Where Freedom Stirs | Lunar Eclipse in Scorpio | Sunday 5.15.22 | 11:14pm CST

Tonight the skies offer up a total lunar eclipse. The event will be visible from the western hemisphere, a revelatory moment where the sky’s theatrics are on full display. From where I am in New Orleans (CST), this event peaks around 11pm. Convert to your time zone and see if you can witness this event.

The astrological and mythic stories that contextualize this event match its visual theatricality.

The Vedic myth that describes eclipses details this: a dragon demigod is seeking the elixir of immortality that’s getting churned up during the creation of the universe. This stuff is called amrit. The dragon is caught in the act of drinking the amrit, and a god (Vishnu, preserver/protector of the universe) smites our demigod by cutting him in half. The demigod, already immortal having drunk the immortality-bestowing amrit, is placed in the sky as two points perfectly opposite each other: Rahu, the head of the dragon, and Ketu, the tail (or ass) of the dragon. These points are known to western astrologers as the north node (Rahu, head) and south node (Ketu, ass). When the luminaries (the Sun and the Moon) pass over these points, the head or the tail of our dragon are said to swallow, digest, and release the luminary.

Tonight’s event is a south node/Ketu lunar eclipse in Scorpio. This means the Moon is passing over/through/into the ass of the dragon. The idea here is release. What are we releasing?

Eclipses are times when we’re seeking the elixir of immortality, or at least remembering our perilous ancestral journeys to do so. The nervous system may be running high, and feelings of linear time may collapse. We may be feeling caught in the particularly Scorpionic struggle of defending ourselves against possible loss, death, or danger. These are emotions and sensations that cause us to sweat and stress. They can snare us into the binary thinking that there is only life or death, loss or gain, light or dark, legal or illegal.

However there is much in between, and one of those in-between things is shadow. Eclipses are the product of shadow: they’re a living mythology of light and shadow that play out several times each year, when the shadow of the earth swallows the moon, or the shadow of the moon blocks the light of the sun. Planetary bodies display tricks of the eye, create spectacle, flirt with representations of life and death, beauty and terror.

During eclipses, shadows are out to play. So, what happens when we play with the shadows?

Let us play then, and meditate on shadow, a strange in-between thing. Shadow is attached to all beings, it’s attached to light and matter, which are necessary for life; is shadow alive? Shadow is attached to bodies; is it part of the body? Shadow seems immaterial, but somehow also, not. You can feel your skin raise and prickle when shadow passes over you. You and all the earth-bound creatures can feel when a shadow swallows up the moon or sun.

Shadow is a little creepy, it can make our skin crawl. Shadows hide things. How do we become intentional about what our shadow is hiding? Because when a shadow falls on something or someone around us and that thing or someone is made less visible, we can trick ourselves into thinking they’re not there, or that they’re less real. Be careful of falling for illusions of “otherness,” of something that, because it’s been made less visible by your shadow, is now something the egoic impulse can name as not-you and against which you can measure yourself.* In studying your shadow, choose carefully where you cast it. You can always move over a few inches to see what is behind your shadow. When you do, just as the shadow of the earth reveals the moon to us anew tonight, you’ll be able to familiarize yourself with the mysteries and brilliance of a whole being you might have forgotten was there.

And now, as ever, be careful to notice upon which bodies power-holding institutions are casting their shadows. Go in and meet others in the shadows. Remember from there that being in the shadow does not subtract your sovereignty over your mind and body, and that no matter what agency any body claims over yours, you still cast a shadow where things go bump in the night, and where your freedom stirs.

Shadows hide things, so cultivate curiosity about what you are hiding out of reflex, and think carefully about what you want to hide intentionally, and from whom. Hiding can be a necessary act of protecting the vulnerable. Scorpio wants to know who your body can trust, and with whom you can let go to share in the connective act of holding vulnerability.

So again, what are we releasing? One way of perceiving this is that we are releasing into the shadow. There is no escaping the shadow, the eerie in-between that evades definition or capture. There is no escaping our fugitive parts of self. So my proposal is this: can you care for your fugitivity, and care for the fugitivity of those around you who are also in process of breaking their chains and creating their freedoms? With compassion, can you let your shadows merge, and see how movements gestate there in that darkness? Can you let these movements grow into bodies that create shadows of their own?

To our becomings through eclipsing,

Amalia

Eclipse Season Part 1: Jan. 31 Full Moon Eclipse in Leo | Feb. 1 Imbolc

Wednesday, Jan. 31 | As Old As Dragons
Full Supermoon Lunar Eclipse in Leo
5:27am PST| 11 degrees

Welcome Eclipse Season, a two-week stretch of sped-up evolution. We can always expect things to move a bit like someone has their finger on the time-lapse dial during eclipses. Time feels a little less linear. We get the chance to watch ourselves in amplified slow motion detail before we speed up and blow through our baggage at a breakneck pace. There’s a weird sci-fi feeling that permeates the air: the feeling that the past isn’t dead yet, that the future was born long ago, and that we are here to heal trajectories set in motion by processes beyond our comprehension. Karma with origins as old as dragons shows itself (think Reptile Brain), and our work is to assess and respond.

Eclipse Season begins on January 31 with a Full Supermoon Total Eclipse in Leo. This is the third of what astronomers are calling the Supermoon Trilogy (a Supermoon is when a Full Moon coincides closely when the Moon is the closest to Earth in its orbit, giving us an up to 30% brighter and much bigger Moon in the sky). 

So what is that about? A Big Moon means Big Emotions. Luna rules the personal emotional experience, so this is about your own emotions. With a Leo Eclipse, we are graced with an eye toward our more hyperbolic and attention-seeking inner dramas, so your personal shit is is extra visible at this time (to yourself and, it's safer to assume, to others as well). 

Your best option, of course, is the path of least resistance: cultivate a relationship with the personal experience whether you like what you find there or not. Word to the wise: cultivating a relationship with your inner experience is never indulgence, it’s mandatory for your sanity. So face what comes up around this time. If you absolutely have to, play it out to some degree, just keep consequences in mind.

Greetings from Krampus! | Greeting Card ca. 1900s | sourced via Wikimedia Commons

So as you work with these inner dramas, keep the ledger at hand and take notes for future navigation through your own waters. Ask the stories your emotions are trying to tell you and don’t skirt around what you hear. Play the neutral observer (Sun and South Node in Aquarius). Read and decode yourself, but remember that if your emotions don’t get heard and integrated, they will come back bigger and badder next time, Krampus style.

This Full Supermoon Eclipse in Leo also occurs the day before Imbolc, the cross quarter Pagan festival that since ancient times has been a day set aside to ritually purify the household, nurture the coming warmth, and light candles in honor of growing creative fires. So again, we get an amplification of Eclipse-style energy: purifying renewal, release, and propulsion forward.

Let’s keep in mind that the chart of this Full Moon has Venus conjunct the South Node in Aquarius, so if we’re going to get held up, it’s likely to be in vain attempts to remain aloof or to evade the grittier aspects of personal renewal and emotional integration. This is not easy work. The ego does not like to change shape. But the promise of this Leo Eclipse is that if we can humble ourselves and drop expectations about who we’re “supposed to be,” our souls will begin to shape our presence here with unprecedented levels of authenticity and truthfulness.

There is a Neptune quincunx to this Full Moon, which is again about emotional integration, but on a more colossal scale. This aspect can bring up pretty daunting psychological states like the existential loneliness that stretches all the way back to the pain of separation from our mothers at birth. Do your best not to numb yourself through hollow connections. Don’t feed things that don’t feed you. And remember that the kind of real connection that sincerely heals such existential Neptunian wounds requires the workout of going miles beyond the ego. Connection requires humility, so make sure you’re talking back to any dramatic Leonine thought patterns. Listen to the heart, not what the mind does to band-aid the heart.
 

Thursday, Feb. 1 | Imbolc

Image by author | 2017 | Avebury

This is the festival of the pan-Celtic Goddess Brigid, a solar deity who represents the transition of the Goddess from Crone to Maiden. Imbolc is therefore, traditionally, a celebration of the quickening of the earth after winter’s sleep. The festival takes place during early winter lambing, when ewes are birthing and milking their first young. It’s a potent time to look within and discover what young and vulnerable parts of yourself need tending.

Imbolc centers around rituals of purification and initiation. It is traditionally a time to begin planning and setting in motion new ventures creative, spiritual, and worldly. The energy we cultivate here is “out with the old, in with the new,” and a common ritual for Imbolc is cleaning the home and then hanging a broom, or besom, above the entrance to the home to protect its purified condition.

Brigid's Cross | sourced via Pinterest

Birch, which is associated with purification and protection, is often used to make the besoms, as well as the protective St. Brigid’s Cross traditionally made during Imbolc. As Maurice Bruce writes in “The Krampus from Styria,” The birch … may have a connection with the initiation rites of certain witch-covens; rites which entailed binding and scourging as a form of mock-death.” And indeed, Birch forests have since ancient times been associated with spirits of the dead and with the process of mourning.

Initiation is a tender process that requires awareness of what we have released, or are in the process of releasing. The bond between death and birth is unequivocal. So while we want to treat Imbolc as an occasion to open up to the warmth of new trajectories, we must develop an astute relationship with what is passing, and of the cold that remains around what is no longer living.

In keeping with the nuanced duality of this festival of purification and initiation, Brigid rules both fire and water. She rules Poetry and Bardic Lore, for she offers the gift of the creative “fire in the mind” to the poets. Yet she also rules water, Sacred Wells, and therefore the art of Augury as well. For this question of the watery source from the “Otherworld” is deeply linked with creativity. We must look beyond the immediately accessible dimensions of our existence in order to feed the creative fires that propel us forward.

So Brigid, also Goddess of Milk, reminds us that with all of the poise required to navigate the balanced tapestry of life and death, the key is the simple stuff of nurturance. This is a time to care for yourself, as both mother and father. Cultivate composure and purified structures for yourself while simultaneously tending the hearth fire for the vulnerable sides of yourself just beginning to emerge. As winter’s freeze melts away and the earth begins to warm enough for the first shoots of spring to appear, reflect on how your internal world mirrors this process, and remember that summer’s ease is some months out. Circumspect care is required here. Go attentively!

Suggested Ritual:

Clear a surface in your house for an altar (if you already have an altar, clear that space). Place a bowl on the altar and fill it with purified water to represent Brigid’s Sacred Wells. Secure a red or white candle, and place this on the altar as well to represent the Creative Fire that will help you to envision and propel yourself into the future. Take some time to write down what the Creative Fire feels like in your personal world, and how you would like to draw from the Sacred Well to purify yourself and deepen your creative process. 

As mentioned above, it is also an ideal time to clean the home and hang a broom above the entrance for protection. If you don’t have a broom that feels suitable to hang above the door, then go outside and collect some twigs. Wrap some twine around the twigs so you have a small bundle that acts as your symbolic broom, and hang that above the door.

Most importantly, reflect on the intentions you have already set for this calendar year, and check in to see what kind of progress you have made with them. Do you need to revise your intentions? If so, this is the time. Rewrite your plans. Really strategize on how you can bring things into fruition. Because Imbolc syncs up with this Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in Leo, listen to the actual state of your emotions as they are, and integrate that as you revise your intentions and your plans to manifest them. Don’t sell yourself short, but keep it real, pups.

Imbolc blessings.

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The Lion Free of Ego: Lunation Cycle July 23 - August 21

New Moon in Leo to New Moon in Leo: The Lion Free of Ego

New Moon Greetings:

While the beginning of a lunation cycle is the Dark Moon and often signifies a time of releasing and unraveling into the unknown, this cycle will flounce in through Leo, asking for attention and activity. This trip of the Moon around the Earth heralds Eclipse Season, our biannual occasion to rebirth and renew ourselves at a rapid rate. Rebirth is in fact fourfold this season, with two New Moons (and one Solar Eclipse) in Leo, a Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in Aquarius, and Mars beginning a new 2-year trip around the zodiac when it enters cazimi and shows itself on the other side of the Sun on July 26, at 4 degrees of Leo.

Besides the ever-expressive Sun and Moon, Mars is in fact our main player during this cycle of the Moon. His roughly 2-year (26-month) journey around the Sun carries us through the ever-evolving rhythms of the noble Warrior within. He is the god of the inner, archetypal fires. God of The Fight, for whatever cause that would compel us into combat. He entered Leo this Thursday on July 20, where he is more the gladiator than the analytical orator he was when in, for example, Gemini, where his last 2-year cycle began in 2015. However in Leo we see him donning the skins of lions he has battled in the past, absolutely visible, and of course illustrious. He might cut a comical figure if it weren’t for his capacity to tap into into the raw power of his vitality, well beyond preoccupation with his stout musculature.

When Mars passes through the redemptive fires of the Sun on July 26, he is scoured clean of any extraneous ego-detritus he picked up in his last 2-year cycle. This is an excavation, and we have been feeling it for some time already, as Mars has been combust since mid-July, meaning he has been overpowered by the rays of the sun, not visible to us on Earth. We’ve likely detected his thrashing within ourselves, in the throes of ego-death, either unaccustomed to selfless battle or veritably averse to it.

But a major theme of this lunation cycle is absolutely dropping the ego, and fighting for that which is beyond the thin skin that contains our organs. The pressure will be on to ask ourselves how our personal battles relate to something larger. With the New Moon in Leo today on July 23, we can relax a bit into personal projects, intuiting our ways through the esoteric process of breathing new life into that which makes us feel individuated, uniquely animated. However by the Full Moon partial Lunar Eclipse in Aquarius on August 7, we’ll be looking at our relationship with the collective: collective fears and compulsions, and how we contribute to or heal them from within ourselves.

Shortly after the Lunar Eclipse, Mercury will station Retrograde at 11 degrees of Virgo on August 12, and remain in its retrogradation phase until September 5, so, for the rest of this lunar cycle and then some. When Mercury goes retrograde, he punctures the realms and enters the Underworld. He now becomes Hermes, the psychopomp who ferries lost souls across the river Styx. This is a time of review, of recovering subterranean information that was not readily available in Mercury’s first transit over these degrees. Mercury will enter its pre-retrograde shadow (the degrees it will cross back over during its retrograde) tomorrow on Monday, July 24, so whatever energies you are engaging by then will be turned inside out and exposed for what the really are.

The exposure of Mercury Retrograde is more of a mental process than a heart-centered one, but the heart will have a heavy dose of lessons to extract during this retrograde as well, when Venus takes a series of hard hits from Pluto and Jupiter. We’ll be called again to come outside of ourselves in order to look long and hard at our intimate spheres, and how we work for or against balanced relationships and the embodiment of grace in the world.

When the “Great American” Total Solar Eclipse rolls in on August 21, visible across the United States, we will truly be tested. There are abundant doomsday prophecies floating around about the collapse of the West and America’s crumbling political system. While astrology is more useful as a tool for energetic preparation than auguring the future, it is hard to overlook the fact that this first Solar Eclipse visible in the United States in over a century does hit Trump’s chart where it hurts: it is literally exact on his Ascendant.

But let’s stick with metaphysics for now: this Eclipse is the Sun (solid sense of self or ego) in Leo (the loyal, royal lion) eclipsed by the Moon (intuition, or emotionality). Mars is involved, just 8 degrees away from the Eclipse, so what we have is an opportune moment to collectively attune our yang warriors to the yin. To allow ourselves to stalk the halls of our inner palaces and turn our ears to the uncanny messages the ghosts have to share with us, unafraid of the what hides in the shadows as the light flickers in and out. We cannot know every step of the way, but we can trust that wherever our steps lead us, the lessons provided will be providential and rich in lightening the ego. Perhaps we will shed our lion skins and open our hearts a bit, ready to devote our energies to some subtler realm of service.

New Moon in Leo: Empowerment Against the Odds
July 23
0’44 degrees Leo
2:45 am PST
This New Moon in Leo goes unaspected by any other planets, meaning it is has a heavy emphasis on Leonine energy. There are two mythological lions associated with Leo: one is the lion that Hercules killed as the first of his 12 labors, skinned, and whose pelt he wore as a protective cloak. The second is the lion from Ovid’s tale of Pyramus and Thisbe. This young couple is an older iteration of Romeo & Juliet, star-crossed lovers who met in secret against their parents’ will. One night they agreed to meet beneath a mulberry tree, and when Thisbe arrived, a lion sprang out of the thicket. She ran away in fright, but her veil fluttered to the ground behind her. When Pyramus arrived, he saw only the lion and Thisbe’s veil, and thinking his love had been killed, he threw himself onto his sword. When Thisbe returned, she saw her love dying, took his sword, and killed herself.

For this New Moon, let’s focus on the second lion. While rather sinister, we can draw out some useful lessons here, emphasized by other aspects in the sky, on the stark potentialities of the desire to expand into greater connectivity. It is risky business.

Venus at 20 degrees Gemini loosely opposes Saturn at 22 degrees Sagittarius, and Jupiter in Libra is very close to its final square with Pluto. During this Dark Moon, we are getting a taste of why it might be frightening to expand beyond the borders of our little bodies to connect with others. Death, shame, the fear of falling. There is no security in loving, only leaps into the unknown.

But with Mars conjunct this Sun and Moon at 1 degree of Leo, we have some verve today. Mars in Leo is the Hercules archetype, and so we have some courage to step into the unknown and risk our precious necks. This is not a bad day to launch into visibility the creative project you’ve been harboring behind the veil, to establish contact with some shadowy figure you've been infatuated with, or to travel to new places. Essentially, chances are good that you’ll have the energy to learn the art of flying (or swimming) when you step off that craggy precipice.

Mars Cazimi and Reborn: The Noble Warrior In The Hedge
Wednesday July 26
4 degrees Leo
10:12am PST
Mars has been traveling through its own underworld for some weeks now, engaging a liminal space where the unconscious has overwhelmed his ego and he’s been subject to the eddying flow of dreamspace. When Mars in combust, or blocked out by the rays of the Sun, he loses much of his sense of glory but also, importantly, vainglory. On July 26 when he goes cazimi, traveling literally “in the heart of” the Sun, he passes through the harshest of the fires and he is reborn. And yet he is not yet out of the hedge. He is absolutely still engaging the necessary tests of endurance this psychologically murky space thrusts upon him.

Luckily, however, he has made it through the biggest trial in this underworld journey: he has shed his ego, and is born into his authenticity, bleary-eyed and so radically transformed he cannot help but feel the freshness. Do not reject this sensation. Because this rebirth occurs in Leo, we will certainly be faced with the fear of losing popularity, friendships, and self-flattering impressions as punishment for brashly charging into our authenticity. But this is precisely the fear we must face. Allow yourself to engage Beginner’s Mind, free of perceptions or pre-conceived notions that crowd out reality. If you have planets in the first 10 degrees of Leo, make an event of this day. Say something you’re scared to say or make an action you’ve denied yourself, even it seems like complete foolishness. Mars is now open-minded and optimistic regarding the second half of his underworld combustion, and the inner warrior is ready to face the 26 months of a new evolutionary cycle around the zodiac.

Jupiter in Libra square Pluto in Capricorn: Expanding into Karmic Arrival
Monday July 31
Both at 17 degrees
Due to retrogrades, Jupiter and Pluto have been in this grueling dance for over a year and a half now, and today is the final exact expression of this aspect. When Jupiter and Pluto square, we get tension between the personal agenda of elegant expansion, and the trans-personal, trans-historical reality of karmic limitations, of our inherent woundedness.

We’re liable to have trouble keeping the faith that we are moving in the right direction or capable of fully expanding into our perceived destinies. The most useful thing to remember is that we are always at every moment fully within our karmic arrival. Every step in your journey is where you’re meant to be. Every moment, travail, and triumph offers unique lessons that are tailored to the growth of your authentic self.
 

Venus enters Cancer: Holding the Heart In A Flat Open Palm
Monday July 31
7:54am PST
Venus, our Aphrodite born from the sea, has been transiting Gemini since July 4, where she’s been exploratory, experimental, perhaps a bit incautious, but analytical. Cancer is a place where Venus returns to the sea, but if we’re not careful this may come as more a swing of the pendulum than the gentle transition we can have if we're astute. Suddenly this goddess of love and beauty may clam up, scramble behind the hardy shell of Cancer’s crab, and ponder how she could have ever been so brash as to associate with the diverse bunch of folks and facts that populated her Gemini season.

The trick is to remain vulnerable and expressive until someone bears a weapon. Only then does the shell go up. Until then, if Venus remains serene within her mindfulness, she will recognize that while she is no longer interested in roving curiosity where friends, lovers, or art are concerned, she ought not indiscriminately close the heart to new territory. She may stay at home more, but her task is to remain open to what energies visit her home, and to be forthright enough to continue forming genuine bonds with people or materials she feels genuinely drawn towards.

Uranus stations Retrograde: The Subtle Art of Getting Free
28 degrees Aries
Wednesday August 2
10:31pm PST
Uranus is an ostentatiously rebellious planet, obsessed with freedom and the future. Usually it’s transits signal breaking free at all costs, tearing down walls and busting up stodgy monuments. However when Uranus stations retrograde, it tends to see these things as slightly more menacing, and is more likely to find blinders on its eyes. Instead of responding to fearfulness or intimidation, we can use this retrograde as an opportunity to check ourselves. Are we strategizing properly about subverting the powers-that-be? Are we calling on our worldly wisdom rather than brash idealism? Remember that retrogradation is about review, so be willing to learn from past mistakes.

Full Moon Partial Lunar Eclipse in Aquarius: End of the Drought
15’25 Aries
Monday August 7
11:10am PST
This Full Moon is, again an opportunity to accelerate rapidly in growth. In this case, Full Moon in Aquarius, it is trans-personal growth. We are aware of the unconventionality of justice for all. How true justice means the space for enormous variety. Aquarius is the water-bearer. The Babylonians associated Aquarius with the rainy month: it represented a flowing urn. This is when the rains fall to nourish the diversity of life on earth. This is not the act of swimming around in water we see with Pisces, it is the act of bestowing and receiving the powerful gift of water, which engenders life. Though Aquarius can feel cool and distant, it is radical in its ethics, prepared to contend for life in all its forms.

As far as aspects go, this Moon receives a waning semi-sextile from Pluto in Capricorn, a waxing semi-sextile from Neptune in Pisces, as well as a trine from Jupiter in Libra. This is quite a benevolent set of interactions, blessing us with a strong work ethic we can use to develop a constructive relationship with death by applying spiritual optimism, and the sense that it is well within our means to be gracefully in harmony with all beings, alive or passed.

Stay sober on this day (though this can be challenging on a Full Moon), as you will want to retain the cool-headed clarity of Aquarius. The polarity we are working with is the impulse to be rowdy, hot-headed, and visible (Sun and Mars are in Leo just 4 degrees apart), and the inner emotional pull towards quietly doing our work, visible to the public or not. Dedicate your energy to exploring where there is drought in your inner landscape. Open the once-dammed channels so that water flows and the perennials waiting to spring back into life can blossom again.

Venus in Cancer sextile Mercury in Virgo: The Mind Learns How To Love Too
Wednesday August 9
11 degrees
7:17pm PST
Mercury and Venus have been nearing this flirtatious aspect for some time. Because Mercury’s retrograde will involve quite a few deep lessons for the heart, take this day to find some congruity between your heart and mind. Mercury is exalted in Virgo and finds himself highly capable of service-oriented practicality. In this aspect he is learning how to serve the tenderness of Venus’s soft underbelly in Cancer. Be wary of Mercury’s tendency to over-analyze the occult workings of this Goddess of Love. She is not to be objectified, and so we must look within and see what a mysterious process of release and acceptance it is to simply love ourselves.

Venus in Cancer trine Neptune in Pisces: Easy Love
Friday August 11
13 degrees
This is a sweet moment of feeling like one can breathe underwater before getting hit by the more arid aspects Venus will see in the following week, but it is not without its tricks. While we enjoy Neptune's nutritive perfume of deep spirituality, we should be careful of falling in love with our gurus, and gullibility in the realm of love in general.

Mercury Retrograde at 11’38 degrees Virgo: Mothers of the Underworld
August 12
6:01pm PST
The Sabian symbol for 11 degrees of Virgo, where Mercury stations retrograde, reads: “a boy molded in his mother’s aspiration for him.”

Mercury opposes Neptune, the great dissolver of boundaries, as he stations retrograde. The tone for this Mercury retrograde then begins with the questions of what in the microcosm we want to dissolve into the macrocosm, and under the watchful gaze of what “mother” we want to mold ourselves. This is going to be a tough Mercury Retrograde for individuals with any mother complex. If we have reason to be averse to manipulative mothering, then we may resist losing our boundaries to a wider sphere of nurturing. To be nurtured can be eerie. We must be open to receiving care from the underworld. The key here is not to overthink it: Mercury is not clear-headed as he traverses the underworld. He is going by the perplexing lantern of memory, and the divining rod of intuition.

While the Neptune-Mercury Rx opposition makes us perhaps susceptible to delusion, we should be careful not to reject Mystery or darkness out-of-hand. This retrograde phase offers much alchemy to learn from the peculiar realms of those motivating mysteries: passion and compassion. Luckily, Mercury and Venus are still within the field of their friendly sextile, and the God of Reason and Goddess of Love are still exchanging convivial whispers.
 

Sun in Leo trine Saturn in Sagittarius: Optimism for the Wisdom of Limitation
Sunday August 13
21 degrees
This is a useful day for cheerfully understanding why we can’t do certain things at this time. Sun in Leo trine Saturn in Sagittarius is a bit like the moment Daniel of Karate Kid begins to see the reason behind Miyagi’s discipline. Life is full of trials, and though we want to get out there beyond practice and show our stuff, without a measured pace and balanced practice, the youthful vitality of the trainee is useless. Use this day to make friendly with a regular, disciplined practice. If you already have one, breathe some new life into it if you’re ready by sharing the skills you’ve developed with the world, be that your personal community or the world wide web. Gravity and grace will keep you on the ground today if you have a tendency to float away into insecurity. 

Venus in Cancer opposes Pluto in Capricorn: The Gaping Maw of Love
Monday August 14
17 degrees
All sorts of psychoses, compulsive behaviors, and fears may fester throughout this day, and our task is to face them stoically. When Venus opposes Pluto, karmic wounds and the desire for love tend to work against one another. If you are an avoidant personality, take a look at why you flee intimacy. If you sidle easily into unhealthy relationships, look at what you’re turning away from by doing so. Whatever the case, stay open to learning what the underbelly of intimate relationships (both platonic and romantic) has to show you.

Remember that Pluto is the chthonic god who rules the dark underground, so the seeds of new life and new harvest are created within his realm. Glean these seeds as you face the darkness. If Persephone spent one sacrificial half of the year in Hades’ realm for the bounty of the earth, you can spend some days staring down his gaping maw for the bounty of unconditional love.

Venus in Cancer squares Jupiter in Libra: The Cautious Lover
Wednesday August 16
19 degrees
Venus catches another hard aspect when she finds herself at odds with the Jovial King in Libra. In this hard aspect, we may find ourselves asked to perform the most attractive sides of ourselves and resist, feeling as though the exposure cheapens our internal beauty. This self-protective side of Venus in Cancer is all well and good, but don’t sell yourself short. You can show yourself and still cultivate inner grace.

There may also be some romantic shut-downs around this day. If a partner, friend, or subject of infatuation refuses to give you what you desire or even ask for, don’t take it personally. The best thing to remember at this time is that nothing is personal and that being motivated in relationship by the idea of a specific outcome is a detrimental disposition. Authentic connection only comes when you can allow yourself and the other individual to grow into whatever alien thing each of you may become. As individuals grow, relationships have to change shape. This may be such a time. Don’t rush into condemnations or brash commitments around now. Allow the tension in the air to clear. This is not a day to propose to your loved one.

Mars in Leo sextile Jupiter in Libra: Airing it Out
Friday August 18
19 degrees
Following Venus’s harsh wake-up calls, there is a bit of excitation this Friday, creative and seductive energies wheeling through the air as we open to the possibilities held by the weekend and prepare ourselves for the upcoming Solar Eclipse. Mars is rather frolicking at this 19th degree of Leo: its Sabian symbol is “A houseboat party” and in this waxing sextile with Libra, Mars feels as though it could become anything and everything it desires at this party. If we are reckless, this energy could throw off the balance we need to cultivate for the ego-ravaging Eclipse of Monday. Careful of inflating the ego or being seduced by hollow glamour. However, allow the energy to wisp around you, kindling optimism around your own hero’s journey.

New Moon Total Solar Eclipse in Leo 28’52: The Lion Free of Ego
Monday August 21
11:28am PST
With this New Moon Solar Eclipse, we get personal and collective transformation of epic proportions. It occurs at 28 degrees of Leo. The last few degrees of any sign are pivotal and feel tense as the Sun prepares to switch codes and enter a new frame of reference. Power lies in the capacity to be transmute tension into release and renewal. As though we haven’t received enough lessons in this throughout this lunar cycle, this is just one more beginning to deepening our integrity.

Fixed Star Regulus is the brightest star in the lion’s constellation and lies, appropriately, at the lion’s heart, at 29 degrees of Leo on the cusp of Virgo. This Eclipse takes place on Regulus, which happens to be the closest star to the ecliptic, the royal road of the Sun’s apparent path around the earth. It is certainly the most noble and regal of Leo’s stars, and because it lies on the cusp of Virgo in the last degrees of Leo, this is where we take the developed sense of our unique inner fires and how to perform them, and open them up to selfless service. This is where the lion sheds its ego and dons the cloak of the noble king, highly responsive to the needs of his people.

Let’s get something straight about the ego: while the ego is useless, sense of Self is not. Without the sense of who one is as a unique expression of the mysterious whole, people tend towards narcissm and excessive hunting for affirmation. This Total Solar Eclipse affords us the opportunity to tap into the reality that simply by being ourselves and fulfilling our distinct life paths while supporting others in fulfilling theirs, we are being of service.

Mars is involved here, very close to the North Node or Rahu, head of the dragon, snarling away from the past and bent toward the future. There is no looking back here. Our Warrior (Mars), our sense of Self (Sun), and our Soul (Moon) are all here at the present as it becomes the future. The future, of course, is unknown.

Retrograde Uranus is the other planet heavily involved, trining the Eclipse from 28 degrees of Aries. Though fluid, this is not a cute aspect. We can use it to our advantage: Uranian energy knows how to get free, but retrograde, it has undercurrents of obsession and psychosis. These shadow expressions of Uranus’s energy will certainly be seen in many across the States, but as long as you remain aware of these pitfalls and guard against them, you should make it through this Eclipse with battle scars you’ll be proud to bear in a decade’s time.

Finally, with Mercury retrograde as well, we are called to continue trusting our intuition. This is literally a dark day, full of chthonic energies that surpass the rational mind’s capacities. But the dark is your friend. Trust that what it has to show you is of value, and this Eclipse will purge you of the ego’s limiting dross, and provide you with a sense of exhilarating wonder that will reverberate through your consciousness for many months to come.

Many blessings in this Eclipse Seasons,
Amalia

If you'd like more insight from Amalia on how these transits affect your personal blueprint, book a Birth Chart reading with her by clicking the link below.