← Encyclopedia of Astrology · lesson 152/235
Eclipse
What it is
The Moon's path is tilted about five degrees to the Sun's, so at most New and Full Moons the three bodies do not line up exactly and nothing is darkened. The two paths cross at the Moon's North Node and South Node. When a lunation falls close enough to one of the nodes, the alignment is exact enough for a shadow to fall:
- a solar eclipse happens at a New Moon: the Moon passes in front of the Sun, and part or all of it is hidden from somewhere on Earth;
- a lunar eclipse happens at a Full Moon: the Earth's shadow falls on the Moon, which can turn a dusky red.
Solar eclipses are total, annular (the Moon too far to cover the Sun, leaving a ring) or partial; lunar eclipses total, partial or penumbral.
When they happen
The Sun meets each node once a year, so eclipses come in eclipse seasons about six months apart, usually with a solar and a lunar eclipse two weeks apart in each. Because the nodes drift backwards through the zodiac, completing a circuit in about 18½ years, the signs of the eclipses shift slowly, staying on one pair of opposite signs for a year and a half or so. Eclipses also repeat in families: an eclipse returns about 18 years 11 days later, slightly displaced — the Saros cycle. Bernadette Brady describes how each Saros series is born as a small partial eclipse near one pole, grows to totality across the centuries and fades out at the other.
The dates here come from the ephemeris's own eclipse calculations.
How it is read
The tradition treats an eclipse as a lunation with the volume turned up. A solar eclipse is read like a New Moon — a beginning — but a more decisive one, often linked with something ending to make room; a lunar eclipse like a Full Moon, bringing matters to a head or into the open. Eclipses are thought to act over months rather than weeks, and to be felt most where they fall on a natal planet or angle, or in the house they occupy.
Whether an eclipse falls near the North or the South Node colours it too: near the North Node it is often read as a step towards something new; near the South Node as a release of the familiar. Like any sky event, an eclipse inclines and marks a time; it does not decree what happens in it.