Feeling fired up? Riled? Combative? Wondering how much more of this you can take?
The cosmos has something for that. A giant wrap-up, reboot and restart dominate the month of February. One eclipse cycle is starting while another is ending, with the combined effect of a powerful vacuum sucking us into a worm hole and spitting us out.
Much will become clear during this strange ride. Lives are changing, permanently, inside and out. Epiphanies will flash like lightning strikes, suddenly illuminating while zapping targets with an overload of energy.
A lot of games have hit the point of no longer being playable. Some connections, of all kinds — relationships, family, group, political, work — will not survive. Others will find previously unlikely common ground and unite. Still others will regroup, consolidate and negotiate how to travel together.
We’re starting a two-year revisiting of a core human challenge, expressing individuality while coexisting in a group. (Not unconnected side note: the same journey has the US revisiting who we are as a people.) Each end is getting quite the backing and buffeting this month as we do.
The new cycle comes first, on February 10, when the Leo Full Moon plugs into the stabilizing but activating fires of the Saturn/Uranus trine that have been blazing since December. Validation, recognition and just plain being seen are core themes of this high-octane lunar eclipse, fueling emotional flare-ups and sending inner children and drama queens alike into the spotlight.
These and related issues are coming back around from 1998-2000, the last occurrence of this Leo/Aquarius eclipse family, which has returned for the next two years. Our priorities, circumstances and self-awareness have been radically refined since the last go-round, so the themes will likely play out differently this time, too.
The kick-off comes with impulsive, self-propelling daring bordering on ferocity. Venus, ruler of relationships, money and creativity, enters Aries, the sign action hero Mars is marching through, on the 3rd. She’s no delicate flower in this mode, waiting for a big, strong man to come to her rescue. She is a force of nature, more than capable of seizing what she wants. And the big, strong man is absolutely in sync.
For the rest of the month, desire and will are in hunter mode, on the prowl without hesitation or apology. We’ll be standing up for ourselves, pouncing on what we want and fighting on a moment’s notice — or without provocation.
Watch for acute, perhaps sudden awareness of who’s paying attention and who’s not, of who and what fan your spark and who and what put it out. Revelations will impel us toward the first in each pair and shut out the second. And because of the chapter-closing nature of a lunar eclipse, some of the second is on the way out, for keeps.
As progress reports come in on the condition of our inner spark, we are simultaneously undergoing a graduation exercise in maintaining intact boundaries amid immersion in all of life. It’s one of the gifts of the Pisces New Moon on the 26th, which is the final in the Virgo/Pisces eclipses that started in March 2015.
Over the past two years, we’ve been resetting boundaries and notions of service vs. martyrdom, logic vs. faith, and intactness vs. enmeshment. The solar eclipse hits the refresh button one final, time and unleashes a wave that carries us dramatically onward, leaving much — and many — in the past. The waters we’re riding teem with compassion, transcendence, escapism and more than a hint of forgiveness, especially directed inward. (Potential downside: am updated version of scapegoating is likely in those waters as well.)
The ride is hardly gentle or smooth, at least not initially. The final week of the month shoots us through an intense gauntlet that challenges, furthers and tempers individual drives and agendas, and forces potent action on situations and structures that have been in upheaval and turmoil for the past five years.
The ending stretch is a hotbed of anger, eruptions, accidents, blows for autonomy, and relationship standoffs, as Mars squares Pluto, joins Uranus and opposes Jupiter. Compromise is in short supply; Davids and Goliaths abound. Funny thing is, everyone assumes that he’s David. Even the big and powerful.
What’s happening is a more forceful replay, and a forceful furthering, of the energies of the last week of December 2013. Think back to how family/tribal foundations evolved then, for an indication of what’s likely now.
Whether you remember that time or not, think of February’s gauntlet as a birth canal. We’re forcing out new ways of coexisting. The passageway is tight, dark and uncomfortable, and some of the pressure could be painful. But it’s pushing us. Elsewhere.
I update this forecast regularly with weekly podcasts and biweekly FB Live Astrochats. Join me at the OMTimes Magazine FB page at noon EST Friday, Feb. 9 and Friday, Feb. 24.