Limiting our Lunacy, Eclipse-Style

2.18.08


Tune in on Wednesday (Feb 20) for the conclusion of our two-part series: the latest eclipse period.

That's right… come Wednesday, we have a lunar eclipse in Virgo to complement the Aquarian solar eclipse of two weeks ago. And it's conjunct Saturn, no less.

Lunar eclipses being extra-psychically-charged full moons and all, they often serve to interject enlightening bits of new emotional awareness. The feelings coming forth may indeed have existed inside us for a while, only now coming to our waking consciousness. But for those of us who prefer to keep ourselves 'in the dark' (so to speak), the abrupt surfacing of these secret guiding influences is likely no less startling than if we'd never felt a single trace of such stuffs before. They may as well have not existed.

This particular eclipse is the last one to hit the Virgo/Pisces axis for a while, wrapping up a series that began with a lunar eclipse in Virgo back in Mar 2006. As such, my interpretation of it fits well with what I said about the Feb 4 solar eclipse—that there's a peculiar lack of drama accompanying the usual up-ended chaos of eclipse phases.

Just as the recent solar eclipse merely reemphasized all the other astrological happenings that had already captured our attentions, so too lurks something familiar in this week's lunar event. Since we've already borne two other lunar eclipses, as well as two solar eclipses, in Virgo over these past two years… well, let's just say the Virgo archetype has now grown accustomed to having its demands for purity, appropriateness, efficiency and analytic accuracy put to the test.

Saturn's presence in Virgo now, too, which began last September, only reiterates this theme of getting serious about where we focus our practical energies… so we may realize that, often, we must choose between (1) accomplishing our share of all this earthly work, sweat and tears and all, as swiftly and effectively as we can, or (2) continuing to pick away at personal scabs and sores, turning our critical-thinking skills back on ourselves, to root out every faint whiff of our own imperfections (and, boy, are there a lot!) with the unkindness of some bitter old schoolmistress wickedly wielding a hard-hitting wooden ruler she's not afraid to use.

If we're trying to do 'a good job' at something (like life, perhaps), there are usually better and worse methods (a nicer way of saying 'a right way' and 'a wrong way') with which to go about it. Absent of emotional judgment, Virgo simply seeks to find the better ones, based on rational analysis and tried-and-true testing and an eagle's eye for finding procedural inadequacies and ineptitudes—exactly the sort of engineer or expert you'd want overseeing your assembly line.

Alas, it's that 'emotional judgment' element that trips Virgo up. Just as she is gifted with the ability to envision the ideal process and product—and, consequently, to continually tweak with the real-world versions so they approach the ideals ever more closely—she can't help but direct that idealizing vision back on herself. And for the Virgoan soul, that often makes the unavoidable flawedness of the human condition that much more excruciating to live. Couple that with all the self-governing rules and regulations we internalize from what our parents, teachers and peers teach us as young 'uns… and it's no wonder that, for most of us, the ever-lingering list of 'Things to Fix about Me' drones on with pages and pages of felony indictments.

But to hijack the symbolism of this Saturn-conjunct lunar eclipse in Virgo as a weapon against such self-flagellation, I must point out that we are not gifted with Virgo's exquisite discrimination merely to torture ourselves, dare we become too satisfied with things as they are. In fact, it is a self-indulgent (and self-abusive) contamination of Virgo's purity. I mean, really… if we were to do a comprehensive cost analysis of how much we actually gain from all the self-critical beatings we dole out to ourselves, in purely economic terms, I'm sure we'd discover it to be a horrendous waste of time and effort.

And don't we have better things to do, anyway?

Along with the Saturn conjunction, the eclipsed Virgo moon will also be trining the newly-in-Capricorn Pluto… another indicator that putting on our thinking caps, to talk our immature selves out of sustaining the emotional self-sabotage, is what's required to valiantly proceed into the next stage of history. As I already wrote (and will continue to write more about), Pluto in Capricorn is a big friggin' deal. It helps put the immediate future up for grabs in a fundamentally new way, which only intensifies over the next couple years, that requires us to be prepared to respond with practical intelligence—not emotional encumbrance—to a rapidly-changing world reality.

Pluto in Capricorn asks us to choose our battles wisely, for not all of them can possibly be won. Energies are inherently limited. We should be smart with how we expend 'em.

Using this week's eclipse (and her stalker, Saturn) as our inspiration, then, it's probably time to cut the crap. How much do our myriad offenses against perfection—the cluttered desktops, the wobbly thighs, the unbalanced checkbooks and dusty gym memberships, the unrequited crushes and unfinished bits of creative genius—really matter? Or is it merely easier to pathologically parrot these same self-sabotaging lines of hypercriticism than to actually apply them to solving real problems, in a manner that doesn't leave us feeling unworthy?