New Moon Eclipse in Aries

This New Moon is about allowing the wildness of change to drop us into heart-centered and holographic perception. Its potential is to reveal the capacity of our heart to hold the both/and in a fundamentally creative way — i.e. in a way that we have never known or seen modeled to us.

This New Moon is also a Solar Eclipse that is happening in Aries, the sign of the Warrior, and is conjunct Chiron, the Wounded Healer-Mentor-Teacher-Centaur.

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For me, and I know I’m not alone in this, as a child I did not learn or witness how to make space at the inner table for aggression, anger, rage, frustration, impatience or other variations of primal fire and their associated internal chemistry and nervous system states. I didn’t know how to hold and ground them in a context of Love and belonging.

However, I was an athlete and it was really helpful for me to have accumulated this visceral knowledge of boundaries and of my capacity to come up against another person, take up space, hold my center and feel an internal drive and fire in action. And to practice doing so with the permission and consent of the others involved, in the context of a game.

In fact, (and I’m cringing to admit this, but bear with me, it’s just part of the story), I entered every single soccer game with this kind of certainty that I was the best player on the field. Even if that wasn’t actually true, it didn’t matter to me because the posture let me experience the pleasure of my fire (my Natal Venus is in Aries, where she also is currently in the sky … ).

While it was life-giving — and probably, in some ways, life-saving for my Neptune-Moon (with her tendencies to disappear, take up no space, have no voice, become a ghost) to have a somatic experience of a warrior — I didn’t really learn how to simultaneously also hold space in my being for the other aspects of myself that knew I played for the joy of playing and not JUST to win.

So, losing felt pretty bad.

Fast-forward 20 years, and I’m playing soccer again. And, surprisingly, the posture of invincibility has not faded in the slightest. I still get on the field, as a mom with a body that has since birthed two babies, and I play with the “expectation” of being the best player on the field! Or, to at least have a pretty good shot at winning every 1:1 battle. Regardless of who I am going up against. It is so silly and it makes me laugh inside. Because it is still a real joyful experience to know my fire.

That said, I’ve (mostly) grown up to the point where I now know what it feels like to both fully adopt that Aries stance of invincibility and that this “battle” matters, because it lets me feel the pleasure of my fire — AND to simultaneously, stay in connection with the other aspects of the whole picture. Like that I’m older and I need to play in a way that takes care of my body. Like, everyone on the field is a friend and not a rival team or nemesis. Like, this is for fun and it doesn’t really matter whether we win … etc.

But. What I have learned from this experience, is that I can’t just water down my Aries posture and intensity in order to make space for these other aspects of myself. If I did that, I wouldn’t feel the pleasure of playing with the heart and focus of a warrior, and it would leave me feeling pretty unsatisfied.

What I’ve found is that, for how obvious it is that it is “just a game”, it is surprisingly challenging — or at least, it takes a conscious intention — to let my fire come fully online in my body AND to still maintain space for these other more reasonable aspects of myself to also be present. It’s become an embodiment practice of being able to drop into my heart, while being on fire. And I am so unbelievably grateful to have a realm of life to PRACTICE this. Because Aries fire can be really intense and easy to identify with, react from, or repress and reject — when they start running in our physiology.

We know this. We know how tough it is to drop into the heart when anger is present. It takes a lot of presence to allow the full experience of fire, without losing connection to other aspects of our multi-faceted intelligence and deeper knowings.

But this fire and this posture of invincibility is good to practice meeting, knowing, and trying on, not because it is factually or wholly “true”, but because it is good for us to get on the field and play with spirit and courage. To play with our hearts on fire.

Flower Essences for the Eclipse

Chicory:  Helps with agitation, fear or existential anxiety, which can be associated with how this Eclipse affects our solar plexus and ability to communicate. Chicory blooms in the morning and its petals wilt or partially close at night.

Turquoise:  Evokes gratitude and reverence for all, for the Earth, for Nature’s abundance & generosity. Inspires reciprocity and ensouled action. Supportive of the square between Ceres in Capricorn & the Aries Eclipse.

Smoky Quartz: Eclipses shift our co-regulatory system, which includes plants, animals, and the many beings around us with whom our nervous systems are connected. Smoky Quartz synchronizes our body with the Earth and helps us re-calibrate after the moment of the Eclipse.

Buttercup:  When the mind dominates the body, it creates a difficulty in alignment. Buttercup and Madia help us bounce back into present-time after the Eclipse, rather than back into the structure of the mind.  Helps us relate to light again in a way that shortens the distance between the dream and reality.

White Birch:  Together with Smoky Quartz, White Birch can help support our nervous system and ground our sense of identity, bringing it into relationship with our be-ing and our holistic perception, cooling reactive patterns or tendencies of over-doing, aggression, impatience.

Redwood: Redwood also helps by bringing our Adult Self, our wisdom-making capacities, maturation process, embodiment, old-growth octave into connection with this Aries, Spring-time, new beginnings energy.

Pear:  Has a lightening effect on the experience of Chiron (Wounded Healer, Mentor, Teacher) with this Eclipse, while grounding us in the fullness of form, our earthly responsibilities, our maturation process.

River Begonia:  Helps us recognize how to fill in the space that’s created once we’ve shed an old pattern or released a habit.

Almond:  Supports us in relating to the Chiron “mind-body alignment” less linearly and to approach it as a process of becoming capable in a holographic way, becoming the medicine to the core wound.