People, please: settle down. Now is not the time to get all panicky over the title of a blog entry… unless of course you happen to be a fan of that 12 COMMON HOUSEHOLD ITEMS THE GOVERNMENT WON’T TELL YOU ARE KILLING YOU style of Internet writing, in which case I would advise you to either look elsewhere for your thrills, or perhaps seek some form of treatment, because after all RUBBING CHIA SEEDS ON YOUR HEAD IS THE CURE FOR PARANOIA YOUR DOCTOR DOESN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT!
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I’ve written about the effects of Solar and Lunar eclipses before. Yes, they are significant, but astrologers — myself included — sometimes tend to get a little overly excited about them. The astrological effects of an eclipse are part of that agitation, but undoubtedly the Sun going dark in the middle of the day has left a strong impression on all of us. Let’s be honest here: if you’ve ever seen a total Solar Eclipse for yourself, it’s pretty darn spooky.
The effects of an eclipse on your personal birth chart can be pretty darn spooky too… at least “spooky” in the sense of “nebulous, weird, and a bit hard to figure out.” They rarely have an immediate effect the day they happen. They tend to lurk in the background until the next set of eclipses, acting as a temporarily energized point in your birth chart that is likely to get tripped off by other transits later on once you’ve forgotten about it, like that “beware of shark” sign at the beach everyone ignores until the one day something finally goes really horribly wrong.
And to be clear: the effects of an eclipse on your birth chart aren’t necessarily bad at all. They are frequently weird and unexpected, but not inherently terrible. Winning the lottery is “weird and unexpected,” right?
This week’s Solar Eclipse is unusual for a couple of reasons. First of all, it’s a “Super Moon”: one of those times when the Moon is a little closer in its orbit to the Earth than usual, and thus looks a little bigger. What are the astrological effects of a Super Moon versus a regular Moon? Beats me, honestly. The phenomenon has always existed but no one came up with that name for it until the late 70s… but it’s not the sort of thing that would make it less significant I figure. Secondly, it happens less than an hour before the Sun enters Aries and Spring officially begins in the Northern Hemisphere (Autumn if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere).
Further complicating things is that this eclipse happens at 29 1/2° Pisces. What’s interesting about that is that, since both the Sun and Full Moon in the sky cover a spread of 2 1/2°, in a sense it’s difficult to say whether or not this Eclipse actually happens entirely in very late Pisces or partly in very early Aries.
Despite all that confusion, here are the basics you need to know about how this Solar Eclipse will affect you.
– There will be an increased chance of unexpected or unusual circumstances happening in your life related to the House the eclipse falls in, and/or any important points in your chart it is closely aspecting.
– Those unexpected or unusual circumstances won’t happen in a complete vacuum: they need to be set off or supported by other transits you’re having between now and the next set of eclipses this September.
– One of the more old-school astrological rules I find still holds is that if the eclipse happens “above the horizon” in your birth chart (that is, between the 7th and 12th Houses) it’s more likely to have an effect than if it happens in the bottom half of your chart.
– Finally, the most useful thing about a Solar Eclipse? I am a big fan of telling people to set out their intentions on a New Moon as to what they want to change about their lives in the next month. An eclipse can be an especially powerful time to sit down and think about the things you want to change about your existence, not just in the coming month but in the next several months. After all, there’s a dragon eating the Sun… that has to be significant, doesn’t it?
So: no need to panic. Now, having said that, I am still strongly resisting the urge to hide under the bed just a little. I’m human, I admit it, and eclipses are still a bit spooky.
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