Dear Friend and Reader:
The approaching Full Moon in Scorpio is a total eclipse. It happens overnight Sunday to Monday, and will be visible across the Americas (and from some points in Europe and Africa) wherever the sky is clear, at about a quarter past midnight Eastern Daylight Time. Quite a bit has happened since the April 30 Taurus solar eclipse conjunct Albion (1992 QB1).
Mercury has stationed retrograde in its domicile Gemini (that lasts through June 3). That placement suggests there’s so much that we do not say, and need to. In Gemini, the retrograde has an especially introspective quality, and evokes the idea of an idioglossia, the secret language of twins.
Jupiter has entered Aries, starting a new 12-year cycle. Earth-Goddess Ceres has entered the sign of mothers and of women generally, Cancer. It is also in aspect to the Aries Point, which emphasizes how this placement contains many ideas that resound through society.
Because Cancer’s ruling body, the Moon, is eclipsed, there will be many references back to this Ceres placement and its diversity of concepts: relationships between mothers and daughters; the relationship between food and emotional reality; and food generally.
Eclipses can be active for a long time, though their most pronounced effects are often over the following six months to one year.
Those tracking discussions just off to the side of mainstream news are no doubt aware of the many emerging problems associated with food security. We are all watching food prices increase steadily. (The commercial media is not making the connections.) In my studied experience, this is another manufactured crisis. It will be blamed on something else — the usual suspect, most likely — the eternal “pandemic,” or climate change. The big boys are still hesitating on the phony UFO crisis, though we are being primed for that one.
On the cultural level, the glam side of Scorpio — its overtly sexual aspect, the beauty of powerful people, romanticizing death and glorifying war — become transparent, and deeper factors can be seen.
The Moon Darkens in Scorpio
Eclipses are powerful omens, especially when they happen overhead where everyone can see them. As I mentioned in Tuesday’s article, we are still caught in a loop made obvious at the time of the Great American Eclipse of summer 2017. That’s the one that cast a shadow across the American continent from sea to shining sea, symbolizing a country divided like it has not been since the War Between the States in the 1860s.
Overnight Sunday to Monday, the Moon will appear to go dim in the sign Scorpio, the dwelling place of nearly all taboos.
You can think of an eclipse as a veil being pulled back from how a planet normally presents itself, and the other side of the story being told. On the cultural level, the glam side of Scorpio — its overtly sexual aspect, the beauty of powerful people, romanticizing death and glorifying war — become transparent, and deeper factors can be seen.
The dark side of the Scorpio Moon is all that we will not say about sex and death, and our deeper (usually secret) feelings relating to just about everything. Europeans and people descended from them live from taboo to taboo.
There is never an appropriate moment to talk about the subject matter of Scorpio, which — significantly for our time — includes all matters related to the genetic code.
We think we like it this way. We think it saves us embarrassment. All it does is cut us off from our deeply held truths. It divides us from having true respect for the mysteries, from pleasure, and from living life sincerely as mortals, with our brief opportunity to live honestly and well. These all go together; it is difficult to have a good life when one lives cloaked and mired in mendacity.
The usual tendency to avoid everything that makes one “uncomfortable” will not serve, and it never has. In therapy, “discomfort” is a positive development because it usually means one has identified a topic about which they are in conflict. Therein lies the true potential of the work.
Being Set Free: Hearing or Telling the Truth
Most people would not know this, except for the few times when they were set free by telling or hearing the truth. This eclipse will do a fair amount of setting free whether anyone is interested or not. The question is how we handle it.
The usual tendency to avoid everything that makes one “uncomfortable” will not serve, and it never has. In therapy, “discomfort” is a positive development because it usually means one has identified a topic about which they are in conflict. Therein lies the true potential of the work.
The therapeutic process is about working out that inner stress and tension, and identifying its causes. Usually this is accomplished by being honest, first with oneself, then with the people around us.
Usually it is embarrassment, a form of shame, which prevents one from experiencing that sincerity. This is the crucial role that embarrassment plays in maintaining the social order: anything that threatens the status quo is shameful and therefore not to be discussed.
It is the glue that holds everything negative together. This is why working with rather than against embarrassment is at the essence of basic Tantric process. Here, we get a clue that the ultimate taboo is true self-awareness.
People tend to dramatize this like talented actors who have studied and memorized the script. But who exactly is the playwright? The taboos have become so overwhelming that they have ripped families and friendships apart the past two years. People who refuse to discuss something, or refuse to believe it, and refuse to associate with anyone who might want to, are trapped in a taboo. In our society, this amounts to shame.
Because people who possess fidelity to truth venture into what others consider shameful territory, they can personally be considered taboo.
Sex usually means some combination of all the bad things that have happened, and all the things that one secretly desires. There is often a relationship between the two. What is forbidden, mysterious and potentially dangerous may be deeply desirable.
About That Word
Since I’ve used the word taboo a few times, let’s go to the dictionary. It seems to have two alternate etymologies, from Polynesian languages. Douglas Harper offers, “‘Consecrated, inviolable, forbidden, unclean or cursed’, explained in some English sources as being from Tongan (Polynesian language of the island of Tonga).”
But he adds, “This may be folk etymology, as linguists in the Pacific have reconstructed an irreducible Proto-Polynesian *tapu, from Proto-Oceanic *tabu ‘sacred, forbidden’ (compare Hawaiian kapu ‘taboo, prohibition, sacred, holy, consecrated’; Tahitian tapu, ‘restriction, sacred, devoted; an oath’; Maori tapu ‘be under ritual restriction, prohibited’).”
So, some version of sacred and prohibited. That about sums it up. Except for one thing.
We are living in a world where the word or the inference of ‘sacred’ is misappropriated and then applied to almost any form of dogma or bullshit imaginable. ‘Sacred Archetypes’ is now often code for old-fashioned stereotyping. ‘Trust the Science’ has become a ‘Sacred Mantra’ when really, it’s just about allegedly unchallengeable dogma and small-picture, self-serving blindness. Perhaps this syndrome will get called out, with a darker Moon in Scorpio. It will when people lose their taste for it, and figure out that it takes more than it gives.
So let’s stick to the prohibited, in particular, when it comes to words, ides and people.
Usually this means sex. Sex usually means some combination of all the bad things that have happened, and all the things that one secretly desires. There is often a relationship between the two. What is forbidden, mysterious and potentially dangerous may be deeply desirable. What has harmed us in the past may create an irresistible attraction that we then feel we must resist.
The only way through this many-layered maze is honesty from moment to moment, from discussion to discussion. There are few places where that is possible and many places it is dangerous. Most of what is popularly considered “sexual misconduct” involves the use of words and the expression of ideas that “make women uncomfortable” and therefore must be silenced.
Mors-Somnus reminds me of the aphorism about how you cannot awaken someone pretending to be asleep. We might add that you cannot revive someone pretending to be dead.
The Moon’s Aspect Pattern
Every eclipse makes many aspects, which all contribute to the story it’s telling, and the circumstances that it describes. I will unfold two aspects directly associated with the eclipse, and one that stands on its own.
First, aspects to the Moon itself. Exactly opposite the Moon, conjunct the Sun in Taurus, is a slow-moving Pluto-like point called Mors-Somnus. That asks the question, “Dead, or just asleep?” It reminds me of the aphorism about how you cannot awaken someone pretending to be asleep. We might add that you cannot revive someone pretending to be dead.
Conjunct the Moon, in Scorpio, is the asteroid Karma, some of which may be revealed or resolved in connection to the eclipse. There’s a lot of karma in Scorpio, as the collective Home of the Whoppers — many of the big lies, and lots of the seemingly small ones. All lies cut off the flow of psychic oxygen and prevent the resolution of our problems.
Accenting the alignment is Sisyphus — connected to the story about the guy pushing the rock up the hill, which he has to do for no reason, every day, perpetually. Sounds about right for unaddressed Scorpio karma. Vesta is also about the processing of shame.
Shame is so shameful, most people don’t want to admit that they have any. But on some level it may inform nearly every action and choice.
Eclipse Square Saturn-Vesta in Aquarius
This one is a gem. We have just experienced the Saturn-Vesta conjunction in Aquarius, and it’s still very close, about two degrees apart at the time of the eclipse. The Scorpio eclipse splits the difference and squares the midpoint.
I say a lot about Vesta in my readings and on FM, but I don’t write nearly enough about it. One outstanding thing about Vesta is that it’s one of the few goddess figures, or Roman myths, where real people come into the story: the Vestal virgins.
It has a few roles: one involves tending the sacred flame. Another involves the definition of space, like a home is arranged around the hearth or the kitchen. Imagine a kiva at a retreat center centered around a ceremonial hearth. Vesta describes the process of holding space, in this case, for the subject matter of the eclipse.
Vesta is also about the processing of shame. Shame is so shameful, most people don’t want to admit that they have any. But on some level it may inform nearly every action and choice. We therefore need to create spaces where it can be handled carefully, and worked through. Some of the most skilled practitioners cannot do this around matters of sexuality because all they can handle is the pain aspect, and not the pleasure aspect. In other words, the pleasure is more taboo than the pain.
This is why professional dominants are in such high demand. There are many issues that one is far more likely to work through with a sexworker or other taboo professional than is possible with a therapist. We have made most aspects of sex so taboo that they are unmentionable even in therapy. These include exploring submissive desires, rape fantasies, bondage and domination, anal sex and even things so fit for Sesame Street as polyamory and bisexuality.
Here is the thing to remember about all shades of embarrassment, guilt and shame, from the Tantra Files: they are, usually, a mere scrim over what we want and need the most. Shame conceals pleasure. To get to the good stuff, one must explore, and go through, rather than avoid, the shame.
Here is the release. In the myth of Narcissus, he falls in love with someone he does not know is himself. He thinks it’s someone else.
Orgasmic Fusion with the Cosmos
One last. Gleaming out of this chart is the conjunction of Venus and Chiron in Aries (exact Sunday, May 15 at about 8:12 am EDT). Barbara Hand Clow describes this aspect as “orgasmic fusion with the cosmos.”
In Aries, and here during Masturbation Month (see my recent comment about Betty Dodson), that implies self-relating, self-given pleasure and what I call self-centered sexuality. But there is a catch.
The conjunction is opposite Narcissus. And this describes the sense that to relate to oneself is narcissistic or going to be perceived as such.
Here is the release. In the myth of Narcissus, he falls in love with someone he does not know is himself. He thinks it’s someone else. So the experience of consciously relating to oneself and loving oneself is not narcissistic. Yet it is one of the most significant taboos of them all.
This is why Gloria Steinem, co-founder of Ms. Magazine, could say in The New York Times: “Betty Dodson was a brave and daring advocate for women’s right to sexual knowledge and pleasure. Her workshops turned women on to the beauty of our own bodies, and her outrageous honesty allowed more women to speak our truths.”
“Outrageous honesty” meant putting to words something that nearly everyone does, and that many people do every day. Steinem means Betty successfully violated a taboo.
I would propose that the alignment of Venus, Narcissus and Chiron is saying: study the issue. Notice where the line between self and other is, and notice how it moves.
Narcissism is About Self-Hatred, Not Selflove
The opposite is true for clinical narcissism, or many forms of its more ordinary expressions. Narcissism is about living a lie, and usually one based on self-hatred. It relates to others as if they are an extension of ourselves.
This is the source of pain for those caught in the drama. The relationship has a motive rather than inherent meaning.
Yet everything around us has life and existence to us because we perceive it, as a function of perception. Yes, life goes on without us, but when we are here, we are the ones doing the perceiving, and the ones at the center of our own existence.
There is sometimes a measure of embarrassment in acknowledging this, particularly in loving and sexual relationships. I would propose that the alignment of Venus, Narcissus and Chiron is saying: study the issue. Notice where the line between self and other is, and notice how it moves.
And while you’re there, perhaps notice what is behind the Moon when it goes dim Sunday night or early Monday morning. For many, she is a harsh mistress, though we can — if we want — get a glimpse on the other side of the veil.
Faithfully,
