Before the understanding of the solar eclipse, the responses from this occurrence has been mostly negative. It is because the human race attaches so much importance to the light of the sun that cutting the sunlight for a minute or two, as it happens during an eclipse, has been given rise to myths and superstitions. Amidst the mythical causes and effects of the solar eclipse, rose ways to counteract with its so called effects.
Many believed that an eclipse is an omen of some natural disaster or the death or downfall of a ruler. Another common myth involves an invisible dragon or other demon who devours the sun during an eclipse. The Chinese would produce great noise and commotion like banging on drums or pans to frighten away the dragon and restore the sun. In India, people may submerge themselves in water up to their necks, believing this act of worship will help the Sun and Moon defend themselves against the dragon. In Japan, the custom is to cover wells during an eclipse to prevent poison from dropping into them from the darkened sky. And recently, in the last century, the Chinese Imperial Navy fired its ceremonial guns during an eclipse to scare off the invisible dragon.
Not every culture that witnessed the solar eclipse felt that it was damning to their society, so eclipses may not have been universally feared. In Tahiti, for example, eclipses have been interpreted as the lovemaking of the Sun and the Moon. And the Eskimos, Aleuts, and Tlingits believe an eclipse shows that the Sun and the Moon temporarily leave their places in the sky and check to see that things are going all right on Earth.
If someone would have told them then, that the solar eclipse is a result of the moon coming between the earth and the sun while revolving in its orbit around our planet, they definitely would not have been believed. But the not so recent discovery of how the eclipse came to be, changed people’s perspectives all over the world.
After the known cause of the eclipse have been discovered, people now look forward to seeing the “disappearance” of the sun. For many long awaited eclipses, hordes of people both foreign and native gather around to watch the occasion. Some eclipse followers were loyal enough to travel thousands of miles away from home to become witnesses.
In the past, it may have been extremely frightening to experience a moment where sunlight is suddenly cut off due to the stories that were built around the event. Luckily, due to research, people became more educated and the hysteria subsided. We sometimes forget that this world was once ignorant and that instead of science, superstition played a major part in life, and because of those beliefs, many natural things, such as a solar eclipse, were turned into a fearful phenomenon.
The world that once concocted rituals to dispel eclipses, gradually transited to a world which not only accepts it, but now has many enthusiasts that tracks down every eclipse just for the love of watching it in its act.

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