Hot damn, this eclipse season couldn't come soon enough!

 

I know.

“Aren’t eclipses supposed to be scary/challenging/bad?”

“Doesn’t this mean things are going to be unpredictable?”

 

I know, but hear me out, the eclipses on the Aries/Libra nodal axis present an opportunity for profound change to our western and highly individualized culture. Of course, it’s not instantaneous, but with all of the new information we’ve taken in over the last four years, the way so many of us have and are currently reassessing our values and experimenting with new action to live by those values, we are primed for a new identity, a new sense of selfhood.

 

The call for unity is no longer a windsong drifting over bowed heads, it is a deep and carnal urge coming from the most forgotten places within our humanity. For generations, we have tried the same tactics for change against oppression, and in many instances these tactics were successful. But at this new dawn that is breaking over our horizon, we may not want to identify ourselves with those movements anymore, with any of those old frameworks and systems. There’s no going back. There never has been. There is only how we move forward. 

 

 

I don’t believe the answer is a communal utopia (Libra), but it’s also not an individualist race (Aries). So what does that middle ground look like, to you!?

 

I had a shower-thought the other day, which was not actually in the shower but a thought I had while out walking my dog in a misty rain shower. Still counts, right?

 

Anyway, I had this grotesque thought, more of a vision—as sometimes one is wont to do with the current state of affairs—that I was sitting alone in a decrepit castle watching “The World Show.” Each conflict, each very real event happening somewhere in the world was a different plotline. I could see who the villains were, the heroes, the key players, the amazing supporting characters and side plots. It chilled me: this perspective that maintains so much distance, that is invested not with consciousness and heart but with a lust for distraction. As if it wasn’t really happening, but that someone else had written it, shot it, produced it for me, to keep me glued to the screen.  This has been our attraction to alternate history, science fiction, post-apocalyptic fiction and the like, that it creates a fantasy out of a very near reality. “Oooh, let’s play with our fears while we try to escape into our imaginations from the very real stressors and oppressions we are facing.” 

 

And I say this as a fan of these genres, myself! I can’t help it. As a kid, I always imagined that I was living in two realities—the one I was actively participating in with my family and chores and school and friends—and the one that was very similar but just slightly off-kilter, magical, distorted.

 

The thing is, I don’t have a problem with entertainment per se or even using it as a way to self-soothe. But I also don’t see my experience that way. Not in terms of villains and heroes, although I do see story arcs. I see the entirety of our world as an orchestra that has been playing for millennia—currently the horns are trying to drown out the flutes, the strings are cutting across the bassoon, the drums are kind of keeping time—and as far as I can tell this orchestra will keep playing forever because the natural course of the universe is an infinite loop of expansion and contraction. Now, do I think this orchestra is playing well right now? No. I don’t think the instruments are listening to one another. And the ones who do can barely hear one another over the cacophony. 

 

But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m a Sagittarius and I will not abandon hope. In fact, in having this grotesque vision in which I sat isolated, I became more inspired to connect with the people around me; to ask if they’ve been thinking the same thing. To hear about what is important to them.

 

You are surrounded, you know. No matter how alone you feel in the noise, there is a friendly face at the coffee shop or the grocery store, or maybe it’s the person you’ve kind of been avoiding at work who would really like the opportunity to connect with you because they see something in you that you’ve forgotten was there. We don’t have to let ourselves sink into the isolation that personal devices and the media would have us get mired in. Solitude is one thing, but peeling away from others because of assumptions or unknowns, because we cannot hear one another, only serves to strengthen the invented systems which seek to control and commodify our experience.

 

 

Humans are relational creatures. Time and time again, research shows how important connection is not just for our mental/emotional health but our physical health and wellbeing. While the Moon’s nodes are on the Aries/Libra axis, and especially for those with a North Node in Aries right now, we get the opportunity to recalibrate our expressions of independence and relationality.

 

The nodes are mathematical, opposing points in the sky. Two points which create a line can also be referred to as a spectrum. So, on the one end, the North Node in Aries is about the ambition to strike out on one’s own and initiate new action. The South Node in Libra is about finding refinement in partnerships and following through on commitments. It’s becoming abundantly clear that hyper-independence can create dangerous tension, either in individuals or whole communities. And, too, people-pleasing or witholding in order to avoid confrontation only leads to repression and resentment. 

 

 

The Full Moon in Libra will peak on Monday morning at 12 am PT and shortly thereafter will experience a penumbral eclipse. The full moon is our halfway point, the highest point of energy for this lunation, the harvest, the celebration of what has come to fruition in the last two weeks of investment. At the New Moon in Pisces, we found ourselves at the threshold where the end became the beginning again. You may have felt reinspired in your spiritual practice or you may have embraced that you’re having new dreams for yourself. This full moon is trine Pluto, so you may be experiencing intense emotions, but more likely it’s a feeling of radical acceptance—which can, in its own way, be uncomfortable. Six months ago at the solar eclipse in Libra, we released how we identified with or to our relationships (codependency, over-identification with our partners) for a new perspective that balanced our individuated expression while remaining open to collaboration.

 

The sign of Libra can get pretty obsessed with being right. With a theme of judgment, this energy can slip into perfectionism. Libra just wants the correct answer. It wants the capital-t TRUTH. And while this is an honorable standard, the correct answer is more often than not subjective. What is right to one person may not be correct for someone else. The truth of a situation is often so elusive because it is conditionally agreed upon by the surrounding parties, it requires us to create the space for the possibility of variation or fluidity. 

 

During eclipse season, things get a little shake-up. Like tipping the snowglobe and then letting the flakes land in new places, which changes the scenery. So what seems like it has been the correct answer may be proving false now. Or you may feel like you’re emerging from a six-month intensive with Libra energy or the house which Libra rules in your chart. Trust that after the solar eclipse in April, you will have all of the information you need.

 

There is a lot of “new” coming around the corner. Initiatory Aries season has already started, and it’s doing us some kind of cosmic favor after the thrashing of the last few years by giving us a slow build. But that’s not an excuse to rest on any laurels just yet. Keep your head up, your feet parallel to the ground and let the refined energy of this Libra moon cast its net. What slips through, what gets left behind at this portal is no longer for you and your direction.

 

The March Full Moon is known in some European and Indigenous North American cultures as the Worm moon for being the season when the earth begins to warm and soften with the coming of spring, and the worms come out attracting birds and other small animals. Worms bring nutrients back into the soil, refining the growing conditions. 

 

Worms are definitely having a pop-culture moment right now, and you know what, good for them! Worms are a gardeners greatest ally. They are primary features in some of our earliest childhood memories, thanks to weird collective associations and Richard Scarry. They are curious and clever creatures, and they are an integral part of nearly every ecosystem. The are also social creatures who form herds and communicate through touch, making decisions to benefit the group at large.

 

We had a glorious four days of sunshine and high 60’s weather last week, and then this past week the rain came back to my corner of the PNW. And the worms that came out! They were scattered all over the driveway, the sidewalk, curling through my garden and, as evidenced by clumps of dirt dislodged by crow talons, all over my yard. Spring is officially here. We just passed Ostara and the vernal equinox this week, and as things warm up, we are bound to discover that far more has been gestating and germinating all winter. I’m genuinely excited to see what comes up this year.