Total Solar Eclipse in Sagittarius, conjunct Ketu; partial phase commencing 8:33am EST

While sources of insight that focus on “Spiritual Life™” might feed you a few lines every new moon about what a good time it is for ‘manifesting your intentions’ and such, this morning a solar eclipse begins, and solar eclipses — which of course implicitly occur on a new moon — are not traditionally auspicious times for standard lunar rituals or spellwork.

​This Solar Eclipse in Sagittarius on Ketu (the South Node) is a potent closing of the year’s last full lunar cycle, in anticipation of new light. It is the end of an era, as the host of the eclipse, Jupiter, changes signs on December 21st along with Saturn in a vicennial Great Conjunction. One’s feelings might range from slight unsettledness to an instinctual hunch that one will know where to go after the curtains are drawn. When the unrelenting rays of the Sun are blocked, it is implicitly a time to go inward, eyelids of the spirit-soul shuttered with the Moon passing across.

​In all transitions there is something to be said for the ‘knower of the proper time.’ Allowing endings and beginnings to make their statements, before one acts, feeds the wisdom that comes from stilled impulse. There can be a dissipating quality to mutable energy such as that of Sagittarius; learning to hold it stokes the fire of sight.

Sagittarius has a classical association with sages, seers, philosophers, religious zealots, and logoic functions whether legal or spiritual. It is the diurnal home of Jupiter, planetary principle of expansion, magnitude, fortune and joviality… largeness of vision, elevation, faith, ascension… yet for the past year, we have been “without a Jupiter”, the swelling planet debilitated in its ‘fall’ in Capricorn.


Deepened lockdowns and extended quarantines might seem to hold over a staleness, yet things could not be changing more. Sagittarius is the sign of long journeys and spiritual sojourn. A solar eclipse ruled by Jupiter, now at the end of a sign which in itself represents completion, endings and steepened old age, seals and stamps the letters of necessary closure you’re writing or your eyes are training to write. Stories ended, adventures paused, new endeavors rerouted in the quest to steady wavering faith.



​The planet of hope, bestower of rewards has traversed a sign barren for it during a year bookended by powerful conjunctions it is staged in, curling back rays otherwise kindly bent to free us. The upcoming of these, the Great Conjunction of 2020, does in ways point toward more of a freeing than this calendrical year has otherwise brought — something I will expound upon this week — but the days surrounding this eclipse on Ketu, in all ravaging and devourment, are for pause and allowing yourself to be exhausted. The star eclipsed is a slow explosion. There is no victory, or communion of wills, without remembering to honor the vacuum surrounding.

[ art depicting 'The Rape of Persephone' re: Mars square Pluto ​]