A Curious and Communicative Solar Eclipse New Moon

Thursday's Solar Eclipse New Moon is an especially powerful lunation, as all eclipses are, and epitomizes the Taurean character of the Sun's current sign. That practical, sensual and earthy energy is also offset by a prominent Mercury and Neptune, bringing more heady and ethereal realms into the picture of this week's cosmic dance. The Sun and Moon make a quintile aspect to nebulous Neptune, while the Sun, Moon and Mars are parallel to messenger Mercury, itself a mere two degrees behind the Sun and closing in. With Mercury so close to the eclipse degree, it can become lost in the heightened energy of the Sun, or come out in strange ways, and with Mercury also making an exact quintile to Neptune, our thought process now partakes of the sensitive, dreamy and largely unconscious nature of the watery Piscean archetype.

Gemini is also featured in this lunation, making a nice chime with the Mercurial theme. We find Jupiter in Mercury's sign of Gemini, exactly thirty degrees away from the Sun and Moon, while the eclipse Sun?s ruler, Venus, having just entered Gemini, resides in the first degree of the talkative sign. We have now within our cosmically oriented psyches the sensual and physical energy of Taurus and as well as the urge to relate by mentally connecting with each other. Communication is, after all, a most important factor in the relationship connection, and this eclipse configuration encourages us to connect with each other in every way: psychically, spiritually, physically and mentally. In some ways it is indeed high time that we do so.

In these days of massive change — with the next exact hit of the radically transformational Uranus-Pluto square coming later on this month — we are more and more mutually interdependent as a society, and within the social microcosm of each and every connection, and, what is more, coming to recognize this. Instantaneous communication around the globe connects us all, and enables us to see the value of what we are attempting as we collectively vision a new world into being. A PFC in Iraq decides to relay to a Scandinavian truth-in-journalism organization a collection of U.S. State Department documents and a middle eastern government falls, promoting constructive change throughout the Arab world and amazement on the part of every global citizen. Who knows, as we continue to evolve as a culture, what will happen next'

The Sabian symbol for this eclipse degree, the 20th of Taurus, is revealing: "Wind clouds and haste." Marc Edmond Jones has the keyword EXALTATION and refers to "spiritual lightness as an outer mark of the soul's fundamental freedom... efficiency in controlling events at any point of transition or crisis." Meanwhile the ruler of Taurus, Venus, lies in the first degree of Gemini "A glass-bottomed boat in still water" which describes the fundamental curiosity of Gemini and the idea of taking advantage of this push for knowledge and understanding. As I read this it speaks to our times. We need all of our curiosity, and our impulse toward connection, because we as a culture are in tremendously perilous days of transition, and the time is growing short. And yet we each of us have within our compass the potential for spiritual exaltation and the power to rise to the occasion.

In our individual lives as well as our collective existence it is vital that we continue to connect with and try to comprehend each other. As the old saying goes, "to understand all is to forgive all," and goddess knows we could all benefit.