A Lunar Eclipse at 6 Gemini

 

 The above image is adapted from a photograph made by Juan Iacruz

of a lunar eclipse in progress.

Where solar eclipses tend to strike awe in the human heart, lunar eclipses seem to fascinate us. And perhaps that’s a reflection of the difference between our relationship between Sun and Moon.

We depend on the Sun for our very life and survival. But the Moon? We love our Luna Moon. We love to canoodle by moonlight and dream our finest dreams while the Moon seems to smile down on us from above. We love walking along sandy beaches playing tag with the tides, feeling the Moon’s tug on our hearts as we reflect on the lunar-like pulse of  everyday life.

November 28th is a lunar eclipse. Occurring at 2:34 in the afternoon, UT/+0, this eclipse is positioned at 6 Gemini. Like all lunar eclipses – all of which are a form of Full Moons – this eclipse will mark an emotional ‘high tide’ moment. For good, for ill, for the delight or the angst of it, feelings, hopes, the very sense of sensation now rides high.

It also fades fairly quickly – in celestial terms, that is. While solar eclipses evolve over three years with their ‘purpose’ (what we are finally led to understand about life) not often understood until very near to the end of that time, lunar eclipses are not only immediate, but short-lived. By three months from now this moment – though not forgotten – will have evolved into something else.

As a degree, the broad brushstrokes on 6 Gemini would involve ideas, mentality, transportation, communication, organization and schedules. It will also involve a choice. As life has taught us certainly of late, sometimes the ‘obvious’ ability to choose is taken out of our hands. But the choice of how to deal with whatever life hands us? That often remains ours even when someone (or something) else has already checked all the boxes.

Narrowing the Gemini field a bit more, 6 Gemini is one of those degrees which is very divided. With some degrees the Gemini choice is ‘do this…or do that?’ or ‘this first…or that first?’. But here the choice is far more stark – it’s simply between feelings and what we might refer to as ‘thoughtful’ or ‘intellectualized’ mentality.

Interestingly, this degree also speaks of a tendency to understand the ‘surface’ of a subject, but not go into it with all that much depth. There is a desire here to ‘just get on with it’ and to ‘get it done’ which can cause a great deal of trouble simply when that very lack of depth which manifests as a drive for analytical functionality actually ends up destroying relationships.

Lacks exhibited or experienced at this time are likely to feel like dim-wittedness or stupidity. But they’re not. They’re simply a result of lack of integration…which brings us back to that age-old story of the Gemini Twins, Castor and Pollux.

And maybe that's also been a choice. Then again, maybe not.

The full tale of the Gemini Twins is told HERE, as part of the May 2012 Solar Eclipse post. In case you're short on time, we'll cut to the chase here and just go with the idea of how Pollux – the intellectual and immortal twin (Castor is emotional and mortal) gives his own life to save his brother by trading that life ‘in reality’ for an eternal life among the stars.

This isn’t an easy lesson or idea. And though many of us are more comfortable with intellect or emotionality, the Gemini ‘choice’ (and Gemini is all about what we choose to do-or-be or not to do-or-be) only reaches ‘immortal status’ when we sacrifice a bit of one thing in the creating of the whole something which lasts…and which we can forever admire.

And this isn’t about ‘me versus them.’ This is about our regulation of our Self and of our own mentality and emotions.

6 Gemini points out the flaw in being one thing or the other. It brings out the flaws in putting all our emotions in one place and all our intellectual, rational thinking in another.

It brings out the challenge in integrating the want and the idea, and how that means there things about being a human being which are just downright tough.

All these issues – garbed in the guise of whatever is going on in your life (and life in general) – are what is likely to come to the surface now. So what’s likely to happen? Answer: anything which provokes these tendencies on each of our parts…and everything which has become problematic because of our tendency to act in this manner.

If you have any planet, axis point or node within five degrees of 6 Gemini or any of the ‘hard’ aspects to 6 Gemini (which would be between 1 and 11 degrees of Gemini, Sagittarius, Virgo or Pisces) this eclipse will hit you hardest. But remember – this is not a solar eclipse. So even if you find it changes your attitude or hurts your feelings way deep down to the core, this is not something which is necessarily life changing…merely attitude changing.

 Lunar Eclipse of November 28, 2012 at 2:34 p.m. (UT/+0)

 - Aries Wheel, Location Not Specific -

That doesn’t make it easier to deal with, absolutely not! Lunar eclipses sometimes live to become our most ‘infamous’ moments simply because as people we tend to ‘live’ in our emotions…which is true even for those who think they’re not into emotionalism. Such people are often so sensitive that they can’t even deal with emotions – so they run from them lickety-split!

But the essential difference between lunar and solar eclipses certainly stands. Lunar eclipses tend to be about ‘the human experience,’ if you will. Solar eclipses – particularly when they strike your chart with any acuity – mark changes which will change your life. The failed promotion, the romance gone sour is one thing - the lunar eclipse thing. The illness which cripples you, or the loss of a family member – that changes your life and your orientation towards life. That’s a solar eclipse.

That as this eclipse occurs the Moon (at 6 Gemini) is conjunct Atropos (endings), Hybris (arrogance) and Scheherazade (the story told) on one side and Black Moon Lilith and Aldebaran (integrity) on the other is also interesting. The Atropos-Hybris-Scheherazade side of things sounds very much like the ‘end of some self-serving tale’…but is that the end of the tale, or is that our ending our belief in something we’ve been told?

Certainly with Black Moon Lilith and Aldebaran at 8 and 9 Gemini respectively, this can go either way. Black Moon Lilith is being denied by society (or social groups) or denying some truth you’re being told by society or some group. Either way, the Black Moon has to do with some sort of rejecting or rejection – that’s the Lilith quality. But with the (Gemini) choice here being ours, this may be something we choose to reject, or which because of our choice we get rejected for.

Or maybe this happened in the past, so we choose to think that, or in that way. Or we thought some choice was the right choice…which maybe hasn’t turned out to be true.

Now that we have that much down, let’s add in the eclipse’s subtext and complications…

They come to us in the form of two planetary pictures, the first of which is a t-square.

Because t-squares always go in a zodiacal “forward” direction placing the ‘hurdle’ of the t-square in the middle, this one begins with the Sun – our consciousness, our conception. With this Sun being placed in Sagittarius, the ‘theme’ here would be ‘how we think things work’ or ‘how things work,’ depending.
With the Sun (by degree) we have Tantalus, an emblem of what we’re tempted by…or tempted to try and get away with, knowing on both counts that whatever it is, we probably “shouldn’t.”

But we’re pretty fixed – or maybe fixated, even obsessed with what we’re doing, our opinion, how we want things to be or with some notion that we can make it work and have our ‘tantalization’ work in our favor. All of this comes courtesy (if that’s the word!) of Antares, one of those infamously famous royal stars.

With Antares, the lesson is that we succeed ONLY when we don’t get obsessed. But with Tantalus in this mix…?

Right away this begins to suggest that anything which has (past tense) been based on what we thought we could get away with, or what we wanted to be true, or what we wanted to feel we were entitled to do regardless…anything we’ve done or set in motion to be built based on this sort of headstrong premise hits a bump in the road now. Your whole apple cart may even get overturned.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t want what we want, as someone once put it to me. And many of us are going to make that choice now – apparently with the division of feelings from rational thinking contributing to the mix.

The ‘t’ in a t-square being that thing we need to get past or get ‘over’ in ourselves (generally at an ego level) is composed of Lilith (emotional denial), Fomalhaut (success only where the process or goal isn’t corrupt, corrupted or corruptive), Chiron (vulnerabilities of the ‘healer, heal thyself’ type) and Niobe, the emblem of ‘pride goeth before the fall’ and all that.

In this grouping, Chiron stands out as Chiron symbolizes all those things which we don’t want to do even though not doing them is hampering us or otherwise getting in our way. Typically, when we see other people doing our Chiron thing we think they’re idiots. Let someone else quail from doing our Chiron thing and we’ll tell them ‘that’s what you SHOULD be doing!’ with nary a qualm.

Chiron is where we stumble over our own ego and our own reluctance and our own vulnerabilities and insecurities. So to have Chiron at the ‘t’ of a t-square makes it pretty obvious that there’s a reluctance to do something we know (deep inside) we really need to do. In Pisces, the overall definition is ‘not just feeling your feelings, but feeling how you feel ABOUT your feelings and getting in touch which where and how your feelings came to be.’

All of that is dangerous emotional ground. After all, many of us flinch at the whole idea of changing emotional course. What will people think? Or how about that tendency so many of us have to not want to question anything about our parents? Or our children? Or our spouse? Or our faith? Or our culture?

Pisces also represents long term and end-of-life situations. How many of us are able to deal at all well with death? How many of us have dealt with the loss of people we’ve loved all that well? Even when we simply ‘lose’ someone in the sense of a broken marriage or a treasured friendship which has somehow gone awry, that can hurt in ways many of us can’t bring ourselves to face.

Again, because this pertains to the lunar eclipse, the question here is whether you have dealt with both the rational and emotional quotients. Discovering where they may have parted ways and dealing with that would be a really good way to solve this t-square. As would be the letting go of whatever (Niobe) pride defenses you may have put up. After all, who are they really limiting?

The ‘goal’ in this t-square is what we talked about initially in terms of this lunar eclipse. Combining the (Pisces) t-square with the eclipse, this suggests that compulsions or feeling you ‘had no other choice’ was really your not wanting to deal with the emotions which would have gone with some other choice.

And then we come to the Yod.

The Yod which goes with this lunar eclipse appears to be particularly challenging - and potent so. Known as one of the most ‘fated’ feeling images in all astrology, which is interesting in and of itself seeing that Yods are composed of two 150-degree aspects which focus on a single point (in this case, the Moon and Black Moon Lilith, the denying of others or society...or to be denied by them).

In operational terms, Yods tempt us to remain at the ‘point’ of the ‘Y’. And seeing that 150-degree aspects (known as 'inconjuncts') denote "adjustments" which need to be made, while there's an argument to be made for people not liking being made to do anything (yes, well...we are human!) the Yod pictures a singular sort of understanding that we've been....well, maybe 'cornered' is the best word.

Hence the 'fated' part. Some people feel life is 'fated' because they don't want to make the effort (or deal with the emotional fracas) which standing up and being your own person involves. Then again, sometimes life really does lead us to a place where we don't have any other choice but to change.

Both are very Yod-like. 

As for this Yod, the factors which are with us now are delineated by the two points (or here, groupings) which form the ‘cup’ of the ‘Y’…which here is Pluto-Mars-Facies in Capricorn on one side and Venus, Hebe, Medea and Saturn on the other side in Scorpio.

Being that Gemini is an assertive (yang) sign and Capricorn and Scorpio are both responsive-receptive (yin) signs, the (Sun/Tantalus) temptation here will be to (Gemini) choose to negate or deny what others say, what the (Capricorn) rules and standards are, what others (Scorpio) need or want…even the (Scorpio) right of others to be treated as equals and a participant in the conversation.

And even when we go to the “solution” for a Yod – which involves going to the midpoint between the two ‘Y’ points, what’s that? That’s Sagittarius. In fact…isn’t that the Sun-Tantalus-Antares position we just talked about?

Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. With the eclipse at 6 Gemini the technical opposition is 6 Sagittarius, a degree all about being of service. Anything else goes unrewarded or is – ultimately – unrewarding.

Which in a sense does give us an answer here. If this ‘service is the path’ is the solution to the Yod, that means the solution to the Yod …AND whatever quandary we face now is found through starting with an attitude of service, even if you interpret that as ‘do yourself a favor…’ or being of service to yourself.

Once there, then we work through the t-square.

And if you think about it, that probably truly does describe the difference between the original choice to deny what others say and what we don’t want to hear and…will I stop holding on to some form of denial about what I need to be in this life? Will I let go of the stories I’ve been telling myself?

It’s an interesting moment, this eclipse. Hopefully it brings you some insights and ways to get hold of your challenges, becoming more productive in the process.

Whatever happens, at least enjoy it. Lunar eclipses are fascinating. They give us a moment to reflect – and moments to reflect on.
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