7:55 am  AHST  10/14/2023
 10:55 am   PDT  10/14/2023 
   1:55 pm   EDT  10/14/2023
  5:55 pm   GMT 10/14/2023

People in the US will be able to see this annular eclipse, called a “ring of fire” — appropriate for these times in which we are steeped in fire — fiery tempers, firing rockets, the Earth on fire with global temperatures rising, yes the symbology is overwhelming. And with another war of grievous proportions upon us, more fire is destroying even more people’s lives and homes.

Eclipses are power moments, turning points and opportunities in our evolution. They’re more than just an amazing spectacle to watch. We can deepen our symbolic understanding of this moment by looking at the chart of this Solar Eclipse.. The aspects of the planets have been warning us for weeks that some kind of test or conflict was in the works, fanning the flames of fires globally. Let’s look at what these aspects are.

A stellium (grouping) of planets is hanging out at the South Node of the Moon (the formula for an eclipse is when the Sun and Moon are near the Moon’s Nodes¹). But also there’s Mercury (communications) and close to Mercury, is the asteroid Athena. They’re all in Libra, the sign of the peacemaker, of building relationships, an air sign devoted to collaboration. Athena, the warrior goddess, is a bit of an androgynous archetypal figure, who uses creative intelligence that is inclusive of the physical body (the somatic) as well as the thinking mind. She asks us to take a hard look at the whole situation we’re in, to look for the big picture behind the events.

And that hard look requires us to look at how much of our past is asking to be addressed. First, as I wrote two weeks ago, that the Full Moon in Aries was, “an indication of major conflict, the kind of conflict that is about old scores unsettled…”. And Eris, the troublemaker/unmasker is still hanging out, nearly exactly conjoined the North Node, calling us to embody our future selves, asking us to address hatred in any form, personal or racial, as a disease we must work to heal.

It’s been quite a dreary time, even before the Middle East conflict started, as Venus (desire) has been opposed Saturn (limitation), and still is in this chart, though it is fading. Venus is also now conjunct the fixed star Regulus. The “fixed stars” were given meanings by the Ancients, noticing that when planets were in aspect to them that their influence was colored by the stars’ energies. Regulus is Latin for prince or little king, and denotes a fondness for power and authority, ambition, and yet violence, revenge, and victories that do not last, royalty that suffers a downfall, especially when in an eclipse chart.

It is of great interest to me that the degree of this eclipse is close the same Libra Solar eclipse of 1949 that is in the birth chart of Netanyahu. Those born under an eclipse must deal with darkness, and either form a relationship to it, or be ruled by it. The re-appearance of this cycle is a turning point for him. Netanyahu is also now undergoing a Pluto transit forming an exact square to his natal Sun (overlapping the current Mars square Pluto). Robert Hand describes this transit as “a test of your self-control… stimulates your ambition and desire for power out of all proportion. If there is a ruthless side to your personality that will do anything to destroy opposition, it will come out now.” 

And then there’s Pluto, that force that brings the underworld into our lives, which is also square (90˚) to this eclipse. Not pretty astrologically. Pluto here is showing us the error of our ways, that when we deal with conflict by seeking revenge, or domination, we will only increase suffering. These are old themes for humanity, as Chiron the wounded healer, also opposes this Eclipse.

Chiron is asking us to seek out the origins of our madness, to find the roots of our age-old arguments that underlie wars, and look at how ancestral trauma affects every one of us, regardless of where we came from. Suffering is universal, and an eye for an eye only makes us all blind, as Gandhi said. 

We’ve gotten ourselves into quite a pickle, having used our endless creativity and great sums of money to create destructive weaponry that is too easy to push a button or pull a trigger to kill or destroy with coldness and ruthlessness that belies connection. Such power! And yet Pluto reminds us that power is not about our ability to destroy, but about the ability to speak the truth fearlessly, to use words not to harm or judge, but to make bridges across impossible chasms. Just as in our night dreams, we have to learn we cannot destroy evil, instead we learn to look it squarely in the eye and see it for what it is, in order to not be afraid of it, to give in to fear. When we know that evil is within each one of us, we can go beyond right and wrong;  then healing begins.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.

I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass

the world is too full to talk about.

Rumi

1 The North and South Nodes are points in the sky where the orbits of the Moon and Earth intersect. Astrologically they represent our future lessons (North Node) and also our past karma (South). They change signs about every 18 years.