Lammas 2009: The Glory of Leo, the Illumination of the Eclipses

Despite the fact that this is my absolute favorite time of year, the Lammas newsletter is always the hardest one to write. Honestly. After the grand imbalances of the Summer Solstice, astrologically and otherwise, the weeks that follow find the world and it's people starting to set themselves back to rights, both consciously and unconsciously. And it is just a big freaking job. And when the weather is great, who wants to work that hard? Seriously. And if that weren't enough, there is the Hero factor. The job of figuring it all out and then making it happen is just a big one, requiring epic strengths most of us are not clear we have. Or at least not at present. The chances of timely success can feel about as probable as holding back the tide. Or in my neighborhood, the fog.

The Shabbat following the Solstice - Lammas - is when we start to see how that coming back to balance process is all working out. Or not. Traditionally observed sometime between August 1st - 6th, Lammas (also known as Lughnasa, Lughnassa, Lughnasad, or Lughnasadh) marks the end of summer and beginning of the harvest season. The first of the three traditional harvest celebrations, Lammas precedes the Fall Equinox and Samhain. Like all Shabbat days, Lammas is a time of assessment, or reassessment, a time where you take a long and honest look at where you are, how you got here, where you want to be and the best way to get there. This is, by necessity, also a time of reflection, where you revisit and revise your goals and your methods of attaining them, to ensure get the harvest you want.

This year Lammas seems just a little more potent, and for good reason. There are technically two of them. By the Solar calendar it is Sunday, August 2nd, and by the Lunar one Lammas on Wednesday August 5th. The latter one is pretty phat, for reasons I will explain further on. Regardless of when and how you choose to celebrate it, Lammas is a time of reckoning. Again, to use the harvest metaphor, growing anything is such a crapshoot: you plant a bunch of things and you tend to them the best you can, and you just never know what is going to come up and what isn't. And when. It is so delightfully, maddeningly random.

But then again, it's not. There are about a gazillion variables, some seen and some unseen that determine the outcomes. The great psychological garden that is your life is no different. You do your best to plant the seeds you think will bear you the harvest you want, and you just keep tweaking it until you get it right. Or as close to right as you can reasonable expect to get. And along the way, it helps to look to the stars for guidance. Enter Leo: this time of year, the major influence is the Glorious sign of the Lion.

leo stained glass

The Spirit of Leo

Ruled by the Sun, Leo's realm is everything that is bright and golden, shining and warm. One of the things that is just so damn endearing about Leo is he is the Lord of All Things Grand. For the Lion, everything is just bigger and more magnificent than it is for the rest of us. From their striking physical attributes to their magnificent power and strength to their gargantuan lust for life, our Leo friends do not live in a plain, boring or mediocre world. Ever. Given that, they are pretty much always anything but dull. As children they have a penchant for magic and as adults are fearless risk-takers who need frequent adventures to break up the banal and mundane monotonies of responsible adult life.

But their graces are not fragile or delicate, not by any means. There is ruggedness and strength to their beauty. Leo rules the volcano-forged pacific islands, especially Hawaii, and so their grace is born of endless birth and death cycles. Like those islands, Leo's beauty is sensuous, enchanting and enduring. And tough. Like dandelions, Leo's can somehow manage to survive and thrive under the harshest of conditions. As a fixed, male, fire sign, they have an indomitable spirit. Leo is, in the immortal words of Bob Dylan and, more recently Will.i.am, Forever Young.

Add this all up, and you seem to have the perfect recipe for a hero, or any sort of heroism your Lammas time is requesting of you. But like everything else, that youthful Leonine spirit can be both a blessing and a curse. The downside of Leo is pure, unadulterated id. They are driven by the need to freely and fully express themselves at all times, and the desire to be worshipped and adored while doing it. Especially while (but not limited to) coming to the rescue of someone or something. Their life lesson is to develop the ability to function within the confines of external structures without an audience and an applause track. Humility and discretion are also parts of that equation. Due to their innate, uh, dramatic flair, your Leo pal bores very easily. Keeping them emotionally nourished, intellectually stimulated, and positively focused is absolutely essential, otherwise they will become monstrous oddities, creating way over the top, soap-opera caliber psychodramas in real life and real time. Over and over and over again.

So at Lammas time, when there is so much Leo in the air, the dilemma is knowing how and when to be golden one, the champion, and shine like the sun. Just how do you be the Sun King, the Superhero? How do you be big and beautiful, but not so much as to flame out or become some sort of freak? Everyone has Leo in their natal charts somewhere, so if you do not have it on your Sun, Moon or Ascendant, do not despair. It's there somewhere, and where Leo is in your natal chart is where you will always be the one voted most likely to save the day. So start there. And this particular summer, if you have had any trouble figuring out where those fine, fine lines are, the Eclipses and their inherent illumination will help you clear that right up. Or at least be able to see it a little better.

The Mysteries and Revelations of the Eclipses

Okay, some of you folks have been asking about the Eclipses. Okay, a lot of you. So it is clear that something needs to be said. Something empowering. The tricky part is the Eclipses of this summer are just way bigger than normal. Oh, that, and Eclipses are already simultaneously some of the most powerful, most obscure and most controversial transits in all astrology. That, and there just has not been a lot of research done in this area, and what exists is frequently contradictory and almost always negative. Seriously. It's hard not to be Debbie Downer about it when the two biggest experts in this field, Bernadette Brady and Rose Lineman, see Eclipses almost exclusively as indicators of negative events, especially if any of the planets involved fall within two degrees of anything in your natal chart. I hate that, it just doesn't leave you anywhere to go. Except maybe up. So here is how I think you get there.

First you have to look at what is happening. Eclipses usually happen in sets of two that occur about six months apart. We had two this winter in January and February, so it only goes to follow that we would have two in the summer. But this summer, we have three. Yes, three. So you know, right off the top, that the Eclipses of the summer will be the most powerful we have had in many years, simply because there are more of them. So to me, that just gives you all the more opportunities to get clear. Or clearer. The first one is a Penumbral Lunar Eclipse that occurred at 2:38 a.m. PDT, on the morning of July 7th.

The Moon was at 15 degrees Capricorn and the Sun was exactly opposite at 15 degrees Cancer. The next one, which occurred July 21st was a Solar Total Eclipse, meaning the Sun and Moon were exactly conjunct. This one was considered to be particularly powerful, as occurred when both planets were at 29 degrees Cancer. For you greenhorns, there is a school of thought in astrology that the last degree of any sign, the 29th degree, is the most powerful. So things that happen here, at the 29th degree of any sign, are considered to be far more intense. And from the traffic in my office that week, I would say that theory is definitely more fact than fiction.

The third and last Eclipse of the summer, the bonus Eclipse, is a Lunar Appulse or Penumbral Lunar Eclipse. It occurs when the Sun is at 13 degrees Leo and the Moon is full at 13 degrees Aquarius, on August 5th, at 5:39 p.m. PDT, which is also, for you Virgos and those others who have been paying acute attention, Lammas. It will definitely be the most powerful day for prayers, religious services and ceremonies we have seen in awhile.

One theory I share with the older generation of astrologers is that of placement. I do believe an Eclipse falling within two degree of anything in your natal chart will definitely be felt, and if you manage the moment appropriately, it will be a transformational experience. But it is in the nature of that experience where I disagree with my elders. Astronomically, Eclipses are where something is concealed and then revealed. Something that was once in the shadows is now not. And sometimes it is the presence of the shadow itself that is the main event. As above, so below. I don't think the dramatic events of an Eclipse are anywhere near as significant as the deeper problems and issues they reveal, and force us to face. For example, one of the things we have come to expect during a pair of eclipses is a series of political sex scandals. There is just always at least one. While these betrayals of families and the public trust are devastating in and of themselves, there is far deeper pain in the realization that we as a people have continued to fail at addressing the corruptive effects of power, and how it gives so many of our elected leaders the impression they are above any laws of man or God.

The single greatest gift of an Eclipse is that of clarity, that wickedly wonderful puncture of your veil of denial. After them, you see your life and it's dilemmas a whole lot clearer than you did before. And the solutions. The tricky part is some of what you can now see is hard to accept, and even harder to live with. That is largely because it usually involves some aspect of your shadow, where your Superhero's tragic flaws are getting in the way. And because of the Cancer/Capricorn influence of these Eclipses, I am seeing a lot of folks getting clearer on where this is playing out in those realms of their lives: work and career, homes and families and money. Particularly in those who are already embroiled in some Saturn cycle. In particular, I am seeing a lot of folks who are in a Saturn Return, or in the midst of generational influences such as transiting Saturn conjunct natal Pluto (those born in the early 1960's), or Pluto squaring natal Neptune (those born in the early 1940's), or anyone with very much at all in Libra, as transiting Saturn will be entering that sign this fall.

me, my shadow and a friend

Finding and Liberating Your Sun-King Superhero

In closing, if this Lammas finds you sailing confidently into the heart of your summer's challenge, good for you. Clearly you found your inner warrior, your Sun King, your Superhero. If you are not and have not, take heart, for there are ways in which you are right on schedule. You are just at a different point on that line. So much of my practice is working with people who are fairly aggressively pursuing a goal or a heart's desire, and helping them create comprehensive success strategies. And any healthy success strategy is going to contain contingencies for those moments when confidence fails and will falls short. You can get there from here, baby, you just have to find the way that is right for you and the situation. And there is always a way (especially for you Scorpios).

There is always something, some way the Shabbat of the summer's height, Solstice, makes you the prodigal son. It brings you home, wiser for the lessons of your journey. And the Shabbat of the waning summer, Lammas, asks that you take your newfound wisdom and become a Superhero, returning to your home and hearth, kith and kin to save them and serve them in ways that both try and expand your soul. Seriously. It's just what is, and what has been since man could walk upright. It is at the heart of that we hold hear, and all of our cultural diversions: art and literature, the blues and baseball. And most of the worlds best political systems. Oh, and don't forget religions.

Nothing brings you back to your faith like a good challenge. One of the things I love about our religious traditions is their heroes. And how the highs and lows of their stories are so parallel to our own. These archetypes are so very helpful to us, especially in times such as this, as their stories convey so many important universal truths. Of particular poignancy now are the tales of the failures or fall from grace - and then subsequent redemption - our heroes go through before they save the day. I am seeing a lot of that these days. Though everyone is going through it in some way or another, it seems to be particularly hard on the Earth signs (Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn), or those with a lot of the element of earth in their natal charts. As they are often older, wiser souls, they usually don't do things like that, and their more human moments tend to hit them pretty hard.

A word to the wise here, be gentle with yourself in these moments. Even Christ balked. As long as you are moving forward, it's all good. And then try to make it fun. Remember, it is summer still, and the hand on the rudder is Leo's. When Leo is in the house, whatever is going on absolutely has to be fun. Or at the very least, interesting. So by the same token, when there is a lot of Leo going on astrologically, the first question you always, always have to be asking yourself is How do we make this fun? Or more fun? How do you put on your proverbial Sailin' Shoes? (Though with some of us, it is all about finding them first.) With Leo, it doesn't matter so much what you do, it's how you do it. So whatever you do, do it big. And if you get stuck, call me. We'll figure it out.
Blessings,

Beth