This year, we mark the end of January with a full lunar eclipse. Wednesday morning, January 31, the Full Moon in Leo roars in with a vibrant energy we won’t want to ignore.
Any Full Moon in Leo would be passionately alive. This one will loom large as a Supermoon, closer to Earth than usual, larger in the sky, and tugging harder at ocean tides and the tides within us.
It’s also a blue moon, being the second Full Moon this month, but that is not significant astrologically. It just adds to the impressively fun list of titles for this Full Super Blood Blue Moon.
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The chart for this Full Moon eclipse immediately focuses attention on the Moon. This pattern is called a “basket.” Almost everything shows up in one half of the chart, with a small but significant focus across the way to create the “handle.”
The Moon herself is the handle, standing with the North Node and the dwarf planet Ceres. Let’s look at what these three together represent.
The Full Moon in Leo is Mama Lion at her brightest. She loves to play, is passionate about her family and her creative work, basks in the love and attention of those she cares about and who care about her, and is not afraid to stand up for what she believes in.
Ceres is the Roman name for the goddess Demeter and carries her story. Demeter is the fierce mother. She kept the entire earth fertile and blooming. She rejoiced in her beautiful daughter, known as Kore or Persephone.
When her daughter disappeared, Demeter asked everywhere for help and found none. When even Zeus refused her and told her to just deal with it, she did, by ensuring that nothing would grow, anywhere. She held her ground until her daughter was released.
The North Node is the head of the dragon, the place where our future is unfolding. Are we in a time when the fierce feminine is coming forward? I think the answer to that is clearly, yes.
Since August 2017, when the Weinstein story broke as Jupiter entered Scorpio and the Full Solar Eclipse in Leo approached, women are stepping forward in ways and numbers we have not seen before.
This is not the first or only women’s movement. There have been many and will be more. This was not even the beginning of #MeToo, a movement started ten years ago by activist Tarana Burke to help young women of color who had survived abuse and assault.
But this time, we see how many of us have been through this and are ready to stand together and say no. We see powerful women, influential women, wealthy women, Leo women stepping up to say they will change their industries. We are empowered to change the conversation, confront behavior, and claim our right to be safe and comfortable.
This is not over.
Could we have had a clearer vision of what strong women look like than the 156 gymnasts who came forward to speak last week? Each of these women is Persephone returning from the underworld as a queen. Yes, she has been through hell and she is ready to hold the light to help others on their own way back. Calling their words “victim statements” feels anemic at best.
Would a man have created the time and space that Judge Rosemarie Aquilina did in her courtroom, or offered the support she did to each woman who spoke up for herself and her sister athletes, against the criminal who abused them, and against the system that for decades allowed it to happen. Here was a face of Demeter, the fierce mother.
This is also far from over.
Eclipses come in seasons and in series. 2018 brings five eclipses, which sounds like a lot but is typical. We think of eclipses as rare because we don’t see them all.
This lunar eclipse falls in the middle of the Aquarius–Leo series that started last year. All eclipses happen when the Sun, Moon, and Earth line up so that the Earth comes between the Sun and Moon during a Full Moon (lunar eclipse) or the Moon comes between the Sun and Earth during a New Moon (solar eclipse).
The Nodes of the Moon are involved by definition: The nodes are the places where the path of the Earth around the Sun, and the path of the Moon around the Earth, intersect. Where they, in other words, line up.
At this eclipse, the fiery Leo Moon aligns with the North Node of the future, while the cool cerebral Sun in Aquarius sits with the South Node of the past. Old structures may be coming apart. What we are passionate about lights the way forward.
Does this point to a new golden age of gender balance? Possibly, but neither easily nor automatically. Shifting deeply held cultural norms is hard.
Backlash is real.
Aquarius is sometimes the sign of fanatics. My current favorite is the new GOP senate candidate who rails against “nail-biting manphobic hell-bent feminist she devils who shriek from the tops of a thousand tall buildings.”
Sounds like the Furies to me. I love those women. And they love this eclipse.
Astrological events point to patterns and symbols. What really sets things in motion is what we bring. We can channel a lot of powerful but unfocused anger that burns stuff down without illuminating anything. Or we can find the right time and the right venue to express our righteous anger. We can channel our passion into brilliant creative work or into loving or play or some combination of all of those.
The energy shows up. We decide what to do with it. So let’s see what other energies are showing up.
Venus at 16 Aquarius is very close to the South Node. She is all about relationships, creativity, and values. Her strong presence at this Full Moon eclipse is a reminder not to go off the deep end. She stands up in Aquarius for the greatest good while knowing we can only get there by including each individual.
Standing with the Sun and the South Node, she reminds us we have relationships and history that influence how we experience and interpret events. Who are we willing to excuse? Who are we willing to leave out? Who are we willing to forgive? Who are we willing to embrace?
Eclipses are turning points. We may find this one to be a time of endings. Some relationships may end. Our alignments to certain values may clarify or shift. Our commitments to creative projects may burn out or be reignited.
Since this is a Full Moon in Leo, we want to know: How does this affect me?
The Full Moon fall at 11 Leo and 11 Aquarius. The Nodes are at 15 Leo and Aquarius. Ceres is at 11 Leo. Venus is at 16 Aquarius.
Where are Leo and Aquarius in your birth chart? If you know which Houses this Full Moon eclipse will occupy, you have a heads up on which areas of your life the surprises, the shifts, and the fire will happen.
Do you have planets or points in Leo or Aquarius? Even if they are not close by degree, they are likely to be drawn into the eclipse Full Moon energy. The closer they are, the greater the involvement.
Do you have planets and points around the eclipse degrees? They will also be affected, especially if the aspect is a strong one. For example, this eclipse Full Moon that involves transiting Venus will strongly square my Venus. Since my Venus is in Scorpio, I would describe my feelings about this as curious but wary.
Eclipses are linked in long, 18-year cycles, called Saros cycles, that move through eons. This pattern was discovered by the ancient Babylonians, although I could not begin to explain how. They discovered that eclipses recur in about the same part of the sky, at roughly the same time of year, every 18 years.
This Full Moon eclipse is part of Lunar Saros 124, a cycle that began in 1152 and continues until 2450. Relating that length of time to an individual life might seem daunting, but we can look back to eclipses in the same cycle that occurred during our lifetime.
Previous eclipses in Lunar Saros 124 occurred on January 21, 2000, on January 9, 1982, on December 30, 1963, and on December 19, 1945. If those dates have particular resonance for you, they might be echoed in some way in this eclipse Full Moon.
But we don’t need in depth analysis to know we’re in a time of great change. While there are many things that can rouse us to anger, there are also things to celebrate. There is pain and there is joy. Through it all, Leo wants us to remember that we are unique. In all of time and space, there is no one exactly like each one of us.
At this Full Super Blood Blue Moon, watch for where the light shines. Feel the heat where the fire burns brightest. Within the warmth of our deepest relationships, in the glow of our creative becoming, we find the courage to live our best lives. This is the gift we are offered. Take it.
I use Unsplash for almost all my photo illustrations. All astrological charts are my own. The images in this post include the title, created from the lioness by Pawan Sharma, the eclipse collage with the blood moon by Anders Jildén and the tree hugger by Will Cornfield, the girl with umbrella by Edu Lauton, the singer onstage by MD Duran, and the photo The Child Within by ketan rajput.