"I'm being followed by a moon shadow, moon shadow, moon shadow
A leapin' and hoppin' on a moon shadow, moon shadow, moon shadow … "
–Cat Stevens
Nov. 20, 2002 –- Raw flute notes wind around pounding drum beats. Rattles shake intermittently on gusts of wind. Long, thin shadows weave among the hilltop grasses and dance along the tree trunks. The glow of a low fire echoes the reddish, cloud-strewn sky where the full moon is seen only as a slivered circle. Someone calls, "Mother, oh Mother, return to us…."
The mysterious power of an eclipse continues to be compelling, even in these modern, electrically enlightened times. Eclipses align with the Moon's nodes, indicators of karma and evolutionary direction and the intertwining of conscious and unconscious issues.
ECLIPSE DRAGON
Eclipses come in pairs, sometimes triples, aligned with the nodes of the Moon — points where the path of the Moon crosses the path of the Sun. Sometimes called the dragon head and the dragon tail, the north node and south node mark eclipse points. You can imagine, as we did in the past, that a dragon is eating the Moon or Sun during an eclipse. One eclipse round is 19 years, when the eclipses are in the same sign of the zodiac yet again, sometimes on the same day. Over a longer cycle, the Saros cycle, a series of eclipses winds around the Earth in a serpentine path. There are different kinds of eclipses, depending on how close the Sun and Moon are to the Moon¹s nodes. The nodes are now in Gemini (north) and Sagittarius (south), accenting the still active opposition of Saturn and Pluto in those signs. (More about that next time.)
With the participation of the north and south nodes, we process a round of karmic conditioning, clearing a pathway toward further growth. This pathway is through the Moon, reflector and giver of light, as it opens a gateway into another level of awareness, channeled through its dark side. In Jungian psychology and in alchemy, the concept of shadow is associated with the unconscious. The unconscious realm contains all that we are not consciously aware of — both repressed, undesired aspects as well as undeveloped potentials, the personal unconscious material as well as the super-unconscious, an unrealized god-state. A full Moon eclipse is a time when the Moon can beam in the deep space mysteries most powerfully.
FULL MOON ECLIPSE
On November 19, the Full Moon is in a penumbral eclipse. The Sun and Moon are in Scorpio and Taurus, not close enough to the nodes to be total. The shadow of the Earth does not cover the Moon; it is not the kind of dramatic total eclipse we get excited about. Nevertheless, this kind of subtle eclipse still carries the charge of change.
The Sabian symbol images for this Moon are:
Sun in 28 Scorpio:
THE KING OF FAIRYLAND IS SOLEMNLY WELCOMED TO HIS REALM
(Isn't the new Harry Potter movie coming out soon?)
Moon in 28 Taurus:
MATURE WOMAN REAWAKENED TO ROMANCE ADMIRES HERSELF
What story can we make out of these images? Look for them in your life. With this Full Moon challenged by Uranus, the Awakener, we have some surprises in store, like the mature woman.
During an eclipse our normal consciousness is "turned off" and the unconscious comes through the invisible dark door of the eclipsed Moon, which may be opening a channel to a particular universal energy –- coming right out of fairyland, this time. This will be a subtle shift, in the Scorpio way. Rather than the light of the Sun, the Moon mirrors back and illuminates what we have projected of our inner, unconscious state, our "earthly and unearthly darknesses."
Universal receptacle of all things, the Moon absorbs these shadows into herself, entering a new phase — dark, receptive without and light, active within. Spouse and mother of the Sun, she gathers the visible and invisible light of all the stars (all the suns) into her womb, with the potential for conceiving and then giving birth to a new awareness seeded from the universal source. This birth is indicated in the next New Moon, which is a total eclipse.
This is the potential available at the full moon eclipse, more possibly achieved by the self-aware individual than by collective humanity. In such high intensity states, "social and collective influences usually produce only a mass intoxication," at least so Jung believed some decades ago. Perhaps in the new renaissance time we are living in, a similar kind of transformation is possible on the collective level — if enough individuals participate.
Editor's note: Astrologer Kelley Hunter is a resident of St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands, where she leads stargazing nights and is studying for her Ph.D. in cosmology and myth. To be on her e-mail list for monthly articles or for an astrology consultation, write her at kellhunter@earthlink.net.
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