I often wonder if you wrote your memoir today, if your life story would be lived on the edge of possibility, if you held wonder in one hand and courage in the other and truly believed that anything was possible. ~Jean Houston
It’s back to the future as the first eclipses of 2016 rattle our charts on March 8 and 23. The New Moon eclipse on March 8 is a moment of profound choice which will re-set the course of your life for the next 19 years and, yes, you read that right! This particular New Moon also happens to be a Total Solar Eclipse, which means that in addition to the usual New Moon magic, we will be co-creating with some amazingly powerful Eclipse energies.
- March 9 Total Solar Eclipse, 18 Pisces
- March 23 Lunar Eclipse, 3 Aries/Libra
Eclipses are cosmic wildcards repeating at nearly the exact degrees every 18.65 years as they follow the path of the Nodes of Fate clockwise around the signs. The Nodes cross through one sign every 18 months or so, and whenever they enter a new sign, that area of our lives feels the winds of change blow very strongly.
Eclipses are some of the most dramatic tools that the universe uses to get us to pay attention to areas in our lives that need to change. They uproot us, surprise us and get us moving. They shake us up so that we can move from one level of maturity to another very rapidly. Between November 2015 and May 2017, the North Node is travelling through Virgo, so alternate eclipses will fall in Virgo and Pisces before moving into Leo/Aquarius.
- Sept 1 Solar Eclipse 9 Virgo
- Sept 16 Lunar Eclipse 24 Pisces/Virgo
If you have planets around any of these degrees, that area of your life by planet, sign and House will be switched off then re-booted and re-programmed to operate at a higher level of awareness.
The Total Solar Eclipse, March 9, 2016
Chandra Symbol PISCES 19:
Palm trees laden with dates.
Soul faculties. Precious jewels carried from before held intact and inwardly rooted within. Absolutely saturated with psychic faculties, inward understandings, and special feelings for the whole of existence. All of this is held and accessed when most deeply needed. To bear such wonders within your core nature is to be complete and whole. It is to want for nothing. It is to have so much to offer that the supply can never be exhausted. It is to be a source, an oasis in yourself, and to remain at peace in communion with what you have always known, which is so very timeless that its relevance and uses are the same as ever and always will be in any world.
Astrological chart for the March 9 (GMT) Solar Eclipse
This is a New Moon on steroids, the first Super Moon of the year, and a total eclipse at 18 degrees Pisces. The seismic window will be open between March 5-12, bringing high tides, storms and earth shifts. All solar eclipses mark major endings and new beginnings, so wherever 18-19 degrees Pisces sits in your chart is where something in your life is about to be taken to the next level. Think back to the last eclipse on these degrees. What was happening in your life around March 8, 1997? And what was significant six months ago on September 12 2015, when there was a Solar eclipse opposite this one at 20 degrees Virgo? Can you join up the dots to uncover your personal themes?
The Sun, Moon and Nodes in the New Moon chart are in a stellium of Nessus, Mercury, Neptune, Ceres and Chiron, all in alignment with Saturn, Pluto, Jupiter and Uranus/Eris, making it a moment of profound choice that deeply affects your fate for the next 19 years. Stunningly, every planet is connected to the Great Attractor at 17 degrees Sagittarius, a huge mysterious gravitational force pulling galaxies towards it. The Great Attractor bends both space and time, giving a simultaneous view of the past, present and future. It appears to be receding from us and approaching us at the same time, and heading in both directions at an almost impossibly fast pace.
When the Great Attractor is activated, either in your chart or by transit, a choice occurs. Curiosity pulls you towards accepting an intriguing invitation to engage with something that captures your interest and draws your attention. Once you connect, you are inexorably drawn into a journey of exploration which begins on a specific frequency. However, a single idea soon leads into an understanding of the vastness of what we have connected with. The crucial point in working with the energy of the Great Attractor is that although you are conscious of the entire range of frequencies available in your chosen area of interest, you must choose only one specific and critically important area of focus in order to make use of the energy.
It’s entirely probable that the Great Attractor supports a way of connecting with core soul unity—the perfect frequency for our soul mission.This radically new and transpersonal planetary energy will be wild, edgy, unsettling and disorienting as Neptune engulfs, erodes and drowns out Saturn, creating confusion and chaos in its wake and washing away terra firma. Pisces is the 12th sign, the last sign, ruled by limitless Neptune. So now you have come full circle around every sign to the cusp between the Solar system and deep space and between the conscious and the unconscious.
Having experienced every theme, every polarity, every role, you now see that you are the actor, the director and the scriptwriter of the drama you call your life. You see that the planets don’t do anything to you, that you have Free Will and you have made each decision that brought you to where you are now. Your chart is a symbolic map of your contract with life. Once you refuse to see yourself as buffeted by fate and chose to collaborate with it, you can embrace the reality that “there is no failure, only feedback”. Jupiter’s conjunction with the North Node is giving you a 360° perspective of endless possibilities to pay your experiences forward with wisdom and empathy.
Amplify the meaning of the eclipse by:
- Acknowledging the power of wounds, empty spaces and the sacred darkness
- Refusing to re-live those wounds, or identify with them, a.k.a. the woundology paradigm, or finding people who will tear open the same spaces.
- Beginning to discard karmic contracts or understandings you have carried for so long, re-asserting your agency in the process of consciously driven evolution
- Radically re-examining your belief systems, questioning roles, rules, and narratives you have held as sacred, unquestionable or absolute.
- Releasing then walking away from anyone or anything that isn’t on your energetic wavelength
- Expanding and trusting in your sensory acuity—your intuition, your gut instincts, your imagination,your dreams—using it as guidance.
- Evolving out of drama and emotional rollercoasters
- Losing your desire or need to make things happen or to fix anything.
- Doing only what is yours to do.
- Giving back burdens that don’t belong to you.
- Practicing allowing, acceptance, being and intent
- Thriving on simple processes, simple desires and a simple lifestyle.
- Taking nothing personally
- Developing a passion for creativity
- Doing things you never thought you could do by pushing against your comfort zone
The Shadow Side of Pisces
The shadow side of Neptune and Pisces reveals itself via mass media manipulation, self-deception, self-sacrifice—the victim/ aggressor/saviour triad—narcissism, weak boundaries, energy leaks, health problems and spiritual inflation, aka the God Delusion. So be vigilant for any of these playing out around you. Understand the difference between physical disease and symptoms of release and cleansing such as: pressure in your neck and head, heart palpitations, ringing in the ears, loss of appetite or weight gain, the need for sleep, and more sleep. These are all “good news from the other world”, described by shamans as illness as a spiritual initiation. Instead of pushing them away or complaining about them, ask them what messages they have for you.
How to Work with Eclipses
Be alert for:
- News of life’s big events—relationship endings, career changes, house moves.
- Out-of-the-blue random circumstances that are completely outside your control, bringing big changes to your door
- Your sense of time expanding and contracting, overturning your linear plans
- The truth of a situation to arrive in a startling way
- Any important message to be non-negotiable, so accept it and move on
- Someone to be eclipsed out of your life and new people to enter it
Make sure you keep your schedule light and elastic and withhold judgment on whether things are good or bad. All eclipses have a second act, often six months later.
Fate is a story that’s been written for you by somebody else. By your parent’s genes, by what happened to you when you were a child, by your culture, by the fact that you were born a man or a woman. Destiny is a story that you write. ~Alberto Villoldo
