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The Blood Moon Survival Guide: How to Navigate Eclipses, Supermoons, and the Lunar Nodes
Without fail, each month seems to bring new and unique astronomical — and astrological — phenomenon. While this has been a year of big astrological aspects, these aren’t what gets media attention. Social media especially seems to be all about the moon.
Which probably shouldn’t be a surprise. As the closest celestial body to Earth, the Moon was astrology’s traditional indicator of the common people, the most human of the divine wandering stars above. But it also moves the fastest, meaning there’s always something going on with it — the Moon changes signs once every 50-something hours, blazing through all twelve signs in just over 27 days. It constantly moves in and out of aspect with other planets, stars, and asteroids.
Many of the clever names assigned to lunar phenomenon derive from traditional timekeeping, evoking other natural phenomenon heightened for the season. November’s Beaver Moon was a reminder to set fur traps as the creatures made themselves scarce for the winter. Similarly, May’s Pink Supermoon was a let-down for many eager stargazers as the name refers to the pink flowers that begin to carpet the ground in spring.
Supermoon is a relatively new term given to full moons in perigee, the closest point to the earth in lunar orbit. There is of course an opposite phenomenon, the lunar apogee, which actually has its own astrological significance: marked on charts as Lilith, it doesn’t enjoy the same media hype likely because it doesn’t look as impressive in photographs.
Last night’s Micro Beaver Full Moon Eclipse did occur near the lunar apogee but there was plenty of other significance to be found. Eclipses must occur no more that 12 degrees from a lunar node, an astrological axis of karmic buildup and release. These nodes often spell massive changes around public thought and reception for certain topics, pointing to underlying lessons of a moment in time. The average cycle lasts about a year and a half, give or take the annual eclipse season. Each eclipse that occurs along this axis acts as a sort of checkpoint, a moment of…
