As Far as The Eyes Can See

The April 8 Total Solar Eclipse has brought together scholars and optometrists to religiously experience the historic event.

This as the eclipse will stretch its way from southwest Mexico and stretch through east Texas and move straight past Fort Worth, Bloomington, Indianapolis, Cleveland, and upstate New York.

To many historians and religious scholars alike, the solar eclipse religiously could bring changes to our current period that many people may not want to accept.

This article will dive into three common human parts including the eyes, the heart, and even the soul. This was explainable after any eclipse, but viewers in Indiana will get a first-hand look of the eclipse and may experience a shift in their perception of the world in some form.

Here is the religious soul etching history and religious outlooks you may need to practice before watching this year’s solar eclipse.

I. Religion

Religious historians were picked to point out that through the solar eclipse path, there will be eight cities named Nineveh and Salem that will cross paths throughout the Midwest and deep South.

According to Eclipse 2024 dot org Nineveh’s 2024 eclipse path will include Townships in Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, and upstate New York.

In 2024, the towns featuring the name Salem will cross paths in the states: Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Nebraska, Kentucky, and Maine.

This eclipse path will be a stark contrast compared to the 2017 solar eclipse path, which went south into the towns of Salem in Oregon, Nebraska, Kentucky, Tennessee, and South Carolina.

Other towns including the towns of Rapture, Indiana, and Jonah, Texas are two other states slated to cross the path of the solar eclipse this year making scholars wonder about its true significant impact on religion.

Many skeptics and experts in the field have flooded TikTok & YouTube to discuss the religious phenomenon.

Twitter X user “Navigating the Lies,” the religious freethinking social media account talked about both the 2017 and 2024 path of the eclipse in these towns. The channel quoted the Bible by saying the town of “Ninevah had 40 days to repent or face judgment from God.”

These users also say the eclipse will allow God to bring a sign or a new rapture that will cause the world to change both in our personal lives and how we have lived in a world full of corruption. Some say these changes will bring lasting impacts to our generation and create a world-changing event that will impact all of us someday after the event.

Whether a rapture truly will come soon or not is only from religious readings and might not always be true. Father Kurt Messick, an Associate Professor of Astronomy at Ivy Tech Community College in Bloomington, said via email that he may not know much about the eclipse but finds this take to be very intriguing to religious scholars like himself.

Brandon Barker, an assistant professor at the IU Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology spoke about folklores and religious skeptics at a solar eclipse workshop held on Zoom in November 2023.

He said at the conference that an interesting thing that he has had to deal with from internet users and religious posts alike is, “… how we deal with the core problem of sameness and difference across cultures. Across temporal epochs?” He said, “One of the things that we know is that clearly there are some ecological experiences that can show up in different places. A solar eclipse would be a good one. It is true that humans have been telling stories about solar eclipses. I think of humans in some ways to be quite unique in the animal kingdom. Now, there’s much of us that we can recognize in other animal species, but parts of our behavior, such as our ability to represent abstract stories in natural language, seems unique to what we are. I’ll sometimes put it this way. We seem to be the species who demands an explanation. That is to say, we want to know why.”

He ties this point by saying that scientific and human discovery brought about historical changes to a new idea called solar mythology.

II. Eyes

The eyes hold a more significant hold on our human safety and human emotions during the event.

We are supposed to keep our eyes safe by wearing glasses once the moon dances away from the sun during the minutes of totality, but according to Dr. Hin Cheung an Optometrist at the Atwater Eye Care Center associated with IU’s School of Optometry.

Cheung has been involved in organizing community workshops with several outreach programs throughout Bloomington and the surrounding areas.

The IDS reported about how to properly wear glasses during the solar eclipse and basic eye safety measures to be used throughout the eclipse, but not about religion.

Cheng referred us over to Barker’s speech. This was a part of one of the organized solar eclipse workshops held by the Department of Astrology and the School of Optometry.

Cheng said him and his team have invested the last year in organizing community workshop with the doctors at the School of Optometry. Since 2023, they have gone around to various schools discussing eye safety and how to properly protect themselves while watching the eclipse. Sometimes they go philosophical in their approach and try not to give the same cooky cutter answers about the eclipse.

According to the Denver Post during the 2017 solar eclipse, while the eclipse is happening, many see stars, galaxies, a planets lightyears ahead of human existence.

In the town of Carbondale, Illinois, which will also be home to the eclipse in 2024, many of the kids were fascinated by what they saw once they were able to take their glasses off and look at the sun before it took shape and moved again.

The human wonder according to Cheng is what satisfies those to want to take their glasses off, but his office have voiced to the public to enjoy the event even if it is religious and could have meaning in life one day.

III. Death

Death during a solar eclipse has even more historically interesting facts than you think.

As explained in the religion portion of this article, ties to religion and death bring a holy intervention to not only the soul and to the eyes, but also how the body escapes pain and suffering to find inner peace in their world.

For example, according to Britannica dot com, on May 10, 1994, serial killer John Wayne Gacy was executed on this day at the Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois by lethal injection.

On that same day another serial killer, Jeffery Dahmer, was baptized in a whirlpool tub by Christian prison minister, Roy Ratcliff at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Wisconsin as pictured in the hit Netflix drama series, “Dahmer” released in 2022.

May 10, 1994, was not just a day for two serial killers to face religious interventions, there was also an annular solar eclipse that stretched from southeast Mexico past Texas, the Stateville Correctional Facility in Illinois, through central and northern Indiana.

Sometimes karma can come to fight against good and evil, and to those who may have caused evil in the world as was the case of the stories of King Henry I, and King Mongkut, the eclipse saved both their soul and their land from utter destruction and public mediocrity.

The National Air and Space Museum said the evil deeds caused by English King Henry I on August 2, 1133 CE reached a final demise as the king died while the moon reached full totality over England. According to the article, after the death of King Henry, Historian William of Malmesbury said, “hideous darkness agitated the hearts of men.”

As for King Mongkut, Rama IV, he died on October 1, 1868, but the solar eclipse that occurred in southeast Asia on August 18, 1868, two months before his passing, may have had a part to do with the death of King Mongkut according to the Science History Institute Museum & Library in Philadelphia.

Not only did the eclipse take out the king, but it may have also had something to do with saving Mongkut’s kingdom he was trying to save before going on a trip and getting attacked by a mosquito that passed through his bloodstream while he said where the eclipse would occur in his kingdom.

He later died from malaria which may have been caused by the mosquito bite with purpose according to the Insitute.

His decision to study the astronomy of the eclipse ultimately saved his kingdom from total destruction and away from British control.

IV. Conclusion

Overall, the eclipse can shape public opinion about the thought of religion and astronomy, but even these sources had to say storytelling this eclipse could make us create help us create a new form of human thought.