5 Powerful Lessons from the Solar Eclipse in Aries

Hey everyone, this is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology happy eclipse day to everyone today; there's a solar eclipse on the last anaretic degree of Aries. Today we're going to take another look at this eclipse, and what I thought would be interesting is to look at the different kinds of lessons or teachings, or insights that may be available to us through some of the main signatures of the eclipse, especially the fact that this eclipse is at an anaretic degree squaring Pluto, hosted by the fallen Mars in Cancer.

So we're gonna look at some of those things in depth today, in terms of the kinds of not only the kinds of themes you might notice with the kinds of insights and lessons that may be available to us right now. So that is our agenda for today.

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Okay, well, let's take a look at the real-time clock and remind ourselves of what the heck is going on today. And that is a solar eclipse in the sign of Aries, the last anaretic degree of Aries, the sun crossing over into Taurus today, will also be moving into a square with Pluto. So it's a very Plutonian Eclipse, which adds to the theme of power, depth intensity, and forceful transformation, but also the last anaretic degree of Aries with the sun exalted doubles down on the same theme.

So we're, you know, we've got fire and Plutonian Hades-like transformation in the air around this one. Also, the fact that this eclipse is also hosted by a powerful but debilitated Mars in Cancer. And then we also have the fact that at the halfway point of the cycle, if we go a little bit further in what's going to happen between now and the Full moon, well, by the time we get to the full moon, we are talking about a lunar eclipse in Scorpio with the moon in its fall, but there'll be mutual reception between Mars and Cancer and the Moon in Scorpio which is very interesting.

So we are moving into a very Marzy, very Plutonian Eclipse cycle with some very powerful signatures. For example, at the time of the full moon, we're going to have a Sun-conjoined Uranus moment. So super powerful, yeah, just very powerful looking stuff in the next, this next lunation cycle.

So today, what I want to do is given the fact that we have the signature of the anaretic degree, the last degree of Aries, which is a very powerful degree, but one that usually points toward the deconstruction, the chaotic or destructive elements of nature, right, and then the Plutonian element, which is the death and rebirth trigger, and then the fact that we have Mars in Cancer underlying everything. So five lessons that I think we can draw on from the solar eclipse in Aries, and this was actually also informed by an I-Ching reading that I did this morning, which focused on this eclipse and what kinds of lessons it might provide.

If you want to take a look at that reading, I'll give it to you right now; it's hexagram 51, with the fifth line changing, which leads to hexagram 17. So that would be the hexagram of thunder or shock. Sometimes, it's called shock, and it leads to the hexagram following. So we'll be kind of explaining that in certain pieces as I go along here, but lesson number one, now, these are not exhaustive; this is not like an exhaustive list; you can come up with others. And in fact, if you have other things to add that you think would be valuable, please do add them to the comment section.

Number one. Avoidance makes things harder. Now I'm saying this because you can't avoid things that are taking major events taking place at anaretic degrees have been cooking for a long time; the early part of a sign is about creation, and the middle is about maintenance. And the end is about destruction, like the Hindu trinity of gods that you have carrying those modalities.

When you get to the very last degree of a sign, it is the end. And you know, it's the bill that's come due, so to speak. I don't mean that with any punitive sense, like, Oh, you did something wrong, or that you're being punished or anything like that. I just mean that this is something that's been cooking for a while, and we're reaching a point of no return, a point of transformation that cannot be avoided. The other thing is that Mars in Cancer hosting an Eclipse at that degree; Mars in Cancer, one of the things that you know, Cancer is like the crab, like scuttle sideways, right? It goes; it tends to go around things. And this is an eclipse that may call into question the way that we've been going about things and whether it is direct enough or effective.

Frankly, Mars in Cancer sometimes will struggle with being afraid or avoiding things that are difficult. And then you also have the signature of Mars in Cancer of getting up the emotional courage to face things. And both of those are Mars in Cancer. So you could see some Mars in Cancer natives will be incredibly, like, brave and protective and assertive emotionally, and others that will tend to get walked down a lot or collapse into fear and being, you know, too passive or timid or something like that.

So one of the lessons that I think is built into it, kind of baked into this eclipse, is the fact that something is happening that we can't avoid, and trying to avoid it because we're scared or afraid, or, you know, taking a more passive approach could be, maybe it might not work so well.

So, you know, and these are just lessons that I've seen from people over the past couple of weeks with Mars in Cancer, as well as just Mars in Cancer, you know, over long periods of times, that one thing that can happen with Mars in Cancer, is that you there's a fear of dealing with difficult, tumultuous emotional spaces. I think this eclipse is asking us to face some things head-on and to recognize that we've reached a point where something can't be avoided; we have to just deal with something a summoning the courage and the, you know, the faith in ourselves that we have the resources we need to do this to face something. I think that's implied in this eclipse potentially.

So avoidance makes things harder. Let's face things, let's face things that you know; there's a podcast my wife listens to called; We Can Do Hard Things. And I've listened to it a few times with her too. It's pretty. I liked the podcasts. It's pretty neat. But anyway, like the slogan for this eclipse, we can do hard things. Avoidance makes things harder; we can do hard things, we can do it, and we can face hard things.

Number two, being honest about our needs is clarifying and healing for everyone. Aries is very assertive. It's a sign that sometimes, you know, it's so assertive that it can feel like it's bullying or domineering or like self-centered or there's nothing there's not a great sensitivity or awareness sometimes of the needs or realities of other people, that's how strong Aries can be.

Sometimes not intentionally, just by virtue of the fact that it's just this flaming hot, assertive Mars sign where the sun is exalted. Mars in Cancer underlying this eclipse could be, especially since it's at an anaretic degree; what kind of boiling point could we be reaching? This is how I feel; this is what I need. And it's been hard for me to say this; it's been hard for me to let people know who I am or what I need, or what I'm all about. So being honest about who we are, what we need, and where we're going, even though it could upset other people and that might be the great fear of Mars in Cancer with the eclipse in Aries is, I mean, maybe you could have someone who's just bulldozing other people under an eclipse like this. But I think of course that would not be very cool.

But another thing that we could run into would be I'm having a hard time letting people know who I am, what I want, where I'm going what I need because I'm afraid of conflict, I'm afraid of disappointing people or have or have not being met or respected. And the truth is that when we are becoming some new version of ourselves, or we're, you know, we're evolving in some ways, personally, not everyone's going to be along for the ride.

In fact, some people will resist because they don't appreciate that they can't stick the same old projections on you that they have in the past; oh, well, you don't make such a nice mirror for me to look at myself in any longer or you there's something about, about who you're becoming, or where you've gone with your life, the choices you've made, the people you've chosen to surround yourself with, or the lifestyle or religion or the subjects like astrology that you get into.

Some people go like, well, I just, you know, I just don't like them anymore. I don't like where they don't like what they've become, and so we know that because that's not an easy thing to deal with. And it can mean the breaking of various emotional bonds in our life, and we'll avoid it, we'll just avoid at all costs, being real about who we are, who we're becoming, what we need, you know, and so forth.

So being honest about those things, though, is clarifying and healing in the end because, let's say, there are a few people who don't want to be around you anymore. There are people who are upset, or there's some level of trauma you have to revisit, or there's a testing of bonds that happen or, you know, whatever the case might be, I'm facing that and going through it, generally speaking, will be very healing because you'll feel stronger and better about yourself, you'll start probably getting into healthier patterns where your needs and your more honest, authentic self-expression is present.

Then, if there are people who just can't hang, well, good riddance, you know, I mean, not to be a jerk, but like, you know, good riddance, if they can't, if they can't hang with you in the way that you are and who you're becoming, and what your honest needs are, and so forth, then that's good because then there probably will be new relationships and new people coming that fit better.

So we can't be afraid of doing some, you know, some emotional spring cleaning, and being honest is the starting point for that. We can be honest without being a jerk; we can be honest; we can be honest without being antagonizing or without being bitter or resentful; we can just be honest and start to experience that clarifying and healing effect of our honesty which will spread around us other people may be honest in return, maybe we have to hear some hard things or face some hard things about other people too. But usually, that is clarifying for everyone if we can get past the fear of that open, vulnerable, sharing, and just being a little bit more assertive; those are the Mars in Cancer dynamics.

Three failure is often the first sign that forgiveness is coming. Now I can't I really can't express how much this one has meant to me personally over the years. There's been a variety I noticed in the news recently that as sun and Jupiter were coming together, and we talked about the potential death or scandals and challenging events related to leaders, and I mentioned political leaders and, you know, people who are sunlike or Jupiter like that there was a scandal involving the Dalai Lama, which, you know, that was really disheartening to read about, and I'm not gonna sit here and issue any condemnation or judgment. I'm just simply saying that's how that's what my response was. It was just a little shock and disappointment. But also, what I find really interesting, having gone through this a number of times in my life with a father who was a minister who had a pretty serious nervous breakdown and some huge moral and spiritual failings, having witnessed them at times in my life and myself in shamans I've worked with, in gurus and religious communities.

There's always this temptation to sort of; I don't know what the phrase is like, throw the baby with the bathwater. I think that's the phrase. And one of and I, and I'm certainly not condoning anything, right, any kind of poor choices or, you know, unethical actions or anything like that. But what I've noticed in my life is that when someone fails me, or I'm really disappointed in someone, because I feel like they failed in some way, morally, ethically, maybe they failed me as a friend or whatever.

Or I've failed probably more regularly that that's the experience is that it's usually a sign that a deeper for me anyway, that a deeper level of letting go of forgiving, and even of inviting a kind of compassionate understanding, even if the compassion and understanding is just sort of throwing my arms up and saying, Well, this only reiterates the realities of impermanence, suffering, pain, hardship, fallibility, vulnerability, we're fragile beings and we, you know, we all have demons.

At this point in my life, it's like, I don't need any more. You know, it, there could be, you know, more failure on my part or on the part of people that I admire. And I don't think anything at this point would shock me in terms of what people are capable of; I mean, I'm sure, it could get a lot more real and terrible. I wouldn't be surprised that people can be capable of very dark things. And of failing and, by contrast, that the same people who can fail so intensely, so deeply, can be capable of so many good things too.

That complexity is part of what I feel that we are learning to live with, not only learning to live with, but learning to appreciate, and I don't mean appreciate in some unicorn, you know, false positive ism, you know, like, I'm not talking about some kind of rose-colored glasses that condones, and looks aside at the darkness. But I still feel like one of the beautiful things about failure is the way that it invites me more deeply into my humanity and an experience of humanity. Speaking of nature, of our nature, and of nature itself, of the fact that it is a complex phenomenon that includes pain and suffering and confusion and seriously falling short at times.

I also know that when those things happen, I always come to have a deeper, quieter, more mysterious, and more poetic appreciation for life that comes eventually. I feel like when failure comes, it's like, oh, well, pretty soon, the forgiveness rains are coming. And that just seems to be a part of the archetypal pattern, that there's the failure is like, you know, the sun burning to brighten and everything gets dried up, and it's like, it's like a drought. And all of a sudden, we're just, you know, we're burnt out from the feeling of things not working out.

But I've noticed that were there if I can step into that space and really feel those big feelings that not in not too long, the forgiveness rains come. And I think that, you know, one of the things that can happen with the sun and an anaretic last degree with Mars and Cancer, Scorpio Eclipse coming is we may be half we may be faced with frailties, the fragile, vulnerable failing places in ourselves and in life, our organs will fail us eventually. You know, our parents often fail us; we fail as parents, our lovers fail us, and we fail as lovers. All different ways in which we fail.

I think what's more important than getting stuck on the failure is to keep watching what happens; that failure is just the first. You know, failure is just like the first part of a sequence of events, and it often leads to this kind of rain. The rain is like Saturn and Pisces; a little bit it's melancholic. But, but cleansing and purifying. I think there's a lot of that coming in a very emotional moon cycle with a full moon, lunar eclipse, and Scorpio with the moon Cancer as well.

Anyway, number four, shocking or disturbing events are natural. So here's the things you get into eclipse season, and one of the things that can happen is that you have repeated like, like, staccato, you know, events that are big. You know, it's like big wave sets are coming through big waves are coming. And they come in sets. And it's, it's hard to feel like these big energetic waves are crashing down on you and, you know, close together repeated in succession. And one of the things I've learned over time with these moon cycles, because especially in the comment section, if you watch, you can really tell who's getting rocked, you know, in the way that they're commenting.

I actually posted a video on Instagram. Last night, I think it was. Yeah, it was a couple of nights ago, maybe it was really, it was this woman who was like kind of just jogging out into her driveway to, like, get something, and she tripped on a crack in the pavement and just spilled out on this, like surveillance video or something. And she's just laying there. And she goes, she goes, fuck, fuck this. She was like, fuck this life. I can't take anymore, just like; it was the straw that broke the camel's back, like, she wiped out in the driveway. And it's just laying there. And just, you know, like, That event was just the one that just tipped it all over. And then, you know, she ended up laughing and getting up when someone came to check on her.

I thought that this is what eclipse season is like, you know, you're walking along, and one thing happens, and it's not the biggest thing in the world. It's the fact that it's the fourth or fifth biggest thing that's happened, and you're suddenly you're just like, Screw this, you know, I'm done. It's hard to go through periods of time where there are major astrological transits, you know, happening close in succession. There's a reason that Eclipse videos are always the time when, you know, subscribership goes up on the channel. There are more people watching the videos than you know, pretty much any other time.

That's because eclipses bring to mind the fact that, okay, we're coming around a tight turn again karmically, and everyone perks up, you know, Mercury's turning retrograde right after this eclipse within a close, pretty close conjunction to Uranus. So what I want to say is that it's easy to get like astrological fatigue, you know, I sometimes joke like, we need like an astrological wellness check, you know, how are you doing after the 40th Transit in a row.

But here's the thing is that people sometimes are going to be like, you know, we joke about this. So I like to laugh at these things, too. Well, screw 2023, you know, let's hope for a better; here's the thing, it's not going to be better and 2024 or 25, or 26, or 20, ever, you know. The reason for that is that what we're really looking at is we're looking at archetypal whether we're talking about the fact that reality is a pattern-generating form of expression. It moves in these familiar patterns. One of those patterns is that big wave sets come in occasionally. And there's just they're just big waves. And those waves are, they're powerful. And they're, and they take themes that we're all familiar with, and they crank up the volume and the strength and the potency in which they wash over us. That is natural. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing that you need; there's not a test that you need to pass, and there's not something that you have to get done during this period. There's not a talisman to where or, you know, it's like there's nothing, there's no special reason that any of this is happening, either any more than we need to look up and say that there's one special reason the sun is shining, or that it's rainy, or that it's snowing, or that it's autumn.

Shocking, disturbing events, big events, energetically overwhelming events in close succession. That's part of reality. It's just part of it. Learning to live with it and accept it as part of what is, is the best coping mechanism. If you look at what the ancient astrologers said, why do we study this? We study it so that we can develop equanimity and a kind of cosmic poise within ourselves. Doesn't mean you don't go through the events; it means that you experience them with a sense of deepening love and intimacy, and that meaning is created through the living out of the events.

It really helps us to stop thinking that what's happening right now is so exceptional; okay, its eclipse season. There are always a million transits going on. This is not abnormal. In fact, this is normal. This is the norm Now; I think that we create a lot of stress for ourselves. And because we create a lot of stress for ourselves in lots of different ways, and I'm just going to try to talk about all the ways we create stress for ourselves, just look at your own life; I look at my life, and I go out, look at all the ways that create stress for myself, there's so many.

So because we're often, you know, making things more complicated and so much more stressful than they have to be, when these successive waves come in, which is natural, not abnormal, we think that they're natural or abnormal, because we experienced them, washing over and through all the different areas of our life. And we find it very difficult to manage, but that's because our lives have become unmanageable, right?

That's because we're trying too hard to be too many different things that we aren't, or we're stressing ourselves out with too many expectations of ourselves; our inner voices are too intense and not nice enough. We're expecting too much out of other people; we're not taking good care of our bodies; so many different reasons that when natural strings of successive astrological events occur, we think somehow the astrology is exceptional when really, it's that our lives are exceptionally stressed out.

Of course, an exceptionally stressed out life is going to experience any kind of natural, you know, intensity in the weather, even the physical weather as like adding to my stress.

So one thing that for me has been very liberating is to realize that these successive events are, are natural, they're, they're just part of things. So too, is our craziness and our stress and our busyness. So we can actually take some pressure off of ourselves and say, Well, I'm doing the best I can; I'm just a crazy little human. So let's make let's take a moment to defend an advocate and protect our vulnerable crazy, making nature alongside the crazy-making nature that is eclipse season. It's okay; it's all good. It's all part of this life. Even that shift of mind and mood can help; sometimes, when it rains, it pours.

So, the other thing is that you know, there are seasons in our lives, set aside, you know, just the mundane level at which we're, you know, we're tripping in the driveway and falling on our back. And, you know, like screaming at the gods or whatever. Sometimes there are seasons in our life that it's not just about dealing with a lot of energy or repeated, intense events that are manageable but amplified by our already crazy lives.

No, we're talking about when you lose something, you know, you lose a parent, you lose a lover, you lose both within a week. Sometimes there are seasons of incredible loss and stress, and trauma. And that's real, too; that's part of what the seasons can imply. These seasons are often the ones in which I see people dealing with major health issues with mean; there can be really big events. And it's not just that, you know, well, it's raining again, and let's just get used to the fact that it rains. Now sometimes, when it rains, it absolutely pours and floods our lives, and we go through healing, transformation, and crisis.

If that's you right now, just know that you're not alone. There are a lot of people going through things. You know, when these, these kinds of astrological events come along, people sometimes go through some of the most important, traumatic, but maybe life-changing events that they'll go through the kind that will have a positive impact on your life that you might not be able to recognize for five years.

The one thing I wanted to say about this is that I've met in all my years of doing astrology, I'd say 90% of my clients, when they go through major traumatic, difficult events, you know, during big transits eventually, they say that was some of the most important beautiful things that ever happened to me. That is like 90% of the time what people say, with enough time to heal and get perspective, but when you're in it, you're in it.

If you're in it right now, if you're really going through something, just know that you're not alone and that the goal, you know, if I had to say like the spiritual goal or purpose of having astrology in our lives, is to sanctify the moment to know that this season is orchestrated by a cosmos that is ultimately loving, meaningful, beautiful and worth putting our faith in as a process that we're participating in.

I hope that you can find that faith in the midst of anything you might be going through right now that's really challenging. Because sometimes it's not just raining. It's not just big wave sets, it pours, and you know it, it wipes out your house. I recently talked to someone who had an astrological transit that their house burned down; they just got a new house, and they were literally moving in. And it was a Pluto transit to their moon, and they literally had their house burned down. Can you imagine? You know, I mean, that's a big event. There's a lot worse than that.

Sometimes, you know, that's what the astrology brings; it brings, you know, really heavy, intense events. So, if that's you right now, keep the faith; it will be okay. You will get through this. Trust that there is there are there is a design to our fate and our destiny that we can't always see when we're in the midst of something challenging, but we will eventually. So ultimately, a hopeful message for people out there who are, you know, maybe like, Okay, listen, you know, nice advice here, but I'm getting my shit rocked, you know. If we can all maybe join ourselves sprawled out on the concrete, like lifting the middle finger to the gods. Like, come on, guys. This is This is insane. I'm done.

I hope that you found some laughter and some insights, and some sense of not being alone in it this week. That's what I've got for today. I hope you all have a wonderful Eclipse. Tell us your stories in the chat section. If you want, you can use the hashtag grabbed and or email us your story grabbed@nightlightastrology.com. One of the ancient names for the plants or grahas or grabbers, they grab our consciousness, they move us around like puppets, but if we study astrology, then we participate in the unfolding of the planetary energies and the dual meaning of the word grahas. It means to grasp we understand something of what they're doing in our lives. So with that, have a great day. We'll see you again tomorrow. Bye.