When I was a child in East Africa we would go out and look at a solar eclipse through tinted sweetie paper, not much of a protection that red cellophane but it added to the dazzle and sudden ebbing of light from the sun. The total solar eclipse of 22 July 2009 will be the longest solar eclipse of the 21st century and mostly visble from Asia and the Pacific.
In symbolic terms the eclipse will take place at 29 degrees in watery Cancer, with Pluto in Capricorn. A time of unpredictability and sweeping change. The 29th degree has long been linked with the fata morgana and karma, a sign of the turning wheel bringing consequences to bear on our choices and decisons of the past. These eclipses are also historically linked to tidal waves or tsunamis, typhoons and earthquakes, manifestations of external rupture and upheaval. Not a comfortable time.
And it is also the new moon in Cancer, a sliver of light in our hemisphere, a time for planting seeds of hunger and longing. A celebration of water, fire and new beginnings, however tumultuous. A quest for the mother, a call to dive deeper into the Unconscious. As I plan to go out into the garden at night, bracing myself against the winter cold, I ask myself: what is ending? What is beginning? And open my spirit to a revolution in consciousness, the possibility of unsought transformation.
A total solar eclipse is always a wild card. And I am a child of the dark moon, the unknowability of what is about to happen.
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