And, let me add, are we to both witness and participate in a sudden new beginning in the relationship of equals (Libra) between unique individuals (Aries)? If so — if we can actually meet the Other with reverence and concern as a “Thou,” rather than with prejudice and judgment as an “IT” — then we have here and now created the conditions that recede from the terrible onrushing tide of endless war.

Eclipses are often thought of as inauspicious times —

Why Solar And Lunar Eclipses Have Been Considered ‘Birds of Ill Omen’ For Millennia

— and the total solar eclipse of March 20, 2015 — which occurred only four days before the Germanwings plane crashed and, as with the other two, created a maelstrom of confusion and mystery — certainly fit that bill.

But Eric Francis is correct, I think, that this one, coming so close to yesterday’s historic deal with Iran may actually prove auspicious, rather than inauspicious. Unless, of course, the “framework” adopted runs amuck, one or more the parties reneg on the deal, or the usual dark forces decide to bomb Iran anyhow. In this latter context, it’s instructive that even the usually deep cynicism of Paul Craig Roberts shifted to joy.

Massive Defeat for US Neocon and Israel’s Crazed Netanyahu

Meanwhile, on a personal front, I experienced a very unexpected, even unnerving Mercury/Sun/Uranus/Pluto shock this morning, when a crucial and massively linked post I had been working on for two hours, and had saved, suddenly disappeared, without a trace. (Rather like the first Malaysia Airways plane, eh?)

In his interpretation of the eclipse, I like the way Eric Francis focused on the Libra end of the equation, by focusing on the relationship between young and old, how we can — and must — help each other during these trying times.

He asks us to go back and ask how life has changed for us over the past three years, and yep! My life has transformed exactly into what he’s points to: the relationship between young and old: before I lived alone (with short or long term visitors); now I live, in a two-pod home, with one other “old” person and three young ones. Voila!

Total Lunar Eclipse: Forever Changes

April 2, 2015

by Eric Francis

planetwaves

Dear Friend and Reader:

We’re now looking right into the vortex of a total eclipse of the Moon in Libra. Like all lunar eclipses, this is a Full Moon. It takes place at 8:06 am EDT (12:06 UTC) on Saturday, April 4. Eclipses are always portents of change and often of progress. They have a way of shaking things loose and moving things along. This one seems to be doing a fine job of that, as we approach it.

From today’s New York Times front page. Note that rather than bombing Iran, something political forces have tried to sell the American public many times, there was a diplomatic breakthrough. Here is a blog post on the chart, which I’ll cover on Tuesday’s Planet Waves FM.

Full Moons, on their own, often have a property of breaking or releasing a deadlock. This particular Full Moon eclipse is bringing that property to the forefront. Now is the time to apply some energy into anything that has been stuck or intractable, no matter how long it’s been that way.

Like the corresponding total solar eclipse of March 20 just prior to the equinox (though for different reasons), Saturday’s eclipse seems to be another sendoff of the 2012-era — the years encompassing the seven exact contacts of the Uranus-Pluto square, from June 2012 to March 2015.

What makes Saturday’s eclipse interesting is how it nestles right into the Uranus-Pluto square. All the points in question — the Moon, the Sun, Uranus and Pluto — are located at about 15 degrees of the cardinal signs. They are all in aspect, arranged in the shape of a T.

In the plainest talk possible, think of Uranus-Pluto as the astrological engine that is driving the times in which we live. But it’s not easy to perceive that effect; it can just come across as all the usual madness, lurking in the background, usually imperceptible.

Bring the Moon and the Sun into the arrangement and what was previously cloaked in the invisible environment has a way of coming forward and making itself known. Of all the ‘personal points’, the Moon and the Sun are the most personal. They are our elemental reflections in the cosmos, the objects we follow through the days and months and years. They’re what we identify with the most closely, because we can feel them the most palpably. They are the most basic landmarks of home on the inner and outer planes.

What were you doing in 2012? Do you remember?

When you put them into contrast with those potent but often veiled background factors — Uranus and Pluto — you may suddenly be able to feel, to orient, to sense your existence in relationship to your environment.

We live with the illusion that nothing much changes. That’s certainly one of the dominant effects of our time — ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’. I assure you that’s not true. I suggest you take this weekend and consider the changes that have worked their way through your life over the past three years.

Then go back even further and consider where your life was, what your expectations were, and what you were doing in 2012 and the years prior. Take the time to consciously observe how much progress you’ve experienced or created for yourself personally since then. I think you will be impressed.

Yes, you have a long way to go. Yes, there is plenty left undone. That’s why you’re alive. Being alive means you have time, specifically to work within time, so that you may do the things you want to do, and that you need to do.

There is one pressing question I would leave you with in these last hours before Saturday’s Full Moon. Eclipses are transpersonal events. They seem designed to connect individuals with the wider world around them. Like the Aries Point (something that’s very much part of this particular eclipse pair), eclipses are the junction of the individual and the collective.

This is especially true when you blend one with a boldly collective event, the Uranus-Pluto square. My question for you is: if you have any aspirations to do something larger, to connect with a wider purpose, to involve yourself in the movement of your culture, what are you doing about that?

Young people have high ideals and want to change the world. Do they have the skill and persistence to do so? Are older people passing along their tools and wisdom? Photo by Eric, Times Square, 2011.

We live in a very strange era where the whole ‘get involved’ thing is concerned. For one thing, most people are convinced they have no time to do anything but the most basic things demanded of them. Yet at the same time, there seems to he this profound, unresolved need, verging on an urgency, to bring oneself into collective life.

This is as true for younger people as it is for older people. Millennials, a generation I’ve been studying lately, are brimming with idealism and the need to change the world, but seem confronted by a kind of glass casing around what they want to change. There would seem to be no way in. This is being exacerbated by a variety of other factors, including debt, lack of tangible examples, and many, many illusions presented by the digital environment.

For example, in the digital environment, when you want to change something, you download an app, then tap on it and like magic, you get an effect. The world does not work that way. It requires much more persistence, a more involved relationship with time and energy, and the slow cultivation of knowledge and experience.

And we’re having to do this under the illusion that time is running out. The oceans are rising, and clogging with plastic. The ice caps are melting. Species are going extinct. There’s this sensation that there’s simply not time to gain the knowledge we need to make the changes we need to make.

Are you passing along your wisdom and tools to younger people? They need what you have to teach them.

But I would ask, is that really true? And if it is, what then is the purpose of time, of experience, of growth, of learning? I believe that most of the illusion that it’s impossible to participate and make a change is born of believing those things are true. If you want to test that out, at a certain point you need to step up and involve yourself; you need to make your process of growing and gaining experience available to the culture around you.

If you’re someone with a bit of age and experience, I would ask: to whom are you passing your knowledge, your tools, your documents, your perceptions? And while you’ve still got them, what are you doing with them?

The questions we face are indeed vexing, and daunting, and scary — just like the times we live in. But they are all the more so for not actually asking them, and for not attempting to answer them honestly.

We are having to do all that we do not just from within the digital environment, but as products of it. In other words, all these years of dealing with and through robots have made us all a bit robotic. Most everyone is, at this time, unaware of their plight. They know something is different, a bit off, perhaps a bit wrong — but few people have words for it.

So I leave you with one last question, as the Moon drifts out of Virgo and into Libra and into the shadow of the Earth. What are you doing to retrieve, to discover, and to express your humanity?

Lovingly,