The view of events like solar eclipses as messages from the gods—good or bad, but mostly bad—has a long record in human history. For millennia, the sudden and brief darkening of the sun was more likely to trigger panic than amazement because, also for millennia, eclipses were poorly understood.

Careful observations and attempts to predict these events took place in ancient civilizations across the globe, but the information gleaned from this study remained with the religious elite, explains Paul V. M. Flesher, a religious-studies professor at the University of Wyoming. For most people, the sudden disappearance of the midday sun was a break in the natural procession of the world as they knew it, in the rhythmic routine—sunrise, sunset—that arranged their lives. Such an unexpected interruption in the natural order of things was, not surprisingly, frightening. “What could be more traumatic than the abandonment of the sun?” as my editor Ross Andersen wrote last week. “This is the energy source that powers Earth’s photosynthetic food chains, the ball of fire that anchors and warms us as we twirl around in the cold cosmic void. The sun is the giver of life.”

The masses attributed eclipses to a god or gods, the only beings they knew to be capable of manipulating forces of nature, the kind that, for example, sometimes delivered badly needed rains for their crops, and other times, withheld them. “Eclipses, whether lunar or solar, are not really central to any theology of any religion,” Flesher said. But there are references to a darkening of the sun throughout religious literature, including in the description of the crucifixion of Jesus. It’s not known whether these mentions represent historical eclipse events or, as Flesher puts it, embellishments to convey significance beyond human control.

Science eventually explained solar eclipses as a testament to the natural world’s power, which is blissfully ignorant of the humans that fear it. Some superstition persists, because solar eclipses, while they’re easily predicted today, are still a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence for many. “While they’re common on Earth, they aren’t common in the same place on Earth, so once you get to the notion that somehow this is a rare event and it’s not predictable, then you get to the notion that this is an omen or a portent,” Flesher said. While the continental United States hasn’t been in the direct path of a total solar eclipse in nearly 100 years, the phenomenon is visible from somewhere on Earth about every year and a half, according to NASA.

Eclipse viewers are susceptible to emotional responses to solar eclipses, whether they view them as natural phenomena or heavenly wonders. Feelings of fear and awe fall along the same spectrum, and the splendor of astronomical events can sometimes blur the lines.

“You read stories of people who saw their first eclipse as a child and it was an overwhelming, numinous—to use a good religious term—response to a physical natural event, something that is beyond description. It’s somehow coming face-to-face with something ultimate and unimaginable,” Flesher said. “The flip side of that kind of numinous reaction—it can be scary. It can be terrifying.”