Illumination
THE SAGITTARIUS NEW MOON & SOLAR ECLIPSE
Thursday, November 24, 2011 at 10:10 pm PST
The Moon and Sun Conjoined at 2.37 degrees Sagittarius
Sagittarius, the sign of Thursday's New Moon and Solar eclipse, is represented by the Centaur-archer, symbol of the quest for wisdom and enlightenment, the realization of a deeper meaning and purpose in life.
One of three identity-focused, fire element signs, Sagittarius, unlike the others, cardinal Aries and fixed Leo, falls in the flexible, adaptable, disseminating mutable modality. Sagittarian fire is distributed fire — inspiration focused outward — like the Centaur's arrow, a perfect symbol for Sagittarius who finds its deepest fulfillment in the act of sharing knowledge. Sagittarian fire is more collegial than competitive, and represents a scholarly approach to life. Teaching, inspiring, and guiding others are all uniquely Sagittarian urges. Sag is the eternal student who possesses a lifelong enthusiasm for learning. Philosophy, by the way, associated with Sagittarius, derives from the Greek word philosophia or "love of wisdom."
So when the New Moon falls in this inspiringly generous and adventurous sign, it marks the beginning of a lunar month in which we are all meant to open ourselves up a bit more, take some time to examine where our personal philosophy meets the road of life, and how we are perhaps falling short of living up to that important potential. This message is made all the more important right now with Sagittarius's planetary ruler, Jupiter, currently finishing up an internally-focused retrograde cycle, Mercury stationing retrograde just hours before the New Moon, and a Uranus-infused, Jupiter-ruled Solar Eclipse followed by a Mercury-ruled total lunar eclipse in two weeks. Two eclipses in a row with planetary rulers in the reflective, reviewing phase of retrograde motion.
"Nations, like stars, are entitled to eclipse. All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become endless night. Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul."
— Victor Hugo
An eclipse occurs whenever the Sun, Moon and Earth align, when a New or Full Moon falls close enough to one of the Moon's nodes. The lunar nodes mark the intersection of the Moon's orbit around the Earth with the Earth's orbit around the Sun, appropriately called the "ecliptic." Orbits delineate two-dimensional planes in space, and if you remember from your high school geometry class, two planes intersect in a line, and the two opposing points that mark these lines of intersection are called nodes. The lunar nodes represent the points where the moon, in its orbit, crosses from south of the ecliptic plane to the north (which is the ascending or North Node); and the point opposite where the moon crosses from north to south (the descending or South Node). This New Moon and Solar Eclipse in Sagittarius is produced by the North Node, with the eclipse degree falling approximately 12 degrees from the North Node, currently at 14 Sagittarius. The further the eclipse falls from the Node, the smaller the eclipse and this one is indeed a partial solar eclipse.
It is very interesting to note that although the Sun is 400 times larger than the Moon, the Moon is in turn 400 times closer to Earth! An awesome cosmic "coincidence." And it is because of this coincidence that, when the Moon's orbit takes it in front of Earth, it blocks the Sun from view, creating a solar eclipse. The closer the degree of the New Moon to the Node, the more total the eclipse, the more perfectly the Moon falls in place to obscure the Sun.
"To appreciate the power of an eclipse," astrologer Gary Caton wrote in an article for The Mountain Astrologer last year, "it is useful to understand that time here on Earth is fractal. It is measured by the constant repetition of the primal alternations of darkness and light. This rhythm of dark/light is ingrained into our bodies and psyches." And most powerfully in evidence during eclipses.
"When there is a disruption of this pattern, via an eclipse, the natural flow of the dark/light fractal is stopped in its tracks. There is darkness where there should be light. It is as if the Laws of our Universe are temporarily inverted. The world is stood on its head, specifically in terms of the archetype within which the eclipse is operating."
So who on earth gets to see this year's Sagittarian solar eclipse? This fourth and final solar eclipse of the year occurs near the Moon's ascending node, the North Node as it is called, and, according to NASA, will be visible from high latitudes in the extreme Southern Hemisphere including South Africa, Antarctica, Tasmania and most of New Zealand. Parts of the western Antarctic Peninsula will have the best show with nearly 90% of the Sun obscured. At the instant of greatest eclipse (06:20:17 UT), the eclipse magnitude is 0.905, making it the largest partial eclipse of the year. At that time, the lunar shadow axis will pass just 330 km above Earth's surface near the coast of Antarctica.
That's the astronomy and geometry of eclipses and the lunar nodes, but what about their personal meaning? What do our natal lunar nodes represent in our charts? And how do eclipses, that come twice a year, every year, in our lives dovetail with this symbolism?
Astrologer Clare Martin offers, in my opinion, one of the best insights into the lunar nodes' astrological/psychological function I have read to date:
Well, the Nodes are in fact empty places in space, except during eclipses, so we have to resist the temptation to interpret them as if they were 'simply' planets. They seem to have a profoundly metaphysical meaning, since it is on these points that the Sun, Moon and Earth are in alignment, so they are the meeting place, symbolically, of spirit, soul and matter, both collectively and individually. Another important point about the nodal axis is that it is moving in the opposite direction to the Sun and all the other planets. As the angles and all the planets move forward or anti-clockwise around our charts, they describe how we engage with and relate to the world around us. The Ascendant/Descendant axis and the MC/IC axis are doors into the world, describing our struggle to extract ourselves from the parental matrix, to put down our own roots and find our own place in the world, and to define ourselves through partnerships. In contrast, the nodal axis moves backward or clockwise around our charts. It is not so tied up with the dramas of life. Rather, it seems to function as a doorway into other dimensions, where we can sometimes glimpse or sense our soul's purpose and pattern, our entelechy, the deeper purpose and function of our existence. And this can be very different from the more conscious or worldly goals we set for ourselves.
Entelechy is an interesting word and concept, a perfect term to describe the metaphysical action of the Nodes and eclipses in our lives, and also reflects the highest function of both Jupiter and Sagittarius, in that important quest for deeper meaning and significance in life. A philosophical term, according to Webster, entelechy refers to the realization of one's potential, and represents an underlying and mysterious "supposed vital principle" that somehow guides the development and functioning of all living organisms and other systems. Entelechy is synonymous with the soul, divine longing, the movement toward light, our own inner light that is.
"For too long, we have believed that the divine is outside us. This belief has strained our longing disastrously. This makes us lonely, since it is human longing that makes us holy. The most beautiful thing about us is our longing; this longing is spiritual and has great depth and wisdom. If you focus your longing on a faraway divinity, you put an unfair strain on your longing. Thus it often happens that the longing reaches out towards the distant divine, but because it overstrains itself, it bends back to become cynicism, emptiness, or negativity. This can destroy your sensibility. Yet we do not need to put any strain whatever on our longing. If we believe that the body is in the soul and the sould is divine ground, then the presence of the divine is completely here, close with us."
— John O'Donohue
The lunar nodes have been known from ancient times in many cultures worldwide as the head and tail of a celestial dragon or serpent, a creature that devours the Sun or the Moon during eclipses. The Nodes have played a particularly important role in Indian, Vedic astrology, where the North Node ('Rahu' shown here) is the dragon's head and the south Node ('Ketu') is the dragon's tail. Because of the freaky nature of eclipses, obscuring our celestial light, bringing chaos, upheaval, sometimes devastating events and unwelcome change, you can imagine why they were considered maleficus, associated with the "ill doings" of shadow, darkness and evil. But to limit their significance this way is a mistake, for the nodes and the eclipses they produce can bring very welcome and beneficial change along with crazy, chaos! You never really know what you are going to get when eclipses strike, yet there is if you look an order at play, that is very hard to dismiss especially when you take a Sagittarian trek back through the events of your life via the potent, thematic connective tissue of eclipses. Eclipses occur in families and they track back at intervals of roughly 18 years to hit the same zones in our natal chart, bringing similar kinds of challenges and events. This particular series was active in the prior years of 1957, 1975 and 1993. Think back to these years and see if there is a common theme that is active again in your life right now. You have an opportunity to work on this particular issue once more, peel another layer of the onion and gain more insight and wisdom. Eclipses, like everything else in astrology and in life, are cyclic spirals of time and experience.
Looking back over the course of one's own days and noticing how encounters and events that appeared at the time to be accidental became the crucial structuring features of an unintended life story through which the potentialities of one's character were fostered to fulfilment, one may find it difficult to resist the notion of the course of one's biography as comparable to that of a cleverly constructed novel, wondering who the author of the surprising plot can have been.
— Joseph Campbell, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space
"Things can change in a day."
— Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
Each New Moon is a conjunction of the Sun and Moon. Conjunctions are special seed moments, new beginnings, and charts are drawn for the occasion to shed light on the entire cycle. Looking at the chart for this New Moon, it has the earmarks of a really special cycle for important life assessment and review, for regaining what it is that is truly important in life. The Sun, Moon, Mercury and Venus are all in Sagittarius with Venus receiving an extra sweet, guardian-angel of a harmonious aspect from transcendent Neptune increasing the soulfulness of the cycle as well as the importance of connecting with a higher power, bridging the human and divine, reminding us that we are indeed spirits functioning in a material world. Venus/Neptune, if we can navigate through the confusion that often comes with Neptune, can help us better connect to that divine part of ourselves that we tend to neglect too much in the course of our lives. Perhaps that's the function of the confusion, that Neptunian fog, to slow us down and make us question the direction we are headed — important to do from time to time!
Uranus, currently retrograde and approaching its station direct which will fall on the day of the Gemini Full Moon in two weeks, forms a supportive trine to the New Moon/Solar Eclipse degree while Mars forms a dynamic square from humble, responsible Virgo. Two very stimulating aspects that can hopefully help us to more effectively, and with Uranian objectivity and Virgo caution, determine and act on what is we sorely need to overhaul and rehabilitate in our lives. Uranus is the wildcard of the zodiac and loves to pull the carpet out from underneath our carefully laid plans, so when Uranus is involved in an eclipse, itself an unpredictable, wildcard event, it is impossible to determine with any success just exactly what will happen. Uranus's action seems to be an overthrowing of the fortresses and structures that we have built in our lives that we tend to hide behind, fortresses that have perhaps outlived their usefulness and have become bad habits, that in some cases have become prisons, destroying spontaneity and aliveness. Uranus seems to make a beeline for exactly where we have sold out aliveness for security.
Jupiter stationed retrograde last August 30th at 10.21 Taurus. The Sabian symbol* for this degree, A Woman Watering Flowers in her Garden, perfectly echoes Jupiter's current transit through the Venus-ruled, earth sign of Taurus. Jupiter's station direct synchronously falls right on Jolly St. Nick's day, Christmas, December 25th. Falling at 0.22 Taurus, the Sabian symbol for that degree perfectly amplifies the personal quest that is innately Jupiter retrograde:
A Clear Mountain Stream.
Astrologer Dane Rudhyar elaborates on this degree, writing that this symbol represents the "pure, uncontaminated and spontaneous manifestation of one's own nature." Entelechy indeed!
"If planets can be said to have intent, Jupiter's purpose in its retrograde cycle is to connect one with a deeper and more personal sense of justice; not jurisprudence, but that which is correct for one's integral balance and health. Often our own inner sense of what is right and wrong is unconsciously suppressed, subordinated to accepted values and moral codes, whether these are social or defined within a specific relationship. Jupiter's retrograde cycle is the annual opportunity to contemplate and reflect upon aspects of our life in which we need to explore our personal code of ethics. In one sense, we experience our integrity more instinctively when Jupiter is retrograde."
— Erin Sullivan, Retrograde Planets
The concept of Justice as a balance between the needs of the self versus the rights of others with whom we share this planet has definitely been an active archetype since last August, most notably seen through the activities of the Occupy movement's great success at circumventing a corrupt, corporate-clogged media and making it obvious, perhaps for the first time in decades, that the majority of us, who have long felt disenchanted, cut off and marginalized in our own countries, are in fact the majority. The rise in optimism and REAL hopefulness, along with acute reminders of injustice and foul play, as a result, has in turn been an unmistakeable effect over the last few months, all while mighty Jupiter, planet most associated with these concerns, has been striding seemingly backwards. Retrograde planets, contrary to some astrological belief, do not seem weakened, in fact, if we examine their effects, there is plenty of evidence for the contrary.
When a planet is in retrograde motion it is actually closer to the Earth than when it is traveling in direct motion. Robert Hand wrote in his classic astrology text, Horoscope Symbols: "The fact that planets are closer to Earth when they are retrograde makes it seem absurd to say that retrograde planets are weaker." And I agree with him, just looking at how much trouble retrograde Mercury can cause three times each year provides some pretty compelling evidence. Hand instead offers that perhaps a retrograde planet is "not so much stronger though, as it is closer to a person's center," and that perhaps the planet's closeness to Earth symbolizes a lack of distance or lack of perspective in dealing with what that planet represents. So with Jupiter retrograde, along with Mercury stationing ready to begin its own retrograde cycle just hours before the New Moon in Jupiter-ruled Sagittarius, and a solar eclipse in this same sign, issues of justice, ethics, fundamental life purpose and personal integrity are all highlighted in importance right now.
We can examine the Jupiter-related archetype of Justice, through the symbolic lens of the Tarot. Justice, shown here from the Rider-Waite deck, represents evenhandedness, balance and ethical principles — in a nutshell: doing what is right. Justice is also concerned with issues of equality, objectivity and impartiality, qualities that are necessary in order to arrive at a fair judgement based on fact and clear evidence. On the Rider-Waite card, Justice holds the sword of truth in her right hand and the scales in her left. Just action is balanced action based on objective analysis of the facts, the truth. Action that takes into account any repercussions, the potential effects we have on everything and everyone around us. We do not exist solely for ourselves. Behind her are two pillars similar to the ones seen on the High Priestess (Pisces Moon) and the Hierophant (Capricorn Moon). Sitting between the two poles, Justice indicates she will maintain neutrality, find the middle ground to arrive at an unbiased, appropriate and reasoned decision.
So this exciting eclipse-fueled, Uranus-powered Sagittarius cycle ahead of us, infused with three planets arriving at their stations, a tranquil grand trine in earth giving us some firm ground and solid footing, contemplative Jupiter in "heart-centering" retrograde motion, and Mercury embarking on its own retrograde cycle in Sagittarius only hours before the eclipse, all point to a very memorable month ahead. When we arrive at the Capricorn New Moon in one month's time, we may very well be looking at life from an entirely different perch!
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
— Arundhati Roy
If you would like to receive notification when I post new essays, subscribe to my mailing list!
Related Essays
The Full Rose Moon — The Sagittarius Full Moon (June 15, 2011)
The Fool Moon — The Sagittarius Full Moon (May 27, 2010)
All That You Can't Leave Behind — The Sagittarius New Moon (December 5, 2010)
*Sabian Symbols are brief evocative descriptions developed for each degree of the Zodiac. Sometimes cryptic, the symbols are little meditations that can, upon contemplation, sometimes open up new insights. It is fun and often illuminating in a "right-brain" kind of way to look up the symbols for current transits and for the planetary positions and chart angles of your birth chart. Developed in 1925 by astrologer Marc Edmund Jones in collaboration with the psychic Elsie Wheeler, they are used as a kind of astrological I-Ching. The citation above is from Dane Rudhyar's book on the Sabian symbols, An Astrological Mandala. New York: Vintage, 1973.
The luminous painting at the beginning of this essay, Woman Clothed with the Sun (1904), is by American painter Alice Pike Barney, 1857-1931.
© 2012 Elaine Kalantarian, all rights reserved