A Lunar Eclipse To Live Into

Friday evening's Full Moon and Lunar Eclipse is an exciting one, the last of three eclipses in this early spring time frame, taking place just a few days following the most recent installment of the perfect square between Uranus and Pluto in Cardinal signs, and strongly highlighting as well both Saturn and Neptune in close trine with each other. All four outer planets including Saturn are therefore very much emphasized at this time. Those born with sensitive points in their natal chart at around 4-12 degrees of any sign are most directly affected, as one or more of these powerhouse planets will likely square, conjunct or oppose such placements. As far as Sun Sign, this means everyone born within a few days of the first of the month, either at nearly the end or in the first few days of his or her birth month. Pretty much everyone will feel the intensity to some extent as we head into another summer of Uranus-Pluto, the hallmark in fact of this entire decade that I like to call the "Turbulent Teens."

All four of these planetary archetypes connote the difficult acceptance of a process of radical change, although from different angles. Saturn, the farthest planet actually visible without instrumentation and the only one known to the ancients, works upon you by a process of extreme limitation. You see clearly where your responsibility lies, and there is no escape. This seems dire, but certainly at times circumstances do conspire to inform us that there is one path for us to take, one way out, and although not necessarily pleasant it will be the road with the long-term reward of lessons learned and wisdom regained for the next stage of our journey.

Neptune is found in forming trine to Saturn — and at the focal point of a close T-square from this eclipse Sun and Moon in opposition to each other. While the trine aspect ameliorates the collision of values represented by this combination, these energies are basically antithetical. Neptune, extremely emphasized by this lunar eclipse, has an intensely transformative component just as Pluto has, and works by dissolving situations that it no longer makes sense to hold onto. This is potentially a very idealistic, and also confusing period, with a tendency for spacing out. You are distracted by the ineffable potential, far beyond the physical. You might be required to simply hold on, putting one foot ahead of the other, without really understanding where your road is leading you, trusting in the guidance of the surrounding universe to somehow get it right when your own sense of existing knowledge fails you. There is a mystery invoked, and an implicit reminder that we do not know the whole truth, perhaps not even a very sizable portion of the truth, of what we are facing and of what we are actually all about.

Then there is Uranus the enlightener as well as the trickster, surprising us constantly and providing a deeper sense of intuition than conscious awareness affords. A sense of what you are going through is available by this occult means, even as you resist it. The secret here is to remain as open as you can to possibility. Pluto combines with Uranus to blast away the impediments to getting on with necessary changes, either by a sense of inevitable realization, or, once subtlety has failed to move you, by more extreme measures. The negativity implied by Saturn wants to make this about difficulty: "I can't wait for this to be over." But the wise person deep inside you knows that, somehow, all this pain is the ache of birth and has underlying it the tenderness of dawning delivery.

The Sabian symbols for this Lunar Eclipse Sun and Moon reflect back on the outer planet energies with which they also strongly connect. For the Sun, in the fifth degree of Gemini, we have: "A radical magazine" for which Marc Edmond Jones states: "This is a symbol of the necessary element of change in human affairs, and of the extent to which the remote and ... the entirely potential ... will have its full and functioning part in any immediate reality with which an individual may be seeking to come to terms." The opposite degree is the fifth of Sagittarius, "An old owl in a tree" for which he references: "deeper and private potentialities," while Dane Rudhyar adds that "the owl functions lucidly in the night aspect of existence." I also like the way that Robert Hunter puts all of this: "Row, Jimmy, row. / Gonna get there, I don't know. / Seems a common way to go - / Get down and row, row, row, row, row."

So while the road is rocky and the height to which it leads more than a bit cold and bleak, it is comforting to recognize that the path that the cosmos is now asking you to tread will prove long-term rewarding, and ultimately necessary for your continued well-being.

A Lunar Eclipse To Live Into

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Chart for the Full Moon on May 24, 2013

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