Hello hello!
Welcome to eclipse week, babes! The September full moon is typically known as the harvest moon, but this year is special- the earth will be casting a partial shadow upon la luna, ringing in the end of harvest season and Thursday’s Autumnal Equinox with a powerful lunar eclipse.
The full moon eclipse is happening in the Human Design Gate of Crisis, opposite the sun in the Gate of Friction- both energies of finding the diamond in the rough, of using challenges we face to grow and gain life experience. The fall equinox is known as Mabon in the Pagan Wheel of the Year, the second of the harvest festivals (after the last cross quarter day, Lammas). Mabon is known as a time to restore balance and harmony to our lives, as this holiday celebrates a day with equal light and dark.
This week’s highlights:
Tuesday, Sept 17/Wednesday, Sept 18: Full moon lunar eclipse in Pisces (8:34pm MST), in the Human Design Gate of Crisis
Sunday, Sept 22: September Equinox (Fall in the Northern Hemisphere, Spring in the Southern),
aka Mabon in the Pagan Wheel of the Year
aka the first day of Libra season!
Human Design/I’Ching:
Sunday-Friday: Gate 6, the Gate of Friction
Sat-Sun: Gate 46, the Gate of Determination of the Self
This week’s themes:
Conflict, crisis and friction are necessary for growth, expansion, and truth
A balance between being open to new experiences and picky about who/what you let into your life
A poly-crisis requires a poly-solution
A focus on embodiment and grounding practices in the midst of stormy celestial seasons
Our Place in the Wheel of the Year
Medicine Wheel Direction:WEST (Water, Adulthood)
Wuxing Cycle Element: Metal
Pagan Season: Mabon!
Zodiac Season: Virgo > Libra (September 22-October 22)
Moon Phase: Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in Pisces
I Ching Hexagram/Human Design: Gate 6 (Mon-Fri), Gate 46 (Sat-Sun)
6 = Heaven over Water (Sung: “Conflict”) or The Gate of FRICTION
46 = Earth over Wind (Sheng: “Rising Up”) or The Gate of DETERMINATION
Tuesday the 17th: The Pisces Eclipse and The Global Polycrisis
I’m recording this from the road, from a rustic, 100-year old beach cabin on the Oregon coast, one of my favorite places on earth. My great-grandparents bought this cabin in the 40s as a place for my great grandmother to bring the kids while my great grandfather was away at World War II. My dad and his brothers grew up coming here, and now their kids and grandkids come on weekends and holidays to sit by a big fire, do jigsaw puzzles, and look through old black-and-white family photo albums. The crabbing equipment and sand toys hang in the garage, and the expansive sandy beach dunes are a short walk down the hill. Yesterday was a rare, gorgeous bluebird day along the coast, but this morning is the more common drizzle and damp, so I’ve got my feet up in my grandpa’s old recliner eating local smoked salmon while my daughter plays with a big tub of old legos and Barbies.
Checking my phone, I’m inundated by memes from last night’s presidential debate. You know, fear-mongering statements like “Illegal transgender aliens in Springfield, USA are eating people’s pet dogs and cats” and stuff like that- words that most of us could never imagine hearing from a presidential candidate a decade ago that are now just unsurprising eye-rolls.
My favorite tweets about the event are to the effect of; “If Donald Trump was talking like this at Thanksgiving, you’d take his keys.”
Infamous single cat-lady Taylor Swift officially endorsed Kamala Harris after the debate, and here in the US we are now officially in the season of everything being about the election. Sitting in this old cabin and looking back and old black and white photos, I can’t help but think that the people in these images had such simpler lives, so much less to think about. In an age of rampant global warming, AI, and several live-streamed and unapologetic genocides around the world happening in real time, the stakes in this election seem higher than ever.
But at the same time, the global, universalized nature of all of these issues makes the divisive and polarizing nature of debates like this one- and elections like this one- feel seriously… outdated. People will always show up with passion for their personal interests for sure (there will definitely be some voters that turn out because they fear for their poor cat’s life in the hands of immigrants). But we’re also now confronted with the realities of a deeply interconnected world in crisis, and the attempts at grabbing votes by scaring people with horrific stereotypes about specific groups people seems just… beyond passe. It’s almost on the brink of a joke to those of us who are beyond belief that this rhetoric is even happening, but it’s not funny in the least- it’s deliberate, unacceptable racism that puts people in danger.
In the Cycles of Time Wheel of the year, quite fittingly, this week’s lunar eclipse is happening in Human Design Gate 36: The Gate of Crisis. This gate is also known as the Gate of Inexperience, an energy of desiring to explore the depth our capacity to feel and be transformed through crisis. Gate 36 is motivated to gain more experience and grow through challenges. It’s all about experiencing life to the fullest and learning from the highs and lows that come with it.
This eclipsed full harvest moon is in Pisces, a sign associated with a depth of feeling, a merging and blurring of boundaries. As the last sign of the Zodiac, Pisces takes the specific things that we’ve learned from the rest of the Zodiac, and helps us realize that, like our world, they are all deeply interwoven. On the precipice of an election, at the time of year when we are harvesting and synthesizing what we wish to take into the fall and winter, stakes are certainly high. What do we wish to see more of in the future? What can we leave behind, to the history books, to the black and white photo albums of days long gone?
We will always have our own personal crises to contend with, but living in times of a global polycrisis puts a new slant on the energies of this lunar eclipse. It’s becoming common vernacular, the polycrisis or metacrisis- the intersection of climate crisis, political instability, cost of living, inequality, social injustice, economic recession etc, a global polycrisis occurs when crises in multiple global systems become causally entangled in ways that cause major human harm.
The Eclipse on the Pisces/Virgo Axis
The Pisces/Virgo axis is about health and healing, both through seeing interconnectedness through the lens of watery Pisces, and piecing apart the issues through the lens of analytical, earthy Virgo. The Pisces moon is conjunct Neptune during this eclipse, the watery planet of dreams and illusions that is the modern planetary ruler of the sign Pisces, making this eclipse energy extra enmeshed and nebulous.
On the opposite side of the sky from this moon’s Gate of Crisis lies the sun in Gate 6: The Gate of Friction, which is the last full gate of Virgo season. Gate 6, similar to gate 36, is about finding the silver lining in the black cloud. Like all opposite gates that are united by similar energy, though, Gates 6 and 36 lessons come from the opposite sides of a polarity. Pisces Gate 36 (Conflict) is about welcoming in all experiences, breaking down boundaries, and merging them together in order to learn and grow. Virgo Gate 6 is about being discerning, picky, and discriminating, constantly checking who and what is right for them or not, being choosy about who they let in. Both modes of existence can lead to conflict and friction (ie. either being too picky or too open), and this full moon eclipse could highlight the tension between the two.
In a lunar eclipse, the earth is blocking the light of the sun as it radiates onto the moon, reminding us to stay grounded and check in with the truths from our earthly bodies, rather than getting too caught up in our ego’s aspirations (the sun) or drown in our emotions (the moon). Lunar eclipses can bring swift and often unexpected endings and conclusions, doing grounding practices that bring us home to ourselves (like breathwork, self-massage, and connecting with nature) are helpful during these celestially intense times . Look to the house of your birth chart that contains Pisces to get insights on where these changes could occur. The last lunar eclipse in Pisces happened on September 16, 2016, so you can also think back to what was happening in your life around that time for clues on this current cycle.
In the Gene Keys, the sun in discerning Gate 6 this week is bringing us the gift of tactful diplomacy, and the moon in Gate 36 is bringing the gift of compassion for humanity. With the earth making herself known in the middle of this cosmic eclipse-forming dance, we are called to remember the middle ground: tact and diplomacy (and working through conflict and friction) is often required for our collective humanity to find greater peace in the world, and openness and compassion is needed to begin the diplomatic process.
A polycrisis certainly can’t be met by a singular solution, and this eclipse is a great reminder of the cycles of openness and discernment that are needed as we work our way toward better, more modern and nuanced, solutions for everyone to thrive. We must go beyond the 2 party system, beyond the blame game, and toward a more compassionate- and diplomatic- way of living in the future. Let this eclipse, on the Virgo Pisces axis of healing, help us find our way there.
Sunday the 22nd: Fall Equinox, Libra Season & Mabon
On the heels of Tuesday/Wednesday’s Lunar Eclipse in Pisces, the sun transits into Gate 46: the Gate of Determination on Saturday, and the scales of Libra season arrive with the Fall Equinox on Sunday.
Next week I’m having Rebecca Baker, my friend and mentor from my breathwork training on the podcast. It’s her birthday on the 22nd, so we’re going to talk a lot more about the equinox, Libra season, and the pagan holy day of Mabon in that episode!
Gate 46, this energy that encapsulates the cusp between Virgo and Libra seasons, will be a welcome gate after an eclipse week of Friction being mirrored by Conflict! Gate 46 touches on themes of harmony, beauty, and balance as we reach the very end of harvest season and enter Libra’s domain. In the I’Ching, Gate 46 is known as Earth over Wind, or “Rising Up”, and in the Gene Keys, it’s gift is “Delight”.
In Virgo season, we went through many ups and downs as we navigated the interplay between our sovereign selves and the other: the sun transited through the gates of Sexuality and Aloneness, Confusion and Realization, Friction and, now, Determination of the Self. It’s been a turbulent ride within profound internal depths, and I for one am ready for a little break in the intensity. Welcoming us to the season of the scales, the Gate of Determination of the Self might bring just that, as a gate focused on growing upward with determination, like a tree in the earth, with the energy to ecstatically enjoy being an embodied human being, find joy in living in the physical plane, pursuing creative endeavors for their own sake.
Just like the lunar eclipse is a potent reminder of our embodied experiences in the here and now, from our place on earth, the Gate of Determination of the Self encourages us to (in the words of Ram Das) Be Here Now. To experience life in our bodies, through our senses, expressing what is alive in the moment.
My natal Mercury and Moon are in this gate. My mercury is at 28 degrees Virgo, and my moon is at 3 degrees Libra, but they are both contained within Gate 46. (For those of you who know Human Design/I’Ching, Gene Keys, you’ll know that each gate is further subdivided into 6 lines (the 6 lines of the I’Ching). My Mercury is in 46.1, and my Moon is in 46.6!) They say that this embodied gate can always put you in the right place at the right time if you let go of expectations… I’m into having my moon and mercury here! It seems like a good counterbalance for my sun’s very mental gate of Confusion.
We’ll chat more about all this next week, but for this week and the weekend, my advice would be to focus on practices that cultivate inner balance, moderation, and embodiment. Know that whatever storms crop up during eclipse season are here to act like pressure release valves, clearing the air after the thunder for a beautiful, expansive sky.
Click the image below to get visuals & descriptions of the final Virgo season gates of this week on Instagram, and stay tuned next week for the 6 HD Gates of Libra Season!
Wishing you the best week ahead, loves, finding that diamond within any rough patches you come across.
<3 <3 <3
Alison
PS. If you’re in Santa Fe this weekend, I’m going to be a part of the Eldorado Studio Tour- a tour of over 100 home studios opening up in my neighborhood to show and sell art! I’ll be showing paintings and mixed media works, my partner Jackson is showing his photography, and my brother and his wife of Tetra Design Works are showing their beautiful woodworking- all in my home! Come by Studio 52 if you’re around!
PPS. A great, free way to show your support for this weekly labor of love is by clicking the heart button below, or leaving a quick comment!
Xo!
The Eclipse, the Equinox & the Polycrisis