The Astrology of Purpose
Bonus Articles on:
Wish fulfillment: the monthly new moon
Full moon madness
Lunar eclipses: emotional earthquakes
Surprise central: solar eclipses
New Moon Full Moon Lunar Eclipses
Wish Fulfillment: The Monthly New Moon
A fair number of astrologers believe that the day of the new moon each month is a power day that can be accessed to change or improve your life. Some astrologers liken these days to 'wishing' days - in which the correct wish, expressed in the correct way, has the power to come true. Others look at the two week period after the new moon as a time to sow seeds that can be later reaped for favorable results. The metaphors some use are those of 'birth' or 'newness', 'fresh start', or even simply increased focus on the sign and house where the new moon falls.
You may use whatever metaphor or conception that suits you, but let's look for a moment at the astrological symbolism to get an idea how the new moon presents a special opportunity each month. Roughly speaking, the moon represents the subconscious mind, and the sun the conscious one. The sun also symbolically represents the driving force of our daily lives.
The moon, however, works at night, reflecting on the activities of the day, attempting to integrate them, understand them, to see how we can resolve potential conflicts they generate. The moon represents the power engine that underlies our conscious thought, the machine that is always humming beneath the surface of our lives, generating the energy that fuels us, keeping us going. When the subconscious and conscious minds are in conflict (astrologically, when the sun and moon are in conflict), the subconscious always has the upper hand, inconvenient and illogical as that may seem from time to time. All of our conscious attempts to lose weight, for example, can be sabotaged by a subconscious association between weight and safety. The Moon represents our needs, the Sun our wants. And when our needs come into conflict with our wants, the primacy of need usually wins, somehow or another.
The magic of the new moon is that for one day each month - the sun and the moon are on exactly the same page. This is not the normal state of affairs astrologically, and it isn't the normal state of affairs in human life. Balancing the relationship between our wants and needs, conscious and subconscious minds, our drive to do and our craving to reflect and find meaning is an ongoing process, dynamic, always in flux. It is normal for every person to experience a continuing range of compromises and adjustments in dealing with both needs and wants. It is, in fact, so normal, that many of us take it for granted and don't give it a second thought.
For one day each month, however, both the moon and the sun are willing to get together and have a brief conversation about how wants and needs can be merged, how the subconscious and conscious minds can work together. This is a great thing! It does indeed represent a wonderful opportunity.
Here's how you might take advantage of it: On the day of the new moon each month, allow yourself to experience the full intensity of your biggest or most immediate want. Perhaps it is as simple as the desire for a sexy new car - or an overarching desire to succeed in your career. Just allow yourself to feel how much you want it. That night, take fifteen minutes to allow your subsconscious to reflect on and talk to you about that want. What does it feel like, what are the hesitations, doubts, and fears, what need does it represent? You may write out your thoughts, or think quietly to yourself.
This is an important step. It wouldn't be a want or a wish if you had already fulfilled it! Since you haven't, there must be something blocking that fulfillment. The moon, the subconscious, is the key to finding out what that block is. Your conscious mind may tell you the reason you don't have a sexy new car is because you don't have the money right now. Your subconscious mind may tell you it's because your family will ostracize you if you become a sexy new person instead of the responsible, self-denying, practical car driving person they expect.
Ask your subconscious and conscious minds what they would like to do about fulfilling your wish. Your Sun may say - now that it knows what the problem is - let the family adjust. Knowing you'll probably get some flack, just be prepared to deal with it. Your Moon might say - wouldn't it feel so good to see that sexy symbol of your sexy, confident inner self sitting in the driveway.
Now that you know what's at stake with this particular wish, your Sun can go off and do it's business of calculating out how you are going to pay for this car, and your moon can on about it's business of reminding you that you need to validate yourself as a sexy, deserving person sometimes. The sun can help deal with the moon's fear of alienating family members, and the moon can help give the sun the motivation it needs to take the actions that will meet your needs. Perhaps you don't need a car at all - perhaps you need to adjust your relationships with your family members. The two luminaries working together can help you figure this sort of thing out.
This is something all of us should do anyway. Taking 15 minutes once a month to problem-solve and take stock of our desires is something any success guru can tell you is the minimum investment you should make in your future. Your Sun can take you many places - but none of them will be worth visiting unless they meet the needs of your moon as well.
A couple of other tips: You can use keywords associated with the sign and house position of the month's new moon to choose a desire to focus on. (Sometimes we have so many it's hard to figure out where to start!). You can also use the new moon in your own sign as the equivalent of the traditional 'birthday wish.' This is the one to just shoot for the moon (so to speak) and dare to believe you have a shot at it.
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The new moon is the time each month when the sun and the moon (conscious and subconscious minds) are the same page. The full moon is the time each month when they are on the opposite page! Your willpower tells you to do one thing, while your subconscious mind wants to do exactly the opposite.
This element of friction has given rise to a lot of speculation about various full moon effects on mental ward admissions and other minor upsets. This doesn't bear out statistically. Most of the time, for most people, the full moon doesn't have very much effect. In fact, the moon's influence on the earth is only slightly increased at the time of the full moon. On occasion, this slight increase can be enough to tip the balance and lead to a shake-up for an individual person, or even a flood of emotions. But this happens quite rarely really, and it happens only when there is pre-existing stress or strain in a person's chart (and life) that needs to be released.
In general, the full moon is associated astrologically with things like culmination, fullness, endings, and emotions. This may or may not be true in each individual case, but there's a fun way to put the full moon energy to use.
The full moon is related to endings and completion, but it is also related to conflict between the conscious and subconscious desires. And the subconscious wins! So, once each month, put this to work for you. By crossing something off your conscious to-do list. Almost all of us build up a mental bank of things we think we really ought to do but are subconsciously dreading and would rather skip entirely. At the time of the full moon, cross one of those things off your list - and honor the fact that your subconscious feelings don't always line up with your conscious beliefs.
Let's say you feel like you really ought to invite your mother-in-law over for an elegant dinner to show off your new house. But deep down you're dreading it and you even know, intuitively, that she doesn't really want to be impressed by your new house and your hostessing skills - they will only excite a certain envy and desire to criticize. Cross that task off your list - permanently. It wasn't a good idea anyway, although it may have seemed that way at first. She'll come over on a more relaxed occasion and you can all spare yourself an unnecessary ordeal.
Almost everyone has at least one thing each month they can cross off their list of imaginary obligations. You can check the sign and house positions of each full moon for an idea kit of what you may be able to rid yourself of during each particular month.
If you can get yourself in the habit of deleting one unnecessary to-do item each month, the full moon will start to become a real treat. A way of indulging and honoring that occasionally grumpy, but very useful and necessary mechanism inside us that wants to avoid what's not emotionally fulfilling anyway. And everything we get rid of that doesn't serve us leaves a little more room for joy.
See, astrology really can be your friend!
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Lunar Eclipses: Emotional Earthquakes
Full moon lunar eclipses have a lot of lore associated with them, most of them portending negative effects of some kind. The full moon has been (incorrectly) associated with everything from epileptic seizures, to psychiatric admissions, to dog bites, births, and deaths. Lunar eclipses have an even worse reputation; historically they were often considered bad omens. Historical peoples feared a lunar eclipse meant famine, disease, natural disaster, the wrath of the gods, and defeat in battle. They don't. But interestingly, there are several recorded cases where fear of the eclipse, and an interpretation that it meant disaster led to bad effects for the very people who predicted disaster for themselves. Keep this important principle of the self-fulfilling prophecy in mind and never predict that an astrological event is a bad omen for you. You do yourself more harm than good to use astrology this way and you will prevent yourself from using the opportunities these events allow you.
Case in point - lunar eclipses are often associated astrologically with emotional endings and losses. But it would be a big mistake to interpret this as necessarily being sad or negative. The Boston Red Sox won the World Series last year for the first time in 86 years - during a lunar eclipse. Fortunately, they didn't interpet the lunar eclipse as a bad omen or try to reschedule the World Series for a more 'astrologically favorable time'. No, they played and won. And what a wonderfully emotional ending to 86 years of frustration it was! What was 'lost' was the burden of a so-called 'curse' their team. I'll say it again - don't use astrology to predict bad events for yourself or to make you fearful of doing something at the 'wrong' time! Astrology used this way becomes closer to a superstition than a life-enhancing tool - and you may very well talk yourself out of the opportunity to end your own frustration or 'curse'. Do your best to assume the universe likes you and is trying to help you out. This is difficult for all of us at certain times - but more often than not, it's worth the effort.
So what is this lunar eclipse about then? Well, it's sort of the astrological equivalent of an earthquake. It relieves the accumulated tensions underlying your chart, if there are any. Its effects range from 3.0 on the earthquake scale (what eclipse? I didn't feel anything!) to 7 or 8 (oh wow!). They can usually be felt anywhere from about five weeks before the date of the eclipse to about five weeks after the date. Sometimes having the tensions in your chart relieved and settled down feels very good. Sometimes an astrological earthquake causes collateral damage in everything in your life not pinned down securely and becomes quite a hassle. An eclipse theoretically affects you in matters related to the house and sign in which it occurs. But eclipses are indeed like earthquakes, unpredictable in timing and exact effect. They can bounce around to the opposite natal or solar houses, bounce their energy off aspected planets and just generally do whatever they feel like doing. An eclipse can manifest as a dramatic outside event or as an interesting insight or helpful revelation. It all depends on what the universe thinks you need.
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Solar Eclipses: Surprise Central
Solar eclipses are said to indicate new beginnings, radical change, unexpected news, or simply an unforeseen bump in the road. What I have found them to be most associated with is an element of surprise.
Sometimes a solar eclipse surprises me when it seems to accomplish exactly nothing - even when it looked like it might be a big deal. Sometimes one surprises me when I think it's passed without incident and then almost a month later I experience that familiar sense of mild shock at some unexpected element entering my life. Sometimes one surprises me when it does exactly what I predicted it would do when I predicted it would do it. I find them continually intriguing events both for their potential significance and great variability.
Leaving how they affect me aside for a moment, here's a very basic primer on solar eclipses and why it might be to your advantage to pay attention to them.
Solar eclipses typically occur twice a year, approximately 5 1/2 months apart. This isn't always the case, but it's a good rule of thumb. Eclipses fall in pairs of opposite signs. You can always tell what sign a solar or lunar eclipse falls in because it's the same sign the sun is in. During 2005, these signs are Aries and Libra. An eclipse cycle in a pair of signs starts toward the later degrees of those signs and works its way backward. (It doesn't hit every degree of these signs, by the way). It typically takes from a year and a half to two and a half years for the eclipse cycle to move out of a particular pair of signs. Often solar eclipses fall in one set of signs during a year and lunar eclipses to fall in another set of signs. You can check the dates for upcoming eclipses here.
This means you have potential surprises in store in the areas ruled by those particular signs and houses over a period from a year and a half to slightly more than two years. What this really means is that you have an opportunity for surprising growth and development in those particular areas over that year or two. An eclipse cycle can allow you to go much further than any ordinary inner planet transit can - because it takes place over a longer span of time in your life.
For example, let's say you had health issues. The first eclipse in the cycle might trigger a wake-up call in which you realize you have to change your habits. By the second eclipse, you've decided that weight loss surgery is a viable option, since you need to lose a great deal of weight or potentially suffer some consequences you'd really like to avoid. So you start researching it. By the third eclipse, you're ready to make arrangements. You do, but the surgery has to be delayed for a variety of reasons. By the 4th eclipse you are actually ready to undertake the surgery. At the fifth eclipse (if there is one), you are integrating the effects of having lost a great deal of weight.
This is a pretty good example of a successful eclipse cycle. The day before you got the news that if you didn't lose a hundred pounds you could easily be looking at some serious health consequences, you might never have imagined that you would actually be able to completely change your relationship with your body. By the end of the cycle, you have embarked on a whole new life as a thin person! The series of eclipses allowed you to make gradual but substantial progress toward your goal. Each eclipse may signal an unexpected element you encounter on your journey - although some eclipses in a cycle may pass without incident.
The advantage to being aware of your eclipse cycles is that it tells you where the universe is focusing attention on changing your life over a year or two period. Taking advantage of the universe's interest in you can be a substantial help. If you are not aware of eclipses, the events may still happen, but you may not be aware of the opportunity they represent. Not all eclipses are equally fruitful or momentous, but if you feel the effects of one, it can be helpful to cooperate.
This year's solar eclipse cycle, as I mentioned, takes place in Aries and Libra. There was a solar eclipse in Aries on April 8. You may feel effects anywhere from about 5 or so weeks before the eclipse date to about five or so weeks after. The next eclipse in this cycle will take place on October 3 in Libra.
Check the house position for Aries and Libra for both your sun and rising signs. (Count around the zodiac wheel starting with your sign until you reach Aries or Libra to determine the house positions. For example, for an Aries, the eclipses are in the 1st and 7th houses.)
Study the keywords associated with those houses. And study the keywords associated with those signs. See if you have any idea which of the key concepts associated these signs and houses the universe may be interested in helping you out with. For example, in my case, the Aries eclipse occurs in my third house of communication. Aries is an assertive sign, so the universe is nudging along my abilities with assertive communication. This cycle of eclipses started in April of 2004.
Eclipses are quite complex (and I'm not addressing all the complexities, just some basics), so don't be discouraged if you don't quite know what the universe is up to. But if you can start to spot the trend, you can jump on it, work with it, and capitalize on it.
This is one area where I recommend you do your own practice predictions. Don't expect to get them right at first! But looking at your life and predicting what area of your life might benefit from a series of eclipses can allow you to set an intention to improve this area of your life. It can also help you jump on an opportunity if one arises. Clear intentions are really helpful in working with any astrological aspect and this is true for even one as surprising as solar eclipses!
Good luck and happy solar eclipses for 2005!
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Dates of upcoming eclipses Ready
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