March 25: Libra Full Moon Eclipse
Happy Spring! We made it through the winter but now find ourselves immediately in eclipse season and the Mercury retrograde shadow–what a way to start the astrological new year.
The Libra Full Moon lunar eclipse at 3AM on March 25, is an opportunity to find balance in the strange swirling energies that confront us over the next month. Eclipses are connected with dragons and there is something fearsome about how they bring the unexpected. You can’t prepare for the thing you don’t think of and haven’t noticed yet, and that's exactly what eclipses and Mercury retrograde are designed to do–reveal blindspots.
Mercury entered its shadow on March 18, and will go retrograde at 27°13 Aries on April 1. We’re in the warm up phase, but things are already getting wacky because eclipse season officially began at the start of Spring when the Sun entered Aries at 11:06PM ET on March 19. The Aries ingress chart serves as an inception point for the entire astrological new year so notice what’s going down right now. There’s spiritual significance and resonance for the next 12 months.
The Vernal Equinox begins the solar time of the year when there is more day than night. Aries season is an activation of our public life and professional purpose. The Sun is exalted in Aries and has a strength to carry out what it wants. Now is usually the time to set intentions for what we want to manifest over the next 6 months. But the Mercury retrograde and eclipses are not making it so simple.
The pagan holiday of Ostara was celebrated on the Equinox with festivals of rebirth and the veneration of the divine child. Ostara invites us to leap headfirst into the new. We’re encouraged to consider passion and what we’re motivated to manifest. For ideas of how to celebrate this weekend, check out Pagan Baby Ostara: Spring Rites (still in e-book form but hopefully not for long). Chock full of sweet rituals to celebrate spring with your loved ones.
The Full Moon eclipse at 05°07 Libra is the second in a cycle that began last year. We have arrived at the middle of a three-part act designed to break us of indecision and the paralysis of perfectionism. Patriarchy tells women and femme folks that beauty is the defining characteristic of our worth and mets out various punishments for those who fail to measure up. It socializes us to go along to get along and discourages disagreement as unattractive. Whether you refuse to play the game or you simply can’t, this eclipse encourages you to opt out of any bs not in your own self interest.
Since last April, the Aries-Libra eclipses have pushed us where we’re wobbly and poked us in tender places. We are complex people who contain both people pleasing tendencies and a healthy dose of unhelpful selfishness. This lunation shows us how both are inhibiting happiness.
Libra is connected to the Justice card in the tarot Major Arcana. The New Moon solar eclipse on October 14, 2023, brought a cascade of violence and horrors. The polarity between war and peace has come front and center on the world stage with devastating results in Gaza.
As Pema Chodron writes in When Things Fall Apart,
"’Am I going to add to the aggression in the world?’ Every day, at the moment when things get edgy, we can just ask ourselves, ‘Am I going to practice peace, or am I going to war?’"
Integrity is essential for Libra. This lunation is a call to stand up for what we believe is right, whether it makes us popular or not. Venus is ruling this lunation from its exaltation in Pisces, imbuing this lunation with a soft sensitivity for how we are all connected through both love and pain.
Many of us fear losing ourselves in emotion when we open to the truth of the world. Connection is powerful but overwhelm is easy with Pisces. It's similar to falling in love. Merging hearts can be blissful, but it can also cause us to shut down from vulnerability. The conjunction between Venus and Saturn at 12°26 Pisces at 7:09PM ET on March 21, clarified boundaries and encouraged us to commit to what we truly care about in partnership.
The supportive sextile from Jupiter at 15°49 Taurus at 12:37PM ET on March 24, grounds us in what’s possible. The Libra Full Moon encourages us to trust that if we do what’s right for ourselves we will come into good alignment with both self-advocacy and compromise.
This eclipse illuminates what is true about the Libra area of life and where we are out of alignment. The Libra last eclipse will happen this Fall at the New Moon on October 2, 2024. Peace has not yet been achieved on Earth, but Libra is an air sign that understands the power of words and thoughts. If all 8 billion of us sat down at the same time and meditated on peace, the energetic vibration would be so powerful it would change our reality. I’m not saying it would solve all our problems but it would open millions of hearts and minds just through that one perfect alignment. Imagine it.