Apocalypto Now: Eclipse in Dallas

Remembering Mel Gibson's 2006 masterpiece on March 8, 2024

Yesterday I watched the 2024 total eclipse of the sun here in Dallas, Texas. My old friend Tom Markson flew in from Phoenix to watch the celestial event, in spite of the augurs predicting heavy clouds.

We gathered on the levee of the Trinity River, just north of the twin “Margaret” bridges designed by the Spanish architect, Santiago Calatrava—one named in honor of benefactress Margaret Hunt Hill; the other named in honor of benefactress Margaret McDermott.

The augurs who predicted heavy clouds were only partly correct. We awoke to fairly heavy cloud cover, but around noon, gaps of blue sky began to appear. This got our hopes up; but at around 1:15 p.m.—just 25 minutes before the 1:40 p.m. moment of totality—heavy clouds began moving in from the south. However, just three minutes before the critical moment, the clouds parted and we got a perfectly clear view.

Note that the video camera sensor on my i-Phone is picking up too much light to capture the partial eclipse happening just before the total eclipse. Looking through our solar eclipse glasses, we could perfectly see the moon as it moved in front of the sun. However, the video camera did succeed in capturing the total eclipse.

The spectacle reminded me of Mel Gibson’s 2006 film Apocalypto—the story of a young man named Jaguar Paw who is a member of a Mesoamerican tribe that is conquered by the Mayans. Along with his fellow conquered warriors, he is transported to a Mayan city to be sacrificed in a ritual to propitiate the Mayan god Kukulkan.

In this remarkably dramatic and frightening scene, Jaguar Paw is placed on the alter on which an official is about to perform the highest form of sacrifice. As the Wikipedia entry describes it:

Heart extractions and sacrifice have been viewed as a “supreme religious expression among the ancient Maya.” The removal of the still-beating heart … was considered a great offering and meal for the gods. … Four blue-painted attendants representing the four Chaacs of the cardinal directions stretched the sacrifice out over a convex stone that pushed the victim's chest upwards. An official referred to as a nacom in Landa's Relación de las cosas de Yucatán used a sacrificial knife made from flint to cut into the ribs just below the victim's left breast and pull out the still-beating heart. The nacom then passed the heart to the officiating priest, or chilan, who smeared blood upon the image of the temple's deity.

Right as Jaguar Paw is about to be subjected to this procedure, a solar eclipse occurs, at which point the High Priest tells the people below not to be afraid, but to rejoice because the darkness is a sign that Kukulkan is sated.

The priest then invokes Kukulkan to reveal to the people that he is pleased by letting his light return up them. The light returns and the people rejoice.

While we modern westerners recoil at such savage rituals, we should be aware that we too now have our own version of high priests who claim to possess special knowledge of our mortal and vulnerable human condition. They call themselves scientists, and while many are indeed disciplined about performing unbiased investigations of natural phenomena, far too many have been recruited to serve financial and ideological interests that have been codified in official orthodoxies. These High Priests of Scientism claim that they can no more be questioned or challenged than the Mayan priests who conducted human sacrifices.