If you’ve spent any time reading about eclipses online this week (what with the upcoming eclipse on August 12, 2026), you’ve probably seen a list.

Don’t eat. Don’t cook. If you’re pregnant, stay inside, and maybe pin something metal to your shirt while you’re at it. Don’t let a baby be born during the eclipse. Don’t start anything new.

Half the internet treats these as quaint old-world nonsense.

The other half treats them as ancient wisdom we’ve lost touch with.

Let’s dig into where eclipse superstitions come from, because the real story is more interesting than either version. And it says a lot about how humans process a sky that suddenly, inexplicably, feels wrong.

Eclipse myth #1: Something is eating the sun (and it’s almost always an animal)

Long before anyone understood orbital mechanics, cultures on nearly every continent landed on some version of the same explanation: Something is eating the sun.

In China, it was a celestial dog or dragon. This is where the tradition of banging pots, pans, and drums during an eclipse comes from.

It’s a literal noise campaign to scare the beast off and get the sun back.

The word for eclipse in Chinese, shih, translates roughly to “to eat.”

Vietnam and Korea have close cousins of the same idea.

The Choctaw told of Fvni Lusa, the Black Squirrel, gnawing at the sun out of hunger, and used the same strategy (make noise, scare it off).

In parts of the Andes, Inca tradition read the eclipse as the sun god Inti expressing displeasure.

Zimbabwean folklore names a crocodile. The Apapocúva-Guaraní of eastern Paraguay and northern Brazil tell of a bat or jaguar chewing on the sun or moon. The Pomo people of the northwestern U.S. have a story about a bear taking a bite out of the moon.

In Hindu mythology, it’s the demon Rahu. In this story, Rahu is a severed head, still very much alive after being decapitated for stealing a sip of the gods’ immortality elixir. He’s forever chasing the sun and moon across the sky for revenge (and occasionally catches one).

It’s worth sitting with how consistent this is.

Cultures with zero contact with each other (at least as the official narrative goes…more on THAT in another post), working with zero shared astronomy, arrived at strikingly similar images. A hungry animal (or an angry severed head) devouring the light.

Some languages even use the same word for “eclipse” as they do for “bite” or “eat.”

That’s not coincidence so much as it’s pattern recognition under pressure. The sun vanishing in daylight is alarming enough that the mind almost automatically reaches for something with teeth.

I’d argue that’s not a myth to be embarrassed about.

It’s a genuinely reasonable guess, made by genuinely intelligent people, before anyone had the tools to point to different ideas.

Ancient Egyptian tradition told of the serpent Apep attacking the sun god Ra mid-journey across the sky. Again, a threat, again requiring ritual and prayer to see the sun through it safely.

These weren’t people being foolish. They were paying close attention to the sky and building meaning around what they saw, which is exactly what we’re still doing, just with different instruments.

Eclipse myth #2: The wolves and fire dogs I didn’t expect to fall in love with

Two traditions in particular stopped me in my tracks when I was researching this, and I want to give them real space, because they’re gorgeous, even completely divorced from the “is it true” question.

Norse mythology

Norse myth gives us Sköll and Hati. They’re two giant wolves, born of the trickster god Loki and the giantess Angrboða, eternally chasing the sun goddess Sól and the moon god Máni across the sky.

Sköll (“Treachery”) hunts the sun. Hati (“He Who Hates”) hunts the moon.

An eclipse, in this telling, is the moment one of the wolves nearly closes its jaws on its quarry. The sun or moon slips free at the last second, buying the world a little more time before the chase resumes.

The wolves never stop. They’re not evil, exactly. They’re closer to an inevitability, a clock running toward Ragnarök, the mythic end and rebirth of the world, when they’re finally prophesied to catch what they’ve been chasing since the beginning.

Vikings would reportedly shout and bang on things during an eclipse, the same instinct as the pot-banging elsewhere, urging the wolf to let go.

It’s a genuinely haunting image (light as something perpetually, narrowly escaping the dark) and I can’t stop thinking about how well it captures what an eclipse feels like to witness, wolves or no wolves.

Korean mythology

In Korea, there are the Bulgae (“fire dogs”).

This one might be my favorite eclipse myth I’ve ever come across.

The story goes that the king of a dark realm called Gamangnara grew tired of living without light, and sent his fire dogs into the sky to steal the sun and moon and bring them home.

Every time, the dogs fail. The sun is too hot, and burns their mouths the instant they bite down. The moon is too cold, and freezes their jaws just as fast.

Each attempt (and each failure) is an eclipse.

The Bulgae aren’t villains in this story. They’re loyal, and they’re trying, and the thing they’ve been sent to fetch is simply not fetchable, not by mouth, not by any creature built like them.

There’s something almost tender in that. An eclipse as a doomed errand, run again and again by a creature who won’t stop trying for a king who won’t stop asking.

(I have a soft spot for this one in particular, malamute owner that I am. A powerful, loyal dog running headlong at something too big and too hot to hold, and doing it anyway…sure, okay, I see myself in that.)

Eclipse myth #3: Where “don’t eat” and “stay inside if you’re pregnant” come from

This is the pair of superstitions with maybe the most staying power today. It isn’t one belief…it’s a whole cluster with several independent origins that converged.

The food warning
In India and parts of China, there’s a longstanding belief that food prepared or eaten during an eclipse becomes tainted.

It’s considered spoiled by “poisoned rays” or negative energy released while the sun is compromised.

It’s common for people to avoid cooking, eating, or even drinking water during the eclipse window, sometimes fasting through it entirely and only breaking the fast with a ritual cleansing bath afterward.

The pregnancy warnings (and the safety pins)
This one gets super specific. Aztec tradition held that a solar eclipse happened because something had taken a bite out of the sun…and by extension, the moon.

The fear was that if a pregnant woman looked directly at the eclipse, her baby would be born with a similar “bite.” Could be a cleft lip or palate, something like that.

Protective measures followed logically from that belief.

Aztec women once placed an obsidian blade against the belly as a ward.

Over centuries, that shifted into the version still practiced today across Mexico and much of Latin America. A red ribbon, red underwear, or a safety pin worn against the skin, believed to symbolically “cut” the eclipse’s influence before it can reach the baby.

In Persian folklore, there’s a separate, oddly specific caution.

If a pregnant woman touches her own face during an eclipse, the baby will be born with a birthmark.

In parts of India, the advice extends to lying flat and still for the duration, or tucking something metal (scissors, a knife, etc.) under the pillow or mattress as protection.

None of this is “unhinged old-world superstition”
It’s what happens when a culture takes a frightening, unexplained event seriously enough to build protective ritual around the most vulnerable person in the room.

That instinct (protect the pregnant mother, protect the baby) is the same instinct behind basically every pregnancy taboo in every culture, eclipse-related or not.

The specific mechanism (bite marks, poisoned food, harmful rays) is folklore. The underlying impulse is care.

Eclipse myth #4: When the sun and moon are fighting

Not every tradition centers on something devouring the light.

Some of the most striking eclipse folklore is about conflict, not consumption. And what a community does in response.

The Batammaliba people of northern Togo and Benin tell a story in which a solar eclipse is a fight breaking out between the sun and the moon.

It’s a spillover of the same anger and discord that exists among people on earth.

And the response isn’t fear, or noise-making to scare anything off.

It’s reconciliation.

During an eclipse, Batammaliba communities traditionally come together to set aside old feuds and grievances, making peace with each other as a way of encouraging the sun and moon to do the same.

The eclipse isn’t a threat to survive. It’s an invitation. A rare, sky-sized nudge to fix what’s broken between people while the sun and moon work out what’s broken between them.

I love this one because it flips the whole emotional register of eclipse folklore.

Instead of something dangerous is happening, protect yourself, it’s something significant is happening, and it’s asking something of you.

Different way to approach the whole thing entirely.

The Navajo (Diné) practice

I want to handle this next one differently than everything above, because it isn’t folklore in the past tense. It’s a tradition actively practiced today, by living communities, including during this week’s eclipse.

In Diné (Navajo) tradition, a solar eclipse is understood as a sacred, intimate moment. The sun undergoing a kind of rebirth.

The customary practice is to go inside, close the curtains, and not look at the eclipse.

Not out of fear of the sun itself, but out of respect, giving the sun what’s sometimes described as privacy during a profound moment.

Families traditionally observe several hours of stillness around the event. That means no eating, no drinking, no sleeping, no unnecessary activity.

Instead, they’ll sit quietly, reflecting, sometimes sharing traditional teachings passed down through generations.

It’s frequently described less as a rule to follow out of fear and more as a practice of intentionally stepping into hózhó (a Diné concept of harmony and balance with the natural and cosmic order).

This isn’t a superstition to debunk, and I’m not framing it that way. It’s a living cultural and spiritual practice that’s still meaningful to the folks who hold it. And it’s still being taught to new generations by choice.

I’m including it here specifically because it makes an important point by contrast. Not everything on the “eclipse rules” list is fear dressed up as folklore.

Some of it is reverence, intact and unbroken, still doing exactly what it was always meant to do.

So, is any of this scientifically real?

I mean, ultimately, you need to decide how much The Established Science matters to you. (Believe me, I have all the feelings about this that I’ll probably get into at some point.)

For the folklore aimed at physical protection specifically (the food-poisoning fear, the pregnancy warnings, the idea that eclipses emit some uniquely harmful form of radiation), probably not so much.

NASA has addressed a bunch of the eclipse stuff directly and repeatedly, because these particular questions resurface every eclipse cycle. Here’s what NASA has to say about it all:

• Eclipses don’t emit harmful radiation that reaches you differently than any other day. The sun constantly emits various forms of radiation, eclipse or not. That includes neutrinos, which pass through your body (and the entire Earth) essentially all the time, completely harmlessly. Nothing about the moon passing in front of the sun changes what’s reaching you in any dangerous new way.
• Food doesn’t spoil or become toxic because an eclipse is happening. There’s no mechanism by which blocking sunlight for a few minutes alters the chemistry of what’s on your stove.
• There’s no evidence linking eclipse exposure to birth defects, cleft lips, birthmarks, or any pregnancy complication, full stop. This has actually been studied, because the folklore is old and widespread enough that researchers have looked into it directly. It consistently comes back empty.
• The one real, physical danger may be looking directly at the bright sun without proper eclipse glasses, same as it would be on any other day the sun is out. NASA says that risk is real and worth taking seriously. It’s just not what most of this folklore was originally warning about. (And I’m not talking about sungazing, which I love. But most folks…though not all..generally don’t sungaze at high noon, they more stick to sunrise and sunset. More on THAT in another post, too.)

So, why keep the ritual anyway, even if you don’t think the mechanism is “real”?

Here’s where I land, and where I think a lot of skeptic-vs-believer framing misses the actual point.

You don’t need the mechanism to be scientifically “real” for the ritual to be worth something.

Sitting still. Fasting for an afternoon. Wearing something red against your skin because your grandmother did, and her grandmother before her. Making noise for a wolf, or making peace with a neighbor, or giving the sun its privacy.

These practices carry generations of intention, care, and cultural continuity.

That’s real, even when strict science-minded folks say otherwise.

If a practice in your family or lineage is tied to eclipses, you don’t have to litigate it against NASA’s blog to decide it still has meaning.

What I’d gently push back on is fear as the reason to keep a practice going.

If you’re avoiding food or staying indoors out of genuine anxiety that something bad will happen to you or your baby, that’s worth digging into. The anxiety isn’t buying you any actual protection.

But if the practice is about connection, memory, reconciliation, or intention-setting? Keep it. Do it on purpose not out of fear, and it becomes something much closer to ceremony than superstition.

That’s the whole difference, really.

Ceremony is a practice you choose because it means something. Superstition is a fear you inherited without ever getting to ask why.

Sources & further reading:

• NASA, Eclipse Myths (2017 eclipse blog series)
• Britannica, “The Sun Was Eaten: 6 Ways Cultures Have Explained Eclipses”
• National Geographic, “Solar Eclipse Myths From Around the World”
• Exploratorium, “Eclipse Stories from Around the World” and “Navajo (Diné) Knowledge of the Cosmos”
• BBC Sky at Night Magazine, “Ancient Eclipses”
• Axios, “Why some will stay inside during Monday’s eclipse”
• KSLTV / KNAU / IU News, reporting on Navajo Nation eclipse traditions
• Historic Mysteries and The Norse Way, on Sköll and Hati
• Mythlok and K-Occult, on the Bulgae

Disclaimer
Nothing in this posts consistutes medical, legal, financial, or safety advice. I’m not a licensed medical professional, and nothing in this post is intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any condition, physical, emotional, or otherwise. If you’re pregnant or have health questions, please talk to your doctor or midwife. This post touches on cultural and spiritual traditions I wasn’t born into including living traditions, like Navajo (Diné) eclipse observance, that belong to communities who are still actively defining what they mean. I’ve done my best to represent these accurately and respectfully, sourced from what practitioners and cultural educators have shared publicly, but I’m a guest here, not an authority. If something here doesn’t sit right with you as a member of one of these traditions, I welcome the correction.