BLOOD MOON - THE TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE at 16º00' Taurus: Tuesday, November 08, 11:03 UTC
Standing on the Precipice of A New Earth
The second Blood Moon of 2022, and third in 18 months, will occur on November 8, at 16º00’ Taurus. It will be the last Blood Moon we will see until 2025.
The event can be viewed in the early morning night skies from Asia, Australia, North America, north-eastern Europe, and most of South America.
What is a ‘Blood Moon’
A Blood Moon is just another name for a total lunar eclipse. During a lunar eclipse, the Earth intercedes the Sun’s rays upon the Full Moon. At around the eclipse's peak (11:03 UTC), the Full Moon's usual glow becomes completely obscured by the earth's shadow as it sweeps across it. Because the Moon will appear to turn reddish-orange for one hour and 25 minutes, emitting a rusty bronze light, this rare, ominously eerie lunation is called a "Blood Moon".
There are also a couple of celestial bonuses in this eclipse—the appearance of Uranus and the possibility of “shooting stars” as the Southern and Northern Taurid meteor showers present bright, colourful “fireballs” around the Moon during totality. With the light of the Moon dulled during totality, Uranus will likely be revealed very close to it, and, weather permitting, you may easily spot it using binoculars or a telescope.
From Asia and Alaska, the eclipsed Moon will also form an occultation to Uranus, obscuring it entirely from view for a brief period before it reappears on the other side.
However, these are mere bonus sights to the main event. A Full Moon turning red right before our eyes is the celestial event of 2022 and not something you want to miss.
The Astrology of the Taurus Lunar Eclipse
Full Moons & Lunar Eclipses
A lunar eclipse is technically a Full Moon, when the energies of the Sun (consciousness) and Moon (instincts) become diametrically opposed during their monthly synodic cycle.
The opposition marks a peak, culmination, fulfilment and ending to their relationship, allowing us to consciously examine habits and unconscious patterns in our lives. Specific areas of importance become points of contention, usually through our various relationships in our world, allowing us to confront what is working and what is not and determine what must stay or go.
Lunar eclipses are not ordinary Full Moons. Their alignment to the Moon’s Nodal Axis - a celestial point indicating where divine energies enter (North Node) and exit (South Node) our lives - adds a remarkably spiritual quality to key events. Also, the scope of influence of eclipses extends beyond their usual lunar month, affecting the tone and feel of much of our year, especially if it forms significant aspects to personal planets/points in our natal chart. Its accompanying Solar eclipse places a distinct impact upon themes described more succinctly by the relationship to the Moon’s Nodal Axis.
A NN Lunar Eclipse in Taurus ushers in a surge of fixed-earth celestial energy, strengthening our psychic intuition and spiritual insight into material matters we instinctively wish to hold and maintain. Sacred places, the soil, the psycho-sexual body, and all physical Earth matters, become magnified or magnetised. This sensitivity can be either healing or unsettling as profound new energies are introduced into our lives and relationships, helping us shift our attitudes and values toward these things.
In one sense, this lunation highlights where we have been inclined to be overly preoccupied with gratifying our material and physical needs, our concerns with money matters and indulging our sensual pleasures. Over the recent months, as the intensity of this eclipse has been building, we have seen where we have become too attached or stuck, developing inertia, letting the stubborn build-up of tension become intolerable until it has begun to affect us in ways which are extremely destructive to our soul-growth.
Brooding in self-pity, wallowing in low self-esteem or negativity about our interpersonal inadequacies could result in unsatisfying relationships and even degrading sexual conduct, which leaves us feeling soul-starved and even more at the mercy of our unsatisfied carnal desires.
Finding easy ways to fulfil or sublimate frustrated sexual energies can become channelled into strange compulsions, addictions, or perverted into perfunctory ways to manipulate others into conforming to our will. During this period, it would be an understatement to say that we are prone to monstrous interpersonal conflicts because of our inability to fulfil or resolve obsessive desires.
The Fixed Dilemma
The transiting Nodes cyclically recede through the horoscope over a period of 18 and a half years. Themes around the transiting Nodal Axis in the fixed signs of Taurus/Scorpio will prevail throughout the period of January 2022 - July 2023.
Essentially, this alignment serves as a powerful reminder to humanity to distinguish between the words 'want' and 'need’. In the quest for greater emotional security and control, we forget that our universe's abundance is so great that we will always have what we need. In our obsession to horde absolute power, wealth and control over the earth, its people and resources, we often lose sight that we, as individuals and as a collective, possess and are surrounded by everything we need at all times.
As our internal attitude toward everything becomes increasingly insecure and clutching, the exterior responds by filling our daily lives with new emergencies. Increasingly, we experience one crisis building upon the next, like an avalanche, assembling such a heavy downpour of conflict that our entire existence becomes reduced to its most basic struggle for survival. We must learn temperance, calmness and contentment for what is both within and without and move away from the evils of bitterness, resentment, obsession and lust for domination and control over things we do not own.
Other Planetary influences to this Lunation
When we examine the eclipse chart below, we can see the Sun/Moon opposition (Full Moon), aligned along the fixed Nodal axis (☊/☋), with other planets. A square from Saturn forms a tight T-Square dynamic.
The cluster of planets at the Scorpio South Node (☋), indicates an urgency to relinquish the wilful intensity of the Scorpio Sun (☉) flanked closely to either side by the fanatical thinking of Mercury (☿) and the compulsive attraction of Venus (♀).
A strong desire to possess, merge and dominate interests seems more of a reactive impulse to past insecurities. As individuals and as a species, we carry collective traumas. We are deeply scarred with memories of transgenerational abuses, violations, abandonment and enslavement, which now, like wounded animals, leave us most prone to vengefulness and deadly rage towards anyone who poses the slightest threat.
All this is reflected clearly in the opposing Moon, exalted in Taurus at the North Node (☊), whose usually vacillating moods are grounded in stable earth as she transits in conjunction with Uranus (economic reversals, upsets, breakthroughs, revolutions). However, we will lose sight of this at some point due to the Earth’s intercedence.
A semi-square from Jupiter in Pisces (altruism) to Uranus (fighting spirit, moral indignation, upsets) evenly separates them from the square to Saturn, also in fixed Aquarius (formal systems of regulation and control).
Here, in this fixed, tightly-knit T-square, resides enough residual tension and wilful determination to destroy the entire planet, and we know it. Trigger planet Mars, now retrograde in Gemini, is still slow, for weeks now appearing stationary in the night skies. The fiery warrior god’s sustained sextile to scorned sister Eris (seeking to exact revenge, comeuppance) is held in check by a wide trine to Saturn and tight quincunx to Pluto. Most disturbing is his square to Neptune (desire to harm, cheat, misuse or abuse others).
There are few redeeming qualities about this chart beside a few trines from Neptune, which I will discuss later. Something hugely disastrous threatens to happen, which many of us may not like, but are somewhat contributing toward with our thinly cloaked anger.
Synthesis and Context
What is undoubtedly true at this present time is that the world is undergoing a profound shift. We feel it in our bodies, minds, hearts and souls. We see evidence of it all around us.
Preparing for monumental change requires first recognising and integrating the various concerns of our times. Our culture is mired with warnings and cautions, congregating crises are coming to a point of singularity, where floods, hurricanes, global pandemics, extreme climate chaos, political kakistocracy, corporate greed, expansionistic wars and escalating militarization, economic collapse, and all forms of intolerance now plague our Earth.
Considering all the inherent contradictions, it would appear impossible to reconcile them. For a change to come through, the rot that has turned this world into shambles must first collapse and die away. Like all decay, this could take anything from a few months to decades. The collapse will not occur within 10 to 15 minutes of violent outbreaks, as seen in an apocalyptic disaster movie. However, this is not out of the question with thermonuclear weapons being bandied.
History shows that dynastic collapses occur over decades, sometimes hundreds of years. The Roman and Ottoman Empires took about 300 years to collapse. The cultural and economic demise of the British and United States Empires is arguably already happening and is inevitable. The necessary elements for destruction, helpful in clearing the toxic debris of the past, are now in play to clear the way for the future. We must only look to the leaders for confirmation that things are beyond salvageable.
How did we get here, and what is happening now? What can we do to brace ourselves and our families for future impacts? How do we break down our illusions of a world that keep us entrenched in broken systems that we unconsciously replicate globally and generationally?
The first conscious decision is to understand how this system works because we are all affected by it. Saturn in Aquarius underscores fixed ideology as a background condition of prevailing structures. As soon as we say we are not political, care about economics, or claim not to hold an ideology, we become part of somebody else's fixed ideology.
When we begin to understand what is happening, we awaken to a deep sense of angst, anxiety, and overwhelm. We endeavour to maintain some degree of ambiguity, manage the grief, accommodate the system's broader ambitions for total power and control, and attempt to take it seriously enough to do the work but not so seriously that we become paralysed by it.
Those who feel powerless or feel like their life doesn't have meaning are not getting the message. Right now, we have the opportunity to be more in power and do more meaningful things than ever in the history of humanity. The challenge is facing our fears and uncertainties about doing what we already know we need to do deep in our bodies. We have all the wit, skill, power and resources already available to us to make the change. We just feel incapable of taking the first step because every direction feels like a dead end or leads us back to a converging super-crisis.
"To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavouring to convert an atheist by scripture."
~ Thomas Paine, The American Crisis
In times of profound change, the most open-minded, innovative and adaptable shall inherit the Earth. Those willing to learn and grow discover themselves perfectly equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists. All that’s required is to risk taking the first step in trusting that the universe, which is abundant and loving, is always going to provide us with everything necessary to complete our mission.
Oppression, discrimination, and injustice continue to plague marginalised groups in a very real way every day. We have to identify the structural issues in the form of mutual understanding. We can't change the past. We cannot reverse the historical trauma and pain we suffer. All we can change is how we frame the past; consider the past in our minds; how we feel the past in every cell in our bodies. That's where forgiveness and compassion come in.
Collective and historical traumas stemming from war, poverty, genocide, and slavery manifest in our everyday lives and immediate communities. Over recent years, we have seen the epidemic discharge of these toxic internal ills become outwardly projected globally. It is through our individual struggles and interpersonal conflicts that our work begins.
Understanding our own part in historical oppression and planetary destruction allows us to step up, heal ourselves, and support a means to envision a path forward collectively. This healing paves the way for regenerating hope, redesigning values, and, ultimately, rebuilding a new Earth and sustainable, self-governing societies. We have all the necessary skills, insights and technologies; we need only to discover how to apply them without inflicting suffering for profit or false security.
In Tibetan folklore, the Shambhala prophecy says that
"There'll come a time when all life on Earth is in danger. Barbarian powers will have arisen. Although they waste their wealth in preparations to annihilate each other, they have much in common: weapons of unfathomable devastation and technologies that may destroy the world. It is now, when the future of all beings hangs by the frailest of threads, that the kingdom of Shambhala emerges.
The kingdom of Shambhala is not a geopolitical place but a place that exists in the hearts and minds of the Shambhala worker. These workers wear no particular uniform nor have titles or ranks. They have no particular workplace, as their work is everywhere. In fact, they look just like the barbarians on the outside, but they hold the kingdom of Shambhala on the inside.
Now the time comes when great courage - intellectual, moral and spiritual - is required of the Shambhala workers. The time comes when they must go into the very heart of the barbarian power, into the tall buildings, offices, factories and citadels of learning where the weapons of destruction are made - to dismantle them."
By the end of this year, and as a divine response to the dire circumstances we face now, a new army of warriors will have begun to emerge. One might call them healing warriors endowed with two chief weapons. The first one is insight, the ability to look inside. That's where self-forgiveness comes from. The second is compassion. It's these two valuable tools that are key right now if we're going to begin to heal ourselves, our communities, and our planet.
We don't know exactly what is coming, but we do know that we will always need food, and we will always need energy. The more we can build up our local self-reliance and basic needs, the safer we'll be in an unknown future. The Taurus North Node eclipse tells us that the one thing that people must do is become self-reliant and support each other locally by buying local food and locally produced energy. In building local self-reliance, we get to know our community better, reinforcing stability, security and abundance.
There is also a necessity for civil disobedience. We must cease to support those who do not represent us or demonstrate that they have our interests and our family's interests in mind. It's clear that this is becoming a struggle for life on Earth. Being 'in community' doesn't mean we need to join an ecovillage or leave the place where we live; rather, we redefine what community means to us by getting involved. This may seem implausible at a time when we are fed up with others and their cooky ideologies. However, a monumental event or series of catastrophes may convince us that we are each in this for ourselves and that we can seriously follow no self-serving or distant 'leader'.
Harmonious aspects from Neptune in Pisces highlight that regardless of our spiritual beliefs, we need a solid personal practice to carry us across the waters of profound change. Spiritual responsibility is essential in our present transition and the emerging global consciousness of Oneness. In these very toxic times, extra vigilance, attentiveness, and mindfulness are required to stay true to one's deepest purpose in this minefield of exploitation and greed.
Sadly, even a lot of spirituality has become tainted either by profit, loss, and commercialism or foggy wishful thinking and self-deception. Practising a prayer or meditation that reconnects us to our sacred inner self - that part that can never be corrupted or defiled - our divine core, our heart of hearts, or 'solar centre' is most important.
Over the course of this year, we will see how these eclipses will have done much to clear away past hurt, baggage and rubble, making way for a new earth.
This refinement process, this setting of your intention, must be practised and repeated many, many times, like a mantra. Making your intention known is the more significant part of your becoming. When you put forth your intention, there's very little else you have to do. The casting of intention goes out and makes results happen. Your role here is to remain keenly aware, patiently expectant, and open to all possibilities.
As usual, I have prepared an intensive horoscope reading for each of your zodiac signs. Please read both your Sun sign and Rising sign, and have an amazing lunar eclipse xx
