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In a world parallel to ours, equal in both technology and philosophy, how would you explain an eclipse but still have science behind in all parts of the world?
How would I be able to tie in all these different mythological explanations to happening on the same day or being related somehow? I want to do this without changing parts of every mythology to tie in to one event and I want help in an explanation for them.
Generally speaking, an eclipse doesn't necessarily have to be physically affecting the entire world, just a small segment of it for a story to carry out. Therefore, in my mind, a powerful being or event that creates an eclipse without literally destroying the entire world or moon by moving it near instantaneously in the atmosphere, would be either through illusion or overlapping dimensions.
Especially overlapping dimensions, consider the Shadow Realm from World of Warcraft - it is an exact replica of the normal Universe, however, Death Knights of the Lich king have the ability to pull, or project an object from that realm. So really, this can be answered in a lot of different ways.
Probably the easiest, as in, uses the least amount of energy, would be to just project an image of a moon into the sky that blocks out the sun. To explain multiple mythologies co-existing, the deities that reign over similar elements, objects, etc. aren't ruling over the physical objects themselves.
For instance, Egyptian Ra, where the Sun is still in the same place, however a given deity believes they have the ability to utilize its power.Belief is often the driving force in mythology, so while the deity believes this is the case, that makes it true. Of course, in reality, they kind of just control the effects of the thing they reign over, how it affects their region of influence.
Therefore, if something had "power over the moon", they're really just removing people's perception of the real one and replacing it with their own, and the effects that come with it. You can think of it like those Sci-Fi Nature domes in spaceships - it looks and generally feels like the moon, but in technicality it isn't. It could be a lot more complex than just a screen over the area, it could do with manipulating beings perception of their surrounding.
Does that make sense? Broadly speaking, abilities and powers like that in intertwining myth don't often have literal control over something, just the perception/idea of it that's physically believable enough that it's nearly indistinguishable.
EDIT: To add on even more, for specifics, projections could be by magic illusions, targeted psychological projection, "window" to a different realm/dimension, physical manifestations, and more, but the idea of projection opens a lot of flexibility and technicalities in a being's/event's scope of power.
Given that different cultures have different myths explaining eclipses it would be difficult to have them "All" be true.
I would say that the best path would be to have the different eclipse-related lore of different cultures be interpretations of the same event. Otherwise you will have contradicting myths and endless causes and reasons behind why it is happening.
Differing levels of ability to manifest and ability to perceive are present in individuals and in groups sharing beliefs
Since your world is similar to ours, each person in your world perceives information through sensory reception, assigns the information a symbol for later memory recall, and through this learning process believes each symbol represents or stands for things and ideas in their lives. This action creates their reality. Their beliefs.
Manifestation enters the picture as the ability of the person to recreate, teach, add depth, and communicate their reality to others. When two or more "believe" the same information in the same way, this increases their ability to manifest this information into the world for others to perceive. If enough believe it together, it becomes solid fact. Those that perceive at a high level and also believe their less common perceptions, but have poor manifestation to others, these unfortunate folks are labeled by the others as mentally deficient in an xyz way, and dismissed. Their myths are also true, but only for themselves.
Those that perceive minimally, but manifest well, add their strength to the myths already presently at large.
Because of these different levels of ability to both perceive and manifest, myths will be perceptually present (and therefore "true") in different ways to different peoples, all at the same time.
You can spend a lot of time spelling this process out in your world if you want to (philosophers and scientists like to do this), but most creators prefer to just let the myths exist in the story with lots of fleshy detail, and the reader/viewer/player/what have you just experiences the intended reality without worrying about just why and how it is that they are able to experience that reality.
So, you can have your sun god eaten by a dragon, the moon's shadow momentarily travel through the path of the sun's light with wonderful astronomical precision, and many other interpretations all as the same event and all be true.
