There’s no greater barrier to productivity than pain. Whether physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual, pain creates a filter over our experience.
Pain prevents us from seeing the truth of situations. It distracts our attention. It causes rifts between people.
It’s no wonder, then, that we spend so much time avoiding our pain. We immerse ourselves into all manner of work and activities to stay busy, numb out, and generally finding ways to avoid or ignore our pain.
This just gives pain more power to sabotage our deepest desires and our strongest relationships.
Because we avoid, ignore, and generally suppress our pain, it does most of its work from beneath the level of our conscious awareness.
Today’s new moon total solar eclipse in Aries (19º23’ at 2:20 pm ET) invites us to sit with our pain, to listen deeply to its messages, and to transform our relationship to it in order to catalyze the next evolution of our healing journey.
New Moon in Aries Initiate a New Chapter
A new moon occurs each month when the moon and sun align in the same part of the sky. It marks the beginning of the moon’s cycle, a fresh start to seed new intentions. This new moon occurs in the sign of Aries — a cardinal, fire, yang sign that initiates the zodiacal year.
A new moon in Aries is always a potent event, as it is the first new moon of the zodiacal year.
This new moon is extra potent, as it is a total solar eclipse. Generally at a new moon we don’t see the moon, because the sun’s light doesn’t reflect on it.
At a solar eclipse the path of the moon’s orbit takes it between the Earth and the Sun. It creates an illusion where the moon and sun appear to be the same size and the moon blocks the light of the sun.
Eclipse Energy: Chaos, Power Outages, and Shadows
In ancient times, people views eclipses as ominous events. The blocking of the light of the sky’s main luminary gets blocked — like a power outage of our main light source.
Chaos and Confusion
In the case of a solar eclipse — especially a total solar eclipse — the eclipse transforms daytime into nighttime, throwing nature into a state of chaos and confusion.
If you watch an eclipse, listen to the sounds around you: birds stop chirping, animals stop moving, everything goes quiet.
This chaos can extend to humans as well.
Facing the Shadow
Think about what happens if you’re in a room when the lights suddenly go out. You can’t see anything around you; you can’t move at your normal speed. You can’t do work or escape to your devices.
As the Sun gets eclipsed, we get plunged into the darkness for a few hours. It’s a cosmic invitation to sit with confront the shadows of our experience: to sit with the pieces and parts of ourselves, our emotions, and our pains that we typically relegate to the backrooms and cellars of our psyche.
It’s an opportunity to face our shadows and connect with our inner light, to integrate our parts, and to initiate a portal to healing — to find our wholeness within.
Reversing the Narrative
Astrologer Diana Rose Harper explains that eclipses bring an inversion of stories. The story of light is getting inverted: instead of having mid-day sunlight, we are plunged into darkness.
This offers us an opportunity to explore the narratives underneath our deepest wounds and reverse and rewrite those stories.
Sudden Beginnings and Endings
The change of light during an eclipse isn’t like the sun slowly sinking beneath the horizon at the end of the day. The light change is sudden and dramatic. Similarly, eclipses tend to mark moments of sudden endings and beginnings.
In our personal lives, they are often the markers of important chapters in our evolution. Even if we can’t see where things are going in the moment, we can often see these transitions as we look back.
We don’t yet know what the consequences will be. Something that might seem “bad” in the moment might have positive outcomes down the road. This calls for us to be open to what is happening and notice, without rushing to judgment.
The Chiron Eclipse: Confronting Our Pain
This new moon total solar eclipse happens in an exact conjunction with the minor planet Chiron. A conjunction means that at the time of the eclipse, the Sun, Moon, and Chiron will all be at the same degree in Aries.
Chiron is the archetype of the “wounded healer.” According to MoonOmens.com, Chiron is connected to themes surrounding rejection, vulnerability, isolation, and not fitting in.
In Aries, Chiron brings up wounds related to feelings of not having the right to exist, disconnection from our instinct, fear of initiating and taking action, and challenges expressing anger in healthy ways.
Chiron is the healer, teacher, and mentor.
As Chiron is involved in this eclipse, it brings an extra focus on what we can learn from our pains and how to come into new relationship with our own pain so that it doesn’t sabotage us.
Aries is a sign that tends to be impulsive and act on instinct. When we don’t sit with our pain and recognize that we have agency, we can burst out in rage — with undesired consequences.
This eclipse invites us to sit with those impulses to act brashly, to hold off on angry outbursts while we examine the narratives that are beneath those impulses.
The Influence of Mars/Saturn Conjunction
Mars, the planetary ruler of Aries, is the ruler of this eclipse, and its condition helps inform the energy of this event.
Mars is currently in Pisces, approaching a conjunction with Saturn. Mars likes to move fast with intense fire. Saturn represents boundaries and limits.
As Mars and Saturn approach a collision, it’s like putting the brakes on our impulses to act.
While this can be frustrating at times, in this case it reinforces the theme of this eclipse: this is not a time to take action. Instead, it’s a time to sit with the impulse to act, to create a pause in which we can examine the narratives driving our impulses. In that pause we can remember our agency and power to change the narrative and take a different action.
Eclipse Summary: Ground Your Energy and Embrace Stillness
By plunging us into sudden darkness, eclipses can sow the seeds of chaos, and disruption.
The best way to work with an eclipse is to embrace this darkness and the invitation it offers to go within. As you would in any power outage or earthquake, the prescription is to lay low and stay grounded.
This is a time to find stillness, to sit with your shadow, to confront your pain, and to use it as a portal to integration, healing, and wholeness.
Eclipses initiate longer cycles in our lives, and are not the best energy for immediate action.
Take note of the impulses to act, to the messages you receive, and to what emerges in the darkness. Let this be a moment of healing and grounding that will set you up for action once the eclipse has passed.
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