Tonight holds the Solar Eclipse in Aries, at the sign’s ‘anaretic’ or final degree.  Implicitly a new moon, as all solar eclipses fall on, the path of totality is visible only from North West Cape — with Australia and Southeast Asia witnessing at least part of a total eclipse.  Energetically, however, this eclipse is particularly potent, the final degree of a sign traditionally holding a weakened or ‘crisis’ kind of shedding, severing or destruction.  A bit paradoxical, given that new moons represent beginnings, the seeding of new life, the waxing emergence of a cycle reborn.

Derived from the Greek ‘anareta’ (meaning ‘destroyer’), an eclipse at the anaretic degree of a sign can emphasize the classically malefic dimensions that eclipses are perceived to hold.  When the light of one or both luminaries — the Sun or Moon — comes to be obscured, some component of one’s will or fortune may feel muted.  What’s more, with Mars as host of the eclipse, we find the Sun and Moon dispatched by a fallen Mars in Cancer, the red planet well amidst a stretch in the Crab that began March 25th and heats such waters through May 20th.

Mars in Cancer, debilitated in the Moon’s home, can bring fire to our nurturing enclosures, aggression to matters of protection, confrontation to safe spaces, or a kind of impassioned defense.  Themes surrounding ‘the mother’, whether literal or symbolic, the matrilineal, conflicts along the foundations of family, home, or personal roots within and without blood origin… such dynamics can be pronounced.  These may be as covert or subterranean in their manifestation as they might be loud and clear in their drama.  Aiming to protect something new, fight for stasis amidst change, or eliminate threats or conflicts before they arise may also be labors of the heart or priorities of late.

The cardinal fire of Aries which instigates spring has a raw primacy to it, the sovereignty of existing and blazing ahead in one’s de facto incarnate state.  It is different from the fixed fire of Leo at center of summer in the north, or the mutable fire of Sagittarius that disseminates hope through the mounting dark of autumn’s end.  Aries holds a pioneering spirit, one which is sometimes disillusioned if others don’t follow it to the ends of a planet whose contours it seeks to forge across.  Answering to Mars in Cancer, however, we might feel as though it’s hard to muster the will to make that kind of headway.  Sometimes existing in our raw primacy is enough — as Alice Sparkly Kat wrote earlier, “your life is not justified by what you can accomplish or succeed at.”

Efforts and struggles to begin or establish something new, while other narratives wax and wane, take on especially nuanced dimensions with this transit, as both the Moon and Sun enter Taurus in the hours after this eclipse and square Pluto in Aquarius.  Worry surrounding the manifestation of our aims, and emotional examination / private integration of the arenas in which we expect or even crave defeat, may also be spoken.  In its own ways, Mars in Cancer, when unintegrated, can lead to self-sabotage and a kind of spiritual sadomasochism surrounding past traumas and their carrying on.  Mars in Cancer often has a unique relationship to pain along the lines of lineage.  This can be as literal as one’s blood family, and more broadly — yet still very intimately — the emotional burdens of what was has been through.  On broader, more societal levels, emerging from Mars’ debilitated rule, the Lights square to Pluto may prompt a probing examination of geopolitical conflict.  

This is also a rare instance of two Aries New Moons in a row, both of them bookending the sign of the Ram this year.  The themes and topics emphasized by the Aries-ruled house of one’s chart are seeing much bigger emphasis now.  Every new cycle implies the end of something, and that duality may feel particularly double-edged of late.  This does not promise catastrophe for every individual , and can still bring a potent refocusing of energy where reserves have been exhausted.  It’s important to remember that astrological transits are going to mean different things for different people.  The birth chart, as an energetic blueprint that etches its valence into the individual, can be a wonderful jumping off point for seeing what arenas of life a given transit might show up in.

Some dynamics to look out for:

*a beginning born from endings
*intense or difficult emotions that take longer arcs to process
*physical effort, ritual, reverence surrounding the processing thereof
*struggling through the baby steps of a project, endeavor, relationship
*efforts made to nurture something while elsewhere we find compost
*worry in striving to establish or maintain something that takes time
*responding with aggression to situations that call for tenderness
*conversely, meeting conflicts with a disarming warmth
*confronting one’s relationship to confrontation
*not finding the motivation to do things unless one feels like it
*something that slips through your hands the tighter you grip
*protecting something new, fighting for stasis amidst change
*letting one’s guard down, opening up to the object of desire
*taking responsibility for one’s wounds and trauma
*past hurts affecting present boundaries
*not mobilizing old patterns in new settings
*worry surrounding the manifestation of our aims
*private integration of the arenas in which we crave defeat

Swim well, stargazers ~

—A.B.

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