August 7 – Aquarius Lunar Eclipse
11:10 AM PDT (6:10 PM GMT) at 15 degrees
A lunar eclipse is an extra powerful Full Moon. An energetic opening is created that offers us a chance to significantly shift how we view reality and operate in the world.
As the last air sign, Aquarius represents the group mind that connects us all and to which we all contribute, both consciously and unconsciously. The air signs help us become aware of how we use our minds. The gifts of the air element include objectivity, space, and vastness, through which we can gain an expanded perspective of reality and vision for the future.
The Aquarius Lunar Eclipse helps us clear old beliefs and thought patterns that cloud our thinking, diminish our clarity, and cause confusion. This eclipse offers us a chance to free our minds from limiting perceptions and thought forms that reduce our potential to be authentic, creative, and enthusiastically participate in co-creating our own awesome life.
Leo/Aquarius Polarity Pair
At each Full Moon a specific polarity pair is active. This time it is the Leo/Aquarius polarity pair, which is about the relationship between the individual and the collective and how we each contribute to the advancement of human evolution (or not).
The Sun, Mars, and North Node in Leo stimulate our creativity and promote our active participation in designing and building a collective that supports us all.
Pallas Athena the Warrior Goddess in Taurus
Pallas Athena, the Warrior Goddess who serves the Earth, is in Taurus and thus an empowered and leading force in this eclipse. Squaring the Moon, Sun, and Mars, she directs our attention to healing the Earth and taking care of our bodies. Also part of a grand trine with Mercury and Vesta in Virgo and Pluto in Capricorn, the collective mind is awakened to find creative solutions to the environmental crisis and to challenges related to health and healing. In Taurus, the Goddess of Wisdom invites us to spend time in nature to heal our bodies and to experience our oneness with the Earth.
Retrograde and Eclipse Themes
We are in a serious retrograde period. Saturn, Uranus (co-rulers of Aquarius), Chiron, Neptune, Pluto, soon Mercury (August 12 through September 4) are all retrograde.
Our attention is turned inward and to the past. Past relationships, situations, and wounds surface to be healed so that we can move forward in our lives, free of emotional baggage and circumstances that are no longer relevant to our growth and well-being. Whatever drains our energy and is not aligned with our heart must go.
When people, events, and hurts from the past surface, healing and completion is available, making it possible to free our mental, emotional, and physical energy to move forward and live richer and more fulfilled lives. This is not only an appropriate time to review and heal the past, it is a good time to rewrite our life story from the elevating perspective of soul growth and awakening of consciousness. By identifying beliefs and thought forms that previously created pain and struggle and by substituting self-empowering beliefs and thoughts, we give ourselves a chance to create a future more to our liking.
The eclipse themes of (1) revealing old patterns and beliefs and (2) letting go of the past require an expansion of consciousness, which in turn requires change and transformation. We can’t sit back and hope things will get better. The Uranus/Aquarius shock treatment will be active where needed to get us unstuck.
The dark unconscious side of Aquarius that can be revealed and released relate to
(1) a sense of alienation and fear of being rejected
(2) a spaced out mind that is detached from the body and the flow of life force in our physical and emotional bodies
(3) fixation on an idealized vision without taking practical action to achieve results
North Node in Leo – May 10, 2017 through November 6, 2018
The North Node remains in one sign of the zodiac for about 18 months. When it changes, it shifts the focus for the entire planetary collective. With the North Node now in Leo (since May 10), the focus of our global community is now on awakening our heart, identifying our gifts, and offering our creative contribution to our world community.
The personal and collective evolutionary assignment of North Node in Leo is to take directives from our hearts, to be compassionate towards ourselves and each other, to give priority to kindness, happiness, and to speak from the wisdom of our hearts.
This is a very Aquarian moment. It is a time to heal the abuses caused to individuals by structural violence, manipulation, and control. The greed based patriarchal institutions have humiliated, oppressed, and exploited people to the point that many have become an economic burden to society, instead of an abundant resource of creativity, productivity, and joyful expression of the light of our souls.
The North Node in Leo highlights the necessity, urgency, and importance of honoring each individual as an invaluable asset to society. For each of us personally, we must focus on our unique soul gifts that make us special. We must view ourselves as a contributory participant in creating new structures that honor and support each individual.
We have disconnected from our authentic selves out of fear of rejection, reprisal, and disapproval. Each one of us must find forms of self-expression that liberate our own inner genius and joy. To do so, we must identify how we have tried to fit in to be accepted, and as a result dimmed our own heart light. We must redirect our choices based on the belief that our most important goals are to be radiant, vibrantly alive, and passionate about living our unique life.
South Node in Aquarius
The North Node in Leo is complemented by and works together with the South Node in Aquarius. These two polarities remind us that diversity is a reality that we can take advantage of to create a new world. Everyone is different and thus everyone has a unique contribution to offer. The challenges and demands of the times are forcing us to wake up to this amazing world we live in.
In the past, people felt alienated because their individuality did not fit the mold. But there is no mold! There is a great big world, a big puzzle, where ours and every other piece counts. We are not cookie cutter items to be cloned. Trying to live up to idealistic and unrealistic models of success and beauty depreciate our individuality and make us feel bad about ourselves. Our self-esteem erodes and we see ourselves as victims.
Aquarian consciousness is about elevating ourselves out of controlled mass consciousness into heart-centered group consciousness. This can happen when we view ourselves and everyone else as creative agents of love and change and not as victims of the power structure.
Contribute and be Supported
In exploitative systems, people feel alienated from the power structures because they are included as pawns to be used to perpetuate the system and then discarded when no longer deemed useful.
For example, the greed machine is now working hard to replace people with robots so it can make more money and take even less responsibility for serving and empowering people. Of course, it is good to use technology to replace back-breaking and dangerous jobs. But as greeters in shopping centers? As mechanization reduces accident-prone jobs, simultaneously efforts need to directed to creating ways for everyone to be not only gainfully employed, but contributory citizens. The Aquarian Age gives us a change to use technology to support the common good, if we choose to use it for that purpose.
It is too obvious that we live in a scary world. As people feel more and more marginalized and become more angry and confused, destructive ideologies and groups gain more fuel to attract the disenfranchised into their clutches, where the gullible ones are again taken advantage of. This scary scenario illustrates that people need a community, and some will align with darkness to feel that they belong to something.
To create a heart-centered world, we need communities based neither on greed, nor on destruction of an external enemy, but on supporting each member to contribute in his or her own special way. The Aquarian Lunar Eclipse is waking us up to the fact that we can’t survive and thrive as isolated individuals. And there is no need. There are so many great souls in the world who are very capable of working together to support each other and the common good.
“If we take judging ourselves and others out of our life, we will mostly be living in paradise.” Yogi Bhajan
References
Aquarius Lunar Eclipse – August 7, The Mountain Astrologer, August/September 2017, p. 81
