Solar Eclipse and New Moon (2)

A solar eclipse is a New Moon with an extra twist. A third actor enters into this cosmic drama, one of the nodes, and everything seems to reverse itself. It is not the Moon that disappears, it is the Sun. It is not night, it is day. If the Moon where a coin with a dark side and a light side, it seems as if she has been flipped over. The dark side becomes light, the light side dark. What is hidden is revealed. The potential of the New Moon is potentized, it is raised a power, so to speak.

There is an often used metaphor that if a planet in a natal chart is conjuncted by one of the planets of the pre-natal eclipse it can be considered to be “plugged into” the cosmic condition of that time. This “plugging in” is between the two potential states of growth and decay that the regular New Moon brings and the potential given by choice. Choice here is between the dark side or the light side of the “coin” mentioned above. An eclipse is not fortunate in the general sense of the word. So dear reader, if you find one of the planets or sensitive points in your chart activated by an eclipse planet, this does not mean that you will be more fortunate than others. It is more likely that you will in the course of your life be confronted more often with serious choices. Life is not any easier than it is for anybody else but it may have more intensity. This is one reason why the study of eclipses in the charts of notable people is so important. Activated planets are easily located and help us to understand how the serious choices in their lives came to realization.

Nina Gryphon in her weblog (see my Blogroll) made an interesting point in a recent post (19 Sept. 2006): “The problem is that Eclipses are like a raw infusion of power into a chart, and not many people are prepared to deal with them appropriately, so usually the person is the unwitting victim of something unpleasant. The solar energy will make itself known one way or another. ”

This “raw infusion of power” is in a sense the battle on one side between the New Moon which is fructified by the Sun and the Dark Moon which greedily tries to absorb the light of the Sun. Older cultures speak of a battle between the Sun, the Moon and the Dragon. It is said that the Dragon can only be defeated by the Sun and the Moon together. We will look closer at this in the series on the “Eclipse and its Dragon”.