Everyone I love is calling me to say the same thing, “This energy, must it be so intense?” “Eclipse season is real,” I reply. “So real,” they sigh in return, and then we drop that line of thought or walk away from our phones entirely.
It’s enough, sometimes, just to put our fingers on it—to say this is happening to all of us at once in varying degrees. Collective mourning is powerful, collective mourning is how we learn to hold each other up and, in turn, to hold ourselves. Outside of the poetry reading, as the sky darkens, old friends and strangers alike lean toward each other and admit that our days have collected into what feels like impossible weight. When the moon is full, and the sky is black, it can appear either as a massive hole or a massive rock and this is how you learn that emptiness has its own kind of heft. What keeps us pinned to this planet and to each other, our Earthly gravity, is an impossible weight. The global violence occurring parallel to our, for the most part, ordinary lives is an impossible weight. Seeker, this lunar eclipse, look toward the moon to remind you of your place in the family of things.
Despite what might feel like end times, when the moon is full in Aquarius decan 1, there’s an electric connectivity in the air. Revolution and transformation are afoot, and you better be there or be square. Aquarian energy knows someone feels bad and someone feels worse but believes that comparing our suffering won’t get us out of this individualized hell-scape. Aquarius wants collective liberation and isn’t above detaching from their personal pain to make it happen. That’s probably where they start to get into trouble and where you, dear reader, will have to be careful. After all, full moons are a time for purging and reflections and eclipses are famous for unearthing whatever we refuse to face. Detachment might help us get through this part of the moon’s cycle (and this news cycle), but it won’t let us rest until we learn our lessons. This powerful lunar eclipse energy seeks to unify through a shared will, to not only live through this moment but beyond it, and it will work its influence long after the 27th.
Aquarius might be the sign of the collective consciousness, but it’s also a fixed sign, stubborn, guarded, and independent. An air sign, Aquarius is the wind that moves feelings like waves to their respective shores. It has ideas for how the world should be, and it’s not about to surrender easily to circumstance, even when that circumstance is their own heartache, their own experience of loss, their own indelible feeling of alienation. There is power in drawing the line and admitting one’s human limits; this is a lesson all Aquarians learn eventually and you will be wise to study it under the moon’s big open eye. To hold your head and your heart at equal height, to admit there is no “above” emotion. To practice reverence for what you feel, no matter how human, and surrender in the fight against vulnerability. These are the rites of the human experiment. To know what we can offer to the collective, we’ve got to figure out what we refuse to compromise.
What’s a witch to do with a tall order like that? Breathe deep, for starters. Breathe often, and drink lots of water. Look at the people you’ve called toward you and practice witnessing them. Your community is your solar system and your net. Be honest about what you need, be honest about what is unsustainable. Acknowledge that what looks beautiful isn’t always the answer and that some of the stars you’ve made wishes on have been dead for a long time. That fact doesn’t make your wishes any less powerful. Power, like energy, can only be transformed—never destroyed.
