TOTAL solar eclipses have fascinated and enthralled mankind since pre-history. The first recorded observations were made by ancient Babylonian astronomers and priests, who viewed these celestial wonders as arresting omens predicting upsets on Earth and perhaps the death of kings. Such spiritual shudders still persist today.

I was in Argentina in 1999 and missed the total eclipse that tracked through Britain (where, I gather, it was mostly cloudy). What surprised me was the reaction of the press in Buenos Aires — serious questions were being asked about the meaning of the event and its implications for the British government.

On another occasion, I was sitting by a fire under the stars in northern Kenya in conversation with a Samburu herdsman and star man, Leparia. The Samburu believed that the fading light of an eclipse was a sign of God’s anger, and Leparia wanted to know what I thought: he was visibly delighted when I suggested the part played by the Moon, admitting that he had always suspected it!

Eclipse and Revelation is a collection of essays by an array of distinguished professionals from a variety of disciplines, ranging through history, religion, mathematics (particularly geometry), physics, animal behaviour, and the arts. The enthusiasm of Lange and McLeish, who have brought these authorities together, leaps off the page. It is the result of a seven-year cross-disciplinary project, deliberately seeking diverse perspectives from the history and science of total eclipses. The glorious cover illustration by Paul Nash, Eclipse of the Sunflower, was well chosen.

Much of the mathematics and geometry of celestial orbits, of Saros and Inex cycles, or draconic months, may not be to the taste of some readers, but that should hold no one back. There is an unusual vocabulary to savour — “syzygy” with no vowels, meaning that three bodies in the solar system (in this case, Sun, Moon, and Earth) are arranged in a straight line; “umbraphile”, the preferred name for an eclipse chaser, who longs again and again to be plunged into the passing shadow of the Moon.

What comes across, from all these writers and observers, is the unique beauty of a solar eclipse, whether viewed by the protected eye of an amateur, or through the instruments of a scientific researcher. The shadow of the Moon races across sea and lands faster than a fighter plane; observers can watch it coming. Temperatures drop; birds stop singing. At total, the planets Mercury and Venus with some stars become visible; the outer atmosphere of the Sun, the corona, shines with delicate filaments that follow lines of the Sun’s magnetic field; a rose-red prominence of plasma may be flaring up from a gigantic storm on the Sun’s surface. The Sun’s turbulent weather becomes visible, the weather that can cause havoc with our communication systems, or create the aurora borealis.

AlamyThe maximum extent of the solar eclipse as seen in Iceland on 8 April

And in less than a few minutes, it is over. The Moon moves on. Tiny sparkles of light, known as Baily’s beads, appear around the Moon’s receding edge, as the Sun breaks through mountainous valleys on the lunar rim, and the Sun becomes brilliant again, dazzling the eye. For a moment, the observer feels the moving mechanism of the solar system. Awe is the response.

There is a rich amount of material in this collection of writings, too much to assimilate in one reading. My favourite is in the section on the arts and literature, in which we immediately plunge into the writings of Dante, his use of the total eclipse as a metaphor for the challenge to Rome by a pope in Avignon, and several references in The Divine Comedy. We are reminded here of the impossibility that “darkness over the whole land” at the crucifixion of Christ was a solar eclipse, because Easter follows a full moon, and solar eclipses occur only at a new moon.

But darkness becomes a symbol for not seeing the light that lies behind it, such as the importance of recognising God within oneself or in a neighbour. From Dante, we move on a swift trajectory to 19th-century art, the paintings of Constable and Turner, Friedrich and Audubon, to name but a few. There is so much to read and ponder in this great collection. I will turn to it again.

The Revd Adam Ford is a former Chaplain of St Paul’s School for Girls.

Eclipse and Revelation: Total solar eclipses in science, history, literature, and the arts
Henrike Lange and Tom McLeish, editors
OUP £25
(978-0-19-285799-6)
Church Times Bookshop £22.50