Where Freedom Stirs | Lunar Eclipse in Scorpio | Sunday 5.15.22 | 11:14pm CST
Tonight the skies offer up a total lunar eclipse. The event will be visible from the western hemisphere, a revelatory moment where the sky’s theatrics are on full display. From where I am in New Orleans (CST), this event peaks around 11pm. Convert to your time zone and see if you can witness this event.
The astrological and mythic stories that contextualize this event match its visual theatricality.
The Vedic myth that describes eclipses details this: a dragon demigod is seeking the elixir of immortality that’s getting churned up during the creation of the universe. This stuff is called amrit. The dragon is caught in the act of drinking the amrit, and a god (Vishnu, preserver/protector of the universe) smites our demigod by cutting him in half. The demigod, already immortal having drunk the immortality-bestowing amrit, is placed in the sky as two points perfectly opposite each other: Rahu, the head of the dragon, and Ketu, the tail (or ass) of the dragon. These points are known to western astrologers as the north node (Rahu, head) and south node (Ketu, ass). When the luminaries (the Sun and the Moon) pass over these points, the head or the tail of our dragon are said to swallow, digest, and release the luminary.
Tonight’s event is a south node/Ketu lunar eclipse in Scorpio. This means the Moon is passing over/through/into the ass of the dragon. The idea here is release. What are we releasing?
Eclipses are times when we’re seeking the elixir of immortality, or at least remembering our perilous ancestral journeys to do so. The nervous system may be running high, and feelings of linear time may collapse. We may be feeling caught in the particularly Scorpionic struggle of defending ourselves against possible loss, death, or danger. These are emotions and sensations that cause us to sweat and stress. They can snare us into the binary thinking that there is only life or death, loss or gain, light or dark, legal or illegal.
However there is much in between, and one of those in-between things is shadow. Eclipses are the product of shadow: they’re a living mythology of light and shadow that play out several times each year, when the shadow of the earth swallows the moon, or the shadow of the moon blocks the light of the sun. Planetary bodies display tricks of the eye, create spectacle, flirt with representations of life and death, beauty and terror.
During eclipses, shadows are out to play. So, what happens when we play with the shadows?
Let us play then, and meditate on shadow, a strange in-between thing. Shadow is attached to all beings, it’s attached to light and matter, which are necessary for life; is shadow alive? Shadow is attached to bodies; is it part of the body? Shadow seems immaterial, but somehow also, not. You can feel your skin raise and prickle when shadow passes over you. You and all the earth-bound creatures can feel when a shadow swallows up the moon or sun.
Shadow is a little creepy, it can make our skin crawl. Shadows hide things. How do we become intentional about what our shadow is hiding? Because when a shadow falls on something or someone around us and that thing or someone is made less visible, we can trick ourselves into thinking they’re not there, or that they’re less real. Be careful of falling for illusions of “otherness,” of something that, because it’s been made less visible by your shadow, is now something the egoic impulse can name as not-you and against which you can measure yourself.* In studying your shadow, choose carefully where you cast it. You can always move over a few inches to see what is behind your shadow. When you do, just as the shadow of the earth reveals the moon to us anew tonight, you’ll be able to familiarize yourself with the mysteries and brilliance of a whole being you might have forgotten was there.
And now, as ever, be careful to notice upon which bodies power-holding institutions are casting their shadows. Go in and meet others in the shadows. Remember from there that being in the shadow does not subtract your sovereignty over your mind and body, and that no matter what agency any body claims over yours, you still cast a shadow where things go bump in the night, and where your freedom stirs.
Shadows hide things, so cultivate curiosity about what you are hiding out of reflex, and think carefully about what you want to hide intentionally, and from whom. Hiding can be a necessary act of protecting the vulnerable. Scorpio wants to know who your body can trust, and with whom you can let go to share in the connective act of holding vulnerability.
So again, what are we releasing? One way of perceiving this is that we are releasing into the shadow. There is no escaping the shadow, the eerie in-between that evades definition or capture. There is no escaping our fugitive parts of self. So my proposal is this: can you care for your fugitivity, and care for the fugitivity of those around you who are also in process of breaking their chains and creating their freedoms? With compassion, can you let your shadows merge, and see how movements gestate there in that darkness? Can you let these movements grow into bodies that create shadows of their own?
To our becomings through eclipsing,
Amalia