Eclipse Season is Here Again
Shedding youthful folly & martian intolerance; creating space for lunar guidance
Eclipse season is trending right now. Next Wednesday initiates the second of two 2-week periods in the year that is bookended by the luminaries battling it out to darken the sky for a bit.
In astrology, regardless of where the eclipse path actually falls across the Earth, the psychological and spiritual effects of these transits are felt around the globe.
Whether it’s the moon obscuring the sun’s light (a solar eclipse) or the earth’s shadow being cast on the moon as it blocks the sun (a lunar eclipse), the astronomical perfection of these events has been a big deal for humankind for as long as our bodies can collectively remember.
Ancient humans saw eclipses as divine omens, celestial attacks by animals or demons, or signs of royal or cosmic distress, all ways of relating to the momentary darkness bestowed upon us by these alignments. Astronomically, when the Sun, Earth and Moon line up in a straight line, it’s known as syzygy. (What a beautiful word!) This alignment does not happen every month because the Moon's orbital plane is tilted by about 5.1° to 5.2° relative to Earth's orbital plane around the Sun (the ecliptic).
Because of this, eclipses only happen when the Moon is at one of the nodes, which one of two points where the Moon's tilted orbit crosses the flat plane of the ecliptic (again, the Earth's orbit around the Sun). Thus, the moon’s path meeting up with the Earth’s path create nodal eclipse points, which move through the Zodiac in a full circle every 18 years.
Total Eclipses are Magic
There are different types of eclipses- total, annular (ring of fire) and partial (bite out of a cookie)- and this upcoming one on August 12th is total, creating a dark path from the north pole through Greenland and the Iberian Penninsula.
Total solar eclipses are extra amazing because the moon is about 400 times smaller than the Sun, and it also just so happens to be almost exactly 400 times closer to Earth.This is a cosmic coincidence that makes the sun and moon appear nearly identical in size in our sky. There is nowhere else in our solar system where a planet’s moon matches the sun so perfectly in it’s apparent size- on any other planet, an eclipse moment would only be partial.
Earth is the only place in our solar system where total eclipses are even possible, making them extra wild and amazing. What’s more, like many things in this life, total eclipses are not a forever-thing. Our Moon is slowly moving away from Earth, at around 3.8 centimeters drift per year. One day in the distant future, the moon will appear too small to fully block the Sun, and total solar eclipses will never happen on Earth again.
So consider yourself lucky to witness this alignment, I suppose!
PS: Another Alignment is happening : Next Wednesday’s eclipse day begins with six of our planetary neighbors forming an arc in the sky before dawn. Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune will all be visible in a semicircle before dawn on the eastern horizon. (The first 4 will be visible with the naked eye, but you’ll have to use an app like Stellarium to see the full arc, or get out your binoculars (Uranus) or telescope (Neptune) to see the outer planets.)
Adding magic to the mayhem, the day of the eclipse ends with the phenomenal annual Perseid meteor shower peaking after nightfall under the dark skies of the new moon.
Wowzers. Be sure to get outside and bow down to the skies!
The evolving story of mother earth’s eclipses
The Earth is the main player in eclipses. This seems obvious now, but it wasn’t always to the ancient people who looked out to the happenings in the skies but weren’t as aware as we are now about the larger nature of earth-as-a-planet in the solar system. Stories of animals and mythical creatures eating the sun and moon are profoundly beautiful… and yet I believe that the story of our moon’s size and our distance from the sun is equally as profound and compelling.
I love to look at eclipses as the only times of each year where the Earth, in her fullness, comes into our awareness in a truly tangible way. Her shadow crosses the moon on a lunar eclipse. Her specific place in space is something we’re all aware of on a solar eclipse. On each eclipse, the Earth is making herself, and her position in the solar system, known.
That is a powerful myth to lean into as the skies darken and things start to get weird.
Every other full and new moon we’re thinking about the sun and the moon- which in astrology represent our conscious will and our emotional cyclic intelligence. Creation and reflection, life force and receptivity. Eclipses invige us to transcend that binary and pay attention to the ground that we’re standing on, the carbon-based earth that makes up our bodies too. We are the earth. Eclipses welcome us to assess the ground we’re standing on- to forget about our future based solar manifestations for a moment, as well as the reflections of our lunar pasts.
Eclipses ask us: Where are you right now? On this planet earth? How’s your relationship with her?
I think this is why eclipse seasons can feel so unsettling- we’re not supposed to manifest with our will and we’re not supposed to get carried away with our emotions , either. We’re supposed to ground into our bodies, into the earth, and attune to their wisdom.
It’s a powerful time of year.
But it’s nothing to be afraid of if we can release some of our control and anxiety and let the earth hold it for a while.
The eclipse is in Leo Decan 3, Human Design Gate 4
This eclipse is happening when the moon meets the sun near the South node of the moon’s path at 20 degrees Leo. Leo: the sign of the regal lion, the king, the crown, the stage, the fruiting time of year, the first harvest, the ego, and the feeling that sums it all up for me: personal self-expression.
The south node is the point in the crossing paths of the moon/earth that represents decrease, release of things that are past their prime, well-worn paths (which are also known as ruts). The tail of the dragon, The place of excreting what has been fully processed and letting it go. South node eclipses amp this up- our bodies, our feelings start to take over when our solar minds go dark. And they are the parts of us that are sharing what it is that needs to be composted. Our mind takes a back seat, hence the discomfort.
20 degrees Leo is the beginning of the second decan of Leo. This is a fiery, bold, and hyper-driven part of the lion’s archetype, ruled by the Sun and sub-ruled by Mars. This decan combines Leo’s sense of pride with an Martian Aries-like energy, which shows up as brutally honest, ambitious, and stubborn with a warrior-king type of vibe.
20 degrees Leo, in the Human Design Mandala, is a degree within Gate 4: The Gate of Formulization. This is known as Youthful Folly in the I'Ching, the hexagram of the young fool who must learn through trial and error, mistakes and all, before wisdom can take root. This gate, in the Gene Keys, carries the shadow of Intolerance, the gift of Understanding, and the siddhi of Forgiveness. The arrogant ambition and stubbornness of the Leo III decan is definitely reflected in this gate.
Gate 4: Formulization is built from the trigrams Mountain over Water in the I'Ching. It's the image of a spring bubbling up at the base of a mountain, raw potential still finding its shape, the early stages of learning, and a reminder that guidance matters at this stage.
Gate 4 pushes us toward wanting an answer for everything, regardless of whether that answer is valid. It’s the gate that generates hypotheses, and is the basis of the scientific method. On its own, Gate 4 is only responsible for asking questions, and when left to work alone it will try to create answers to those questions even when the hypotheses are a little ridiculous. Because of the intolerance of the process and the warrior-king mentality here, those answers can end up far from valid.
Gate 4 doesn’t have the ability to check its own answers, and if it can’t understand something, it will find a logical-sounding reason to reject it instead of sitting with the not-knowing. In the I’Ching, hexagram 4 makes room for mistakes and not-knowing as part of the path rather than something to be ashamed of, and asks us to meet others with an open mind instead of a fixed one. It calls for self-discipline and real inner reflection, and it pushes us to actually live out what we’ve learned instead of waiting around to be told what to do next.
So this eclipse will be tied to letting go of the naiive pride and intolerance of youth - the childlike quality of saying “I already knew that!” (my 7 year old says this to me ALL THE TIME). What will get released on this eclipse is the need to have the answer before you’ve earned it, the desire to be certain when we need to have a reflective and open mind.
It’s time to let go of the part of yourself that reaches for a quick, confident explanation just to make the discomfort of not knowing go away. Leo eclipses always ask us to loosen our grip on being right, and release our propensity to perform certainty for an audience that was never actually watching that closely anyway.
Heads will roll this Leo eclipse, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There’s a softening available here, when we welcome in willingness to stay in the question a little longer instead of rushing to close the loop and find an answer based on our own ego and pride.
Leo is ruled by the sun, so it’s a perfect time to pay reverence to the earth and the moon, the soft bodies that are taking over the solar stage for a bit. They carry wisdom that is not brash, not arrogant, not always rushing to fill the dark spaces with light or sound or consciousness.
Sometimes the dark space, the liminal realm, is where the answer is actually forming. This eclipse reminds us to flush out the tendency to avoid or ignore the things that still soft, still unfinished, and not ready to be dragged into the light and forced to defend themselves yet.
The moon doesn’t explain herself. She moves through her phases with grace, disappearing and returning, trusting that the dark is part of the cycle and not a formulaic problem to be solved. This eclipse is an invitation to let some part of you stay in shadow a little longer, unformulated, unrushed, and still in a process of becoming.
Let’s love on our close-by moon mama while we still can, from our place on this earth, with our feet in the soil…. before she drifts another 3 centimeters away.
xox,
Alison