Eclipses, Alchemy and Waking Up

There is a change of tide in the skies, as Saturn comes out from under the eclipse of the lunar node Ketu (a shadow planet which steals the light of any celestial body it crosses) which has been taking place since April. Simultaneously the tension engendered by the cluster of planets that have been in Virgo over the past several months playing out the dramas related to combustion, planetary wars, enmity and friendship begins to clear, leaving only the Sun and Mars to work out their differences.

I, myself, feel like the straightjacket of Ketu (the body of the cosmic snake) has been suddenly loosened and can begin to see the blind spots that had been held in tight secrecy over the course of his eclipse. You might feel this, too, as you suddenly see the dysfunctional habits you’ve been living with or the aches and pains you’ve been blocking out or the ways you’ve been contributing to your own problems. This is what eclipses do: they block our vision in certain areas so that we have to navigate as best we can in the dark only to later realize the gaping hole in our awareness when it suddenly blindsides us on some idle Sunday (like today!).

The potential benefit of this is that when the light finally returns (the eclipsing planet passes) the acuity of sight we’re granted can allow us to see unconscious patterns and crutches we’ve been carrying around for much longer than the meager course of the transmitting eclipse. Because the planet that has been under eclipse is Saturn this can relate to health, discipline, hard work and limitation, depressive states of mind and negative attitude as well as pessimism. It’s possible that suddenly you see an erroneous idea you’ve been carrying around for a while in one of these areas, or a false and unnecessary ‘mood’ that became locked onto you at some point in time, which is not your true nature. it’s like a lightbulb is suddenly turned on and you realize that what you thought was your medicine is actually your poison, or what you identified as you is more like some foreign body that attached itself to you. Enjoy this! There might be no greater sensation than the expansion of awareness.

The phenomenon of eclipses and the way in which our lives are tethered to the motion of the planets through the stars provoke (at least for me) a fair amount of existential questions. I think it is essential to have a wide-angled view of these elements of our existence in order to weather the storms as well as orient our lives according to the cardinal directions of the things which are most essential to us. It is easy to get blown out to sea and disoriented when seemingly ethereal phenomenon such as the movement of stars come crashing into your life in the form of very concrete events: a health crisis, the disintegration of a relationship, the death of a loved one, for example. All of these events will have been provoked by celestial phenomenon. And not for no reason. It is critical not to remain too long in survival mode “just trying to get through.” That is not a place to live; that is not actually living, and I’m not a Christian but I’m pretty sure that is not what God intended for us.

As far as I can tell, our lives are the material for a grand alchemical operation of which Nature is in charge. Every thought, emotion and event experienced is a substance (the prima materia or raw matter) which wants to be continually refined by the various operations provoked by the sky: a calcination, a dissolution, a coagulation. These are all alchemical operations meant to perfect the material which is the subject. And I do not mean ‘perfect’ as in make flawless; it is a refinement of its essential nature which I see as a realization o four own nature. But one can imagine that the material itself does not always feel comfortable inside these alchemical operations. Who wants to be calcinated (effectively turned to medicinal ash)? And what does dissolution feel like? Doesn’t sound like something you could sleep through. But of course, the point is not to fall asleep but to WAKE UP.

If we can approach the various discomforts of our lives not as problems to be fixed (an approach very much born and bred into the American Mind) but as material which wants to be refined and made more subtle, then we can get inside our own experience and begin to take charge of the internal processes taking place. Instead of being unconscious victims to our experience we can be conscious contributors to our own transformations.

Astrology for me has been a way of getting inside the processes taking place inside my own life, understanding some of their mechanics and beginning to work with them instead of against them. This is what I attempt to do for others as well: to orient them inside the unfolding of their life—where they are inside their own story, what pitfalls to avoid, what potentials they might maximize, what demons to watch out for and which ones to befriend; and most of all to convey the fact that there is meaning in the journey, however perilous it might be at any given moment.