Decans and Dragons

The Mysterious Power of Eclipses

Eclipse Dragon from Peter Apian’s Astronomicum Caesareum, Ingolstadt 1540. The diagram is one of many in the manuscript intended to help the astronomer predict the dates of eclipse.

One day, more than a decade ago, I was working in a newly planted orchard alongside my helper Salvador, Don Chava to his friends and family, who is now 90 years old, and at that time was a very spry and active elderly gentleman in his late 70’s. He was born in 1934 in a rural district in the state of Zacatecas, Mexico. Definitely a man from another time and world, he remembers the first automobile in his village, as well as when the first airplane flew over, and hearing the first record player. Without getting lost in a biographical digression, working alongside Salvador, who was my principle helper on the farm, as well as my good friend, was an amazing experience in cultural exchange. He is a devout Catholic of a rather conservative, but extremely kind and loving, orientation, his worldview is strongly ma…