There are few celestial events that have moved human civilization as deeply as the eclipse. In India, a Grahan — Surya Grahan or Chandra Grahan — is never just something happening in the sky. It is a cosmic pause. The heavens hold their breath. Temples close their doors. Mantras grow louder. Food is set aside. Pregnant women retreat indoors. And millions look up with a feeling they cannot quite name — part awe, part reverence, part something older than language.
Behind the rituals lies something far more interesting than superstition. Indian astronomers understood the geometry of eclipses centuries before the telescope existed. They could tell you, in verse, when the next one would arrive and how long the shadow would last. The story of Grahan in this civilization is, at its heart, the story of how human beings first learned to read the sky — and then stitched that reading into the rhythm of daily life: when to sow, when to marry, when to pray, when to pause.
That is the thread this guide follows. From the Puranic tale of Svarbhanu and the churning of the ocean, through the mathematical architecture of the Surya Siddhanta, to the Sutak rules still followed in kitchens and temples today — we walk through Grahan in all its layers. If you are a devotee looking for clarity on what to do during an eclipse, a student curious about Indian astronomy, or someone who simply wants to understand why your grandmother insists on covering the pickle jars — read on.
The Mythology: Svarbhanu, the Cosmic Ocean, and the Birth of Rahu-Ketu
In the Indian tradition, every great truth arrives dressed as a story. The story of eclipses begins not in an observatory but at the bottom of the Kshirasagara — the Ocean of Milk.
The Samudra Manthan
The Samudra Manthan is one of the most vivid episodes in Hindu cosmology, told across the Vishnu Purana, the Bhagavata Purana, and the Mahabharata. The Devas and Asuras, exhausted by their eternal war, struck a truce. On Lord Vishnu's counsel, they agreed to churn the cosmic ocean together and share whatever emerged — above all, the Amrita, the nectar of deathlessness.
Mount Mandara became the churning rod. Vasuki, the great serpent, became the rope. As the churning began, the ocean gave up its secrets one by one: the lethal Halahala poison (which Lord Shiva drank, staining his throat blue — hence the name Neelakantha), the divine cow Kamadhenu, Goddess Lakshmi, the celestial tree Parijata, and at last, the pot of Amrita itself.
The moment the nectar appeared, the truce collapsed. The Asuras grabbed the pot. Lord Vishnu, ever the strategist, took the form of Mohini — an enchantress of devastating beauty — distracted the Asuras, and began serving the nectar quietly to the Devas alone.
The Deception of Svarbhanu
One Asura saw through the trick. His name was Svarbhanu — sharp, stubborn, unwilling to lose. He slipped into the row of Devas, disguised as one of them. Mohini poured him the nectar. He drank. But Surya and Chandra, seated nearby, recognised the impostor and cried out.
Lord Vishnu raised the Sudarshana Chakra — the divine discus — and severed Svarbhanu's head from his body in a single stroke. But the Amrita had already touched his lips. He could not die. His severed head became Rahu. His headless body became Ketu. Both were given a permanent seat among the Navagrahas as Chayya Grahas — shadow planets, formless but powerful.
The Eternal Vengeance
Rahu has never forgiven the Sun and the Moon for that betrayal. And so, the Puranas say, he swallows them periodically — an act of cosmic retribution that we see from Earth as an eclipse. Surya Grahan is Rahu devouring the Sun; Chandra Grahan is Rahu swallowing the Moon. But Rahu is only a head. He has no body to hold what he consumes. The Sun or Moon passes through him and re-emerges, the eclipse ends, and the sky returns to normal.
A metaphor, yes. But pay attention to what it encodes. Rahu and Ketu correspond precisely to what modern astronomy calls the ascending and descending lunar nodes — two invisible points where the Moon's orbit crosses the Sun's apparent path. Eclipses happen only when the Sun, Moon, and Earth line up close to these points. The Puranic storytellers were not making things up. They were translating orbital mechanics into narrative — teaching through the oldest technology of knowledge transfer: a story well told.
The Astronomy: How Eclipses Actually Work
What does it feel like to stand in the shadow of the Moon?
For about two and a half minutes during a total solar eclipse, the temperature drops. Stars come out at midday. Birds fold their wings and go quiet. Crickets start their evening song hours early. The horizon glows amber in every direction — a strange, 360-degree dusk. And then the light comes flooding back, as if the world blinked.
Solar Eclipse (Surya Grahan)
A solar eclipse happens when the Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun, throwing its shadow onto the Earth's surface. This is only possible on Amavasya — the new moon day. But most Amavasyas pass without an eclipse. The Moon's orbit is tilted about 5 degrees from the plane of the Sun's apparent path, so the shadow usually misses the Earth entirely. An eclipse occurs only when the new moon falls close to one of the two lunar nodes — Rahu or Ketu.
There is a coincidence in our sky that borders on the uncanny. The Sun is roughly 400 times larger than the Moon, and roughly 400 times farther away. The result: the Moon, as seen from Earth, appears almost exactly the same size as the Sun. It can cover the solar disc with the precision of a coin held at arm's length blocking a distant lamp. This is not a law of physics — it is a quirk of our particular moment in cosmic time. The Moon is slowly drifting away from the Earth. A few hundred million years from now, total solar eclipses will no longer be possible.
| Type | What You See | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Total | The Sun vanishes behind the Moon; the corona blazes around a circle of darkness | The Moon is near enough to cover the full solar disc |
| Annular ("Ring of Fire") | A bright ring of sunlight frames the Moon's silhouette | The Moon is a bit farther from Earth, appears slightly too small |
| Partial | A bite taken out of the Sun's edge | The alignment is off-centre |
Lunar Eclipse (Chandra Grahan)
A lunar eclipse happens when the Earth moves between the Sun and the Moon, casting its shadow across the lunar surface. This is only possible on Purnima — the full moon night. As the Moon drifts into the Earth's shadow, it darkens and often turns a deep red or copper — the effect people call the "Blood Moon."
Why red? Because of us. Earth's atmosphere bends a sliver of sunlight into the shadow, but scatters the blue wavelengths out. What remains — the reds, the oranges — reaches the Moon. In that moment, the Moon is being lit by every sunrise and every sunset happening on Earth at the same time. That is why it glows.
| Type | What You See | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Total | The Moon turns deep red or copper | Fully inside Earth's darkest shadow (umbra) |
| Partial | Part of the Moon darkens; part stays bright | Only a portion crosses the umbral shadow |
| Penumbral | A faint, barely noticeable dimming | The Moon grazes the outer, weaker shadow (penumbra) |
The Saros Cycle: Eclipses Repeat
Eclipses are not random. They run on a clock. They repeat in a pattern called the Saros cycle — roughly 18 years, 11 days, and 8 hours. Two eclipses separated by one Saros share nearly the same geometry: same lunar node, similar Sun-Moon distance, similar season.
Indian astronomers tracked this recurrence as part of their Panchang work. In a civilisation where the Panchang governed everything from sowing dates to wedding muhurats, knowing when the next eclipse would arrive was not an academic exercise. It was a civic necessity.
When the World Falls Silent: Eclipses and Nature
What the village elders always said, twentieth-century scientists eventually confirmed: eclipses are felt well beyond the human eye.
During the 2017 total solar eclipse across the United States, researchers documented startling animal behaviour. Birds returned to their roosts in the middle of the afternoon. Crickets began their night chorus. Bees stopped foraging and went still. Orb-weaving spiders started dismantling their webs — their nightly routine — only to begin rebuilding them minutes later when the light returned. Temperatures dropped several degrees along the path of totality.
Tides, too, shift subtly during eclipse alignments. When the Sun, Earth, and Moon line up, their combined gravitational pull is at its strongest. Coastal communities in India — fishermen, salt farmers, pearl divers — have observed these tidal surges for centuries. For them, a Grahan was never just a sky event. It was a sea event, a tide event, a work event.
The old rule about not eating during a Grahan is often dismissed as blind faith. Maybe. But consider this: in a tropical climate, a rapid drop in temperature followed by a rapid rise creates conditions where bacteria multiply faster than usual in uncovered food. The practical wisdom of the ancients was often dressed in the language of ritual — not because they lacked reason, but because ritual is how you make an entire village follow a rule without argument.
An eclipse ripples through everything — from the pull of the tides to the silence of the birds to the temperature of the air. The Indian tradition's insistence that a Grahan is a total event, not just a thing in the sky, turns out to be closer to the truth than the modern instinct to separate it into "astronomy" and "superstition."
The Vedic Science: Surya Siddhanta and Eclipse Prediction
The mythology tells us how Indians understood eclipses. The mathematics tells us how they predicted them — and the precision is staggering.
The Surya Siddhanta
The Surya Siddhanta — the "Sun Treatise" — is one of the foundational astronomical texts in human history. In its surviving form it dates to roughly the 4th–5th century CE, though its authors claim a far older origin. Written entirely in Sanskrit verse, it lays out methods for computing the movements of the Sun, Moon, and the five visible planets.
The text's own origin story is characteristically Indian: the knowledge was revealed by an emissary of Surya himself to the Asura architect Maya at the close of the Satya Yuga. Set aside originology for a moment and look at the numbers. The Surya Siddhanta's estimate of the sidereal year is 365.2587 days. The modern value, measured with atomic clocks and space telescopes, is 365.2564 days. The difference: about two minutes per year. In verse. Without a telescope.
Eclipse Chapters
Chapters 4 through 6 are given over entirely to eclipse computation:
- Chapter 4 — the apparent diameters of the Sun and Moon and the width of the Earth's shadow at the Moon's distance.
- Chapter 5 — parallax corrections, because a solar eclipse looks different depending on where you stand on Earth.
- Chapter 6 — minute-by-minute projection of the eclipse's progress: when the shadow enters, deepens, and lifts.
Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, and the Tradition That Followed
Aryabhata's Aryabhatiya (c. 499 CE) argued — centuries before Copernicus — that the Earth spins on its own axis. He also sharpened eclipse calculations. Brahmagupta's Brahmasphutasiddhanta (c. 628 CE) produced step-by-step algorithms for computing eclipses accounting for the Moon's varying distance from Earth.
This tradition did not stay within India's borders. The Surya Siddhanta was translated into Arabic as "Sindhind" then into Latin, shaping Islamic and European astronomy. The Sanskrit "jya" became Arabic "jiba," was misread as "jaib," and entered Latin as "sinus." Every student who writes "sin θ" on a whiteboard today is using a word born in a Sanskrit astronomical text.
The Village Panchang Maker: An Unbroken Thread
Eclipse prediction in India was never the exclusive work of court scholars. In villages across the country, Panchang makers — families that have carried the craft for generations — still calculate eclipse timings using methods descended from the Siddhantic texts.
The thread from the Surya Siddhanta to the Panchang on your grandmother's wall — or the one on your phone — has never been cut. When PanchangBodh computes a Grahan's timing for your city, it is running a calculation whose core logic was first written down over fifteen hundred years ago.
From the Surya Siddhanta to your screen. The tradition is continuous. The algorithms are old. The precision is modern. That is what a living Panchang means.
Rahu and Ketu in Jyotish Shastra: The Shadow Planets
In Jyotish, Rahu and Ketu are taken very seriously. They are not afterthoughts or mathematical footnotes. They are the Chayya Grahas — shadow planets — and any experienced astrologer will tell you that their placement in a horoscope can be more decisive than the placement of the visible grahas.
What Are Lunar Nodes?
In astronomical terms, Rahu is the ascending lunar node — the point where the Moon's orbit crosses the ecliptic heading north. Ketu is the descending node, where it crosses heading south. These points drift westward, completing one full circuit in about 18.6 years. This backwards drift is why, in Jyotish, Rahu and Ketu are always shown moving retrograde. For how Rahu's influence shapes daily Panchang timing, see our guide on Rahu Kaal.
What They Govern
Rahu governs desire — raw, worldly, consuming. Ambition, obsession, illusion, innovation, foreign connections, sudden rises and sudden falls. A strong Rahu can bring fame, political power, and the kind of success that baffles conventional explanation. A troubled Rahu can bring addiction, deception, confusion, and the particular misery of getting what you wanted and finding it hollow.
Ketu is the opposite current — detachment, spiritual insight, old wisdom, and release. Where Ketu sits in a chart, the soul has already learned its lessons — and may feel curiously indifferent to what the world values there. Ketu can trigger sudden awakenings, renunciation, and a quiet inner knowing that the game being played is not the real game.
The Rahu-Ketu axis in a birth chart maps the soul's central tension: the pull towards worldly accumulation on one end, the pull towards letting go on the other.
What This Actually Feels Like in a Life
Take someone with Rahu in the 10th house — career, public life, reputation. They rise. People notice them. Opportunities appear from unexpected directions. But the rise has an uneasy quality. There is fame, but whispers follow the fame. Achievement, but not the peace they thought would come with it.
Now look at the other end of the axis: Ketu in the 4th house — home, mother, emotional roots. This same person often feels disconnected from where they came from. They love their family, but feel like a guest at their own dinner table. There is wisdom in this detachment, a certain lightness — but also something missing.
That is the Rahu-Ketu current in a real life. Hunger on one side, release on the other, and a whole incarnation spent learning to hold both without drowning.
Eclipses and Graha Dosha
When Rahu or Ketu sit with Sun or Moon in a natal chart, Surya Grahan Dosha or Chandra Grahan Dosha may arise — affecting self-clarity, emotional stability, or ancestral patterns. These placements are sometimes connected to Pitra Dosha — ancestral karma surfacing for resolution.
Sutak Kaal: The Sacred Prohibition Period
Of all Grahan-related practices still alive in Hindu households, none is more widely observed than Sutak Kaal — a window of ritual restriction that opens hours before an eclipse and closes only when the shadow lifts.
What Is Sutak?
The word points to a period when the atmosphere itself is considered tainted by the eclipse's influence. During Sutak, the Sun or Moon is "weakened" — and because human life, in this worldview, is woven into the same fabric as celestial life, we must take care. The sky is not a backdrop; it is a participant. When it falters, we pause. For more on how cosmic timing windows work in daily practice, see our guide on Bhadra Kaal.
| Eclipse Type | Sutak Begins | Sutak Ends |
|---|---|---|
| Surya Grahan (Solar) | 12 hours (4 Prahars) before | When the eclipse ends |
| Chandra Grahan (Lunar) | 9 hours (3 Prahars) before | When the eclipse ends |
A Prahar is one-eighth of a day — about three hours.
A rule that many people miss: Sutak applies only when the eclipse is visible from where you are. If a Grahan cannot be seen from your city, you are not bound by Sutak. This is not a modern shortcut. It is the original rule, stated plainly in traditional Panchang texts.
Traditional Observances
- Fasting is the first rule. No food during the entire Sutak and eclipse period. Children, the elderly, and the unwell follow a shorter restriction — one Prahar (3 hours) before the eclipse.
- Cooked food from before Sutak is discarded. Stored goods are shielded with Kusha grass or Tulsi leaves.
- Oil, combs, toothbrushes — set aside. Personal grooming stops. Physical intimacy is also avoided.
- Temple doors close. Home puja pauses until the eclipse lifts and a purifying bath is taken.
- After the eclipse, bathing is the first act. Charity given at this moment is considered especially powerful.
Special Precautions for Pregnant Women
Expectant mothers are told to stay indoors, keep away from knives, scissors, and needles, and avoid sewing or cutting. The beliefs are rooted in tradition, not clinical evidence — but followed with a seriousness that has survived generations of modernisation. Whether you follow them is your family's call. These rules, at minimum, ensured that pregnant women rested during a period of atmospheric disruption — not the worst advice.
Mantras and Spiritual Practices During Grahan
An eclipse is not only a time of restriction. In the Vedic view, it is also a time when spiritual practice carries unusual weight. Mantras chanted during a Grahan are believed to multiply in their effect.
Recommended Mantras
- Gayatri Mantra — the foundational Vedic invocation to the Sun — for both Surya and Chandra Grahan.
- Aditya Hridayam — the hymn taught by sage Agastya to Lord Rama before his battle with Ravana — during solar eclipses.
- Mahamrityunjaya Mantra — Lord Shiva's great mantra for protection and liberation — during both types.
- Mantras specific to one's family tradition or ishta devata.
Charity and Dana
The period right after a Grahan ends is considered especially fertile ground for giving. Traditional dana includes food, clothing, gold, and sesame seeds (til). The logic is old and elegant: the eclipse is darkness — counter it with daylight acts.
Eclipses in 2026: The Night Rahu Meets Holi
Four eclipses will occur in 2026. Three will not be visible from India. The one that will be visible falls on the one night you would least expect — and most remember.
✦ Total Lunar Eclipse — March 3, 2026 (Tuesday)
This is the Grahan of the year for India, and it carries a coincidence that will be talked about for decades.
The total lunar eclipse of March 3 falls on Phalguna Purnima — the full moon night of Holika Dahan. Picture it: bonfires burning across the country to honour the victory of Prahlad's devotion over Holika's treachery. And above those fires, the Moon turning blood-red as Rahu swallows it whole.
Where you will see it:
- Full totality: Northeastern states — Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland
- Partial phases: Delhi, Mumbai, Jaipur, Bengaluru, Chennai, Lucknow, and most major cities
- Sutak Kaal: Traditionally applicable wherever any phase of the eclipse is visible — check your city's specific visibility
What this means for Holi: Sutak restrictions and Holika Dahan preparations will overlap. Families will need to think carefully about timing — complete the bonfire before Sutak begins, or wait until the eclipse passes. PanchangBodh will publish city-specific Sutak and Holika Dahan timings as the date approaches.
A Blood Moon rising above Holika fires, on the threshold of Holi. This kind of convergence does not repeat often. Pay attention to it.
Other Eclipses in 2026 (Not Visible from India)
| Date | Type | Where Visible | Sutak in India? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 17 (Tue) | Annular Solar ("Ring of Fire") | Antarctica, southern hemisphere | Not visible from India |
| Aug 12 (Wed) | Total Solar | Europe, northern Asia, NW Africa | Not visible from India |
| Aug 28 (Fri) | Partial Lunar | Europe, Americas, Africa | Not visible from India |
None of these are visible from India. Sutak does not apply. This is the original Panchang rule — not a concession to modernity.
2026 Eclipse Timings for Your City
Your City's Next Eclipse
PanchangBodh calculates exact eclipse dates, Sutak timings, and visibility details for your city — with Vedic accuracy and modern precision.
Why Grahan Still Matters
It is easy, in the age of apps and satellites, to treat Grahan as a curiosity — a thing that happens in the sky, explained by physics, fin. But that misses the point.
The Bridge Between Watching and Understanding
What sets the Indian approach apart is not that Indians believed a demon eats the Sun. It is that they simultaneously built mathematical systems to predict exactly when and where the eating would happen — and then folded those predictions into a working calendar that governed agriculture, trade, marriage, festivals, and daily worship.
What the Story Actually Teaches
Look again at what the Rahu-Ketu narrative encodes:
- Eclipses are caused by two invisible points in the sky interacting with the Sun and Moon.
- These points have no physical body — they are shadows, not stones — yet their effects are real.
- They move backwards through the zodiac.
- Their cycle governs the timing and recurrence of eclipses.
Every one of those story-elements maps to an astronomical fact. The rishis were not guessing. They were teaching — through the medium that travels farthest and lasts longest: a story that a child can repeat and an astronomer can decode.
Grahan as Inner Eclipse
The deepest teaching may be this: what happens in the sky is a portrait of what happens within us. Rahu obscures the Sun; ignorance obscures the self. Rahu swallows the Moon; desire swallows peace of mind. The Sutak period, with its fasting and silence and turning away from the world, is not merely avoidance of "contamination." It is an invitation to sit in your own darkness for a while. To chant. To be still. To notice what you are without your usual distractions.
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna that the Self cannot be cut, cannot be burned, cannot be wetted. The eclipse dramatises this teaching at the scale of the sky: the light is covered, but it is not destroyed. The Sun behind Rahu's shadow is still the Sun. When the shadow passes, the light is exactly as it was.
Grahan, then, is not a calendar entry. It is a practice. A periodic reminder, written in shadow and fire, that the light we are looking for has never actually gone anywhere.
What obscures your light? What shadows do you carry? And what would it mean to let them pass?
Common Misconceptions
"All eclipses are dangerous to look at."
Not true. Chandra Grahan is perfectly safe to watch with naked eyes. Staring at the Sun is always dangerous — eclipse or not. Surya Grahan requires proper eye protection (ISO 12312-2 certified solar filters). The old injunction against "looking at the Grahan" was solid health advice for solar eclipses — dressed in the authority of dharma so that people would actually follow it.
"Sutak applies everywhere, regardless of visibility."
The most common mistake. Sutak holds only where the eclipse is visible. If the Grahan cannot be seen from your city, you are not required to observe Sutak. This is the old rule, clearly written in traditional Panchangs.
"Food turns poisonous during an eclipse."
There is no evidence for this. Discarding cooked food and shielding stored grains with Kusha grass or Tulsi is a ritual practice rooted in the idea of atmospheric vulnerability during Sutak. Think of it as a spiritual discipline, not a food-safety protocol.
"Grahan is only an astrology thing."
If anything, astrology is only one layer. Grahan sits at the centre of Indian astronomy, calendar science, agricultural planning, temple ritual, and meditative tradition. Treating it as a horoscope event alone is like describing the Ganga as a river and leaving out the pilgrimage, the poetry, and the pyres.
How to Observe Grahan: A Practical Guide
Whether you follow every traditional prescription or simply want to be present for the event, here is a grounded approach.
A Day Before: Get Your Bearings
- Check visibility. Pull up your city on PanchangBodh and confirm whether the eclipse will be visible. No visibility = no Sutak obligation.
- Note the three times that matter: When Sutak starts. When the eclipse starts. When the eclipse ends.
- Sort out food. Eat your last proper meal before Sutak opens. Keep Tulsi or Kusha grass ready for stored grains and pickles.
Sutak Begins
- Lay Kusha or Tulsi in all food and water vessels.
- Brief the household. Children and the elderly: one Prahar (3 hours) before, not the full Sutak.
- Prepare your space. A mala, a mat, an image of your ishta devata. Nothing elaborate.
- From this point: no cooking, no eating, no oil, no grooming.
During the Eclipse: Be Still
- Chant — Gayatri, Aditya Hridayam, Mahamrityunjaya, or your own parampara's mantra.
- Sit quietly. The enforced stillness of Sutak is, if you let it be, a genuine window for inner clarity.
- Chandra Grahan: Go outside and watch. The naked eye is all you need. A total lunar eclipse — the Moon turning copper against a dark sky — is one of the most beautiful sights you will ever see.
- Surya Grahan: Use only certified ISO 12312-2 solar filters. Not sunglasses. Not X-ray film. Not smoked glass.
- Do not begin any new activity, meal, or project during the eclipse.
After the Eclipse: Open the Window
- Bathe first. Before food, before conversation.
- Throw away any unprotected cooked food from before Sutak.
- Give something. Food, clothing, til, money — whatever you can. Dana after a Grahan is held in high regard.
- Sit for a moment. What came up during the silence? What did the stillness show you?
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about Grahan, Sutak, and eclipses
Q: What is the difference between Surya Grahan and Chandra Grahan?
Surya Grahan is a solar eclipse — the Moon moves between the Earth and Sun on Amavasya, blocking the Sun's light. Chandra Grahan is a lunar eclipse — the Earth comes between the Sun and Moon on Purnima, and the Earth's shadow falls on the Moon.
Q: Is it safe to watch a lunar eclipse with naked eyes?
Yes. Chandra Grahan can be watched without any protection. Surya Grahan requires certified solar eclipse glasses (ISO 12312-2). Do not look at the Sun — eclipsed or otherwise — without proper filters.
Q: Does Sutak apply if the eclipse is not visible from my city?
No. Sutak holds only when the eclipse can be seen from your location. This is the traditional Panchang rule, stated clearly in the old texts, not a modern relaxation.
Q: When is the next eclipse visible from India?
The Total Lunar Eclipse on March 3, 2026 — falling on Phalguna Purnima, the night of Holika Dahan. Full totality will be visible from India's northeastern states; partial phases from Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, and most major cities.
Q: What mantras should I chant during an eclipse?
The Gayatri Mantra is recommended for both eclipse types. The Aditya Hridayam and Mahamrityunjaya Mantra are also widely practised. Chant whichever mantra you have a connection with or have been initiated into.
Q: Can pregnant women go outside during a Grahan?
Traditional practice says no — stay indoors, avoid sharp objects, do not cut or sew. These are old household rules, observed widely, though not supported by medical evidence. Follow your family's practice and your own judgement.
Q: Why does the Moon turn red during a total lunar eclipse?
Earth's atmosphere bends sunlight into the shadow but strips out the blue wavelengths. What reaches the Moon is the red end of the spectrum — the combined light of every sunrise and sunset on Earth at that moment. Hence the 'Blood Moon.'
Q: Who are Rahu and Ketu?
In astronomy: the ascending and descending lunar nodes — the two points where the Moon's orbit crosses the Sun's apparent path. In Puranic narrative: the immortal head and body of the Asura Svarbhanu, severed by Lord Vishnu's Sudarshana Chakra. In Jyotish: the shadow planets that govern karma, worldly desire, and spiritual liberation.
The Grahan Legacy
The shadow passes. The light returns.
The story of Grahan in this civilisation is a story of something rare — myth and mathematics held together without apology. Observation and devotion, walking the same road. The precision of the Surya Siddhanta and the surrender of the Sutak fast, not contradicting each other but completing each other.
On the night of Holi 2026, as the shadow of Rahu moves across the face of the Moon, we will be doing what people on this land have done for thousands of years — looking up, noting the time, protecting the grain, chanting the syllable. We will be joining a chain that runs from the rishis who first mapped the lunar nodes through the astronomers who first encoded the algorithms in verse, all the way to the grandmother who still places Tulsi in the dal before an eclipse.
The shadow passes. The light returns. And we, like those before us, look up.
Note: This guide offers traditional Panchang wisdom and Vedic perspective. Eclipses are natural astronomical events. Always use certified solar filters (ISO 12312-2) when viewing a solar eclipse.