Daphne Constance Allen “Night Covers the World with Her Hair”

In the early hours of Saturday, when the Moon strikes twelve degrees of Sagittarius, she will draw a curtain over the face of the Sun, and hold him in her earthly lap, at her ample bosom, and feed him dragon wisdom. In this case, a powerful, poignant reminder of the human need to be fed, sheltered and safe—while at the same time free to move, to grow, and to experience the depth and breadth of life. It is an unwanted, but necessary, restraint on the stentorian, centaurian, Sagittarian star; as much as he would like to, he can’t run away. Blithely bypass it, he cannot. Father Sol, our sole provider; the Heavenly Sun, our Fortunate Son, must listen to the Mother, to the children, and to the People, and hear what they have to say. 

It’s a moment of silence, heard round the world: a reset, a pause, amidst the buzz of the season, and of the mutable signs. It is the end of another lunar cycle, another eclipse cycle, and the last of the Gemini-Sagittarius eclipses that have vibrated in the background of our lives since May of 2020. It’s time to graduate, and we will all pass, in one way or another. 

Over the past year-and-a-half, these eclipses have led us to rewrite old stories, or to let old stories die so that new ones can be written. They have seen philosophers and firebrands come into, and out of, this world; seen old souls born into young bodies, and youthful ones into old. With mutable signs as hosts to the nodes of karma and destiny, we are being taught to accept what change may come, and, in the best case scenario, to gladly anticipate it. And perhaps the biggest lesson that the south node in Sagittarius has offered us: you can’t outrun your problems, nor can you outrun your shadow. And only by facing them are we afforded a real chance at life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and the best of all possible worlds.

This New Moon solar eclipse, conjoined as it is to Mercury, will come bearing a message, traveling on the centaur’s arrow, and encoded in hymns and songs, in eulogies and confessionals, in sentences and statutes, in scripts and scriptures, that find their way to us. What kernels of truth can you glean from them? In what ways have your beliefs about the world, or your faith, changed since two summers ago? And how comfortable are you with not knowing all the answers, and with the idea that some Truths, some of the Big Ideas, are not meant to be known, only wondered at?