8:20 am  AHST  04/08/2024
   11:20 am    PST  04/08/2024
   2:20 pm    EST  04/08/2024
   7:20 pm   GMT 04/08/2024

Eclipse fever is gripping the nation here in the US, as millions of people gather along the path of a shadow that will travel from Mexico, through Texas to Niagara Falls and up to Montreal, to witness a spectacular totality of darkness at midday that will not happen again here in the next 20 years.

As an astrologer looking at the chart, I see a different kind of darkness descending. This is an OMG! kind of chart. If we heed the message of this neon-billboard sign of a chart, we will be looking squarely into what our darkness is made of: the wounded nature of humanity. Looking into that darkness, we can begin to see the light of our future emerge.

I’m speaking of the most unique chart I’ve seen in quite a while, a total solar eclipse at 19˚ 24’ with Chiron exactly conjoined TO THE MINUTE at 19˚ 24’, with a gathering of planets in Aries, the sign of new beginnings, the first sign of the zodiac. Right away, we know we are at an ending point of an era and the beginning of something totally new. And that Chiron is speaking to us, loud and clear.

Chiron: a wounded centaur who was immortal and yet could not die from a poisonous wound, nor could he heal himself. His unbearable pain is the unbearable pain we all carry, generations of trauma from war, poverty, abuse, and the suffering of ignorance, all of which remind us of our collective shadow as the Moon occludes the Sun’s light. Ecocide. Genocide. Suicide. All very shadowy parts of humanity’s psyche. A total eclipse conjunct Chiron asks us to face our pain in order to begin the healing necessary for our survival as a race. It doesn’t happen otherwise.

An eclipse, though it may be spectacular to look at, also forbodes a time of looking at what that darkness brings to us. The ancients were not wrong in understanding its possible meaning of coming difficulties. Studying the chart of an eclipse reveals the nature and extent of its effects, and this one is quite explicit.

That its shadow is passing over much of the US, and that the US is the world’s largest manufacturer of weaponry, more than all the other countries combined, speaks to the US’s karma: it’s up for examination and exposure. Particularly with what is taking place in the Middle East and who is supplying weaponry to whom. And worldwide, we are STILL using our precious resources to manufacture even more atomic bombs, can you believe it?

This is our opportunity to comprehend the awful history of the US, the shadow of the eclipse, the slavery, the genocide of Native peoples, the clandestine support for dictatorships in Chile and elsewhere in the world, and so on. It is no wonder that “far-right” politicians are supporting book banning and outlawing teaching about these facts of US history, making fun of and deriding  “woke” awareness. A population that heals its trauma cannot be easily subjugated.

Sun/Moon/Chiron are conjoined the North Node, which represents our collective destiny. As it’s in Aries, it’s asking us to make a new beginning, to start over. To let go and change the systems we’ve created so far: the competitive, capitalistic, money-based values of our society. The question before us all is: how do we move toward a society of sharing, of generosity? Kindness is actually our human nature. In times of great struggle, it is human generosity that shows itself, and always is the glue that holds any society together, not our laws, nor fear of punishment, but a general feeling of good will toward others. It’s basic. Yes, there are demons in Pandora’s box, and our failure to recognize them in ourselves makes others around us (other races, religions, countries, lifestyles) the projections of what we fear.

In addition, Mercury in Aries is exactly conjoined with Eris by three MINUTES of a degree. Eris, who is the goddess of strife, actually is a force that strips away pretense, upsets the apple cart, in order to make us pay attention to what we’ve learned to steadily look away from, what we’re resisting looking at in ourselves. Mercury/Eris in Aries pulls the rug out from under our self-indulgent self-importance, and shows us we’re the Emperor who has no clothes.¹  In our daily discourse, can we see where we’re tied to rigid thinking patterns? Aries energy can bring confrontational arguments, especially with Mercury now retrograde. But also this can be a signal that new ways of thinking and communicating which challenge the status quo will become the forefront and focus on the world stage.

Venus and Neptune are also conjoined, though less dramatically, but tied to the rest of the planets in Aries nonetheless. Venus and Neptune are the two more receptive energies astrologically, asking us to contemplate Higher Love as a way through this mess we’re in planetarily. Without this kind of love, we cannot survive, and Venus newly in Aries asks us to take initiative to make “love thy neighbor” an integral part of our lives, even when we’re being challenged.

Backstage, a powerful duo conjoins, it’s Saturn and Mars in a rare combination in Pisces. The last time this happened was 1996. Usually these two together (the “malefics” in old astrological terms) mean a time of war, suffering, violence, but we already have that. In Pisces they indicate a potential for a major shift in the deepening of our understanding of ourselves. Though the War Machines and the media’s coverage of violence dominate our news, beneath the surface shock, the potential for global ecological collapse is having an enormous impact on humanity’s psyche, and it’s changing us. Mars in Pisces indicates the search within ourselves for how to establish a new way of living together, one that’s more true to human nature’s way of generosity and kindness. Many of us are asking this important question: how can we heal? Saturn in Pisces asks us to imagine how change can happen.

And then there’s the Jupiter/Uranus conjunction in Taurus, only 2 degrees apart in this chart, which will be exact on April 20^th. The meeting of these two giants happens every 14 years, and is the beginning of a cycle that initiates a kind of rebirth of a focus that is at once revolutionary (Uranus) as well as transcendent (Jupiter). They are together in the sign of Taurus, which has not happened since 1941, not a cheery fact, since the world was engaged in dealing with war worldwide in that year.² We’re at that place again of choosing what we value: cooperation, or total obedience. Democracy or fascism.

In the “you can’t make this stuff up” department, on the day Jupiter and Uranus conjoin, April 20^th— in itself an epic event—Chiron will be at the same degree within 1 minute, as it was in the birth chart of the US in 1776! The US is having a Chiron Return on that day. As Chiron will go retrograde in July, it will be crossing back over that same birth degree on Election Day, November 5^th of 2024, arguably the most important Election Day in the history of the US.

A Chiron return for individuals happens around ages 49-51. It’s a time to remember and re-integrate the challenges to our well-being, to see our woundedness as a teaching, showing us how to balance, maintain wellness, and embody humility. What it is we’ve perhaps forgotten (or ignored) will appear in our reality for re-consolidation. So it is with a country.

In many ways this eclipse asks us to face the unresolved past: a world beset by power-hungry autocrats promoting war, embracing totalitarians, desperate to hold onto a world order defined by war, violence and force, to create a populace that’s fearful and desperate. As Deena Metzger writes, “The moral harm that we and war are creating has no bounds. There is no future if we continue in this way.” ³

But Jupiter’s presence combined with Uranus’s forward-thinking can be a resource for creating peaceful change, which in Taurus brings a rebirthing of our human consciousness. Taurus represents what we value in life. We’ve all been colonized to measure our value monetarily, to see others through the lens of material wealth. Uranus asks us to overturn the tables of the money changers, to re-evaluate the distribution of wealth in the world, while Jupiter sees our wealth from a higher perspective, as the gathering of wisdom. This is the Universe’s signal that there is hope, if we learn how to transcend our ways of greed and fear, and learn how to regain the trust in each other, in our diversity.

Pluto’s passage through Capricorn (2008-2024) and also in its last passage through that sign (1762-1778) was characterized by revolutions in which the people rose up against monarchy. Those societies in the 1700s bravely began experiments in democracy, flawed as they were, they were still a beginning. The reverberations to that era bring us to the possibilities of going beyond patriarchy, capitalistic greed, colonialism, and plutocracy.

We have a long way to go, to be sure. Centuries of systematic eradication of educated and “subversive” people (in Russia by Stalin for example), and the repression and decimation of those culturally informed in the ways of wisdom of their ancestors (in Native peoples across the globe), have for a time all but crippled us spiritually, and addicted us to being fed the Kool-Aid of “modern” society. Native people globally have had inherent understandings of living in balance with Nature that can help us to return to a more stable way of co-existing.

Science will not save us. Religion will not save us. Chiron in this chart tells us the way through is in healing the wounds that continue to perpetuate our beliefs in the necessity of war, of violence, of greed, of revenge, of “survival of the fittest,” or that humans are inherently flawed. When we begin by looking at the wounds in ourselves, and of our ancestors, at the pain and suffering we all carry, either consciously or not, then healing can begin. The way through to this healing is challenging: it means we must grieve what we have done, suffered, and lost. Interestingly, as we dive into our grief, our hearts open, and change becomes possible. This is what is on our plate globally. Pluto in this chart is sextile (60˚ angle) to Venus. This is the signature of “higher love.” Finding our way from grief through to love is just what this chart demands for each of us. It is literally our salvation.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Clothes

2. though the US didn’t formally enter WW2 until December 1941.

3. https://deenametzger.substack.com/p/when-we-are-in-a-war