Full Moon & Lunar Eclipse in Leo: Rites of Passage

Overnight Sunday, the Full Moon in Leo arrives. This is a special Moon, landing in the first degrees of Leo and Capricorn (Aquarius!), the Moon at 0 Leo, the Sun at 0 Cap (Aquarius!). Since this Moon aligns with the Moon’s Nodes, it is also an eclipse.

This is a total lunar eclipse visible in the central Pacific, the Americas, Europe, and Africa. This is also a Supermoon, that time when the Moon appears larger in the sky because she is closer to us. This is a big deal.

Leo loves the spotlight. At this particular Full Moon, I don’t think the Leo Moon could be more of a focal point. Alone with the North Node that points toward the future, all the other planets and points look to the Moon.

This is the moment. We are in the spotlight, called to share our gift with the world. This is our time to shine.

Yet Leo also fears the spotlight. What if I fumble, stumble, or forget my lines? What if they don’t love me? What if they laugh or jeer? A Leo lost in shadow craves constant attention to assuage those very fears.

This eclipsed Full Moon is in shadow. Our Earth lines up with the Moon, blocking much of the Sun’s light. Instead of a glowing, golden orb, we see the Blood Moon, a dusky orange-red.

We are poised at the edge of the stage, awaiting our cue, but the lights don’t come up. We realize we don’t know where we are or what’s about to happen. The script has changed and we didn’t get a copy.

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So instead of our fifteen minutes of fame, this Full Moon Eclipse is more like a rite of passage. We are the initiates. We know something momentous is happening. We can feel it. But we are, literally and symbolically, mythically, in the dark. We must be ready without knowing what happens next.

This is not a comfortable place to be, this not-knowing.

As modern people, we don’t like it. We have been raised and trained and are constantly told we ought to know. Goals, spreadsheets, trajectories, budgets, affirmations, life plans—all assume we know what we want, who we are, where we’re going, and the best way to get there.

If you don’t, there are endless books, blogs, videos, courses, and coaches to help with that.

And sometimes, still, We. Don’t. Know.

This Full Moon Eclipse finds us in a place where certainty is irrelevant. The patterns and symbols point to this in multiple ways.

Eclipses show up when the Sun and Moon align with each other and are close to the Moon’s Nodes. Whether we have a solar eclipse at a New Moon or a lunar eclipse at a Full Moon, every time, the Sun, Moon, and Nodes of the Moon line up.

Most often, when this occurs, the Nodes are going to be in the same signs as the Sun and Moon. This time, they’re not.

The Nodes of the Moon moved not long ago. The North Node of the future is in the Moon’s home sign, Cancer. The South Node of the past is in Saturn’s sign, Capricorn. This shift points to, among other things, the ways we are redefining traditional ideas about the masculine and the feminine, and how those archetypes are played out in structures of privilege, power, caring, and service.

The Sun and Moon, though, have slipped into Leo and Aquarius, the signs the Nodes have just left behind.

So this Full Moon is the culmination of the last eclipse cycle in Leo and Aquarius, the one that included the “Great American Eclipse” in August of 2017. At the same time, we have already begun the new Cancer-Capricorn eclipse cycle, which started at the New Moon on January 5.

We are betwixt and between. This is a threshold, a liminal space. Some things are moving away, fading, dying. Other things are coming in, being born. But right now, in this moment, we can’t see clearly.

This is precisely what happens during a rite of passage.

This concept can apply any time we have a change in status. Traditionally, rites of passage happened around birth, the transition to adulthood, marriage, and death. There are rites of passage to welcome warriors home. To help someone reintegrate into the community after a serious illness. To be recognized as a full member of a society of healers, or practitioners of magic.

In all these, the pattern includes times of separation, transition, and reintegration. A child might be separated from her family and taken to a secluded space, along with other children. A woman about to give birth might move to a special birthing place accompanied by other women. A man might withdraw alone into the wilderness. This is the separation from what we have been before.

We are now in a great cultural and ecological separation. We cannot continue as we have if we wish to survive. We feel wrenched, torn, pulled forcibly away from what we have known. We are confronted with the consequences of what we have been and what we have done.

This is a long term process signified by transitions of the Nodes of the Moon, and transitions of the outer planets Pluto, Uranus, and Neptune, and the asteroid Chiron. As we approach some kind of crisis point, we feel these pressures to change speeding up, increasing in force.

As Yeats said so many decades ago, the center cannot hold.

The middle piece of a rite of passage is called transition, but this is a mild word for what occurs. We are no longer what we were. We are not yet what we will be. So what are we?

This is transformation. It’s the goo inside the chrysalis, the warrior who is no longer on the battlefield but does not know how to come home, the person lost in a dark night of the soul. This is where we are at this Full Moon.

The special challenge in the world today is, we really do not know what comes next.

In traditional rites of passage, the process is mapped out. The way is known. The initiate does not know, but those who hold the ritual have a deep understanding of its process. The initiate may be unsettled, anxious, even deeply afraid, because his or her outcome is not yet known. Still, there is a broader security in knowing the process is there, others have gone through it and survived, even thrived. Someone knows what’s going on.

Today, the changes are on such a massive scale we have no road map. If someone is orchestrating this transformation, they are not human and haven’t shared the playbook. We are finding our way, yes, and also creating the way.

The Moon is with the North Node of the future, Leo allied with Cancer. This is the Mother as Queen, the illumination of women’s ways of knowing and feeling and being in the world.

The Sun at 0 Aquarius, a place of clear vision and high ideals, is aligned with the South Node of the past, and Pluto, Mercury, and Saturn all in Capricorn. This is a great weight on this past-oriented, traditional masculine side of the scales.

Meanwhile, Uranus the revolutionary squares the Nodes from the last, intensely fiery degrees of Aries. He too is about to make a big transition into Taurus, a change we will watch unfold over the next eight years.

Venus and Jupiter, together in Sagittarius, sextile Neptune in Pisces and trine Mars in Aries. Here we find bright visions, deep dreams, and a genuine excitement about whatever comes next.

This can also be a place of delusion, inflation, and overextending, unless we keep our feet on the ground.

Staying grounded is the key. Saturn squares Mars, doing his best to keep us from charging right off the nearest cliff.

And the Moon, we remember, is the body. When our Earth, our physical home, blocks the Sun’s light from the Moon, our closest ally in the heavens, we are brought down to earth.

Full Moons illuminate but right now we can’t see well. We can, however, feel.

This Full Moon is a time for orienting not with the mind but with the gut. What do we know in our bodies? What do we feel a need to turn toward, or turn away from? What do we know in our bones is true? Or false?

At this Moon, tune in to the physical world, including your own physical world. Notice how the natural world is slower, mostly, than our human constructions. Notice how change happens, and why. Notice how your body is changing, and why.

The reintegration stage will come. We can’t see it, though we have many visions of what it might be, could be. In this moment, we are stumbling.

This is where we are now. This is where we know, and don’t know. Only from here can we begin.

I close with a line from Mary Oliver’s well-loved poem, Wild Geese :

“You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves …”