
An eclipse in 878 was recorded as lasting for about an hour during the afternoon. This was the same year Alfred the Great was fighting the Great Heathen Army and taking refuge before his victory at Edington, so the eclipse became part of a year already filled with invasion, violence and uncertainty. We need to be careful about claiming that people gave it one fixed meaning, because the surviving record doesn’t provide us with a tidy little interpretation. It does show that the eclipse was important enough to preserve alongside the political and military events of the year.
The eclipse of 1133 gives us an even better example of how an omen could grow around an event. On 2nd August, the day after King Henry I sailed from England to Normandy, a total solar eclipse crossed northern England and southern Scotland. Contemporary writers described the Sun becoming a thin crescent, the stars appearing during the day and people being frightened by the darkness.
Henry never returned to England alive. He died in Normandy in December 1135, more than 2 years after the eclipse, and the country later fell into the civil war known as the Anarchy. Chroniclers connected the eclipse with his final departure and death, and it eventually became known as King Henry’s Eclipse.
That gap of more than 2 years is quite revealing. The eclipse wasn’t necessarily witnessed, instantly interpreted and given one agreed meaning before everyone went home for their tea. Its significance developed through what happened afterwards. Once the king had died and the succession had descended into chaos, the eclipse seen immediately after his last departure from England appeared ominous in retrospect. The event became part of the story because later events seemed to supply its meaning.
This is where the older idea of omen reading is very different from the modern habit of assigning every celestial event a fixed magical correspondence. An omen wasn’t always expected to explain itself immediately. It could be observed, remembered and understood later, once events around it had begun to form a pattern.
Solar eclipses were particularly associated with rulers, governments and the condition of the country. The Sun represented authority, order, life and divine favour. If the Sun appeared to lose its light, even temporarily, it could be read as a warning that earthly authority might also weaken. The death or illness of a monarch, rebellion, invasion, political upheaval and disputes over succession were all possible interpretations.
There was also a Christian layer to this. Darkness during daylight recalled biblical accounts of the Plagues of Egypt and the darkness at the Crucifixion. Medieval descriptions of the signs preceding Judgement Day also included the Sun losing its light. For somebody who had never seen an eclipse and had no warning that one was coming, daylight suddenly fading and stars appearing overhead must have felt deeply unsettling, especially when sermons and religious stories had already linked a darkened Sun with divine judgement.
That didn’t make every eclipse a universal prediction of the end of the world. Context was important. An eclipse seen during war might be read in connection with war. One occurring during disease, food shortages or failed crops might become a warning about the health of people, animals or the land. If a king was unpopular, elderly or already ill, attention might turn towards the Crown. Omens were interpreted within the circumstances surrounding them.
By the 17th Century, eclipse prediction had become part of the enormously popular almanac trade. Almanacs contained calendars, weather forecasts, tide information, medical astrology, planetary movements and predictions about the coming year. They weren’t obscure books read only by wealthy scholars. They reached ordinary households, farmers, sailors, tradespeople and medical practitioners, carrying astronomical information and astrological interpretation out into everyday life.
The great eclipse of 1652 is one of the best examples. It occurred on Monday 29th March according to the calendar then used in Britain, which is 8th April on our present calendar. Totality crossed Scotland, while northern England experienced a very deep eclipse. It became known as Black Monday, and in Scotland as Mirk Monday, using the old word for darkness.
The timing could hardly have been better for anybody wanting to predict political disaster. Charles I had been executed only 3 years earlier, Britain had been torn apart by civil wars, Scotland and England were in conflict and the country was trying to work out what government even looked like without a king. An eclipse appearing during all that uncertainty was never going to be interpreted as a cheerful little sign that everybody ought to start a new hobby.
Astrologers William Lilly and Nicholas Culpeper published extensive predictions about it. Between them they warned of political unrest, the fall of monarchies, poverty, war, plague, storms, shipwrecks, fire, famine, cattle disease, invasion, murder and disorder across Europe. They covered so many possibilities that there was a fair chance something unpleasant would happen somewhere and allow them to claim success afterwards, which is a method of prediction that hasn’t entirely disappeared.
Culpeper connected the Sun with the monarch and the governing order of the world. If its light was obscured, he believed rulers and governments were threatened. Eclipses were also blamed for illness and harm during pregnancy, although those ideas had come through older medical and astrological writings and weren’t uniquely British beliefs.
Not everybody accepted these predictions. Within a week of the 1652 eclipse, an anonymous pamphlet appeared attacking Lilly, Culpeper and the other astrologers for their exaggerated warnings and failed forecasts. London hadn’t become as dark as predicted, and people could still read indoors. The pamphlet accused the astrologers of contradictions and frightening people unnecessarily.
I rather like that because it reminds us there was never a single historical British response to eclipses. Some people feared them. Some treated them as divine warnings. Some made astrological predictions. Some understood the astronomy perfectly well while still believing the event carried meaning. Others thought the predictions were complete nonsense and wrote entire pamphlets saying so. People have always argued about this stuff.
By 1715, Edmond Halley was able to calculate and publish a map showing the expected path of a solar eclipse across England. His prediction was remarkably accurate and gave people advance warning of what they would see. Clergymen also preached against treating predictable movements of the Sun and Moon as supernatural threats. The eclipse was increasingly presented as an astronomical event which could be calculated, mapped and observed.
Even then, older beliefs didn’t vanish overnight. Folk belief rarely disappears simply because somebody publishes a scientific explanation. Weather lore continued after meteorology developed. Herbal charms survived alongside medicine. Omens, dreams and animal signs carried on being read because the question wasn’t only, “What caused this?” It was also, “Why did I witness it now, and what might be happening around me?”
So what did a solar eclipse mean within British Folk Magic?
The truthful answer is that it didn’t have one universal meaning. The strongest historical associations are disturbance in authority, danger to rulers, war, rebellion, sickness, scarcity, severe weather, trouble affecting livestock and crops, divine displeasure and the interruption of the expected order of life. Which meaning people chose depended upon where they lived, what was already happening and what followed afterwards.
There’s no reliable evidence for a single ancient British eclipse ceremony, a traditional collection of eclipse herbs or a universal rule that spells mustn’t be worked during one. There’s also no historical basis for declaring that every eclipse brings personal renewal or instantly closes one part of your life and opens another. Those are modern interpretations, and people are free to use them, but they shouldn’t be dressed up as ancient British folklore.
From a British Folk Magic point of view, the most faithful thing we can take from the history is the habit of observation. An eclipse is a disruption of the familiar pattern of the sky, and disruptions were watched closely. The change in light, the movement or silence of birds, the behaviour of animals, the weather, the condition of the land and events within the community could all become part of how an omen was understood.
The behaviour of birds and animals is especially interesting because they respond to the sudden reduction in light and temperature. Birds may begin evening calls, return towards their roosts or become briefly quiet. Insects may change their activity and livestock may behave as though night is approaching. These reactions aren’t supernatural in themselves, but that wouldn’t have prevented earlier observers from including them in the wider sign. If the Sun darkened and the birds fell silent, the whole event could feel far more significant than a diagram in an almanac could ever convey.
The important part is not deciding in advance what every detail means. If a rook calls during the eclipse, it doesn’t automatically mean death. If the dog behaves oddly, it hasn’t necessarily received a message concerning the government. Omens gain meaning through repetition, circumstance and what follows. Without that, we’re just grabbing ordinary behaviour and forcing it into a dramatic story because we’ve already decided something mysterious ought to happen.
For me, today’s eclipse belongs to that long British history of watching the world and remembering what it does. Not panicking, not inventing a ceremony and not rushing to announce that every odd thing which happens during the next fortnight was foretold by the Sun. Just noticing the light, the air, the animals and what is happening in the land and community around us.