We’re in the midst of the big eclipse energy, magnified by Mars and Pholus — as if an eclipse isn’t potent enough all by itself. (Here are links to last night’s edition, which includes the relevant Moonshine Horoscope by Len; and to Eric’s Monday horoscope, for your reference.)
Add in the fogginess of a Pisces Moon, and you’re looking at one of those supermoon-type optical illusions, wherein things look larger than they really are.
Photo of today’s penumbral eclipse by Auvo Korpi.
Put simply, this means that we’re all likely to be feeling some form of psychological tension. It’s not unjustified.
The U.S. election is fast approaching — a culmination of many, many months of weirdness and high-running emotions — and many people are looking forward to this period being over, so we can return to something like normality.
Jupiter has already brought some welcome change by entering Libra. This will be followed next week (Sept. 22) by the Sun’s own ingress into that sign, accompanied by Mercury stationing direct.
In the meantime, as Eric suggested in yesterday’s edition, the key to easing any feeling of stress or anticipation may well be accessing the gifts of Chiron: “healing comes to those who ask for it.” That, first of all, involves awareness of what might need the attention of the healer; and secondly, it requires willingness to embrace the help offered, and to accept that changes are possible.
We’d like to provide this space for you to discuss your eclipse experiences. Please feel free to come forward with comments or questions.
Amy: Thank you for the forum. For me, last night was the intense part. When it comes to Full Moons (in a way similar to Mars aspects) the anticipated correlating phenomena often manifest just before, when the aspect is “applying” (as we astrologers put it). Of course, eclipses do tend to have a longer legacy.
In addition, the opposition from Venus to the Uranus-Eris conjunction this weekend (as described in my blog today – to be found by scrolling further down the page) will probably correspond to today’s Full Moon and lunar eclipse being both extended and elaborated upon with some specificity to not only the Chiron’s role (as you describe it here) but also a process of individuating evolution through the revolutionary practice of love.
For love without condition truly is revolutionary. Hopefully, now that the last series of eclipses for 2016 is over, and now that the Full Moon is waning there will be more room inside our psyche to go along with a greater connection between our physical existence and what’s outside. I would advocate a weekend of physical activity (whether sexual or otherwise) and physical sensation (actually tasting that food, actually seeing that tree, actually listening to real, live, breathing musicians performing songs in real time – or being a musician yourself.) I would also advocate for a long, slow wandering conversation with a good friend close sitting close enough to hear you whisper. Finally, weather permitting, I would advocate looking at the Moon and stars so as to understand through your body (rather than just your mind) that we do have a place and a purpose in the Cosmos.
We are now out on the other side of the eclipses. We have each been moved in some sense, or are somehow in the process of moving far from where we started only weeks ago. Roll with retrograde Mercury, and take it all in.
If anybody needs a song to get started with, I would suggest the late, great B.B. King playing “Rock Me Baby” That should do something to ya’ – if you still be breathing at all.
Like my back ain’t got no bone…
The eclipse has focused two areas of my life, relationships & career. Having ended a four and half year relationship on or around the recent solar eclipse, today carried with it a further sense of letting go of that relationship.
On the career front, I had a conversation with the chair of my department today about some frustrations, resentments, and anger I’ve been carrying lately about our production & class schedule. We’re basically working 60 hour weeks right now, classes from 9-12 & rehearsal 2-10 pm. Add to that rehearsals from 10-6 on weekends. Our only day off are Mondays. I feel like I’m back in the grind I was in back home; working all day, then doing community theatre at night. Sure, I was getting roles all the time, but I was so exhausted by it all; taking care of myself, my home, my pet, working, and going to rehearsal every night of the week until 10 pm. It was too much, and now grad school has become more of the same. Only difference is the location, and I’m paying lots of money to do it now! Naropa was supposed to be contemplative, and I was supposed to have time to take care of myself & explore my own process. Right now the pace is anti-contemplative. These are the points I brought up to the chair of the department today, and I was on the verge of tears because it’s sad. I’m kind of freaking out about what I’ve chosen to do with my life thus far. Sure, I’ve got the talent to keep going, but why do it if I’m not enjoying myself; if all it does is use up my time & energy and not give anything back?
Ah yes. The Healer. This morning, after only 5 and a half hours of sleep, oldest son woke me up to say our older cat looked off and he wouldn’t close his mouth. I got up and held our kitty (he loves to be held) and examined his mouth. He has lost teeth before this due to a genetic predisposition to mouth infections but this time, a canine tooth was behind another and causing him pain. I could feel his pain and knew he needed medical help.
I took him to the vet where they sedated him and ended up pulling several very loose teeth from his infected mouth. Poor baby is now on antibiotics and pain meds and is feeling loopy. So now I am his nurse, gently caring for him and administering both love and medicines to help him heal. My baby; so loved by the family. I watch him carefully, making sure he is safe, warm, fed, has water, a clean box, is loved, and allowed to rest.
In another life, I probably could have been an actual nurse or wise woman herbalist healer. I chose another path in this life but use my knowledge, skills, and intuition to help my family.
Instead of tension, I felt and feel a deep sense of profound vastness in myself that has opened up since Merc went RX and has just continued. My usual, practical, realistic self has taken a small step back to make room for the intuitive, compassionate, sensitive self. That sensitive self is usually kept in the background because to allow it up front often makes me unable to function in my everyday life; things FEEL too intensely so I have to temper it with my Realist. If that’s not the Virgo-Pisces axis, I don’t know what is. I have Virgo rising and Sun in Pisces so I feel comfortable in it.
My favourite post-Harvest Moon/eclipse story so far also involves Chiron. It reminds me of Chelsea Manning’s situation in your link earlier this week, Amy. I’d always thought of the Scots Guards as being more than typically military in their attitude towards non-conventional sexual orientation and the subject of gender. Yet, lo and behold:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37391807
Surprisingly, in Britain at the moment at least, it seems that you can let the military authorities know you want to undergo gender reassignment and they may consider it favourably. Of course, it might be that the cost of training military personnel to the required level is so expensive that it’s more economic to ignore gender.
As an Aquarian, the most significant aspect of the week for me has been the Mars-Uranus trine. My tough and tender Arien friend Lucy and I resolved a long-running sense of aggravation between ourselves and ended up going out dancing. Joy and respect. This aspect has only just passed exact, so grab some of its strength if you can and power your vision towards a better future.
Loves,
I have found, not only with astrology but everywhere in my life, when I welcome all of it, rather than projecting or reacting by “bracing” myself (not even consciously, but that contraction or holding back, which I feel in my body) or holding my breath, The process moves through me with more ease and opening.
This time of eclipses and aspects therein, has been really exciting.
I love Chiron so much. For some reason I feel it inside me really intensely as an energy and support for healing, so feeling Chiron’s presence with everything else has been grounding for me, and inspiring in terms of holding fast to the trauma work my dreams have been plunging me into.
I have been feeling tons of electric energy and desire and sensuality and juiciness and creative inspiration.
I love hearing everyone’s experience.
I am so deeply grateful for it all…
I was measured, and found wanting, as Chiron moved like a firestorm through my body. Lack of self care, indecisiveness , and stagnation have been the theme for me. Relationships have been non stop crazy as my ex has begun to make plans for re entering my life, along with an ex lover. I really didn’t need a deluge of advice from any of them, as they force my hand to make decisions. Grateful for the weirdness though, it is helping me define my needs and my wants. Feeling too fuzzy to really make sense of it all anyway, and my gay roommate is trying to bring me levity, while advising me to give up men, except gays of course, haha, what a world , what a world !
I am grateful fro this space to express myself and what I’ve been going through – just prior to, during and after the eclipses…..it’s been HUGE…..with really powerful energies coursing through….
the main focus in my life during this whole period seems to me to be around money and all the things entangled with it – my deep fears, long-held beliefs on various things, how I have been seeing myself etc…..right now, we are in a financial low as a family, which has brought many things lying deep within us to light and posing a question to us if we want to change our ways and our beliefs…..
After having experienced a watershed of creative energy – of not having an outlet for that which was ‘enough’, I’ve been feeling like I’ve been in a soup that is being stirred constantly……so much turbulence, uncertainty, chaotic energy….
Over the last week or so, I’ve been feeling very much more ‘aligned’ and confident within, with things flowing from a very different space inside me……it’s been a powerful and humbling experience….to watch a new ‘me’ take form and get into its new skin….there have been a couple of experiences where I’ve felt like I was possessed by something outside of me, for the energy was just too powerful, strange and mind-boggling….my actions and words seemed to flow out of something that was so ‘unlike’ me, the ‘me’ that I and others were used to…..and yet it felt like I knew exactly what I was doing…..very purpose-full….it felt like an energy that needed to flow in that way to break certain walls in and around me for us as a family to start afresh….a kind of ‘Kali’ energy….it was scary to experience!
And quite naturally, I found myself seeking music to get to a different space…..we went for a music concert last night as a family and thoroughly enjoyed it, and feeling the energies flow and shift after that. It feels nice to know that this is also what Len has suggested we do over the weekend 🙂 Thank you! I feel like I’m on track and getting these ‘signs’ from the universe too!
Being a Libran, and with so much happening in my life right now, I am wondering if balance and alignment is what is coming into focus in a big way for me….it certainly feels like that is the way….right now, I don’t see any of the ‘gifts’ that Jupiter is bringing my way, although I can see how much more focused and intent I am in my pursuit of things, and would certainly welcome those gifts, if any, with open arms, in this most challenging time!
Didn’t even realize I was bracing myself to endure this final eclipse until the day following when I tried to relax and see what remained, only to feel deep emptiness. So much shedding since 2008, soul crushingly intensified in 2014/15, and now this summer, the Veil pulled back to see the habits of living my life through and for others’ needs and demands. Perfectly trained to be the responsive servant, with appropriate masks of efficiency and charm for all occasions. And then– the roadblocks and failures, one after another, to teach and demonstrate to me so clearly that this way of being was insupportable, and in fact, toxic. That those who saw the pattern could and would use it for themselves, only to discard me when I asked for something for myself, And then the sense of it all gone– my belief that I gave with love and for love, the “story” of being a good person, of what a “friend” is, of what being a sister, daughter, respected collaborator meant. That I had been given a role to play before I was even conscious of choice, a stage act, designed to make me useful, and that I adopted out of desperation to get whatever crumbs of love I could. So more Burning through the grief, shame, rage, despair… Gifts of Chiron? Sat. was hard– what remained, except my foolishness and naievety? And then last night in meditation, realizing that I can love myself without reserve, that everything is a teaching, and that I am a worthy Agent of All That Is, even if parts of me are afraid and uncertain. New keys for old locks that I didn’t even know existed. Now to rest and just Be, to see what unfolds. There are those who laugh at astrology, but I will testify that reading about these transits has kept me on the side of sanity, seeing these major returns and reworkings of my chart from the karmas of the previous six decades–profound for this native with a natal Virgo stellium, lit up by Sun, Venus, and Jupiter, Pluto plowing up her ascendant Capricorn, and natal Moon and Eris lit up by Uranus, not to mention Mercury revisiting its natal Libran position in retrograde opposition to that electrical, individualistic cluster in Aries and just for spice, a handful of retrogrades slowing everything down, just in case I hadn’t gotten the message yet. Peace to you all, and deepest thanks to all at PW for this offering in the face of a culture that often puts up roadblocks to so much that is self-affirming and empowering on the spiritual level. <3