the (meta)physics of time: it's eclipse season

on the magic of change and the lunar eclipse in libra

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Astrology is, in many ways, the magic of time. The observation of the Spirit(s) of time. Is it any surprise that cultures the world over — the Mayans, the Chinese, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Aztecs — all developed astrologies, which is to say, calendars of both mundane and spiritual significance for marking the passage of time. The experience of aging and maturation is something that unites every species on this planet. 

Time is, as the saying goes, the one resource you can’t get back — so, as another axiom goes, be wise in how you spend yours. 

But time is not the same for everyone, and not only in the sense that you actually don’t have the same 24 hours a day as Beyoncé. Scientists are well aware, for example, that time passes more quickly in the mountains than at sea level. An incremental difference, but one that shows up in the passage of a life. Time does not, actually, pass at the same rate everywhere on earth. Its quality and quantity vary according to locale. 

Perhaps you know this already. Many things, after all, are different in the mountains versus at sea level — and extrapolating out to the elements of symbol and metaphor, isn’t it fitting that air in its highest elevations would move more rapidly than water at the base of the earth? 

More rollicking is the fact that there is, generally, no such thing as The Present. There is only The Past and The Future, one moment that has happened rolling into the next. 

As physicist Carlo Rovelli wrote in his eminently readable The Order of Time, 

The difference between past and future, between cause and effect, between memory and hope, between regret and intention… in the elementary laws that describe the mechanisms of the world, there is no such difference.

But what makes things The Past versus The Future? What distinguishes these things in time, scientifically speaking? 

The law of heat. 

Also Rovelli: 

A ball may fall, but it can also come back up, by rebounding, for instance. Heat cannot. This is the only basic law of physics that distinguishes the past from the future. None of the others do so. Not Newton's laws governing the mechanics of the world; not the equations for electricity and magnetism formulated by Maxwell. Not Einstein’s on relativistic gravity, nor those of quantum mechanics…. Not one of these equations distinguishes the past from the future. If a sequence of events is allowed by these equations, so is the same sequence run backward in time. In the elementary equations of the world, the arrow of time appears only where there is heat. The link between time and heat is therefore fundamental: every time a difference is manifested between the past and the future, heat is involved. In every sequence of events that becomes absurd if projected backward, there is something that is heating up. 

Only where there is heat is there a distinction between past and future. Thoughts, for instance, unfold from the past to the future, not vice versa—and, in fact, thinking produces heat in our heads.

Inasmuch as astrology is the study of time, it is also, then, a kind of metaphysical observation of thermodynamics. Which is to say, much of astrology has to do with symbolically interpreting Heat’s byproducts: friction (the increase of heat) and entropy (its denouement).

What is an intense astrological transit in the birth chart if not friction? What is a period of increased ease, flow, and “finally getting a break” if not entropy? 

Change is inevitable. Another axiom: Change is the only constant. Rovelli, again: “The world is a network of events. Nothing is; things happen.”

Why talk about the physics of time on the eve of an eclipse? Why take us all back to high school science classes? In part, because astrology and astronomy used to be the same thing, thousands of years ago, but have long since been separated into the Magical and the Mundane. Especially in this present revival of interest in and engagement with astrology, I think it’s important to call back to the science and natural observation from which we derive astrological interpretation, metaphor, symbolism, and significance in the first place. 

Which is to say: I want us, in our exploration of astrology, to be grounded in the natural order of the world. There are, always, processes of friction or entropy ongoing in different parts of our lives. The cycle of growth and denouement, of peaking and plateauing, of building up to something and letting go, are as predictable — dare I say normal — as the spinning of the Earth itself. 

Nothing is. Things happen. We are human beings, emphasis on the present participle of “ing.” Being is an action, and the future is, as yet, unfixed — something that is, in many ways, being decided moment by moment with every action and choice. 

As someone who grew up in fundamentalist evangelical Christianity, where everything was understood as God’s will, where I learned from infancy that I was powerless to do any good in this world outside of what God intended for me, I find a radical, chain-breaking freedom in the idea that we are, always, moment by moment, a future becoming. While the idea of freewill, wholesale, is problematized by our respective positionalities, resources and points of access, genetics, and multitudinous other factors, there is still a kind of freewill that is available to us in this recognition and embrace of Change. 

It is also a freewill, however, that has been decidedly poisoned by the contemporary western capitalist mythos of Productivity. How to win at growth. How to win at being “well.” How to fix yourself. How to get so better that you get a gold star. 

The impacts of this kind of wellness culture that emphasizes constant effort to “get better” is on display in Melissa Broder’s harrowing essay for Harper’s Bazaar about the difficulties and burnout in pursuing “wellness culture.” (Fair warning, Broder lumps together such disparate things as talk therapy and Goop juices in her definition of “wellness”). While the article doesn’t dive deeply into the capitalist, white supremacist beliefs underlying so many IG-ified wellness spaces, anyone who is familiar with these spaces will feel a perhaps familiar anxiety of “trying to get better” jumping off the page. In many ways, Broder’s wide-ranging representation of the wellness sphere rings true — it’s easy to see how, to spiritually hungry and earnest seekers, the IG-ification of therapist influencers and astrological horoscope meme accounts might all feel like the same thing. Inasmuch as some practitioners in those spaces constantly preach Growth (which is not the same thing as change) and decidedly individual approaches that 1) can be achieved without community and 2) are without an acknowledgment that some change is, in fact, a necessary release, rest, and reset, then: yes. Those spaces, selling self-improvement, are in fact deeply toxic, in the most literal sense of toxicity literally being poison to the mind and spirit. Notably, after putting herself through the ringer of that wellness circuit, Broder cratered even harder than she had before the events that inspired her to seek out help in the first place. 

So many such spaces are all friction with no entropy. All effort with no processing. All doing, no being. 

To crash is inevitable. 

In a capitalist society, Rovelli’s affirmation that “nothing is; things happen” may well feel like a call to Produce, to make, to do, to plan. 

In a capitalist society, a potent astrological event such as an eclipse can feel like a literal call to action. When I hear questions like, “What are you doing for the eclipse?” or “How are you managing this astro-weather?” all I hear is, “How can I control what’s happening around me?”

We must divest from the illusion of control that so much contemporary wellness (and plenty of astrologers and diviners) sell. 

Consider: how many eclipses did you live through before knowing about eclipses? 

Few things are certain: 

The world turns. 

We have a certain amount of freewill in how we respond to it. 

Responding with an attempt to so ferociously control an outcome, especially one born of fear or worry, is, perhaps, not the way. 

An unpopular thing to say: Many people come to astrology in an effort to predict their way out of pain. 

But pain, too, is a fact of life. An essential source of friction. In this, it can be a teacher. 

What is hindsight but that unique demarcation between the where and the when of a painful event? The ability to process and slow down and put enough distance between you, now, and you, then. 

It is hard to comment on, or make sense of, a period of intense friction when you are still in it. Perspective is the gift of time passed and changes made.

It is very hard to get perspective on an event that we are experiencing. It is impossible to have perspective on an event (like, say, an eclipse) that we are, collectively, yet to experience. What will this eclipse mean for you? I don’t know. I could guess, based on your birth chart, but I do not actually know your life. I don’t know the choices you are making from one moment to the next, how you have spent the first three months of the year. I don’t know what choices people in your life have made that are informing yours. I don’t know how you take accountability, or don’t. How you accept the lessons of pain, or avoid them. I don’t know your relationship to productivity. I don’t know the pain points that inform how you feel worthy, the markers by which you deem a choice or action “worth it.”

This is the kind of reflection that an eclipse invites. And I’m going to be real. So many folks who are interested in pop astrology these days just want to be told what to do. Want to be told what is going to happen without doing any reflecting on their own complicity or agency. 

The best way to manage this eclipse is to move through it. Acknowledge that it’s happening, and go about your day. Be mindful of how you treat people. Be mindful of how you treat yourself. Consider your complicity in wrongs. Consider the agency you have to initiate change: even change that invites perhaps-dreaded entropy.

Do not give in to fear, for anything that puts you in fear is, in that moment, threatening your agency. 

If you are in a state of fear around this eclipse, or around current astrology as it may be happening to you, take a step back. The stars and planets will still be there, doing their own thing, showing up in your life in varied ways. They’re not going anywhere. They’ll be here for you when you return. 

And for those of you who have read this much and been like, Jeanna, where the hell is the astrology? Here it is: The lunar eclipse will be exact at 5* of Libra at 3:00am Eastern (cute, right?), Monday, March 24th. The moon will be co-present with Mercury and Chiron. 

I recommend sleep and rest. 

A few parting thoughts: 

Rovelli, again: “We are struggling to adapt our language and our intuition to a new discovery: the fact that ‘past’ and ‘future’ do not have a universal meaning. Instead, they have a meaning that changes between here and there. That’s all there is to it.” That's all there is to it. 

I was recently reminded that Mary Oliver’s answer to her famous question — “what are you going to do with your one wild and precious life?” — was to observe flowers and go for walks in nature. 

Observe.

And be.

That is the medicine for this eclipse season. 

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A note for paid subscribers:  

I woke up with the very strong feeling that sending Writing With the Moon during this first half of eclipse season, at least — around the Ketu south node eclipse — was not the way. Anything that was about anything other than Deep Rest felt profoundly wrong. This instinct was confirmed by divination this morning — a process which, incidentally, strongly confirmed the themes of Rest and Play and Exploration for this time. 

I also pulled an oracle card, to see if there were further messages that might want to come through. Once again: confirmation of rest, of acceptance in the way of the Serenity Prayer, of Settling In. The goddess who spoke through this divination was Skuld, one of the three Norns (comparably, the Fates) of Norse mythology, who sits beneath Yggdrasil, the tree of life, spinning time and destiny. Skuld, also thought to be a Valkyrie, is the sister who is tied to the future: her name means “Shall-Be” or “She Who Is Becoming.” She is often shown as veiled, unknown, reflecting how the future is, ultimately, a mystery: something that we can only do so much to control. 

And so there will be a brief break for the next two weeks for the Writing With the Moon column (whether we resume in the second half of eclipse season, with the Rahu north node eclipse, will also be determined by divination). Consider this, instead, a prescription for passive creative inputs — comfort books, favorite films — and (of course) Rest.

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