Let's talk eclipses

I think I’ve said this before, but if not, here goes: eclipses freaked out our ancestors, so we continue to freak out about them. Venus retrograde freaked them out, too (with the observation being that wars broke out when the thing governing getting-along changed direction). But with eclipses, it’s something about the light going away that people cannot handle. There’s a lunar eclipse on Monday and another one on April 8.

Here’s how you should decide whether or not to panic: do you have anything major within 3 degrees of 5° Libra? That’s the lunar eclipse degree. How about anything within 3 degrees of 19° Aries? That’s the solar eclipse degree.

What to expect? Lunar eclipses are hit or miss, but often they accompany a change of heart. Solar eclipses just mean change. Good change? Bad change? Depends on what in your chart is being aspected by the eclipse AND it also depends on the transits you currently have going. If it’s a fiesta of misery, transit-wise, an eclipse is not going to help you. If things are going pretty well, you can often decide to initiate the change yourself. (Often! Not always.)

Should you freak out about an eclipse by itself? No. Absolutely not. Should you take it under advisement that change is due in the house the eclipse falls in in your chart? Absolutely yes. If the eclipse aspects “something” in your chart, not only should you take it under advisement, you should expect it as if a train carrying change will be arriving shortly (in the house indicated in your chart).

A solar eclipse is a new moon on steroids. New moons are about beginnings. A lunar eclipse is a full moon on steroids. Full moons are often (but not always) about discarding something, or “throwing something off,” but they can also simply be an opposition, which is something opposing you. It could be a person. It could be a puma. But oppositions force you to act. A puma opposing you will hopefully force you to run away from the puma.

There’s a new moon and a full moon at least once a month, so you have that many opportunities for new beginnings and puma encounters annually; the eclipses are just bigger than normal. Oh, and: the eclipse point remains a hot zone for a year or so, unless Saturn conjoins the eclipse point before “a year or so” is up. Anything ELSE going over that hot zone can spin it up, ESPECIALLY Mars. My best example of this is COVID: we’d had a solar eclipse at an 4° Capricorn in December 2019, and Mars went over that point in late February 2020, which was the inflection point of the shitshow that it became (in my opinion). Mars hits 19° Aries (for this eclipse round) around May 24. I’m not expecting a COVID redux, for the record! The sky back in 2020 was a shitshow, if you recall.

If either 19° Aries or 5° Libra is the degree of your sun, moon, ascendant, descendant, midheaven or IC (bottom of your chart), that screams “change!” to me. Some eclipses come in sets that are very few degrees apart, so let's say your ascendant is at 20° Libra: there was a solar eclipse at 21° Libra in October, and now there's an eclipse at 19° Aries, so that's hitting two of the angles we care about in a short time span. I often see this kind of activity the year someone gets married and moves across the country, but it’s always supported by everything else happening in the chart.

We change all the time for all kinds of reasons. You could begin a new diet. You could buy a lot of new pants. You could learn a new language. Often, it's very productive. It's the people who resist change who struggle with eclipses.

A good resource for eclipse interpretation is this manual, which you’ll consult twice a year maximum, which is when the eclipses happen, and then when the change ultimately does happen, you’ll think back to the definition of whichever eclipse it was and think “oh, right.”

Basically, people freak out about eclipses, obsess over them, slowly forget about their freakout/obsession, then the change happens on its own (organically) and in hindsight it all makes sense. Frankly, that’s most of astrology, but it’s eclipses, especially.