The Mystical Practicality of the Solar Eclipse New Moon

Friday morning early, the New Moon that takes place in the final degree of Pisces is also a Solar Eclipse, thus an extra-powerful New Moon with long-term implications for individual and collective transformational development. Additionally the same day the Sun enters Aries for the important symbolism of the Spring Equinox, beginning the entirety of the season. We will want to look closely into the symbolism of this powerful lunation for the clues to that which we will need to incorporate into our own process of dawning awareness and evolutionary growth. The cosmic message of this timing will speak to us in different ways depending on where we have arrived, along the outline of our path, and where indeed we might yet be stuck. This New Moon eclipse is especially poignant for us now, coming as it does in the aftermath of the recent perfection of the Uranus-Pluto square, the seventh in a series of seven, thus the last exact hit of their dynamic alignment for the next thirty years. Eclipses are significant moments and you will want to be asking of this one, what exactly is the message for your life right now — what is the cosmos attempting to convey that speaks to your own particular situation?

In reference to a message, the position of Mercury is particularly apt, and we do find Mercury highlighted in this eclipse configuration, in conjunction with Neptune, only a few degrees of Zodiacal longitude away, and closely parallel. The position of Pluto, at 15 Capricorn, makes a sextile to this Mercury while they each make an inconjunct aspect to Jupiter, which almost exactly aspects their midpoint, bringing both the archetype of transformational change, and as well that of the logical mind, as represented by Mercury, into greater focus. Mercury resides in numinous and other-dimensional Pisces, and the eclipse itself takes place in the final degree of Pisces, the sign of Neptune's rulership. In this sense the logical mind is itself eclipsed in favor of the mystical. This speaks to the idea that there is a numinous and irrational element to this cosmic patterning that could indeed help us to navigate this difficult period when everything around us is radically changing. Although Uranus and Pluto have made their final exact contact, they remain only a few minutes of a degree off. In the pattern of this eclipse, we also find Jupiter across the Zodiac from the rest of the planets, which are contained in the arc from the beginning of the sign of Sagittarius, where we find Saturn, to Taurus, where we currently find Venus, making a 150-degree inconjunct aspect to Saturn.

An awareness-spawning impulse toward figuring out where we are at in this last half of a transformational month of March is thus very much emphasized in the timing of this eclipse configuration, with an emphasis on Saturn, Neptune and Jupiter. Saturn symbolizes practical limitations, grounding the mystical impulses of Neptune and Jupiter for greater concrete realization and social activism. This might indeed be the very combination that we need as we confront the massive changes indicated by this twenty-first century's second decade, that is far from over.

Why do we need both a mystical and a hard-nosed and practical, reality-based approach to get us through? The logical mental powers that have achieved the glory and the headaches of our materialistic culture will not suffice to allow us to move beyond it. As once the Great Chain of Being supported our souls, so too do we now need new models of Spirit to support our understanding of our place in history and our path of intentionality to move past our current difficulties on both a personal and a societal level.

The Sabian symbol for this eclipse in the final degree of Pisces might have something to contribute. It is "The Great Stone Face." This is a reference to a mid-nineteenth-century short story by Nathanial Hawthorne: "The Great Stone Face was a work of Nature in her mood of majestic playfulness, formed on the perpendicular side of a mountain by some immense rocks, which had been thrown together in such a position as, when viewed at a proper distance, to precisely resemble the features of the human countenance." Marc Edmund Jones invokes as well the surrounding social setting when he comments that "each individual selects the image within [him- or herself] to which they would shape themselves outwardly, and this they come to resemble, as in Hawthorne's tale... [with the result of] self-integrity in its irresistible impact on the course of events." Indeed we reap in terms of the collective what we individually sow, and this in turn inspires us to our best efforts to emulate, and to further, the emerging ideals of this New Age that is presently being born.

The Mystical Practicality of the Solar Eclipse New Moon

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Chart for the New Moon on March 20, 2015

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