What Is this Solar Eclipse Telling Us?

During the weeks before, after, and during an eclipse, the air is wobbly. Life ain’t smooth. There are sharp and sudden changes. Odd events go global.  The visual metaphor is simple: during eclipses,  darkness–our shadow–is made vivid in dramatic ways.

Between the March 25 lunar eclipse and the April 8 solar, among the head-turning events rippling through the collective, we saw a deadly bridge collapse in Baltimore, a rare but not impossible earthquake in New York, and in Taiwan, the strongest earthquake in 25 years, while in Gaza, where war has already killed over 33,000 people, the targeted deaths of just 7 humanitarian aid workers has rocked the world.

The terror of eclipses runs deep in astrology tradition.  For the first astrologers, over three thousand years ago in Mesopotamia, solar eclipses were the top feared sky event, capable of unraveling a kingdom.  Eclipses signaled floods, famine, disease, and the death of kings.  Yet unlike us, the first astrologers didn’t believe the sky was causing these things to happen—they rather saw them as divine announcements.

The Mesopotamian sky was an enchanted tablet onto which the gods were always writing humans messages—about living in balance for the good of the whole.  Eclipses were omens, warnings, that we were veering off course. It was the job of the astrologer priests to help set the kingdom straight. After an eclipse they scurried to address the issue with incantations, rituals and pertinent advice for the king.  Dire futures could always be averted—otherwise, what would be the point of reading the gods’ tablet?

The value of eclipses lies in humans heeding these heavenly warnings. Eclipses don’t cause ominous events, but they beg us to interpret them!  Astrology is a symbolic art, not an empirical one. In the Mesopotamian seed from which astrology grew lies this premise: unusual happenings in the sky or on earth are informative.

The signs on earth just as those in the sky give us signals. Sky and earth both produce portents though appearing separately. They are not separate (because) sky and earth are related. A sign that portends evil in the sky is (also) evil in the earth, one that portends evil on earth is evil in the sky.—A Babylonian Diviners Manual

So what of our list of recent eclipse-y events? What’s the holy messaging? An ancient priest would have seen the collision, collapse, quakes, and killings as an urgent call to wake up.  We are being warned about the possibilities of the times in which we’re living.

• The Baltimore bridge collapse affirms what many of us are feeling—that we live in a time of great instability and chaos. Physical and social structures we once thought solid are vulnerable. They need to be checked and reinforced.  The debris needs to be carefully dragged away.
• The quakes advise us to assess our readiness for unexpected challenges. We are called to strengthen our resilience and solidarity—to reinforce ourselves for any future shocks.
• The murders of humanitarian aid workers in Gaza symbolizes a profound moral and spiritual crisis, the darkening of our compassion and empathy. It is a warning against neglecting our humanity—an urgent call to renew our commitments to peace, cooperation, and human dignity.

It’s up to us now to apply the remedies.

Of course these aren’t the only possible messages.  There are a zillion more.  For many it might be that the “once in a lifetime” solar eclipse they traveled to see wound up being hidden by clouds. That’s a metaphor! The eclipse event that has your name on it is the one that’s been arousing your feelings. This could be a very personal situation. Eclipses are universal events–but they’re also intensely personal. If that’s the case for you, to distill and drink its nectar, be sure to see it as a divinely inspired symbol.

 

For a more detailed view of how this eclipse impacts your chart, I highly recommend the eclipse report from my colleague, April Elliott Kent:  “Followed by a Moonshadow Eclipse Report”!