Eclipse Season
Welcome to the eclipse portal.
Eclipse season can be emotional, overwhelming and chaotic. But this turmoil does not mean that life is out to get us, it is actually the opposite. Eclipses sweep away the bullshit and present us with a painfully honest mirror of ourselves. Eclipses are in service to our souls journey. However, our minds often want to cling to what we know, that’s where we feel safe. When eclipse season graces us with the powerful winds of destiny, it can feel brutal—but they are ultimately here to steer us towards our truth.
Every 6 months we travel through the eclipse portal. Sometimes it feels like a slap in the face, a rollercoaster, an unraveling, a revelation, a death. This happens every spring and fall, the seasons of change. In spring we feel the pressure of blossoming after our hibernation and now, in fall, we feel the tenderness of surrendering to our inward descent. We are born and we die, these are the only certainties in our lives, along with the promise of change. And we play out this primordial cycle of change every year, every eclipse season, every month, every day. Our lives are interwoven in the web of nature. Now that the garden is dying and the burnt leaves are falling, we must surrender to our own transformation.
This Taurus/Scorpio eclipse cycle began on November 19, 2021 with a lunar eclipse in Taurus and now we end the cycle this upcoming October 28, 2023 with a lunar eclipse in Taurus.
Taurus is the first breath in of spring and Scorpio is the exhale of fall. It is a cycle of life and death. It is a struggle with and reclamation of, power. It is about defining our values and allowing them to change and grow over time.
We have come full circle, we have completed a cycle and likely learned many lessons. So what does it all mean? I see these cycles as metaphors and mirrors of our own personal cycles. This particular polarity of energies has been especially concerned with our power and security. How do we embody our power? Do we give away our power? Do we abuse our power? Do we feel safe? How can we cultivate security?
For me, all the eclipses on the Taurus/Scorpio axis have coincided with a journey of reclaiming personal power and finding home.
With this new and evolving journal space, I am trying to lean into more vulnerability. I had hoped I could give more intimate details and wrap up my story in a perfect metaphorical lesson. But the truth is, I’m not there yet. I don’t know enough yet, my journey is still in process. And even though we are just about to end this years long Taurus/Scorpio cycle, we aren’t finished yet. Truthfully, we never fully will be. As one cycle ends, another begins. But this is precisely the nature of eclipse season. The eclipses are potent moments of reflection, recovery and realignment.
Think back to what was coming up for you when this eclipse cycle started in 2021 and take stock of the journey you’ve been on. There is a story to be uncovered here. My hope is that you can find a thread of connection that can guide you to see the bigger picture of your struggles and triumphs. You are the one who makes the meaning and creates the story.
The tarot card I pulled for us is The High Priestess. And she is reversed. This is a powerful metaphor for how eclipse season flips our world upside down. But this reversal is not a bad thing. It is simply pointing us inward and asking us to turn towards our intuition.
The High Priestess sits in front of a thin veil of pomegranates which separates the conscious from the unconscious. She is the guardian of this threshold between the seen and unseen. She takes our hand into the underworld and urges us to forge our own path through the dark waters. It is in these liminal spaces that we can begin to remember who we are and listen to what our soul yearns for.
I have found that the mysteries of our dreamworld are often the key to this discovery process. The High priestess knows that our dreams speak our truth, even if we can’t understand or even recall them. Every night, our dreams gift us with multitudes of metaphors and layers of symbolic information. We simply need to give attention to our dreams in order to evolve our recall and understanding. Our dreams are yearning for us to listen and engage. If you suffer from nightmares, you may feel as though the dreamworld is screaming at you.
Try to take up a practice of recording your dreams every morning. Keep an open notebook and pen next to your bed and scribble whatever you can remember, as soon as you wake up. Try to do this before getting up to pee or looking at your phone. Dreams can vanish quickly once we enter the waking world. Don’t stress if you can’t recall much. Sometimes all we are left with is a feeling. That is enough. I have found that the best way to understand my dreams has been to focus on the way I felt, this is usually the most telling detail. The more time you spend with your dreams, the easier it will be to understand your personal symbols and stories.
Have compassion for yourself during this process. Go for a walk, take a nap, make a meal, feel your feelings. Do whatever the soft animal of your body desires.
“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”
– Mary Oliver.
Jenna Diliberto is a herbalist, medicine maker, tarot reader, astrologer, educator, gardener and artist living in the Catskills. Email to inquire about booking a reading or workshop.