Full Moon Watch: Acceleration!…But Which Direction?

Eclipses. The cosmic gifts that keep on giving. And thrilling.

Why do eclipses fascinate?

Astrologically, the specificity and exactness of the eclipse mirrors a concentration of attention and awareness within the biosphere. That’s one reason. But more, eclipses disrupt our normal perception of the heavens. Our accustomed sky view shifts. During an eclipse, reality feels inside out. The Sun darkens or the Moon casts its own ruddy luminescence.

And the sky within? Imagine your will, your conscious self (Sun) aligned perfectly — or opposed exactly — to the rich contents of your unconscious (Moon.) Dreams concentrate and condense during eclipse periods — the dream’s narrative becomes emphatic, unforgettable. The opportunity to divine, to perceive intuitively, is heightened. So, now’s your chance.

The lunation today concludes the Leo Aquarius eclipse series that commenced in early 2008. So we’re at a culmination point, events of the last eighteen months moving towards resolution. The flood gates are about to open. Because this concluding eclipse series occurred in fixed signs (Leo and Aquarius), our sense of time, the movement of time felt sluggish and incremental — stuck in a rut. When the next eclipse series begins, within the Cancer Capricorn polarity, time takes on a more dynamic, volatile sense. Quicker paced, expansive, initiatory.

Wednesday’s lunar eclipse strokes the 14th degree of Aquarius. The Sabian symbol for this degree: A train entering a tunnel. Watch as everything crescendos — but then goes to black. This degree symbol seems paradoxical, given the conclusion of the Leo Aquarius series. A cosmic irony: We’re ready to move forward — but straight into a dark tunnel.

Given the present mood of the country (speculation mixed with paranoia mixed with delusion — hallmarks of the ongoing Jupiter Neptune conjunction) it’s fitting that the eclipse occurs in the 12th house of the lunation chart for Washington, D.C. Everything is being worked out behind the scenes, in the dark. In fact the 12th house (the hidden, foggy, clandestine section of the horoscope) is jammed with activity. The Moon, Chiron, Jupiter, Neptune, a Node — all that’s missing is Michael Jackson. The light point, the Sun, lands in the 6th house — health care. The machinations that will ‘work it all out’, that grouping in Aquarius — in the 12th, in secret.

The eclipse is very close to Obama’s natal Sun. Will this galvanize his current modus operandi, which is becoming increasingly sterile and fuzzy? His perfection-obsessed Mars in Virgo has become his Achilles’ heel. Obama’s Aquarian ascendant is incubating the retrograde Jupiter Neptune transit, which can denote an inflated self-image: A spiritually motivated savior of the people or someone with a grandiose sense of infallibility and imaginary powers.

As I’ve noted before, the current Jupiter Neptune nexus occurs right around the United State’s Aquarian Moon — the image this calls to mind? A fog bank trapped in a bell jar. And what’s happening within that confine? Well, very little objectivity.

Jupiter, as Grant Lewi taught, is more than just the principle of expansion. The planet also represents the absorptive and assimilative qualities at work within any given environment. As he puts it, Jupiter corresponds to the “indrawing of energies and the effect that things in the outer world will have as they impinge on the inner nature.” Jupiter, within an individual or within a culture, denotes forward momentum. Mars might power and compel that momentum, but we rely on Jupiter to gather the data we need to have a sense of where we are heading, how we envision the future. But Jupiter is pulling on Neptune now — which, if we lived in a more utopian state, would be fabulous, but instead we’re likely to fall prey to Neptunian deception and glamor.

Who really understands what’s happening economically in the country? Or with health care? With corporate control of Washington? With the bailout heist? Doesn’t it all feel vague, unclear but also larger than life, beyond comprehension? Meanwhile the fabric of reality — how we experience the structure and support of the world we live in — is being eaten away, like termites in floorboard, while Pluto gnaws through the early degrees of Capricorn. The equation is difficult to work through: Neptune fog. A confused, ill-informed Jupiter impulse and the Pluto-synched mammalian brain going into hyper-drive as our survival instinct flares.

Dane Rudhyar‘s keyword for the Sabian symbol is “penetration.” As he puts it, the keynote here is acceleration, “the ability to short-cut the process of natural evolution by the exercise of the will…” A fascinating bookend to the solar eclipse last month. As I wrote, it was a conceptual eclipse, straddling two worlds, the birth of a new impulse. If 14 Aquarius is indeed a degree of quickening, a mutation point on an evolutionary path (as Rudhyar mentions) then we might have some kind of Frankensteinian creation on our hands. Study carefully what you’ve compiled in your life during the last eighteen months. For tonight — it lives!