October 2022’s Solar Eclipse In Scorpio Makes Final Girls Of Us All

On Oct. 25, a partial solar eclipse in Scorpio exposes the dark side of 2022. Restarting the karmic purge of the Taurus-Scorpio eclipse saga, this pre-Halloween portal uncovers any demons hiding in the periphery, preparing us for a Final Girl battle royale at the Nov. 8 total lunar eclipse. Read below for insight on what manner of creatures may slip through the gate.

During a solar eclipse, the moon passes between the sun and earth, momentarily enveloping the solar rays. On a partial solar eclipse, the moon occludes only some of the sun’s light, and in the process casts a vast shadow — with all the portentous doom of an alien aircraft descending upon the heavens. The sun is a masculine archetype, representing our external, projected reality, a symbol of vitality and identity. Luna, meanwhile, represents the mother archetype, bearing eons of history, pain, and emotion. When the moon casts a shadow upon the sun, it cuts the transmission, even for a few moments, which may be enough to trigger an awakening.

This will be the third of four eclipses in 2022, all on the Taurus-Scorpio axis. The last round went down with a partial solar eclipse in Taurus on April 30, and a total lunar eclipse in Scorpio on May 16. You may remember that period as a vertiginous lurch on the roller coaster to hell, with the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial spinning into kangaroo lunacy and the U.S. Supreme Court taking aim at long-established abortion rights. Consider October’s partial solar eclipse (timed just as the Los Angeles rape trial of Harvey Weinstein begins) an opening salvo for a new cataclysm, introducing themes which will come to form with the total lunar eclipse blood moon freak show, in Taurus, on Nov. 8.

Eclipses go down when the sun and Luna hit the moon’s nodes, the designated convergence points in the two planets’ orbits. In 2022, the south node — where old karmic business is released — entered Scorpio. The north node — the door to our future — entered Taurus. Broadly speaking, Taurus and Scorpio deal with sex, money, and power. Taurus rules the body, its autonomy and desires. But that perfected, Apollonian bull god must submit to Scorpio, the bloodthirsty dungeon master, which forces an ego death to prepare us for intimacy and higher consciousness. Because eclipses act like revelatory flashes, the 2021–2023 Taurus-Scorpio cycle feels particularly jagged, centering around the human body and how its natural freedoms can be controlled, denied, or wasted.

The Last Eclipse Of This Kind

For this eclipse, the sun and moon will be joined at two degrees Scorpio by the princess herself: Venus, escalating an already dramatic discourse on sex and gender. Naturally, when Venus drops into Scorpio’s subterranean bastions, she rules as Persephone, the bride of Hades, ripped away from the fields of youthful virginity and remade as the queen of ice, a dark majesty who sees all and falls for nothing. Not incidentally, partial solar eclipses in Scorpio, featuring Venus, went down in October 1995 and October 2014. The 1995 edition came on the heels of the box office releases of To Die For, Showgirls, The Net, and Pocahontas, four films about women negotiating with how they are perceived and manipulated in the public eye.

The October 2014 eclipse hit right after the release of Gone Girl and weeks before The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, revisiting themes of public narratives and gendered resistance. “The camera loves you, ain’t that enough?” purred FKA Twigs, in her newly released single “Video Girl.” The Scorpio Tove Lo had achieved global chart dominance with her ballad of desperation and dissociation, “Habits (Stay High).” These heroines operated in gray ambivalence, surviving in a game of cat-and-mouse with the surveillance state, employing their femininity to blow the fuse.

Scorpio grants us the jarring clarity to see the matrix in its entirety, and to either reboot it, walk away from it, or become its new overlord. When Venus enters the pileup of a Scorpio eclipse, that awakening is colored by a hard feminine awareness: the grim acceptance of Bluebeard’s wife, willingly signing over her fate; or Gone Girl’s Amy (Rosamund Pike), who bites off her own paw to escape the trap of suburban matrimony. There is no truth that can scare Persephone — not when she’s embraced her throne in hell.

Solar Eclipse In Scorpio: Truth, Lies, And Crossroads

The April-May eclipse series felt like the latest barrage of shocks in a backlash decade. This time, we can see the sun setting, and the vampires coming from their nests. With the November 8 total lunar eclipse coinciding with U.S. election day, in the sign which features a greatest hits volume of dictators, autocrats, and megalomaniacs, we’re likely in for another long night. But armed with Persephone’s awareness, this eclipse gives us a clear, sober look under the bed, behind the closet door, and anywhere else where monsters may lie. We can see it all, and the shock won’t kill us.

This eclipse marks the ten year anniversary of the sci-fi epic Cloud Atlas, whose martyr-messiah Somni leads a revolution for the enslaved clone class in Neo Seoul in 2144. “Truth is singular,” Somni tells her captors, “its ‘versions’ are mistruths.” Somni knows that her uprising has been doctored by the totalitarian regime she seeks to overthrow, a stunt designed to inspire false hope, and root it out. But that doesn’t stop her from playing her part, and ultimately succeeding.

Have you noticed some glitches in the metaverse lately? Or that, in the case of Alex Jones, a public “rebel” spouting vitriolic nonsense had to finally eat his words? That’s not to say that, in what is already the most truth-obscuring clown circus of an election season imaginable, the world has gone sane again and the truth has won out. But it’s a start, a collective shadow of a doubt, which can be enough to hack the transmission. With a new U.S. Supreme Court term freshly in motion, it’s likely that all manner of freedoms, from voting rights to the Indian Child Welfare Act, will come under fire. Eclipses aren’t necessarily calls to immediate movement, but moments to observe, gain awareness, and prepare for your countermove. As evinced by the heroines of The Net and Mockingjay, the way to break the code is by careful, clever calculation.

This Eclipse: How To Deal

Remember that this eclipse hits the south node, the point of karmic release, where we’re meant to process old history and blast it out the airlock. You’re not instructed to take any harsh action on an eclipse, necessarily, but to observe, and this edition invites you to notice which relationships, personal stories, or old incarnations are ready to go — once and for all. The parting may not require much doing, but rather the recognition of change already completed. As Fleabag’s therapist says: you already know what you’re going to do.

Furthering the extremely literalistic themes of shadows and revelation, this eclipse goes down just days before Halloween. Whether you’re gathering the coven around the black flame candle or dancing your tits off at Horse Meat Disco, this is a chance to take the form of your shadow side, to voice and inevitably exorcise something unseen and dark within. If this eclipse is about the truth, then take advantage of Halloween, the night when all veils come down, to face it with a laugh. Nothing would please the Devil more. By the time of the election day total lunar eclipse blowout, you’ll be studied, sober, and nobody’s fool. That it’s going to get ugly is certain; that you’ll be set free from the lie is what they won’t see coming.