I cannot remember a time when I did not understand why certain fields lay fallow. Growing up in the rural Iowa countryside, my sister and I absorbed the adult conversation around us through osmosis, in that way children do. We knew the logic behind crop rotation, and why certain patches of land needed to be rested before being re-planted the next season. It wasn’t just an intellectual knowing; we witnessed it. Sometimes, the fields that abutted our house, separated only by a barbed wire fence, spilled over with tall stalks of corn nearly 8’ high. Sometimes, the fields were full of lush bundles of soybeans my dad could have squashed with his steel toe boots, had he been so inclined. And sometimes, the fields were bare. Waiting.
South node eclipses can feel like the fallowing: the season that precedes the need for a clearing, where it all seems like too much, like you simply must let go or you’ll burst. Then, of course, the release itself. The emptying.
But then: the realization that you’re bare, naked. Waiting. Resting and itching to do more. What’s next?
Fallowings take time, patience, and a not insignificant amount of trust in yourself and your process.
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The Total Solar Eclipse (which is to say, a new moon eclipse) at 12* Sagittarius is exact at 2:42am Eastern on December 4th. This is the fourth and final eclipse in Sagittarius since June 2020, and the final eclipse in the Gemini/Sagittarius eclipse cycle.
Mercury, the planet that governs communication, is closely conjunct this eclipse, and so how we speak, listen, understand, and otherwise think about the ideas and beliefs that we are processing and fallowing may well be up for review.
Writing Prompt Horoscopes for the Solar Eclipse in Sagittarius
These writing prompts indicate some themes that may arise around them. As ever, I recommend reading for your rising sign first.
Also! Now through December 31st, year-long subscriptions to this newsletter are on sale. Subscribe to stay updated on how the eclipse cycle will impact your writing life, and more:
Aries & Aries Rising
What patterns have you been shedding and healing when it comes to wisdom traditions and belief systems? Since June 2020, have you shifted or otherwise let go of commitments around teaching, publishing, educational pursuits, travel, and/or long-term plans? What have you learned?
Taurus & Taurus Rising
What collaborations and shared projects are you releasing? Have you had to recalibrate your relationship to shared resources, debt, inheritance, taxes, alimony, or other such finances since June 2020? How has your relationship to mental health, grief, and/or the psychic changed — have you shed misconceptions or limitations?
Gemini & Gemini Rising
What ideas and structures have you let go of when it comes to partnerships and ways of relating and committing to others that may have worked for former versions of yourself, but not this newest one? How have you made space for new commitments to enter your life since June 2020?
Cancer & Cancer Rising
What patterns around your daily work and health have you come to better understand since June 2020? How have you recalibrated your daily routines to better take care of yourself? What has been taken out with the trash, and what has been invited in?
Leo & Leo Rising
What old passion projects and creative ventures have you perhaps finally been willing to let go of, to say goodbye to in order to make room for the new? How have you come to understand that creative growth is not always linear, but that each new project still builds and expands your conception of the possible? How has your relationship to desire shifted since June 2020?
Virgo & Virgo Rising
What are you sloughing off when it comes to old patterns around the past, family life, and/or heritage? Since June 2020, you’ve been on a journey, releasing or otherwise reframing what home means or can mean to you. What have you learned, and how is your belief in what’s possible shifting?
Libra & Libra Rising
What are you releasing when it comes to writing projects and ideas that don’t connect to where you’re moving in your creative work? Has your daily writing routine — or even where you write, such as your home — shifted significantly since June 2020? How do these changes feel to you, and how are you taking steps to move confidently in new directions?
Scorpio & Scorpio Rising
What old ways of money-making are you discarding that aren’t suited to the present moment? What ideas around money and income, or even value itself, have you let go of or otherwise recalibrated since June 2020? What is emerging in its place?
Sagittarius & Sagittarius Rising
What changes have you noticed in yourself since June 2020? What desires are different? Have you literally altered your appearance or certain behaviors, or is it simply that you’ve let go of old ways of being or believing that you realized were no longer working for you? What have you cleared away in this last year and a half in order to make way for the new sprouts of self and identity that you’re growing into?
Capricorn & Capricorn Rising
Have you spent time in intentional solitude, doing the deep work of therapy or other therapeutic practices to really work through things? Have you let go of behind the scenes projects that you realized were ultimately unsatisfactory or otherwise attached to an older belief or ideal you no longer hold? What realizations have the last year and a half brought to your conscious mind?
Aquarius & Aquarius Rising
When it comes to community commitments, friendships, and groups, what have you realized you need less of — and more space for? While the pandemic has brought a natural clearing out of social life for many, for you, it has been a more prominent theme, with more intent behind certain cullings; so, here at the end of the eclipse cycle, what cullings have you made (or avoided making), and what have they made space for (or continued to crowd) in your life?
Pisces & Pisces Rising
Since June 2020, you have been undergoing a major recalibration when it comes to how others see you and also how you yourself want to be seen, particularly around public life and career. What have you realized about how you value — or don’t value — certain spotlights and kinds of attention? How do you want to move in the world?