by Robert Wilkinson
The Full Moon of Sun in Libra and Moon in Aries, being conjunct the Lunar Nodes, is a Lunar Eclipse. What does this mean?
Since all Eclipses shut something down, this Total Lunar Eclipse begins a several month "shut down" in the houses it occupies in our charts. Given that it happens with some very powerful frictional, spiritual, and irrational aspects, this one ushers in over 5 months of adjustments, turning points, and intense spiritual focus.
This one will help us find a new way of expressing our ideals and truths, and open us to new ways of interpreting things from the past. We will again see the light of moderation and ideal ways of interacting take shape as a new individuality that will help us join with others to overcome some form of coldness or barrenness in the outer world. This one will bring echoes of the Total Lunar Eclipse from this time last year, since that also had Mercury retrograde spinning us around and around as we look back to see how we really have made it through a testing period.
This one helps us review some things from the past to find new perspectives, and we continue to be challenged to be joyous in reconstructing parts of our past and repairing whatever needs repair. The voids this Eclipse will yield over the next 5+ months will be the workshop for us to demonstrate Libra power skills directly related to the Saturn in Libra lessons of 2010 through 2011.
This Eclipse will be visible in the eastern Pacific, North and South America, Africa, Europe, and west Asia, including India. In fact the only place it won’t be visible is central and east Asia, Oz, and Nez. Though the penumbral phase lasts over 5 hours, the umbral phase is 3 hours and 20 minutes, making this one both long and intense! All of you lucky enough to be able to view this Eclipse remember that when it’s happening, you’re being shown a new way to experience life, growth, the future, as well as new connections and newer and deeper ways to relate to your Spiritual Brothers and Sisters as you go “back to the future.”
Due to the strong Libra-Aries and other Fire energies active in this Lunar Eclipse, over the next few months we’ll find a new balance or perspective on past events that will help us reclaim some things that we will need in the future once the endings shown by this Eclipse have come to pass. This will help us feel what we need to in order to liberate ourselves in some way.
Be compassionate toward yourself and others and find a balanced understanding when moving through events that at times seem to be an ordeal. This Eclipse gives us new ways of understanding our past so that we may combine imagination and “engineering skill” as we move toward a new archetype of how to live in the world.
It’s important to remember that most worldly events follow celestial events. Whether an event happens simultaneously with or later than an Eclipse, or some aspect configuration, is conditioned by many things. Sometimes a decision is made that will affect many things in the future, but we don’t know about that until the result manifests.
The time of an Eclipse is when the future effects are set into motion. Regard it as beginning a process of elimination to come to an understanding in the future about why those things had to be shut down for a while, or leave the life altogether. We have to close out parts of our past to create space for future ways to do our Being. Eclipses create excellent time periods to do that.
For example, the Eclipses in Gemini and Sagittarius in 2011-2012, both Solar and Lunar, served to shut down old ways of life, thinking, and understanding wherever we have Gemini and Sagittarius in our charts. There's a lot about them in the archives if you want to know more about their ongoing influence. The Eclipses earlier in 2013 shut down down old ways of life, feeling, and valuing wherever we have Taurus and Scorpio in our charts, and the Wesak Full Moon Lunar Eclipse opened us to a form of “Buddha Wisdom.”
This is the last Eclipse for many years where the Nodes are in Libra and Aries, showing we’ve been in an era when those signs have been most affected in our charts. And in an interesting note, both Lunar Eclipses in 2014 occurred in Aries/Libra, but the Solar Eclipses fell in Taurus and Scorpio. This year, both Lunar Eclipses occurred in Aries/Libra, but the Solar Eclipses fell in Pisces and Virgo. So the long wave Solar eclipses have been working on different areas of our charts than the short term Lunar eclipses last year and this one.
So like most Lunar Eclipses, this one ushers in a transitional period of several months (this one will be in effect for 5+ months) that will clear things out of our lives, and especially our past (the Moon). The space created can attract circumstances and people through which we can develop skills helping us move through the various Cardinal T-squares involving Uranus and Pluto, and Mutable T-squares involving Saturn and Neptune.
You can find out all the astrophysical technical information about this eclipse from NASA Lunar Eclipse Page
Here’s the timing on this event:
P1 (Penumbral) Eclipse Begins: 00:11:47 UT
U1 (Umbral) Eclipse Begins: 1:07:11 UT
U2 (Total) Eclipse Begins: 2:11:10 UT
U3 (Total) Eclipse Ends: 3:23:05 UT
U4 (Umbral) Eclipse Ends: 4:27:03 UT
P5 (Penumbral) Eclipse Ends: 5:22:27 UT
This is the last of four consecutive total lunar eclipses in 2014 and 2015. It will also be a dramatic color due to various astronomical factors, so expect a great light show if you’re in one of the areas on Earth where this Eclipse is visible. To note, this one will bring transcendence, where we’ll see the value of the heart training we’ve done these past 11 months. This one is liberating, and shows us how well we’ve learned core truths.
In the next parts, we'll explore the qualities of the Eclipse, the Sabian Symbols, the aspects, configurations, and other specifics of this powerful Total Lunar Eclipse Full Moon in Libra-Aries. Check back in tomorrow!
Because this Lunar Eclipse happens while Mercury is retrograde, if you haven't already gotten your copy, you may want to buy a copy of the new expanded 2nd edition of my pioneering book A New Look At Mercury Retrograde, the 2015 winner in its category of The Indie Spiritual Book Awards.
The first major work on Mercury retrograde ever written, it offers in-depth information about Mercury retrograde people, Mercury retrograde in the various signs and houses, and what the entire Mercury Retrograde phenomenon is about. If you want to know what we can expect from Mercury retrograde in Libra, or the last one in Gemini, or the others in any other sign and the influence in the houses, it’s all in there.
By knowing more about 2014's Mercury retrograde periods in Pisces/Aquarius, Cancer/Gemini, and Scorpio/Libra, or 2015’s Mercury retrograde periods in Aquarius, Gemini, and Libra, you may see patterns in what was going on in your life, what you were taking a new look at and why, and how this "looking back" influenced your choices as you moved through past events. And you can get a heads up by taking a look at the coming 2016 Mercury retrograde periods in Aquarius/Capricorn, Taurus, Virgo, and Capricorn/Sagittarius. It’s all in the book!
Here's the Amazon link to the page where you can order your paperback or ebook copy of A New Look at Mercury Retrograde. It is an invaluable resource for understanding past, present, and future Mercury retrogrades, so get your copy today. Just make sure you get the 2015 edition, and not the 1997 first edition, since the second is a far superior product!
For more about Eclipses in general, how they are timed for effects, and other seldom considered considerations (con = "to be with" + sider = "the stars"), please check out the previous article in this series Astrology in September 2015 - On The Threshold of a Total Lunar Eclipse at 5 Libra-Aries
© Copyright 2015 Robert Wilkinson
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