Between Order and Chaos: Virgo New Moon Solar Eclipse

This article will be dramatically confessional because this astrology is expressing itself through my life in such a way that I feel like I cannot even discuss this eclipse without opening up personally.  So with TMI and trigger warnings aplenty, I begin my story on the Cancer New Moon of 2012.

Wait, my story truly begins with Pluto crossing my 29 Sagittarius descendant and entering my 7th house, entering Capricorn in 2007, at the time that I met a man with Sun, Mars, Moon, and Mercury in Capricorn.  For several years he gaslighted me, manipulated me, and groomed me.  No one wants to admit that this type of thing could happen to them, but four years later I was essentially being held prisoner and raped on a regular basis.  Under the Cancer New Moon of 2012, I escaped from this situation, acquired a restraining order, and won my freedom, based solely off of several threatening voicemails he had left me.  I never told anyone about the sexual abuse, and I was oblivious to the full extent of the injuries I had acquired, masking it behind an eating disorder.

Under the Taurus full moon of 2012, opposite Sun conjunct Saturn who had entered Scorpio only days before,  I was living in a shelter with my daughter awaiting a court date that would give me permission to take her out of state and back home to my family.   This was during the same period of time as the Mercury retrograde that crossed from Sagittarius to Scorpio.  I chronicled my breakthroughs from this full moon in a blog I co-wrote called Empress Pinniped.

By early 2014, my injuries were increasingly obvious as I struggled with going to the bathroom normally.  I relapsed into my eating disorder.  My complete inability to address the abuse that I suffered caused endless problems in my life and in my relationships. I was basically lying to everyone that loved me,  telling them I had intestinal problems rather than admit the truth out loud. The pain kept increasing until  I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I first sought medical treatment around spring equinox, and met my current doctor under the 2014 Capricorn Full Moon.

She put me on a medication that I take every time I eat, and scheduled me for a minor surgical procedure to address my symptoms.  The date that she scheduled me was the day of the Libra New Moon, trine Persephone.  As I sat in my gown awaiting to be taken into the day surgery suite, a nurse informed me that there was a problem with my pre-surgery urine screen.  My doctor came in and told me that I was pregnant.

My world turned upside down.  It was miraculous and horrible at the same time. Miraculous that it happened in the first place, that I was able to reunite with my true love and experience trust and union after the unspeakable violence that I survived for so long, but horrible because my doctor now refused to do the treatment, even with local anesthetic.  My boyfriend came to pick me up and took me home, in shock. We both slowly wrapped our minds around the idea of being a family, and eventually my daughter and I moved in with him.  Our son was born two days after the Taurus New Moon of 2015.

The magical mysteries of pregnancy helped resolve the main symptoms of my internal injuries, but the external damage remained.  This type of injury is “not life threatening” so restorative surgery is not considered a priority procedure by insurance.  During the Pisces new moon solar eclipse earlier this year, my doctor told me she was ready to start the long and drawn out process of petitioning my insurance to pay for the surgery that would allow her to excise scar tissue and fix the problem areas that would otherwise stay damaged forever.  I graphically titled my article for that eclipse Exuvia.

Which brings me to the present moment.  I have had no say in the timing of any of these events, and it is 100% my doctor’s scheduler’s choice that my restorative surgery was scheduled for August 31st, the day before the Virgo new moon solar eclipse at 9 Virgo.  I feel like my entire life is converging on this moment.  8 Virgo is my natal IC.

 

Before I discuss the eclipse astrology specifically, I have to say one more thing about Mars. As Mars squares the lunar nodes, I’m blown away as I look back to the previous Mars-north node conjunction.  In May of 2014, Mars stationed retrograde 4 degrees away from conjunction to the north node.  During this Mars station I found my cat dismembered in the street the day before I got on a plane to spend a few days in the woods healing with a small tribe of friends (we call ourselves the Lady Jackalopes). It was the first time I had spoken the words out loud of what had happened to me, to someone other than a medical professional.  It was the first time I told someone who knew me that I had been raped.  After Mars stationed direct, he exacted his conjunction to the north node in July of 2014, around the time I let my story out into the open, posting to facebook sharing the truth of what happened to me with my community.  Letting go of this heavy secret was the first step that allowed real healing to take place.  It certainly helped to have Uranus transit exact conjunct my natal Mercury, 16 Aries, to make such a radical public confession with no shame. To think that I am finally going forward with this surgery during Mars first square to the lunar nodes, and Uranus is now 24 Aries, exact conjunct my natal Mars… wow, it gives me chills.

Two days before the eclipse, Venus left Virgo and entered Libra.  But Virgo is still jam packed.  Virgo is the sign of details, grammar, divine order, cleanliness-is-next-to-godliness, and organization as the key to inner peace.  Pisces is the subconscious, Virgo is the frontal lobe. One day before the eclipse, Mercury stationed retrograde at 29 Virgo, now exact conjunct Jupiter at 28 Virgo.  Asteroid Sekhmet opens the way at 20 Virgo, past the north node at 12 Virgo.  The Sun and Moon converge at 9 degrees, slightly over 3 degrees orb building to the north node.  Asteroid Apophis just entered Virgo and is at Zero degrees during the eclipse.  In many ways Apophis and Sekhmet are energetic opposites and partners, like Mars and Venus.  They are the extreme polar ends of a continuum that encompasses chaos and order, fear and boldness, obfuscation and illumination, destruction and unification. And our Virgo new moon solar eclipse is sandwiched between them.  The themes of order and chaos are reflected in the asteroids that flank the eclipse, and also by the lunar nodes’ position in Virgo and Pisces.

The Uranus-Eris conjunction reminds us that “chaos” and “order” are ideas that are created by people to describe our perceptions, and that the same scenario could be described as either depending on who is doing the perceiving.

Donald Rumsfeld famously said, “There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.” Knowing that you know nothing is the level of consciousness that passed for wisdom in the time of Socrates, but the goal of this Virgo solar eclipse opposite Neptune in Pisces, and the intention to set during this new moon, is to turn the unknown unknowns into known unknowns.  Neptune is the key to this crucial alchemy. His low vibration is superficial and his high vibration is deep.  We cannot know what we know until we know what we don’t know. The amount of depth that we are able to surrender to the mystery is what creates space for the influx of gnosis- knowledge that can only come from experience. The depth of our knowledge matches the depth of our surrender.

Asteroid Vesta is moving out of her trines to Neptune in Pisces and Lilith in Scorpio, and she is now aligned with fixed star Sirius in Cancer, and transiting opposite Pluto in Capricorn, linking our efforts for self-care and self-realization to the energies of unavoidable righteous elimination. Her quincunx to Mars ensures that we will not lose ourselves as we blaze forward into the realm of unknown unknowns, and find our own way to master this level of existence.

After the new moon solar eclipse, later in the evening when the Sun reaches 10 Virgo, we have the third quarter square in the Sun-Saturn cycle. See that chart in this article: Saturn in Sagittarius which also contains my thoughts on Juno/Lilith in Scorpio and their role in this configuration. This solar eclipse is linked to the manifestation of the third quarter square between Sun and Saturn, but it is also linked to Mercury retrograde, causing this manifestation cycle to have its own unique pace.  I feel that Mercury retrograde in Virgo will cause many of us to see our own truth in a new light, finding revolutionary ways to speak our truth, leading to advanced level manifestation of the reality that we choose. At the end of this retrograde, Mercury stations direct at 14 Virgo exact trine Pluto bringing to mind the quote by the great James Baldwin: “The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim…”