“Ooh, a storm is threat’ning
My very life today
If I don’t get some shelter
Oh yeah, I’m gonna fade away…”
On March 23rd, there will be a Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in the sign of Libra. In astrology, eclipses are a kind of celestial hurricane that shift the structure of your psyche by cracking and crumbling many of your most hardened beliefs and expectations.
Therefore, this eclipse season, which began on March 8th with the Total Solar Eclipse in Pisces, has no doubt brought about a series of events and circumstances that have provoked you to confront many of your most unconscious wounds from the past in order to make some necessary alterations to your current life path.
Considering that Libra is the sign that seeks harmony between opposing forces, expect to feel an internal pendulum of emotions swinging back and forth, pushing you to the edges of your ability to cope and then pulling you back to your comfortable center, only to push you over the edge again. This is the motion of testing your limits.
As with all Full Moons, this is a time to relent, release, and relinquish, but on an eclipse it is an especially good time to open an old wound to the celestial light and let it bleed…
The internal sensations produced by a lunar eclipse can be strange. As your vulnerability heightens, you might feel your moral compass spinning around in circles, rambling a litany of reactionary responses all out of order: need…sell…buy…forgive…exile…kill…peace…fuck you…you’re the best!
During a lunar eclipse, the earth passes between the Sun and the Moon and in its shadow the miraculous energies of birth and death are amplified. As a testament to this, it is a common folk belief all over the world that pregnant women are at greater risk for premature labor or miscarriage during eclipses.
Therefore, after this eclipse season, you may find that many of your greatest ambitions begin to flourish! But, you can’t always get what you want. Therefore, it is also likely that you may suffer what seems like a tragic miscarriage of some of your best laid plans.
Not every seed of intention germinates: only the ones tenacious enough to unfurl, suck in nutrients, and crawl up from underneath the earth. Therefore, it is likely that this eclipse will make you aware of the equal measure of vitality and necrosis in your life. This is the powerful and somewhat rarified information that can be obtained during these volatile seasons.
War, children, it’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away
War, children, it’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away
This Full Moon Eclipse, born from the opposition between the martial passions of the Sun in Aries conjunct Mercury and the feather-light diplomacy of the Moon in Libra, will usher in a new strategy for putting yourself into a position of influence. After everything you have discovered about your self since the recent Solar Eclipse in Pisces, expect this subsequent Lunar Eclipse in Libra to bring you to a place that wildly vacillates between love and hate, building friction, tension, and explosive energy!
Ooh, see the fire is sweepin’
Our very street today
Burns like a red coal carpet
Mad bull lost your way
War, children, it’s just a shot away
War will be a pervasive theme during this eclipse as the Sun and Mercury conjunct in Aries will be trined by Mars in Sagittarius, firing up volatility and impulsive aggression. You may feel emboldened by wrath and empowered by words that fly as poisoned arrows. The Moon in Libra will be sextiling Mars in Sagittarius, creating yet another relationship to the spirit of war that will be deeply felt in your most vulnerable places.
It’s just a shot away!
Mars in Sagittarius really emphasizes the religious war, where people sacrifice themselves to defend or violate dogmatic traditions. Therefore, with both luminaries eclipsing in relationship to Mars, the instinct for war and the delight in one’s own righteous anger will arise. Remember that even Jesus Christ once went into a berserker rage and whipped the merchants out of the temple.
That is the emotional volatility that this eclipse can arouse, reminding even the most gracious pacifists of their primal inclinations to fight, thrash and rage against their perceived enemies. Righteous anger can be noble, but it is also a highly manipulable state to be in. Therefore, this eclipse is a time to purge any vulnerable states of militant dogmatism that you may harbor that would leave you susceptible to group hysteria.
In memory of the swirling chaos that braids history and present times together, this Full Moon Eclipse in Libra has more than a touch of the macabre in it. But the grim realities of life are not an excuse to totally succumb to hatred and violence.
In the fall of 1969 when the Rolling Stones recorded the song, Gimme Shelter, the counterculture was in a dismal juxtaposition between romantic ideals and the gritty mechanistic reality of the military/industrial war in Vietnam.
The Vietnam War was waged as a religious war, Communism vs. Capitalism, and continued to be fought for a protracted number of years despite the fact that the counter-culture protested its ideology of murderous profiteering. As a crusade for capitalism, the duration of the Vietnam War remained mostly unaltered by democratic dissent because it was really nothing personal…just business.
Rape, murder!
It’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away
Unfortunately, history is doomed to repeat itself, or rather, stay on an agonizing tape loop. Rape, Murder, War…Rape, Murder, War…And in the 21st century, the New Age/Social Justice/Romantic idealists and murdering mercenaries are still clashing.
Through its ominous instrumentals and visceral images, Gimme Shelter, still perfectly evokes the feeling of dread that an idealist experiences when they fear total annihilation of their dreams for humanity. It’s a song that asks whether or not all that is sacred going to fade away…
Lest you think that artists have it easier than other revolutionaries during hard times, remember that in 1969, when the Stones wrote and recorded Gimme Shelter, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, the Tet Offensive, the brutal suppression of the Prague Spring were all still recent memories. In their personal lives, band member Brian Jones had recently died from disintegration into drugs.
To add another note of tragedy, it has been reported that the featured singer, Merry Clayton, had a miscarriage only a few hours after she had recorded “Rape, murder! It’s just a shot away!” with every fiber of her being.
Ooh, the floods is threat’ning
My very life today
Gimme, gimme shelter
Or I’m gonna fade away
And to finally memorialize the maelstrom of misery that was swirling around this song, the infamous stabbing at Altamont occurred only one day after the album, Let it Bleed was released. This tragedy was seared into cultural memory forever in the documentary, Gimme Shelter, by the Maysles brothers.
No matter what it is that antagonizes you, on this Full Moon Eclipse in Libra, you may offer your righteous anger and your justifications for cruelty to be cleared from your psyche, making space for peace of mind. You don’t have to remain forever beholden to a negative emotion, nor take any action on its behalf.
Feel the riptide of hate well up and wash away. Feel the call to violence rise and then let it bleed out of your open wounds…
If you know that humanity has love and kindness in its soul, just as you do, then you must use the diplomacy that a Full Moon in Libra offers to make the choice to find and follow that instinct.
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Look to Libra’s planetary ruler (Venus) for guidance. Venus’ current presence in Pisces is a beautiful and beneficent placement for anyone seeking to get in touch with compassion, soften rage and quiet anxiety. The choice to find the inclinations for peace and harmony within yourself, even when under duress, is one that takes great courage.
This is the potent alchemical purpose of this Full Moon Eclipse in Libra. Let your base emotional elements be transmuted into golden sovereignty.
I tell you love, sister, it’s just a kiss away
It’s just a kiss away
It’s just a kiss away
It’s just a kiss away
With the cathartic experiences evoked by this eclipse, you will be better able to understand that war is first and foremost within yourself and that the only way to overcome it is to find the middle path that synergizes extreme polarities into harmonious union.
May you find comfort in remembering how many people have been through what you are going through and how many have found miraculous ways to transform evil into benevolence…fear into courage…hatred into love.
It’s just a kiss away
kiss away, kiss away
