A total solar eclipse will take place on Monday, August 21, 2017. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partly obscuring the image of the Sun for a viewer on Earth. A total solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is larger than the Sun's, blocking all direct sunlight, turning day into darkness. Totality occurs in a narrow path across Earth's surface, with the partial solar eclipse visible over a surrounding region thousands of kilometers wide.

This eclipse is the 22nd of the 77 members of Saros series 145, the one that also produced the solar eclipse of August 11, 1999. Members of this series are increasing in duration. The longest eclipse in this series will occur on June 25, 2522 and last for 7 minutes and 12 seconds.

The eclipse will have a magnitude of 1.0306 and will be visible from a narrow corridor through the United States. The longest duration of totality will be 2 minutes 41.6 seconds at 37°35′0″N 89°7′0″W in Shawnee National Forest just south of Carbondale, Illinois and the greatest extent will be at 36°58′0″N 87°40′18″W near Cerulean, Kentucky between Hopkinsville and Princeton, Kentucky.[1][2] It will be the first total solar eclipse visible from the southeastern United States since the solar eclipse of March 7, 1970.

A partial solar eclipse will be seen from the much broader path of the Moon's penumbra, including all of North America, northern South America, western Europe, and Africa.

The August 2017 eclipse will be the first with a path of totality crossing the USA's Pacific coast and Atlantic coast since 1918.

Also, its path of totality makes landfall exclusively within the United States, making it the first such eclipse since the country's independence in 1776.

(The path of totality of the eclipse of June 13, 1257, was the last to make landfall exclusively on lands currently part of the USA.[9])

Each member in a semester series of solar eclipses repeats approximately every 177 days and 4 hours (a semester) at alternating nodes of the Moon's orbit.

The metonic series repeats eclipses every 19 years (6939.69 days), lasting about 5 cycles. Eclipses occur in nearly the same calendar date. In addition the octon subseries repeats 1/5 of that or every 3.8 years (1387.94 days).

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This version of the legend was shared with us by Anne Bouchard.

Once Tcikabis decided to visit the sky. His sister tried to talk him out of it but his mind was made up. He climbed to the top of the highest tree, but when he got there and looked around, the sky was still above his head. So Tcikabis used his medicine and blew on the tree until it was twice as tall as it was before. He climbed to the top, but the sky was still overhead. So Tcikabis used his medicine again and blew on the tree until it was even taller. But when he climbed to the top, the sky was still overhead. Tcikabis used his medicine again and the tree grew even taller. But when he climbed to the top, the sky was still overhead. Finally he used his medicine a fourth time and this time the tree grew so tall that when he climbed to the top, he could step off onto a road leading across the sky.

Now Tcikabis was tired from all that effort, so he lay down on the road to sleep. But he didn't sleep long before a loud noise woke him up. It sounded like something big was coming. He looked, but all he could see was a light getting brighter and brighter. It was the sun!

"Get out of my way," said the sun.

"No," said Tcikabis, who never did what anyone told him. "I don't want to move. You go around me."

"I can't go around you, I'll set the treetops on fire if I leave my path. This is my road, now get out of my way!"

Tcikabis just laughed at the sun. "If you don't want to go around me, jump over me then," he said. "I don't intend to get up."

"Fine!" The sun stepped over Tcikabis. He was so hot that Tcikabis' clothes caught on fire as the sun passed over him, and if it wasn't for his powerful medicine he would have been burned to death from the heat. Now Tcikabis was naked and burned and his hair was singed off and he was angry. "I'm going to get revenge."

When he went home his sister asked him what happened. "The sun burned me. I was just sitting there minding my own business and he burned me." Tcikapis forgot all about being such a troublemaker and ignoring the sun's warnings. "I'm going to get revenge on him."

"No, don't do that. You'll just cause more trouble for all of us."

But Tcikabis didn't listen to her. He got to work making a magic net, big enough to catch the sun in. He went back up the tree and set a trap on the sun's path. When the sun came that way, he was caught in the net, and darkness covered the whole world.

Tcikabis was happy, but his sister said "Nothing good will come of this."

The darkness lasted and lasted. The people were starting to starve. No plants would grow, and there was no light to hunt by. Everyone was angry and they told Tcikabis "Let the sun go! We need him!" But Tcikabis said "I can't let him go. If I get close enough to cut the net, I'll be burned to death this time."

But everyone bothered him so much that Tcikabis finally agreed to carry some little animals up the tall tree. Maybe one of them could hide in the shadow of a rope and gnaw through it. The turtle tried, but he was too big. He got burned and had to turn back. The rabbit tried, but he was too big too. He got burned and had to turn back. Even the squirrel was too big. He got burned and had to turn back too. Finally the mouse tried it. He was so little that he could hide his whole body behind the rope. He gnawed through it and the sun escaped.

And then life went on as usual.

According to Rudolf Simek, "the squirrel probably only represents an embellishing detail to the mythological picture of the world-ash in Grímnismál".[9] Hilda Ellis Davidson, describing the world tree, states the squirrel is said to gnaw at it—furthering a continual destruction and re-growth cycle, and posits the tree symbolizes ever-changing existence.[10] John Lindow points out that Yggdrasil is described as rotting on one side and as being chewed on by four harts and Níðhöggr, and that, according to the account in Gylfaginning, it also bears verbal hostility in the fauna it supports. Lindow adds that "in the sagas, a person who helps stir up or keep feuds alive by ferrying words of malice between the participants is seldom one of high status, which may explain the assignment of this role in the mythology to a relatively insignificant animal".[2]

Richard W. Thorington Jr. and Katie Ferrell theorize that "the role of Ratatosk probably derived from the habit of European tree squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris) to give a scolding alarm call in response to danger. It takes little imagination for you to think that the squirrel is saying nasty things about you."[11]

Ratatoskr (Ratatosk) is depicted in the novel American Gods [12]u by Neil Gaiman. Ratatosk is a Squirrel that traverses The World Tree (Yggdrasil) while Shadow Hangs from the tree as a Vigil to Mr Wednesday (Odin). American Gods (TV series) is due to be releases in April 2017 and we can expect to see Ratatosk here too.

In the Popol Vuh, Camazotz are the bat-like monsters encountered by the Maya Hero Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque during their trials in the underworld of Xibalba. The twins had to spend the night in the House of Bats where they squeezed themselves into their own blowguns in order to defend themselves from the circling bats. Hunahpu stuck his head out of his blowgun to see if the sun had risen and Camazotz immediately snatched off his head and carried it to the ballcourt to be hung up as the ball to be used by the gods in their next ballgame.[3]

In Part III, chapter 5 of the Popol Vuh, a messenger from Xibalba in the form of a man with the wings of a bat brokers a deal between Lord Tohil and mankind, wherein mankind promises their armpits and their waists (the opening of their breasts in human sacrifice) in exchange for fire.

The Minyades (Greek: Μινυάδες) were three sisters in Greek mythology who were daughters of Minyas, and the protagonists of a myth about the perils of neglecting the worship of Dionysus.[1] Their names were Alcathoe (or Alcithoe), Leucippe and Arsippe (although instead of "Arsippe", Claudius Aelianus calls the latter "Aristippa", and Plutarch "Arsinoë"; Ovid uses "Leuconoe" instead of "Leucippe").[2][3][4]

At the time when the worship of Dionysus was introduced into Boeotia, and while the other women and maidens were reveling and ranging over the mountains in Bacchic joy, these sisters alone remained at home, devoting themselves to their usual occupations, and thus profaning the days sacred to the god. Dionysus punished them by changing them into bats, and their work into vines.[5] Plutarch, Aelian, and Antoninus Liberalis, though with some differences in the detail, relate that Dionysus appeared to the sisters in the form of a maiden, and invited them to partake in the Dionysian Mysteries. When the sisters declined the invitation, the god metamorphosed himself successively into a bull, a lion, and a panther, and the sisters were driven mad.

In this state of madness, they were eager to honor the god, and Leucippe, who was chosen by lot to offer a sacrifice to Dionysus, gave up her own son Hippasus, whom the sisters tore to pieces. The sisters afterwards roamed over the mountains in a frenzy, until at last Hermes changed them into bats. Plutarch adds that down to his time the men of Orchomenus descended from that family were called psoloeis (ψολόεις), that is, mourners, and the women oleiai or aioleiai (ὀλεῖαι or αἰολεῖαι), that is, the destroyers.[1]


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Dionysus is represented by city religions as the protector of those who do not belong to conventional society and he thus symbolizes the chaotic, dangerous and unexpected, everything which escapes human reason and which can only be attributed to the unforeseeable action of the gods.[14]

He is also known as Bacchus