Solar Eclipse in Aries

Solar Eclipse - Thursday, 20 April 2023 - 2:14pm, local time (Bilpin, Australia)

This New Moon finds us entering Eclipse Season from the anaretic degree of Aries - the last degree of the sign. Its often thought of as a kind of 'final exam' of an energy before it leaves and ingresses into a new sign. So what does an Aries final look like? And more importantly, how do you pass it? That is kinda hard to tell during an eclipse - for they are like wild cards, often heralding major beginnings and endings of chapters in obscured, often tricksey ways that we can't possibly grasp fully. (But lets try anyway!)Aries is cardinal fire, so it is initiatory and transformative. It wants most to awaken - and it does this by moving into action, being decisive, taking a stand, making a point, charging ahead, claiming its space. One of my favorite descriptions i have heard about Aries energy is that it learns about boundaries by running into them. One of the less helpful things i have heard about Aries energy is that it wants to make things personal. Eh...kinda... Sure - i mean that is what taking a stand and claiming space require of us - to put your own personal skin in the game, but when Aries energy bumps into you during the charge, its not personal. It really has nothing to do with you whatso ever. We can understand the difference most easily when we remember to consider its polarity (patterns of two). The Aries-Libra axis is about learning how "i" need to take up space vs. how "you" need to take up space. Aries moves forward to activate its own energy imperatives whereas Libra, cardinal air energy, its imperative is to move over -making room to include more and more others. Look and see where Aries falls in your chart - the house will give you clues as to where in your life you are going to be feeling this energy most. The Sun is our conscious self and the Moon is our intuitive, feeling self...its like they are sitting down to tea planning their next big move. New Moons are initiatic energies that mark the beginning of a new cycle. And this new cycle has the potential for a lot of healing, for the Sun and Moon are in a loose stellium with both Jupiter - the planet of expansion - and Chiron - the planet also known as the Wounded Healer. But healing isn't a guarantee. Remember, we live in a reality modeled on a binary system energetic system of understanding - every up has a down. So these two planets can also just as happily throw themselves a giant pity party and wallow in their trauma story, regurgitating a model of reality that serves no one (for some interesting sidebar on all of our trauma stories,  i highly recommend The Emerald | The Revolution Will Not Be Psychologized, Part 2 (Interview w/ Báyò Akómoláfé) https://www.podbean.com/ea/dir-khg4w-1783154a). What this Aries combo 4-pak in the anaretic degree suggests, is that we are at a point of self determination. ....But wait?! Did i mention its eclipse season? Yes, a solar eclipse. So the Moon getting inbetween us and the light of the Sun - or if you will, our feeling self is somehow disrupting the flow or getting in the way of our conscious self. Download disrupted. Vision occulted. Comprehension obscured. Sometimes life is like that, and sometimes the Way is Dark and you need to put some skin in the game anyway. This is one of those times. Let's be completely transparent. None of us really knows what is going on - the world as we know it is CHANGING and very, very quickly. Everything is untethering and show no signs of slowing down in this process. We can insist on trying to be on top of things things and put up barriers and act with willfull aggression, panic or stubbornness, all stemming from a me first attitude in such circumstances. These options are easily available to Aries energy. Or we can sink deeply into ourselves - into our own intiatic spark - find our bottom line and just stand there, alert, ready, willing and courageous come what may. This New Moon is really not about doing anything. Its about being. What are you gonna be in the world? Whats your bottom line?

Think of Eclipses as a moment where there is a break in the coding. Something outside of our perception has the opportunity to enter and change the game. Lofty visions are grand, but every true warrior knows that it is hard to hold onto lofty ideals when you are in the thick of the moment, just trying to move the ball forward. Its important to just keep it simple. Try to embody a sensation, a feeling or perhaps a single word. Interestingly Vesta and the North Node also conjunct this New Moon, but out of sign from Taurus. So we have those energies lending their influences. Vesta, Keeper of The Flame and the North Node, the Dragons Mouth - what we need to move towards to release karma and evolve out of our own soul cage. Oh! And did i mention that its squaring Pluto in Aquarius?!!! (gulp) Ha! A momentus and heady time for sure! Vesta in Taurus - fixed earth - reminds us to go into the body, and breathe deeply and tend the Flame from there. Fixed earth is quietly determined and patient. It knows what it knows. But be attentive - this is not a knowing of the mind, it is a knowing of the body... a knowing the body carries - bottom lines are like that, they are instinctual, not of located in the rational mind. Pluto squaring from Aquarius - fixed air - is going to be rattling the mind, peeling back and shredding the knowing it finds there to expose any rot. This can be a very deeply unsettling square. Its point is to shake something loose from our collective place of blind individualism. The way to navigate this passage well is not to become more stubborn, Taurus can do that even better than Aries. The mind can close its eyes and ears and just hold on tight... but gosh, that sounds painful and a waste of this really quite amazing signature.
This New Moon is not a time to check out, but rather check in. Check into the humble resting place of your own bottom line, the seed spark from your own soul and just stay there, tending the Flame. Be focused there, let the quiet simple rythms of your own body guide you. Stay with your breath. Stay with your spark. Activate your own healing power - for yourself and the world - by simply deciding to become bigger than your fear, bigger than your grief, bigger than your anger, bigger than your pain. Expand beyond whatever too small story your mind has been telling you. Instead, claim your space. Claim your own story. Be courageous. You've got this. We all do. Chiron and Jupiter tell us that we just have to decide and then act accordingly.
We make reality through our participation in every moment. What is your story in this moment and this moment, and this one? If you don't like your story stop carrying it around with you. If its not worth repeating - then don't. When we do this (and we all do this) all  we are doing is scattering the seeds of the same thing before us. What this moment asks of us is simply an act of willful embodiment. So just stand on your bottom line and let the rest come or go, stay or leave however it needs. This is not a moment to get distracted with baggage that is not ours to carry. We may think that our pain or our story belongs to us... but that too is just an idea that's been given to us that we keep repeating into exisitence over and over.

To get through the eye of a needle, its best to practice Camel Medicine and remember that we don't have to carry anything but our own hump. We were made for exactly now. Go Team!