03/14/2025
Ritual, Focus, and Agency
(on tonight's eclipse and the Aries-Virgo antiscia)
On face value, this lunar eclipse, a blood moon, in Virgo, represents a fullness and a culmination of the Virgo archetype. Virgo energy is strong, and therefore putting it to use via ritual, cleaning, organization, study, or planning is a good idea. This intensity can lead toward frustration and excess, though, which is represented by the blood moon—at these moments, the moon gets displayed in a rare, atypical light. Something can be eclipsed, released, or understood in more fullness and subtlety than a normal perspective gives.
Virgo’s shadowy extreme is well encapsulated in the stereotypical depiction of Virgo as neurotic and excessively focused on detail, which can certainly be the case. Virgo’s strong sense of quality and insistent specificity is connected to their sharp diagnosis of what’s needed, requiring things to be just right, as if it were a sacred ritual or medical procedure. This pointedness is mirrored by the sharp directedness of Aries. Aries, ruling the head and eyes, describes our point of focus and impact. It’s the tip of a sword or the bull’s eye. This Virgoan fixation on detail is either a nuisance to others or a gift to be employed by others. For Virgos themselves, though, the worst elements of it, when they really start tweaking out, it comes forth when they don’t have agency or independence—terms that we would typically associate with Aries, the individualist of the zodiac.
The central focus of this object of devotion is also key. This organizing light, too, is a mirroring of the Aries pointedness, except the central focus can be related to as an intimate subject or divine ideal as well as a goal or objective. This vital flame, this heat and light, is the power behind any successful ritual or rhythm. Our habits and routines become stale when this motivating fire loses its light. Perhaps the ideal is too far removed to be attained, no longer as central as we thought, or simply our devotions are insufficient to keep the dream alive.
(Read much more on this eclipse at the link in my bio!)