There’s another eclipse this week, this one a solar eclipse at 8.35 Aries early Wednesday morning. What’s been stirring and awakening in your life these past couple of years? Aries is the sign of quickening, or coming alive; somewhere inside you, a seed is trying to push through the earth’s frozen crust after a long winter. The birthing takes place in the house of your chart containing 8.35 Aries, and involves any natal planets between about 4 and 12 of cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn).
This is the conclusion of an Aries/Libra eclipse season that began two years ago. Specifically, this eclipse falls opposite the eclipse point of the October 3, 2005 solar eclipse at 10 Libra. Relationship issues that were raised last fall are ready for review and reconsideration now. But relationships are always a dynamic process of negotiating “me” (Aries) vs. “we” (Libra), and while the October eclipse in Libra focused your attention on others, this Aries eclipse emphasizes the “me” part of the equation. Right now, taking meaningful steps to define and assert yourself as an individual will do far more to improve your personal relationships than trying to figure out what others want you to do or be.
Let’s not take that message as a license to be self-absorbed or insensitive, however. The chart for this eclipse features the Sun and Moon in a sober trine to Saturn in Leo. The work of this eclipse seems to be about proactively assuming individual responsibility (Aries Sun/Moon trine Saturn) for the state of your life, including doing what you can to become a better partner and friend.
Overall, this eclipse should feel relatively benign after the rather horrid March 14 lunar eclipse. That one featured the eclipse point square Pluto, and was the first in the Pisces/Virgo eclipse series that will dominate for the next two years. We’re out of practice with the Pisces/Virgo eclipses – it’s been seven years since our last Pisces/Virgo season ended – so that one was kind of rough, stirring up a compost heap of all kinds of old muck. Alternately, this week’s eclipse is a graduation of sorts; look back at how the landscape of your relationships has changed since 2004, and hopefully it will be with a sense of satisfaction at what you’ve learned and how you’ve grown.
And if not, you’ll get another crack at it all beginning in 2013!