9:43 pm AHST   12/3/2021
11:43 pm  PST   12/3/2021
  7:43 am  UTC  12/4/2021

Sagittarius is often thought of as the sign of eternal optimism, ruled as it is by expansive Jupiter. In a time when optimism seems to be out of fashion, or even in bad taste, still Sagittarius beckons to us to find some glimmer of hope or possibility in times of great darkness. During eclipse season, shadow contents — those parts of our psyche that have gone unaddressed and lie beneath the surface of consciousness — become more available to us, whether we want them to or not. Perhaps the shadow of our global pandemic depression is finding that optimism somewhere within us.

This eclipse is reminiscent of last year’s solar eclipse in Sagittarius, in which the Sun and Moon were also in a challenging square (90˚ angle) to Neptune. The planet Neptune governs our relationship to the unknown, the unconscious, the deep well of archetypes and dreams that we all share. Since Sagittarius governs our philosophy and knowledge, i.e. how we put together the facts we gather to make a whole picture of the world, and eclipses are times when we are confronted with shadow material, we are being challenged to question our beliefs about reality, about how we’ve put together our world view. We are being asked to go deeper into our selves (Neptune in Pisces) to find there a larger picture of reality than our present society and culture gives us. This is about transcendence. This year we are even more “in it” than we were last year, as dissidence and discord are affecting every aspect of our lives. Neptune has moved into direct motion as of December 1^st, giving us a boost to put our imaginations into action, to live our ideals and dreams out now, here, in physical reality, rather than some time in the future as well as to separate fantasy from reality.

With Mercury also joining the Sun and Moon and squaring Neptune, our thoughts and our reasoning are subject to re-evaluation. We must remember that what we concentrate upon affects our lives, being that our bodies will manufacture chemical (hormonal) responses to our moment to moment perceptions, as if what we are imagining is really happening to our bodies, thus affecting our health and well-being. Here we must be careful as Mars, our activation energy, is in passionate Scorpio now, forming a harmonious trine (120˚ angle) to Neptune which stimulates our imagination, but also a challenging square to Jupiter, which can mean that we forget our higher principles while in a moment of emotional fervor. And Mercury in Sagittarius tends to globalize in its perceptions, rather than observe the specifics of a situation (as it does when it’s in Gemini, its opposite) so we must watch out for black and white thinking and snap judgements.

Venus, becoming her brightest on the 4^th at this eclipse, is “in bed” with Pluto, conjoined for much of the month at the same degree of Capricorn, around 25˚. This intensifies her energy, calling on us to use our feminine energy and the power of love in the most active and practical ways, as the Capricorn influence is strong now in that archetype. Perhaps it’s about using the power of the feminine within us all in order to save our planet, and democracy in general, that power which connects us, is relational, that cares and gives to others as a primary way of operating in the world. Since Pluto rules the power of the collective, it is when we join together in cooperative ways that we feel the strength of what is possible for humanity to achieve.

The aspect of the inconjunct (150˚ or one sign off from an opposition) cautions us to observe how different energies need extra attention in order to coordinate and work well together. This Solar Eclipse is tightly inconjunct to Uranus the revolutionary, in Taurus. We are being asked to harmonize our personal and global ideals (Sagittarius) with the needs of the Earth (Taurus) and watch where we can, even in small ways, improve the ways we use the Earth’s resources, conserving water, electricity, food, etc. as a way of being a part of the healing we all need. The more we do so, the more we are living in accord with healthy energies that improve not only our own lives, but the lives of all beings around us. Adopting ways of living that are conserving our Earth’s resources is perhaps a kind of optimism that we need in order to move through these times.