By Marcia Buchart

It always feels, to me, as if the lunar eclipses are more conducive to feeling nutsoid than the solar eclipses.  In solar eclipses a magical thing happens: at totality, one can look directly at the sun.  In Egyptian and Hellenistic cultures, the Sun was associated with Divinity and Divine Purpose.  Following this line of tradition the Sun, more than Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto or the Nodes, has to do with one’s spiritual purpose, the spark of divinity within.  And when is the best time to get a glimpse of that?  When the Moon, our nearest celestial neighbor, has protected us, when She has shielded our eyes sufficiently that we can gaze upon the Source of our magnificence without damage.  Before the era of satellites and Hubble telescopes, astronomers eagerly awaited eclipses because it was then that they could learn the most about the sun.  In the darkened sky during totality, one can get a visual handle on divine purpose.

It can be quite centering, as I learned when I witnessed my first eclipse in Hawaii in 1991.  I had just abandoned Corporate America and was still quaking within, wondering what in heck I could possibly thinking of, to leave without the pension, the gold watch…but during the trip, gazing on the spectacle above I was spellbound.  I could see solar prominences—93,000,000 miles away!—with my naked eye.  And, upon returning from the trip, I suddenly found myself inwardly centered, still unsure how the rest of my life would unfold, but sure that I had done the right thing.

I married on a solar eclipse (one that occurred only 4 degrees away from where the sun will be when a lunar eclipse occurs on June 15!).  Any electional astrologer would shudder with horror at such a thing, as I was to find out decades later.  However, our marriage is now in its 37^th year.  Our first year together was extremely difficult, materially and emotionally, yet it never entered my head to abandon the course on which we had embarked.  Again, I knew not what I was doing, really, or how it would turn out, only that I was somehow on the right path.

Ah, but lunar eclipses…may be very different animals altogether. 

Even though Bernadette Brady’s first book to look at them extensively, The Eagle and the Lark, pairs lunar eclipses with the Saros Series numbers of nearby solar eclipses, she recently told me of an alternate measuring scheme for them.  The first solar eclipse of any Saros series begins near either the north or south pole.  However, while astronomers use this same method for organizing solar eclipse series that astrologers do, they treat lunar eclipses on their own terms.  To astronomers, the first lunar eclipse of a given series begins with a lunar eclipse near the equator.  Think about it: the initiation point of any solar eclipse series begins near an axis, a stable point, an anchor, as it were, around which the earth spins.  But lunar eclipse series, under this definition, begin at a geophysical point of maximum centrifugal force, which, if not withstood by competing forces (Goddess bless gravity), will fling things far and wide into the great beyond. 

Feel flung around a bit? Scattered to the four winds?  Running in circles?  Maybe the centrifugal force of an upcoming lunar eclipse is in play. 

But wait—there’s more! 

 How many of you have watched a lunar eclipse? 

You watch the moon slowly vanish from full to a tiny crescent to “new”, then to a waxing crescent and back to full.  It’s as if a whole month had passed within a single night.  Any month with a lunar eclipse in it has, symbolically, 60 days! 

Feeling that your plate is a bit full?  That all of a sudden there is far too much to accomplish in a standard 24-hour day?  Well, no wonder!  And you thought it was only because Uranus is in Aries…

As I write these words, I am preparing for an anniversary trip which will begin on the day of the lunar eclipse (in which the Sun is close to the degree of our marriage eclipse).  And in the middle of typing this up, the phone rings.  My spouse’s new boss demands that he be in Massachusetts for their first face-to-face the day after we are supposed to return from our vacation.  Since we live in Washington state…okay, quick phone call to the ferry to reschedule our return sailing from Victoria, BC; mad dashing around on his part to get travel arrangements into place; I’ll have to drive him from Anacortes to SeaTac to hop a red-eye for Boston.  Lunacy!

But! not everybody will be dashing to and fro.  The reason this eclipse is affecting us is because the degree affects our marriage chart and both our birth charts.  If you don’t have planets or chart angles in hard aspect to 24 Sagittarius/Gemini, sit back with your popcorn and giggle while you watch the rest of us fly around like bats out of wherever.

OH, BUT WAIT–THERE’S EVEN MORE

The Moon and Sun, in the eclipse chart, are both in paran to Ras Alhague, the head of the Great Healer, that infamous “13^th Sign”, Ophiuchus.  If you look at the Starlight map, you’ll see the Moon down near his foot. 

And since these parans are Foundational (they are tied to the IC) a lasting effect of the eclipse may involve a breakthrough in mending things—what things to be mended?  Whatever is relevant to the individual depending on where the eclipse falls in her/his chart.  What houses do the signs Sagittarius and Gemini occupy?  A balance point may be able to be struck that brings order back to one’s life, possibly not before things come apart, so to speak; after all, if you have too many things in the air, how long will it be before at least one goes crunch on the ground?  The solution when the straw breaks the camel’s back is not to blame the camel, but to lighten its load—after you take the poor beast to the vet and get it well again.

Do you really need to have your own back broken before you say, “No more”?

Here’s Lookin’ at you through Crazy Eyes!