Moon Eclipsing Sun ~ Carrying Grief
An invitation to ceremony on an auspicious day
Dear One,
I’m sure you’ve heard some of the conversations about tomorrow’s Solar Eclipse / New Moon in Aries. I don’t live anywhere near its path, but I imagine that experiencing the eclipse in person will be awe-inspiring. NASA will be broadcasting it live and I plan to watch at least part of it.
I appreciate the metaphor of the Moon “triumphing” over the Sun, if just for a short time. There’s solar wisdom and there’s lunar wisdom, and our culture tends to value solar qualities (logic, intellect, action, masculine-oriented) over lunar ones (intuition, mysticism, receptivity, feminine-oriented). So I especially appreciate eclipses because it’s La Luna Bella’s turn to shine. It’s time to “speak the language of symbol, myth, and metaphor,” as Latisha Guthrie writes in the Herbcrafter’s Tarot section on Datura the Moon.
I heard a story once (and I’m honestly not sure if it’s true or not) that in Tibet, the day of an eclipse is particularly auspicious. Any activity done on that day will be magnified many times over, it is said, so prayer wheels are spun and prayers for the planet are recited continually. Whether or not this story is true literally, I’ve taken it to heart. Ever since I first heard it, I've spent some time praying for the planet, hanging prayer flags or ribbons, or doing other kinds of simple ceremonies on eclipse days.
April 8th carries another significance for me. My 15-year-old son Jake died on April 8, 1990 in a hiking accident. It was a full moon, and he was one month away from his sixteenth birthday (which was also on a full moon). He would be 50 years old this May if he had lived. That boggles my mind, as he is forever a sweet child and a restless teenager to me.
“Some things cannot be fixed; they can only be carried,” Megan Devine writes. (I highly recommend her book It's Ok That You're Not Ok: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn't Understand.) My experience is that a loss that grievous becomes part of your core cellular structure. Trauma becomes compost over time and nurtures new life—new loves, new passions, new creations. Yet that particular life is still over. They’re still gone. You carry the loss, always.
Tomorrow, on the eclipse and the anniversary of my son’s death, I plan to create a simple ceremony to soothe the souls of all of you who have lost someone you love, and to honor your beloved dead. I invite you to share their names in the comments below, but if not, no worries. If you’re reading this, your beloveds will still be covered in my prayers.
If it feels right to you, I invite you to do the same. Just take a few minutes to pray in your own way for all the ones you’re connected to, who are carrying a deep grief. There’s a lot of us.
And so it was, so it is, so shall it be.
Thank you.
