I heard someone the other day refer to current times as a “crucible moment”, and immediately thought of all the big gun combinations we’ve been subjected to, the dance of Saturn-Pluto-Jupiter, Uranus in Taurus bringing sudden shifts in the material realm and in personal assets and personal responsibilities, Neptune in his own sign manufacturing a fog so thick it’s making it hard to navigate, hard to trust others and, it’s so hard to see, we don’t really trust ourselves, either. Now add an eclipse in Sagittarius that threatens the very facts that underpin our reality, threatens to wipe out accumulated knowledge or our faith, and even threatens to make us dismiss our shared humanity by making us think 1) people are animals (Sagittarius, where the Lunar eclipse will land, happens to be the sign of large animals), 2) animals are part of Nature, and 3) Nature is against us (Covid-19, an assault by a natural invisible, Mars–assault–at the midpoint of Ceres–Nature–and Neptune–toxins, poisons, infectious diseases), and so 4) others must be against us, too (the death of George Floyd, among many others, is entirely too real an example of the extension of this fear to the point others are seen as not human; think also of the gassing of peaceful protesters so that the President could have a photo op, treating them as less than). The thing is, bad as the disparate parts are, they don’t lead, one to the other; that’s a fallacy. Our minds want to connect the dots, but the dots don’t exist in relation to each other, in spite of the way a susceptible consciousness might see them as related.

A crucible is a vessel that allows something to be subjected to high temperatures. Let something burn in a crucible too long, it becomes ash or evaporates; you lose or render useless the contents if you subject it to high temps with no end point. And we as human Souls may feel as if we’ve been in a crucible for much much too long, a heated environment of fear and legitimate threat from many sources that makes it difficult to grasp the facts, and to think of others as truly human. This eclipse may help.

Saturn is the container, analogous to our bodies and our realities, in both instances, something that surrounds the spirit, that contains us. Pluto is the process, in this case a transformation through a journey to hell and back, one that long-term breaks down all that has made us feel secure (Capricorn). Jupiter is both the indisputable facts, and the social element. These sit within a 7 degree span in Capricorn, with Saturn in Aquarius but retrograde and slated to re-enter the sign of the Sea Goat. Add to this Pallas, symbol of wisdom, practicality, useful skills, at 29 tense degrees of Capricorn, and we see the stress that our intelligence is under (and this is magnified by Saturn suppressing the intellect in Cappy). The proximity of these bodies to one another may give us the impression that they’re working in concert, but they aren’t; we may even be prone to characterize them as having a kind of consciousness, as if they’re deliberately getting together and making chaos, aided by the Neptunian fog and Uranian erraticism. The reality is each body does its own thing, while we look for the connections and the reasons why, and come up empty (if we’re relatively rational) or clutching a handful of conspiracy theories (if we’re too Neptune susceptible). These energies collide but have no intent, make for some synergies that we may interpret as purposeful, and so are the background against which this Lunar eclipse forms.

The eclipse occurs at 12:12 PM PDT at 15 Sagittarius 34 of the 5th. It makes a close square to Mars, a trine to the Black Moon Lilith point, and opposes Venus which is still retro and moving away from her recent rendezvous with the Sun. Here’s our connection to those bigger, broader social energies: the eclipse is semi-square both Saturn and Pallas, and novile Jupiter. A Lunar eclipse is a Full Moon, with all the promise of conclusions, endings, and peaks that a FM carries, with the added eclipse propensity to sweep away, to cause a re-set, to re-align, to disturb, to upset the status quo.

The eclipse may trigger anger and aggression, and a big need to make ‘I Am’ statements (Mars square), but why? Because we easily funnel what we have been agreeing to ignore or deny into consciousness–it pesters us, won’t let us rest–along with all the rage over injustices we’ve tamped down (trine Black Moon Lilith). We’re feeling removed from caring about what we usually value, distant from a prevailing sense of Love and relationship (Venus opp and retro), and this sets the stage for personal anger looking for an outlet–and it finds it in the irritating and threatening circumstances surrounding the reality picture (Saturn) and a sense of outrage that what’s wise isn’t being done, and is now at a breaking point (29 degree Pallas). And who receives our anger? The larger social order (Jupiter)–but wait, it might not be all bad (the novile), because what we may see is expansion of the energy of the eclipse ruler, the facts and faith finally bringing some sense of justice, of right.

The Sabian for the eclipse is, ‘Sea Gulls Fly Around A Ship In Expectation Of Food’. The eclipse may spark anticipatory energy, the expectation of a better social order within a better world, shaped from all this pain and suffering and from the Love and wisdom we normally feel much more pure a connection to, that we naturally carry inside.

It’s our crucible moment only in the sense that we are at a point when we can take things from the heat, when we can use the contents of our experience to make something new, to forge something better, and offer this to the world. So, what have the months and years forged in you?