Astrology in July 2018 - On The Threshold of a Total Lunar Eclipse at 5 Leo-Aquarius

by Robert Wilkinson

We have a Total Lunar Eclipse coming in 3 days!

As I've offered you before, no eclipse of itself is "bad," nor do we have anything to fear. There is a lot of superstition about Eclipses, mostly focusing on "dreadful" or difficult elements that often seem to accompany them. However, while all eclipses take something away and/or shut something down, an Eclipse can have beneficial effects if we just know "when to hold 'em, when to fold 'em, when to walk away, and when to run."

Eclipses are both dreaded and misunderstood recurring phenomena. Solar Eclipse effects usually last for several years, while Lunar Eclipse effects usually last for a few months.

This Total Lunar Eclipse happens on July 27, 1:20 pm PDT, 4:20 pm EDT, and 9:20 pm BST. This one is long and very powerful! The Penumbral phase of the eclipse will last 6h 14m, showing a general influence lasting over 6 months, which is an incredibly long time for a Lunar Eclipse to show effects!

Also, the Umbral phase lasts 3h 55m, showing a very strong effect for the next 3 months and 28 days, and the Total phase is 1h 43m, indicating a major quickening of “Cosmic Recycling” in our lives for about 7 weeks! Given this Eclipse configures with Mars and Uranus in a partile Fixed T-square, expect some pretty dramatic events of an early Scorpio nature to come forth these next few months!

Today we'll discuss a lot about eclipses in general and a little about this one. In following articles I'll elaborate on the astrophysics of the phenomenon, who is most affected by this Eclipse, symbols, aspects, patterns, and what we can expect from this Total Lunar Eclipse at 5 Aquarius-Leo.

I've composed quite a few articles on past eclipses in the archives that bear re-visiting, since the Solar Eclipses of 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017 are still manifesting results, if traditional Eclipse lore is to be believed. Core material about the timeline of Eclipse effects can be found in the article, The Solar Eclipse - What It Means and Its Effect On Our Life, as well as many other elements of what we can expect from these recurring celestial events. Links to recent eclipses are at the bottom of this article.

Also, if you missed them, please re-visit this week’s important articles explaining what effects we can expect to result from Lunar and Solar Eclipses. As I offered, eclipses are “Cosmic Recyclers,” removing what is over and done in our lives. While eclipses shut down some elements in the area of life (house) in which they fall, this is needed for growth, since we must bring some things to an end if we are to embrace newer, better ways of doing our Being.

No Astrological event need be "bad," or have "evil" effects, regardless of whether we're using Vedic, Chinese, Western, or any other approach to figuring out cycles within "All-That-Is." Though a circumstance may seem to have "bad" omens for the future, we can always transcend any negativity and turn the future to beneficent possibilities if we find the right point of view. No matter where an Eclipse falls, we can turn it to good.

Favorable ways to use Eclipse energies can be seen by the aspects in eclipse charts as they impact our natal and progressed planets. And because time is an unbroken continuum, we can anticipate what is ending and let it go with grace and a sense of surrendering to a greater life in the becoming.

The choices we make at crucial astrological junctures bring pleasurable or painful circumstances, depending on what we need to learn. These choices are directly related to how evolved our planetary responses are. As I explain in my book Saturn: Spiritual Master, Spiritual Friend, each planet has a duality of function. It is up to us to determine whether our Moon, Sun, Mercury or any other natal planet involved in eclipses, "bad" aspects, and configurations manifests productively or non-productively.

This Total Lunar Eclipse in Aquarius-Leo over the next few months will give us a check-in point related to how “adult and at ease” we are in social setups as per the Jan 31 2018 “Supermoon” Lunar Eclipse setting that into motion then. Since that point, we’ve glimpsed a broader “staircase of human evolution,” and seen that our knowledge needed to be taken to a higher level, and how we can use our knowledge to help others attain a higher level of understanding or experience.

This continues that Leo-Aquarius theme but in an earlier phase of that Scene of Contribution, taking it from the emotional-social level back to the actional level. Here is where we express our integrity in forms of broad understanding, grounding that Leo "divine order" in a fixed vision via the Aquarian Moon. Though the January Lunar Eclipse no longer is in direct effect, those themes will be important once Mercury goes SD in a few weeks on the degree of the Moon in that January Eclipse.

This will be a favorable (if very frictional!) Eclipse, and I’ll explain why over the next few articles. To whet your appetites, this one has a major Fixed T-square involving Sun, Moon, Mars, and Uranus, with Venus in Virgo creating a “Hammer of Thor” configuration with the T-square, making for a lot of cutting, grinding, and polishing of our “jewel of truth” and pounding our “precious metal” of personality into shape.

Many will finally penetrate to the heart of an interpersonal matter, or something to do with people and things of value. This could lead to leaving the past behind in “a grand adventure in consciousness,” where we demonstrate cooperative building skills, seeing things as symbolic of higher and deeper things, and learning patience if we would build anything lasting.

Though there are always endings associated with any Eclipse, these open the space we need to align with Spirit in natural and productive ways. Take a new look to see what really matters and what you do and do not want to bring with you into the new world opening before your very eyes.

Enthusiasm, spontaneity, creative self-expression, and taking an honest look at how to mobilize to get things done will be good ways to use this eclipse. Look at your expectancies, and eliminate all that are less than the best!

The integrity you’ve glimpsed these past 2 weeks can lead to forms of heart strength and growth in the power to love, both in concrete and abstract ways. Reflect on how your ambition and/or attempts to fulfill your purpose have led you to “different environments,” where you’re seeing how cohesive your group is (or not,) and how you’re in dynamic change as a result of the evolving environment in which you find yourself.

There is a lot of love, vision, and harvests to receive in this Eclipse chart, and though many things will fracture, it’s merely a prelude to reintegration. Be wholehearted in pursuing the goals that really matter to you, and be alert to unusual or sudden opportunities to regenerate, focus, and “break on through to the other side.”

This will be an extraordinarily powerful Eclipse from a spiritual angle, since many things will reveal themselves about our path and why we’ve had to delay some things until now, and why now is a preparation time for what needs to gestate for 4 months. Whatever people and things that will be taken away over the next 6 months will be replaced with other things and people perfect for where we’re at now. New strengths and new vision are coming forth over the next few months.

See you soon with more on this 2018 Leo-Aquarius Total Lunar Eclipse!

Past Solar Eclipses

These were all active for 2 to 5 years.

For more about the November 2011 Sagittarius Solar Eclipse with links to the 2011 Gemini Solar Eclipse, please check out The Solar Eclipse at 3 Sagittarius November 24-25, 2011 Pt. 3 - Signs, Sabian Symbols, and What It All Means. (You can follow the internal links in this article to the previous articles about this specific Eclipse.)

For more about the May 2012 Gemini Annular Solar Eclipse, here’s The Solar Eclipse at 1 Gemini May 20-21 2012 Pt. 3 (You can follow the internal links in this article to the previous articles about this specific Eclipse.)

For more about the 2012 Scorpio Total Solar Eclipse, here’s The Total Solar Eclipse at 22 Scorpio Nov 13-14, 2012 Pt. 3 - Signs, Sabian Symbols, and What It All Means. (You can follow the internal links in this article to the previous articles about this specific Eclipse.)

For more about the 2013 Taurus Solar Eclipse, here’s The May 2013 Solar Eclipse in Taurus Pt. 3 – How Will This Lunation Affect Us? (As with the previous links, follow the internal links in this one to the previous articles about this Eclipse)

For more about the 2013 Scorpio Solar Eclipse, here’s A Hybrid Solar Eclipse New Moon in Scorpio Pt. 2 – What’s Happening in November 2013 as well as 2014-2015-2016. (link to pt. 1 at the bottom of that article. Pt. 3 has the Sabian Symbols.)

For more about the 2014 Taurus Solar Eclipse, here's The New Moon Solar Eclipse in Taurus Pt. 2 - What’s Happening in May 2014 (Part 3 elaborates on the Sabian Symbols and other factors.)

These are still active at this time.

For more about the 2014 Scorpio Solar Eclipse, here's The October 2014 Solar Eclipse in Scorpio Pt. 3 – Signs, Sabian Symbols, and What It all Means (Links to other articles on the Eclipse at the bottom of this post.)

For more about the March 2015 Total Solar Eclipse at 30 Pisces, here’s The Total Solar Eclipse at 30 Pisces Pt. 3 (You can follow the internal links in this article to the previous articles about this specific Eclipse.)

For more about the September 2015 Partial Solar Eclipse at 21 Virgo, here’s The Partial Solar Eclipse at 21 Virgo Pt. 3 (though there are no links to previous articles in that Eclipse series, you can find them in the articles posted in the week before this link).

For more about the March 2016 Total Solar Eclipse at 19 Pisces, here’s The Total Solar Eclipse at 19 Pisces Pt. 2 (though there are no links to any other articles in that series, you can find them just before and just after this one.)

For more about the September 2016 Annular Solar Eclipse at 10 Virgo, here’s The Annular Solar Eclipse at 10 Virgo Pt. 2 (though there are links to previous articles in that series, you will have to go to part 3 to find the Sabian symbols, Jones pattern, aspects and more.)

For more about the February 2017 Annular Solar Eclipse at 9 Pisces, here’s The Annular Solar Eclipse on February 26, 2017 at 9 Pisces Pt. 2 - What’s Happening in February-March 2017 (and through 2022!) (You’ll have to go to parts 1 and 3 to find out the Sabian Symbols, aspects, Jones pattern, and all the other details about its qualities).

For more about the August 2017 Total Solar Eclipse at 29 Leo, here’s The Total Solar Eclipse on August 21, 2017 at 29 Leo Pt. 2 - What’s Happening in August-September 2017 (and through 2022!) (You’ll have to go to parts 1 and 3 to find out the Sabian Symbols, aspects, Jones pattern, and all the other details about its qualities).

For more about the February 2018 Partial Solar Eclipse at 28 Aquarius, here’s The Partial Solar Eclipse on February 15, 2018 at 28 Aquarius Pt. 2 - What’s Happening in February-March 2018 (and through 2022!) (You’ll have to go to parts 1 and 3 to find out the Sabian Symbols, aspects, Jones pattern, and all the other details about its qualities).

In answer to questions about why I don’t include the Lunar Eclipses from years past in this section, it’s because their effects are usually only for a few months, and so they’ve completed their work long before many long lasting Solar Eclipses. If you’re interested, you will always find what I wrote a couple of weeks before or after the Solar Eclipses, depending on when the Lunar Eclipses fell in those years. They’re all in the archives.

© Copyright 2018 Robert Wilkinson

Comments

[Shakti]

5 Aquarius-Leo is exactly on my IC-MC axis, so this one will be personal! Uranus is near my descendant, so do I have it right that late-Libra/Early Scorpio (my ascendant) is what you call the “release point”? I’m guessing you would say that exercising good balancing and deep transformation are the ways to go here...

The grand cross on the natal chart angles suggest a crucifixion of sorts. Looking forward to the resurrection part ;-)

Thanks as always for the wisdom, Robert. Namaste.

[Christina]

I have Saturn in Leo at 4° 4 and would like to know what that means for me. Saturn is in my 9th house. Thank you for all your great work.

[Esther]

Thank you, dear Robert, for being such a superb psychopomp.
(Oxford English Dictionary definition: 'the spiritual guide of a living person's soul').
Wishing us all the courage to live this eclipse wholeheartedly.
Warmly, Esther

[Robert]

Hi Shakti - So you'll be gathering magnetism at this time. Self-purify! Yes, go with the concentration of the early Scorpio. See how that aspects other things in your chart. If your Asc is the void, YOU are the solution to any problem.

Hi Christina - You're most welcome. Your Saturn, or "Spiritual Master and Spiritual Friend" is being illuminated, and expanded by the NN transit over it. Your Saturn indicates many lessons of the heart, courage, spontaneity, and the need for genuine self-confidence through faith in your ability to express your heart. In the 9th, you could become a great Teacher, but only by seeing the universality of all wisdom teachings as strengthening the heart as we integrate our personalities to express the Loving Wise Intelligence of our Souls.

Hi Ester - Great word!! Yes, I suppose I am. Even helped a few into the ultimate transition, since I already had my dress rehearsal in 1984. Great wish for the Eclipse. Blessings on building the Wisdom in your life and living your Love.

[Christina]

Thank you, Robert. It is perfect timing as I am ready to start a Heing & Teaching Center for children.