The 2019 Eclipse Season and Your Karmic Path

At the start of the New Year, we are launched in our biannual Eclipse Season, affecting our first New and Full Moon of 2019. The Eclipse Season officially starts when the Sun is within 17 degrees of a Lunar Node, which is occurring today, Dec 30th. Eclipse Seasons last approximately 34 days, with this season lasting until Feb 2nd, 2019. Eclipse Seasons occur twice a year and bring us one solar and one lunar eclipse. Occasionally, we get a third eclipse if we’re lucky. This Eclipse Season will bring a partial Solar Eclipse on the New Moon in Capricorn January 5th/6th and a Total Lunar Eclipse in Leo on January 20th/21st.

Eclipses always occur on the New Moon or the Full Moon. They involve both the Sun, the Moon and the Lunar Nodes. The Lunar Nodes are the intersection where the Moon’s orbit crosses the Sun’s path. There is a South and a North Lunar Node. The Nodes are energetic vortices that take on the astrological energies of the sign in which they are positioned. The Nodes shift astrological signs every 18 months. They just changed stations in November with the North Node moving from Leo to Cancer and the South Node moving from Aquarius to Capricorn (they always move backward). The North Node is said to be where society is going energetically and the lessons we as a collective are incorporating into our consciousness. The South Node is what we are leaving behind, especially the lower vibrations of the governing sign. You can read all about the energies of the North Node in Cancer and the South Node in Capricorn here.

                                                                                        Image via Wikipedia 

Along with the collective nodes, we each have a personal North Node and a South Node in our birth chart. You can look them up here; your South Node is the opposite sign of your North Node. Our Nodes show us our karmic life path. Just like the planets of our birth chart, our Lunar Nodes take on and transmit the vibrations of the sign in which they are positioned. Our life’s journey is to shift from the energies of our South Node to the energies of our North Node. Eclipses activate the Lunar Nodes helping us make leaps and bounds on our Nodal path.

We come into this world knowing and understanding the energies of our personal South Node, which in many ways represent our past life. Whether we were this sign in a former life or not, we have mastered its vibrations. The South Node forms our comfort zones and the places we return to over and over again just because they are familiar. Each zodiac sign has a low side and high side to its vibration. We must be careful not to get attached to the low side of our South Node out of familiarity. Part of our evolutionary journey is to detach and leave behind the lower vibrations of our South Node. Eclipses help us with this detachment.

The North Node, on the other hand, represents the energetic qualities that we are here to master. They often feel foreign, but persist in showing up over and over again in our lives until we pay attention to them. We may even resist or resent them during our younger years. Our North Node helps form the life lessons we are here to learn, how we learn them and how we integrate this information into the rest of our being.  Our job is to master the higher vibrations of our North Node and mold them into our new place of comfort.

With each Eclipse Season, we are brought the energy of the current Lunar Nodes (Capricorn and Cancer) to help us work through our personal Nodal Path. Solar Eclipses occur when the Sun and the Moon pass through the same Lunar Node. During the Partial Solar Eclipse on the New Moon in Capricorn, the Sun and Moon will both be near the South Lunar Node in Capricorn. This partial Solar Eclipse will activate the energy of Capricorn to a greater degree than a typical New Moon. It will supercharge the already occurring powers of the New Moon, providing a burst of energy for us to direct into mastering our personal North Node. The high side of Capricorn, which is characterized by determination and stamina, will be felt by the collective at large. Likewise, we will be encouraged to leave behind the low side of Capricorn which embodies aloofness, judgment, and overworking. This New Moon/Solar Eclipse will encourage us to maintain more of a work-life balance while staying focused on our goals.

Each of us can use this balance and focus on our journey towards our personal North Node. For instance, my North Node is in Virgo, whose high side is detail and service. This New Moon will provide an opportunity for me to gain more insight into understanding the energies of Virgo and how I can integrate them into my life. They will come into focus for me, and the path from my South Node in Pisces to my North Node will become more evident if I am open to receiving it. This New Moon in Capricorn will be a particularly important one to make clear and concise intentions. It not only is our first New Moon of the year, enveloped by the energy of the New Year but has the potential to launch us further down our energetic path than a normal New Moon.

Lunar Eclipses occur on a Full Moon when the Moon passes through one Lunar Node and the Sun passes through the opposing Node, with the Earth in the middle. Lunar Eclipses provide powerful releases and are opportunities to let go of the low vibrations of our personal South Node. So while Solar Eclipses activate, Lunar Eclipses release. Our Total Lunar Eclipse in Leo on Jan 20th/21st (depending on where you live) is an interesting one, as the Moon will be in Leo,  with the Sun in Aquarius, the North Node in Cancer and the South Node in Capricorn. All four of these energies will be involved in this Lunar Eclipse. It is rather complicated energetically, I highly suggest turning to the Leo Lunar Eclipse Workbook to understand all of these vibrations involved fully. Know, though, that this supercharged Eclipse will give us the energy of Leo and Cancer to help us detach from our comfort zones, our limiting beliefs and our methods of escape brought to us by our personal South Node.

Leo and Cancer bring us energies of courage, love, and self-care. As we learn to love our self unconditionally, we will be able to detach from our ego and its defense mechanisms. We each have them, and we each have an ego who tries to control things from our thinking mind in attempts to thwart our true Self. One place to look for the energies, which contribute to our attachments and ego, is in the shadow side of our South Node. While my North Node is in Virgo, my South Node is in Pisces. The low side of Pisces is escapism through various means. It is my natural tendency to want to alter my consciousnesses so I can catapult out of this reality, leaving society to figure out things for themselves. To fulfill my karmic path of embodying the energy of Virgo, which is service and healing through order, I must let go of my urge to float away into the ethers. I must learn to stay on the Earth, writing neat, [hopefully] spell checked blogs for all of you which I resisted doing for many years. Every Lunar Eclipse affords me the energy to understand this path better, as it does for you.

This Eclipse Season affords us room for growth, expansion, and continued evolution. Each Eclipse opens a portal for us to step through and on the other side, we are a different point on our personal Nodal Path helped by the astrological energies involved in the Eclipse. Eclipses speed up our evolution and an Eclipse Season often brings us serendipitous events that fuel the process of shifting from South to North Node. The energy of the Eclipse Season can feel intense, where we often have to face things in our life that aren’t comfortable, but we need to confront, so our journey continues. On the flip side, patterns and limiting beliefs that have been holding us back can shift in an instant due to cosmic energy supporting us on closing the door to these lower vibrations.

Enjoy this time of growth.

Cover art via Rebecca Reitz