Why this Week’s Eclipse in Aries is a Powerhouse

Hi, everyone, this is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology, and we are back today to talk more about this week's major eclipse, a solar eclipse in the sign of Aries happening at the anaretic last degree of Aries moving across the sign boundary and squaring Pluto. It's a major event this week.

Yesterday, we took a look at horoscopes. Today we're going to unpack a number of reasons why this eclipse is so powerful. You know all eclipses are a pretty big deal. If you listen to astrology content, you know the viewership goes way up around eclipses. So people do pay a lot of attention to them in general.

This one's really potent, and there are some specific reasons why it's so potent. So we want to kind of take a look at those today, and hopefully, this will help you all prepare a little bit more for the eclipse on Wednesday.

So before we get into it, as always, don't forget to like and subscribe, share your comments and stories using the hashtag grabbed, or send them to us at grabbed@nightlightastrology.com. If you want a transcript of today's talk, you can find it on the website nightlight astrology.com. I'm gonna take you over there right now because you guys know we are in the midst of enrollment season.

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Okay, well, I'm really excited to unpack this solar eclipse a little in a little deeper way; I want to just remind you of what's going on with the eclipse. So let's put up the real-time clock and take a look at it. You can see there that the solar eclipse is forming in Aries with the North Node out of sign in the early degrees of Taurus. Of course, the nodes move retrograde. So the nodes are also about to change signs. We're going to talk about that today too. But this is an eclipse that will form in that 29th degree of Aries which is what we call an anaretic degree.

So today, what I want to do is I want to go through five reasons that this eclipse is so powerful and why it's not just your average eclipse we have, every eclipse is important, but some eclipses are just built a little different. So these are five reasons that this eclipse is so powerful.

Number one and most important sticking place at an anaretic degree. The 29th degree of any sign is called the anaretic degree, and it is considered to be the weakest point in the sign or a place that is often associated with things starting to fall apart and deteriorate. The beginning of the sign is associated with creation, the middle with maintenance, and the end with destruction or deterioration.

Don't think of that as an evil thing. Think of that more like, you know, there's their spring and there's autumn, things grow and things eventually fall apart. The word anaretic, if I'm remembering correctly, comes from a Greek word that means something like destruction or destroyer or something that destroys. So that anaretic degree is a very powerful degree at which to have a solar eclipse.

Now solar eclipses, our new moon eclipses, they're always on the new moon, which means that we have the energy of something seeding something starting. And Aries is a cardinal sign of spring, which starts or initiates the light half of the solar year. And so it's a sign that has a lot of yang, heroic, willful, assertive pioneering qualities behind it.

It likes to start things, but it's also starting things at a degree that is all about things falling apart, the very last degree. So that combination, which we talked a little bit about in yesterday's video on the horoscopes, is very powerful. Yesterday, I mentioned it as the beginning of the end of something.

So you think about something that is beginning, but it's, it's a turning point that is happening because something is you can, I would think of it as the word transition comes to mind where, okay, this is an event that is going to start an entirely new season in my life, but probably because something is falling apart or coming to a close or end. That's the meaning of the anaretic degree. That's what makes this so powerful.

Now, number two is that this is an eclipse that's hosted by a badly debilitated Mars in Cancer. Now when we say badly debilitated, what we mean is that the planet is in a space that is not so easy for it. It's in a space where its expressions are often more difficult. For example, well, there are many good things that we can say about Mars in Cancer, we do have to take into account why Mars is said to be debilitated in the sign of Cancer.

I love that as soon as we do this is, like most of you know, the most predictable response from an audience talk about Mars in Cancer is challenging. And you'll have like 15 Mars in Cancer natives chant, standing up to protect and defend and advocate for it. This is like; it's so funny how we resemble the placements that we are most triggered by I think that's always great.

Anyway, um, so and I, again, like dignities, and abilities are not about the potential for there to be beautiful archetypal expressions of the same planet. It's just talking about the tension that's inherent in the archetypal combination. For example, we have Mars in the moon's sign, Mars and the Moon don't; they're not easy, it's not an easy combination. So one of the things that happens when you have an eclipse like this, hosted by Mars in Cancer, is you'll see these turning points or these hard endings that have a Mars in Cancer quality behind them or within them.

So, for example, drama around mothers, families, emotional bonds, and more emotional hostility as a theme, blowouts emotionally and again, things like family drama or drama surrounding things like mothers, women, children, and domestic things. One of the really sad examples when Mars entered Cancer right away was the we had another instance of little kids being, you know, killed in a school.

So and of course, there are healthier and many beautiful expressions of Mars in Cancer. But this is a difficult placement for Mars. And so one of the things we have to notice in this eclipse is the potential for this to be a sort of flashpoint emotionally, a critical mass that has the history of family and the familial past, like past traumas that are rooted in where we live, or how we were raised, or our parents or family of origin, things like that.

There can be racial and ethnic tension or hostility in something like this because Mars in Cancer will also speak to the kinds of conflicts that we have that are rooted in, you know, where we come from in the world or our origins. And so the potential for there to be almost like a civil war vibe with this eclipse is also it's a really unfortunate but real thing. This can also be a point where you're having to grapple with really intense emotions, and that can be a good thing, a very positive thing, but nonetheless, the emotions may be quite intense and differentiating between what I feel and what I need, what is reasonable to for me to need or want.

Also, maybe where am I being emotionally immature or needy, those kinds of things may come up for us. And also this eclipse in general could have the sense of advocating or defending or fighting on behalf of something that we perceive as being picked on or weak or insulted or taken advantage of, and that can be a very good thing. This may be a really heroic, you know, and again, I always use the image of a mother bear quality with Mars in Cancer. So maybe there's a little of that in the air too.

Now number three is that this eclipse is followed immediately by a square from the sun to Pluto. So take this forward just a little bit; let's go around the wheel, and you're gonna see the eclipse comes through. This is by the evening on April 19. And then immediately the moon passes into Taurus squares Pluto, and then you're going to see the sun going into Taurus and also squaring Pluto, and it will do so it's right around mid-morning into the afternoon of Thursday, April 20. So we get the Eclipse Wednesday night. And then, into Thursday afternoon, we have the sun moving into Taurus and squaring Pluto right away.

So this also has like a very loud and powerful Plutonian energy behind it the energy of transformation of death and rebirth of depth, darkness, and intensity behind it, which is already sort of present, and I feel like an anaretic solar and anaretic degree solar eclipse already has a kind of Plutonian feeling behind it. But then you toss in the fact that within a day, the sun will move into Taurus and square Pluto, and you have an even more powerful signature of transformation at work.

That transformation, I think, may also it may like one of the ways that I'm looking at this square between the sun and Pluto, between the earthy, the sensual, and the sort of airy or cerebral. The idea is that we're looking at the biological, the physical, the mental, and rational. And how do we work together a very physical embodied level of something alongside of a more ideological or philosophical or intellectual side of something. The rational and the sensual also have a very tense discussion right around the eclipse, which is a fascinating side note, but it's right there. And it's just back to back Boom Boom between the eclipse and the sun square to Pluto.

So we'll be taking a look at that sun square to Pluto this week in a separate video as well. And then this is a turning point for the nodes of the moon. I mean, to me, this is another really powerful reason why this is charged up the eclipse. This is the first of the new series of eclipses that will start happening in Aries and Libra. We're not quite done with eclipses happening in Taurus and Scorpio.

For example, pretty soon, we're going to be talking about the fact that we've got a lunar eclipse forming in Scorpio on May 5, that's Friday, May 5; that's a big one to talk about as well. But then, if we go keep going right into the summer, we're going to see the nodes of the moon at one degree of Taurus right there. Now I use the mean node as a measurement. But that node of the moon is going to change signs into Aries right about July 12. So this eclipse is officially the first of a long series that will start receiving an Aries and Libra; they start forming again in the fall when the sun's going through, you know when the sun starting to go through the sign of Libra, then we get eclipses coming into Libra in Aries.

So this eclipse is not only a turning point, you know, in the immediate sense, but it's also a turning point for the reverse of karma and how they're flowing overall in life, switching into the areas of Libra, and Leo switching into the areas of Libra and Aries in our birth charts. That's a very different energy. We're going from the feminine signs of Venus and Mars to the masculine signs of Venus and Mars. And that's an interesting transition, which, again, we'll be spending more time with as we get closer to the changing of the nodes.

Finally, the other interesting piece of this eclipse is also brought to us on behalf of orbits brought to you by Mercury stationing in the sign of Taurus in a pretty close bodily union or conjunction with Uranus. Now it doesn't perfect; it turns retrograde, or it refrains from the conjunction to Uranus. But you could kind of say that, hey, look, not only is do we have this anaretic degree Eclipse with a really interesting Mars that's hosting it. That could be a little intense, followed by a sun square Pluto; it's a turning point for the nodes of the moon. But then also Mercury is turning retrograde by Thursday of this week as the sun squares Pluto and it's doing so in a pretty close conjunction, not exact but a pretty close conjunction with Uranus.

What does that signal? That signals are innovation, originality, breakthroughs, the need for greater freedom, and another emphasis on the desire to transform or rethink something or reconfigure our lives in some way. So you know, when you put all that together, this week is super packed. It's a very strong week of astrology. Now If it's really hard like I find that it's, it ends up sounding really abstract and sort of like just a bunch of woo-woo if you try to put all of that together and say that this will mean one thing for everyone, it doesn't all of those things individually mean that it's a very powerful week of astrology, it's really good to look at the whole sign house of the eclipse to give it a sense for where is the locational focus in your life, which we did yesterday.

But then again, just knowing that look, it's taking place at an anaretic degree, that's a degree where things start to deteriorate and fall apart. But it's also happening as the sun is squaring Pluto and as Mercury is turning retrograde and hitting Uranus, so this is a highly transformational moment, and the phrase that keeps coming to mind is the beginning of the end of something, which marks an important transition that may lead eventually to a really exciting theme of rebirth. But the beginning of the end of something is the phrase that I'm sticking with.

This could be quite emotional, or the feeling of there being history and weight behind it emotionally and maybe even rooted in things with family; the health of family members comes to mind with Mars in Cancer or things that you're advocating or fighting for that have a lot of emotional weight and baggage for you. And then, you know, I think we also have to remember that this is a major turning point with the eclipses moving into new signs and start looking at those areas of Libra and Aries and your birth chart because you want to get a feel for where the eclipses are heading and what new things are being activated by virtue of those two houses as a pair in your chart.

Okay, so I hope that that was useful for you today to go through some of those reasons why this eclipse is so packed with power. I think what we're going to be doing is we are going to be doing the next installation of the parenting series; we're gonna be looking at parenting tips for Gemini children this week. Also, I will be taking a look at the sun square to Pluto as well. And then I have some other ideas that I'm working on, but we'll see where we go. But that's our agenda for the rest of the week so far. Well, I hope that this is useful for you and you are all getting ready for eclipse day. We will see you again tomorrow. Take it easy, everyone. Bye.