channel humility
surrender to how life is
release your control
Scorpio full moon
eclipsed by the Earth’s shadow
compost the decay
Sometimes the Universe gives us signs that are too big to ignore. In those cases we would be fools to resist. The only option is to surrender.
Today is the start of week 5 of the counting of the Omer. In our 7-week journey through the lower Sephirot on the Tree of Life, this week brings us the sephirah of Hod.
Hod literally translates to gratitude and appreciation. Beyond its literal meaning it’s implication is to awe, splendor, humility, modesty, and surrender.
Hod is the counterpart and converse to Netzach. Whereas Netzach represents the drive to push through to the future, Hod speaks to appreciation of the present. Hod is the focusing agent for Netzach’s drive.
We cannot appreciate what is if we don’t have humility. If we are full of ourselves, we have no capacity to receive the abundance that life is offering us.
And so part of Hod is also about surrender. Emptying ourselves, not to create a void but to create space to receive and appreciate the majestic workings of the Divine.
We will dive deeper into Hod this week, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring in another big event happening today that speaks to some of the same themes as Hod:
Tonight’s total lunar eclipse of the full moon in Scorpio.
This is a supercharged full moon, a trifecta of signs pointing us to the need to release, surrender, and compost our grief.
Full moons represent a peak experience and a time of releasing. Scorpio is a sign that is about death, destruction, grief, and ultimately transformation. A full moon in Scorpio is already inviting us to release what no longer serves us, grieve it, and compost that grief into something new.
Death also represents new life.
And then there’s the eclipse. Astrologers traditionally viewed eclipses as ominous signs. Imagine the world before electricity. Eclipses snuff out of the light of the luminaries. They represent an unstable energy.
The moon cycles in general, and especially eclipses, remind us that we are not in control of the workings of the universe. Eclipses leave us in the dark, even if just for a moment.
What do you do when you’re in the dark, without flashlights or candles?
You surrender.
You remember that you’re not in control, that the world is so much bigger than you can perceive from where you stand. That you cannot know the whole picture.
In the face of big cosmic events, whether a stunning sunset or an eclipse or some other natural phenomenon, we realize how small and insignificant we are in the vast workings of the cosmos.
In the infinite span of time we are here only for a few seconds, specks of dust in the larger cosmos.
Perhaps we learn to take life, and ourselves, a little less seriously.
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