Image: Shaolin monks holding a horse stance
Eclipse season started yesterday when the Sun entered Scorpio and is truly over with November 23 with the new Moon in Sagittarius. There will be two eclipses, a partial solar eclipse in Scorpio tomorrow, and a total lunar eclipse in Taurus November 8. The key themes for tomorrow’s eclipse will therefore be with us for about a month. They include sitting with discomfort, a new beginning that comes with a loss or a letting go, and a larger context that’s quite challenging, and has been challenging for some time. A solar eclipse is simply a new Moon on steroids, a particularly impactful beginning. In this moment of big beginnings, Venus, the Moon, and the Sun are all coming together in the fixed water sign of Scorpio. The Moon and Venus are both supremely uncomfortable here, and the larger context is also one of discomfort. The host of this eclipse, Mars, is stationary in Gemini and about to start backtracking. Saturn is also standing quite still in the sky, in a sort of “evil cahoots” with Mars, just starting to appear to move forward after a long retrograde. Mars and Saturn are the two planets that do not feel good, and when they are both standing still, they are particularly influential. Oh, and one more thing. That neverending stress test that we cannot stop talking about, the Saturn Uranus square, is as tight as it ever will be this year.
If you are enduring an intractably uncomfortable situation right now, that would make sense! And if you are not, that is okay too–everybody’s chart is different, there are a lot of people who aren’t going to be massively impacted by this. Just keep in mind that people around you might be having a hard time and try to be a force of good.
I don’t have any advice for this eclipse season except sit with it and let it happen, even though it will be uncomfortable. And we live in a culture that really cannot tolerate discomfort, so I understand that I am asking you to do something that’s culturally impossible. The two things I use to handle the discomfort of sitting with difficult feelings are choosing to do something else that’s hard, so I can prove to myself that I can do it, and prayer. It’s a good month to just do something you really hate to do, like a minute long forearm plank or holding horse stance or meditating or cleaning the toilet–whatever you really hate to do the most–every single day. It’s a surprisingly effective handhold in a difficult time to just choose to do something you don’t like on purpose. For the other 23 hours and 59 minutes of the day, when I am having a hard time sitting with hard feelings instead of raging or medicating myself or dumping thirty anxious text messages into a loved one's phone, I am not at all ashamed to say that I pray. A lot. Here is my prayer for this eclipse season. You can use it if it resonates, or make your own. I recently got over my inability to say the word god, but you do you. Pray to whomever you think is listening, you do not even have to name that entity.
God, I can feel you with me. I know that I am not alone and that this difficulty is part of something that’s larger than me. Grant me the strength to participate in this moment. When I collapse into rage, or self medication, or anxiety, grant me the compassion to forgive myself and come back to presence. Grant me the ability to trust that everything is going to be okay. Let me take comfort in your love while everything else is taking a new shape and is not comfortable.
Oh, and if you're in the US, remember to vote! This eclipse season does not exactly predict an easy midterm election here.