- guardian.co.uk, Thursday August 12 1999 00.41 BST
"In the period of totality, there seems to have been a common response," said Jeremy Dowling, spokesman for the Anglican diocese of Truro, who watched the eclipse on Dartmoor.
"First of all huge cheers go up from the crowd and then there is a silence. The silence seems to have taken every body by surprise and the word people used was that it had an air of the spiritual about it."
Many of Britain's million-strong Muslim community attended special services as the moon passed across the face of the sun. An eclipse occurred over Arabia in the time of the prophet, Mohammed, immediately after the death of his only son, Abraham, by his Christian wife, Mary.
Dr Majid Katme, coordinator of the Islamic Concern organisation, attended prayers at Edmonton mosque in Enfield. Many in the congregation wept, he said.
"The imam, Aziz Alhaq, switched off the lights of the mosque so we could be aware of the changing light outside I was crying, because he was reading a text about the sun and the moon and the creator. It was a really moving experience."
According to sacred Hindu texts, eclipses are the periodic revenges of a demon beheaded for impersonating a god and trying to drink the gods' nectar.
"It's a great happening," said Sri Narotam Pandey, priest at the Vishwa Hindu temple in Southall, London. "During the eclipse we neither eat nor drink, even water, nor do we work. We just sit and chant the names of almighty God."
Eclipses are seen as presaging disaster and the deaths of prominent people, and temples are shut for the day. "Whenever there has been an eclipse, bad things have happened," the priest said.
In Rome, Pope John Paul II shortened his morning audience and flew by helicopter from the Vatican to his summer retreat at Castel Gandolfo as the eclipse began.
Getting out of the helicopter, he held up a piece of welder's glass and watched intently as the sun was 84% covered by the moon, the darkest point in central Italy.
Mainstream Christians have made little attempt to seek religious significance in the eclipse. "Since we believe God is the God of all creation we see the eclipse as part of the naturally created order," said Mr Dowling. "There haven't been any specifically Christian observances, although there have been a lot of general jollies going on.
"I was profoundly moved by the event itself this morning, in a way I didn't expect to be. I think it gives you a sense of wonder at the whole order of creation."
