Eclipse season has begun! This full moon lunar eclipse takes place at 15 degrees 22 minutes of Pisces on Sunday, 7^th September 19:08 UTC.

Reflective Liquid Skin

This week has felt long even as it started. The experience of time around the eclipse seems to morph and change. Moving both slowly and quickly it is a particular window of time in the year.

The lunar eclipse takes place in Pisces, the temple of Jupiter. This double bodied sign hands over from the dark to the light part of the year when the sun enters Aries. Pisces is the lunar realm of Jupiter, a place of deep feeling, emotion, and often very misunderstood. When I think of Pisces I think of looking at a barely moving body of water where the sky and horizon are reflected on the uppermost skin of liquid. A dreamscape of reality, that slowly shifts and moves and never really remains the same. A moveable feast where ideas are born and form is not what is seems.

This ever changing, projective, nature of Pisces gives rise to the delulu-ness of the sign that we must remember is a temple of faith and, perhaps extreme (!?) optimism. The sign rules the end of the dark part of the year with the light continuously growing. This place of Pisces gives us space to imagine something new that may not have existed before. In my part of the world, I link the season of Pisces with the first germinations in early Spring. The sprinkling of snowdrops as they appear in the dewy grass. The first purples of the crocuses that herald the return of the light.

Ball bhrú / Bruise

This Pisces Lunar eclipse, however, is a bruising full moon. Saturn has just recently returned to the sign a little worse for wear after the frenetic pace of Aries. This along with the edginess of Uranus stationing retrograde just before this lunar eclipse gives me the feeling of frayed nerves and frayed edges. Feeling parched and not knowing why. Time to rehydrate, cool down but not so quickly that we become brittle. Some of the heat of a Mars ruled Saturn is required to remain somewhat pliable for what is to come.

Saturn rules the skin, boundaries, edges, where the sea meets the shore. He is re-walking the path that he tread earlier this year in the late degrees of this temple of Jupiter. There is something that needs to be finished up in the Pisces part of your life and you have about 6 months to review it. There may be a long held structure that require repair or renewal or just a second and a third look. Do the work now before Saturn returns to Aries. He maybe remembering something in Pisces that will need to be reviewed, changed and brought back with him as he returns to Aries or something that is best left behind.

Focal Seanchaite / Stale Words

Mercury not long in Virgo is in their own temple and place of exaltation. There is no more comfortable a place for Mercury in the realm of the zodiac. Mercury is approaching the sun in Virgo and is under the beams of the sun. Being in their own temple allows Mercury some protection but Mercury is coming closer to their cazimi point. A potent moment of rebirth and new ideas. Mercury feels this keenly on approach and their may be an expression or expulsion of old words before the new ones flow.

Jupiter in the temple of the moon rules this blood moon lunar eclipse and very aptly is in testimony to Mars, ruler of the blood. Jupiter being exalted in the place of Cancer holds much strength in this position and is said to be in an overcoming square to an exiled Mars in Libra. Mars is hobbled in a sense and expresses differently in a Venus ruled sign. Jupiter has the upper hand yet Mars in this position certainly has the ability to cause some passive aggressive irritation or honeyed tones of interruption to Jupiter’s flow. Jupiter offers a supportive trine to the moon in this chart so whatever does happen remember that Jupiter offers strength and his largesse support.

Although Saturn has excused himself with his return to Pisces the remaining outer planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are still held in that conversational sextile, trine configuration. Uranus just turned retrograde and so take note of any events that stick in your mind this week be they disruptive (my car woes continue), going against the grain, or downright ingenious! This linked in connection is a staple for the coming year.  

Ball gorm / Blue mark

The planetary configuration is reflecting that what may be old is being spoken to allow the new to flourish. It may likely feel bruising, a little hurt, that may stick around for a while but is worth looking at more closely. Rather than falling back on the usual ways of doing, thinking, seeing things perhaps its time to look at something not altogether comfortable in order to change it. During this process you may have hurt feelings or hurt someone else’s. It is part of the process. Carry the bruise with tenderness. Examine the contusion where the blood has leaked under the skin. Watch the anger of the bruise recede as it changes colour over time and disappears. The discoloration of this blood moon will not last forever and will pass.

Le Gealaí

The moon itself will appear blood red in the sky above parts of Europe and Africa, China, India, The Philippines, Australia and New Zealand. Visible to the naked eye. Always worth a look however the ancient astrologers believed that you should not look directly at an eclipse. Not the luckiest of activities. Eclipses have caught the imagination and interest of humanity for millennia. They were the first symbols used to predict the fortune of rulers and cities. Whether we observe them, ignore them, read their signs or not we are all on this earth le gealaí or with the moon.