the total lunar eclipse in scorpio for writers
let's talk about dreams and those major clearings
Hi folks,
It’s here — the grand finale to this eclipse season. A few quick things before we dive in:
Some spoilers for Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness herein (largely through gifs), so if you’re still trying to avoid those, postpone this one!
Registration for my class How to Write a Book Proposal is open! Class starts June 5. (Please note that this will be the last time I teach the course to the general public this year.)
A casual reminder that annual subscriptions to this newsletter are ON SALE for 30% off until 11:59p tonight! This newsletter contributes to my rent, so subscriptions are always incredibly appreciated. And also! Part 2 to the Monthly Guide to May’s Astrology is going out later today, which is exclusive to paid supporters.
As ever, thanks for being here.
Jeanna
The last few nights in a row, I’ve dreamed about people who used to be important in my life, whose desires and ambitions no longer create the shape of my own. Each morning, I’ve awoken with a start, heart pounding — the anxiety that comes from inadvertently touching a part of your life you thought you’d buried.
In Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the latest offering from the MCU, our favorite sorcerer learns that dreams are portals to our experiences in other worlds: glimpses of a life that went differently. In our own reality, psychologists theorize as to dreams’ messages from our subconscious. An entire field of New Age thought is dedicated to dream interpretation; interpreting dreams as omens or even prophecies is, of course, an old practice common to many cultures the world over.
My Grandma Kadlec, a devout Catholic and former librarian who had figurines of angels and other fantastical wingéd creatures all over her apartment, was obsessed with understanding dreams. Had so many books on them that were always right there for my perusal in her apartment when, as an adolescent, my vivid, recurring dreams and nightmares were alternate sources of comfort and haunting. To her, interpreting the stories of our sleep was not sin.
I don’t know what I think about dreams. I do know that it’s eclipse season, that today we have a total lunar south node eclipse where, like a snake, we shed another skin.
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The total lunar eclipse (which is to say a full moon), south node eclipse in Scorpio comes to us at 25* of Scorpio in the wee hours of the night, 12:14a Eastern on May 16. Eclipses come in pairs, and this is the follow-up to the Taurus eclipse we had a few weeks ago. We will have another pair of Taurus-Scorpio eclipses at year’s end, on October 25th (the day my book comes out) and November 8th (which is… the election).
Which is to say: eclipses, like everything else in the cosmos, are cyclical. Predictable. Yes, eclipses invite great clearings and also great hunger — life and death, never one without the other — but they are rarely releasing or inviting something that hasn’t already been moving through your peripheral vision.
Eclipses tend to be surprising only for those most committed to the blinders of denial.
This is especially true of south node eclipses. Whereas the north node is hungry, looking to devour, the south node of the moon, called Ketu in Hindu mythology, desperately wants to let go. To empty itself. To take a left turn. To release the “shoulds” and “oughts” and move into a more edifying space.
Thematically, this kind of eclipse dovetails well with Scorpio’s style. Scorpio, which doesn’t have the patience for surface-level bullshit, which is more than happy to clear away the excess commitments, the fake finery, the hangers-on, the dross. However, Scorpio also guards its treasures jealously: it is, after all, fixed water — stubborn, unyielding, a fortified well rather than a rushing river. What it has accumulated and let in, it can be loath to let go.
The Scorpio house of your chart will reveal more about what area of life is experiencing an emptying out, a reorientation, a release.
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Dreams aren’t just “a series of thoughts, images, or emotions occurring during sleep,” as put by the Merriam-Webster. Dreams are also “a strongly desired goal or purpose” or even “something that fully satisfies a wish.” The subconscious made conscious. The intangible brought to life.
Visions and nightmares are clarifying, both. But our desires are, too. Those ephemeral waking dreams often masquerading as “goals” point us toward a direction: not an inherently moral one, but rather, an indicator of we are putting our energy, our time, our devotion. What we truly crave, in spite of what we pay lip service to. (To quote the Spice Girls: what we want, what we really really want.)
Eclipse season offers a potent period where those everyday dreams become magnified so that we can see them more clearly in the mirror. Witness our reflection, stripped away by eclipse magic of the stories we tell ourselves. Of our dreams’ real impact on our lives, and the lives of our beloveds. In so doing, we can assess what needs to change, or even be fully retired — as well as what we actually require more of.
Letting go of or even revising dreams, especially long-held ones, can ache. But what the south node clears, it in turn creates space for. It reveals a new field ripe for the planting that you didn’t even know was there. Dreams are, in fact, portals to the life we are consciously, intentionally creating in the here and now.
As far as we know, this is our one life in this reality. What are you going to do with it?
Writing Prompts for the Total Lunar Eclipse in Scorpio
What in your life has felt like it’s naturally shifting, like it needs a new structure, purpose, direction? What might need to go altogether? How does this feel to you? How does it impact and recreate your relationship to your creativity?
Look at the Scorpio house of your chart. Even if you don’t have planets in that house (totally normal; it’s impossible to have a planet in every part of the chart), that house still rules a part of your life that is still being eclipsed by this moon. Google the parts of life that your Scorpio house rules. Does this resonate with what you’re experiencing? How, or how not?