Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.
—Zora Neale Hurston
The total lunar eclipse in Libra will occur on April 15th at 12:45 am PST.
Libra: Love. Relationship. Balance. Harmony. Justice. Air. Communication. Connection. Art. Elegance. Beauty. What we create together.
Lunar Eclipse: Full moon. Opposition. Shifting light. Revealing. Pattern setting. Chaos inducing. Hype enhancing. Openings and closings. Beginnings and endings.
We have been recording and tracking eclipses for nearly 3,000 years, mostly cowering upon their arrival. We are a fearful lot. Eclipses mostly spelled out doom, death, plagues and ruin to our ancestors. Imagine seeing the moon turn red without fully understanding why. Imagine seeing the light of the sun covered by something (many cultures the world over believed it was a giant black dragon swallowing the sun or moon). Eclipses (and for that matter all astronomical phenomenon) can make us feel puny; which we are, which is terrifying to our egos. Something in us is swallowed up when we witness an eclipse; namely our fantasies of immortality, self-importance and illusions of grandeur.
This eclipse is coming at a very interesting astrological moment. It graces us mere days before the Cardinal Grand Cross revs its engine (the week of April 20th). Either event on its own would be an important astrological happening; together they are pretty freakin’ bananas. Where there is one eclipse there is bound to be two (and sometimes three). Eclipse #2 happens on April 28th in Taurus, but more on that beauty soon. Just keep in mind that there are two eclipses hugging the grand cross. Or putting it in a choke hold, perspective is everything.
The Libra eclipse is only connected to one traditional planet, Mars, who’s currently retrograde also in Libra. Mars is in its detriment in Libra meaning that it can’t function properly. This is not always a bad thing for malefics such as Mars; sometimes you don’t want “bad” planets to work too proficiently. Mars likes to wreak havoc, cut, define and loves to start a fight. Any planet that is retrograde tends to work oddly, internally. Mars retrograde asks us to understand our internal war mongers and in Libra asks us to defend the only thing worth protecting, LOVE. Because both the eclipse and Mars are in Libra they are both “ruled” by Venus (that is the planet that rules the sign so we can look to it for more information). Venus moved into Pisces on April 5th, the sign of its exaltation (meaning the planet is very happy here), on its way to making a trine to Jupiter in Cancer (the sign of its exaltation). A trine from Venus to Jupiter is more than good, better than best. It’s sweet, lucky and generous, which could help to offset a lot of the more frightening aspects of this eclipse.
The other very interesting component to this eclipse is the presence of two Goddess Asteroids, Ceres (almost exactly conjoined the moon) and Vesta (2+ degrees behind the moon). Ceres is the Goddess of the Grain in Greco/Roman mythology. However she speaks to the ever important human experience of losing what’s most important to us (her daughter) and being forced to tread a path of individuation. While her daughter, Persephone, has gone into the underworld, Ceres is forced to come into her own as a powerful initiator. Her archetype speaks to loss and recovery, grief and re-membering (bringing ourselves back together); to nourishment and sustenance. Vesta, goddess of Hearth and Home, is a humble bad-ass who takes no lovers and harkens us back to ideas about parthenogenesis and self-fertilization. Vesta teaches us how to regenerate our energy through focus, ritual and devotion.
If an eclipse in Libra can teach us anything, perhaps it can help us to better understand our relationship to our lives. I think and write a lot about re-creating the present as we want to see it, live it and experience it, but never do I want it to be misunderstood. I would be greatly saddened if I came across as a magical thinker that handed the Goddess my laundry list of gadgets and trinkets that I want, awaiting their arrival as if that would be proof of my spiritual achievements. As if “spiritual” could ever be achieved. Constantly scheming to get what we want is living in a one-sided universe where Aries (I am) exists without Libra (we are). Libra understands that if the “I” doesn’t help us connect to the “We” then this life is nothing but a self serving, narcissistic waste of ovum and sperm. To use our personality (Aries), our desire and our unique way of expressing our individuality in service of the whole may prove us worthy of praise. However, we cannot graduate to this level of living unless we are willing to be touched by others around us (Libra).
The relationship to develop is one far beyond the futile fields of manifesting cars and dollar bills. What if we instead were to “ask” to be connected to the currents of energy that run through us, speak to us and always guide us? Medical intuitive and spiritual ass-kicker Caroline Myss suggests that the reason why we don’t is that we aren’t actually willing to take the actions that our intuition is constantly asking us to take. “I want everything to be different in a better kinda way but I don’t want to have to do anything like in a workin-ish kind of way. Waaahhhh…”
It’s tremendously difficult to hear our internal Siri when we are inundated with stories from our past; our lost daughters, how we’ve been victimized, what has been taken from us, what is owed us, what we never get and what we always want. Consider for a moment how much time, mental and emotional energy you spend on thinking about what so-in-so did or didn’t do to you, for you or with you. Meanwhile your spirit is screaming “Who cares we have more important things to do! MOVE ON!”
Ceres/Demeter ends up creating and teaching mortals the Eleusinian mysteries; some of the most culturally important rituals the ancient Greeks preformed. The secret rituals initiated those who took part in them into the mysteries of change, growth, loss and renewal. This was a way of seeing past death, seeing beyond our fear of it and coming through the portal of the limits felt in mortality. In the myth, Ceres has to give up her grief for long enough to realize her gift, and so do we. I’m not saying life isn’t brutal to the point of being sadistic at times. I’m not saying I wouldn’t blame you if you decided against hope and happiness at certain points. What I am saying is that the only way to get through this sometimes disaster of an existence is to carry as little resentment and bitterness as possible no matter what. When we are held captive by feelings of superiority, our psyche screams “How dare they!” with a militia of indignant internal soldiers ready to exclaim, “Yeah! Get ‘em!”.
Libra is about relationship. All life is relationship, every facet. If we are to integrate the Aries/Libra polarity then we have access to the kind of courage it takes to show up for the great love affair that is life. We have to access the gumption it takes to follow those internal directions. Ceres is about many things but mostly about the stages of grief that we go through, not get stuck in. Her mysteries were rituals that were performed. Generally we lack deep, spiritual, communal ritual in the west. Vesta tells us to devote ourselves to something long enough so that we can be sufficiently broken. Open.
Astrology reflects our process of becoming. May this eclipse and the rest of the crazy roller coaster that is April’s astrology help you unfold like the beautiful, wise warriors of Love and Justice that we were all put on this planet to be.
Eclipse blessings,
Chani
*Edited and DJ’d by Laurence Joseph Jones