The Leo Solar Eclipse: A Personal Process

Shadow Work

I arrived at astrology through shadow work, after learning that Carl Jung had practised it too, and used it to inform himself before sessions with his clients.

I arrived at shadow work after learning, and by learning I mean that The Universe, or The God(s), or my spirit guides, or my higher self, or my divine masculine (pick whichever you relate to, or be like me and have no real clue) demonstrated to me with absolute clarity, through the body of a man and the promise of a destined divine relationship, exactly what my shadow was and how perfectly it was creating my reality: my first love, the friend who broke my heart, my tumultuous marriage and what followed after, my latest obsessive interest and their apparent disinterest. All of it a slightly different version of the same story. All of it disappointing, and painful, and all of it instilling within me the feeling that I am doomed to survive this life without the mutual relationship I have always longed for.

Everything we carry within us, our beliefs, our expectations of life, how we were loved as children, what we think, especially the chatter that runs unconsciously in the background, how we felt about what happened to us, what we felt and didn't let ourselves feel with every disappointment, every heartbreak, every failure, gets expressed in our reality as physical events, situations, experiences.

Who we are, the blueprint programmed into us before we even arrived, defines the family we're born to, how we feel within that family, and the events that go on to define us. Those experiences, and how we felt about them, whether we were conscious of the feeling or buried it immediately, go on to create more of the same. The same feelings. Same outcomes. And so it goes.

Our world, and our interaction with it, our thoughts about it, the experiences we have within it, is a direct reflection of the self.

As within, so without.

Your birth chart is your blueprint. That's why a reading can tell you who you are, what your relationship with your father was like, and what your marriage is like and how it feels. Astrology clears away the clutter and goes straight to the heart of the matter. That's why Carl Jung used it. And that's why, in 2020, I decided I needed to learn.

What I have confirmed through experience over the last nine years is this: whether we know astrology or not, whether we are on a conscious healing or transformative journey or not, whether we have any communion with our spiritual side or not - we are always in a process of growth and expansion. We are being schooled. We are being tested. Through the experiences we have, the decisions we make, the directions we choose, and the way we react to what life brings. The universe guides us through signs and synchronicities and the thoughts that arrive in our heads. We think they are our own, but they can wake us from our automation or show us our shadow. I learned all of this by listening to my own inner wisdom long before I discovered that Jung and Gurdjieff had taught the same things. Learning to listen was a step in itself.

(This blog tells more of that story: My Journey 1: The Beginning My Journey: Facing Myself)

This is what I shared on Instagram and Facebook this week. And it wasn't what I actually sat down to write. I meant to write something neat and factual about the solar eclipse in Leo we've all just lived through. Instead these words poured out in a way that felt vulnerable to post, as if I was handing over the heart of me. I'd written something that would demonstrate just how weird I actually am (as if believing in all this woo nonsense, and becoming an astrologer wasn't enough!). And the reason lies in my chart and the conversations it is having with the current sky. What follows is how I've come to understand it, and why I've developed a practice of curious contemplation of the experiences I have and the meaning behind them.

My Blueprint

I'm Libra rising. I'm most comfortable when I fit in. When I'm smoothing how I appear in the world in order to be as appealing as possible, and to avoid ruffling any feathers. If you know me well you may glimpse some of my depths, but out in the world I'm strictly surface level only.

My Sun sits in Capricorn, hidden deep in the dark of my 4th house. My Moon, exalted in Taurus, is also tucked away, in the 8th. And at the top of my chart, in the public facing 10th house, the house of me in the world, sits an unhappy Saturn: God of restriction, of limitation, the God who says no. Retrograde, in a night chart, opposite His own home of Capricorn, opposite my Sun. Together these placements mean that putting myself in the spotlight and standing out from the crowd, being 'seen' out there in the world for who I actually am, is almost intolerably uncomfortable.

I carefully curate myself, like any good Libran woman. I seek to harmonise. To balance myself and my expression through the other, whether that's a partner or the world itself. I want to appear in a way that is pleasing to whomever I am with. I want to cooperate with the general consensus. Maintain peace. I don't want to take a stance and put myself at odds.

But part of me is tired of that. Tired of fitting in. Of smoothing over. Tired of hiding the real me beneath a veneer of what's polite, what's deemed acceptable in the wider world, what's 'normal'. Part of me wants to expose my true self and say f**k the social image. F**k fitting in. F**k being normal. F**k harmony. F**k dwelling only on the surface.

The Sun in Capricorn at the root of my chart (4th house), I am private, I shine in the dark, my purpose is focused inward, my mountain personal and walked within. The Moon in Taurus in the 8th house. I keep my inner world hidden – my true feelings, my vulnerability, my anxiety – often even from myself. Saturn in Cancer in the 10th house. I don't feel safe in the wider world. I don't feel welcomed. I don't feel a part of things. I don't feel like I fit in. And most of me has accepted that. Is happy to hide. To watch from the side-lines. To not get too involved.

But those aren't the only significant placements in my chart. I also have Jupiter and Venus (my chart ruler) bound together in Aquarius in my 5th house of creative expression. Venus loves the 5th. She wants to shine bright and to be seen in all her glory. And She's expanded by Jupiter. Supported with a deep desire to come back to what's really important. To be true.

And Aquarius is the sign of the outsider. The weirdo with a vision. Aquarius has no inclination to fit in for the sake of harmony. Aquarius is independent and original. Aquarius would rather fight for freedom and authenticity than blend to conform to societal expectations.

Libra rising with all the conventional support of a Capricorn Sun (the sign that prefers structure, respectability and staying inside the lines) with Venus in Aquarius creates a profound paradox between the natural inclination to please others and a deeply unconventional core that is designed stand apart. Because Venus rules my Moon and my chart (as Taurus and Libra's ruler), what She is doing dictates the trajectory of my life, expression, style and identity. And in Aquarius She demands that I am unconventional. I must not follow the crowd.

And these unconventional parts of me are longing to be out there, in the world, being weird, being me and being proud. Despite what my Libran nature feels comfortable with. In spite of that.

Now what's all this got to do with the Leo eclipse and the shadow?

The Current Sky

The solar eclipse on the 12th of August was in Leo, the Sun's home sign.

Read more about the Leo Eclipse and it's significations here: Venus: Bringing Balance

Eclipses bring out our shadow. When the Sun is eclipsed its light is hidden and darkness falls. In that dark the shadows become visible: the private self that usually stays buried, the feelings we smooth over, the parts of us that refuse to stay polite and pleasing. For a little while the surface is stripped away and what has been living underneath has nowhere left to hide.

This was a total New Moon Solar Eclipse at 20° Leo, the first major eclipse on the new Leo–Aquarius nodal axis, and it fell on the South Node. That means it carries a strong flavour of release and completion as well as new beginnings.

Leo rules visibility, creative self-expression, and the need to be seen and recognised. A South Node eclipse here asks us to shed an old self-image or way of seeking attention: the version that needed constant applause, or the one that hid behind image, or the one that never quite felt safe enough to shine without armour.

Venus is watching all of this from her home in Libra. She entered Libra on the 6th of August and is currently moving through my 1st house: the house of self, of how I meet the world, of the face I show. As my chart ruler, this is no small thing. From the sign of balance and relationship, she looks softly across at the Sun and Moon meeting in Leo and sees something both fierce and tender. She knows none of this release triggered with this eclipse is possible without love, and that love begins with the self we don't usually show.

This is why so much is pouring out of me right now.

With the eclipse landing in my 11th house of groups and communities, and directly opposite my natal Venus–Jupiter conjunction in Aquarius (where Pluto is currently walking and rupturing the ground), the shadow being brought to light is the fear of being fully seen. And this is what that fear of being fully seen actually feels like for me right now:

I am afraid of losing the close relationships I have (which are actually very few) by being myself in the world. By exposing just how much of myself has changed and transformed through my journey of the last few years. I'm afraid of showing just how weird I actually am now.

At times it feels like I'm posting into the void, but I am acutely conscious of who follows me and who I count as my friends on Facebook (where this automatically shares). I know that every time I post something about astrology a huge part of me cringes. That part counts all the lack of likes or comments made by the majority of my Facebook friends (including my close family). I feel that the more I venture into this part of myself, the more I share my true self with the world, the further away I will get from those who I love and who I believe love me. I am afraid I'll be banished. Cast out. More than I already feel I am.

But am I a part of things if the face I show the world is a mask? Am I a part of things if I hide the parts of me that consider all this to be the truth – the why we are here, the what we're here to do? The feeling of fitting in is as false as the part of me that thinks I need to be a certain way to fit in.

These questions don't really have answers. And I'm not sharing this because I want reassurance it's okay to be me. I'm sharing because I'm trying to demonstrate my own process through this eclipse and highlight that we are all in a process. I'm trying to be honest because that's where I am on my own path.

The most important thing we can do is be honest with ourselves. Get to know our true self: what we truly think and believe. Whether we share that with the world or not. And that is only possible when we look at the shadow – at what's hidden from plain sight. This is the time we're in. If we pay attention, and are willing to be brave, we have an opportunity to see hidden parts of ourselves, to bring them to light, and in doing so step more into our true expression.

It’s as if I have two faces. The one that I show the world, and the one that comes out only when it feels safe - in a vulnerable moment when reading with a client, or in nature when I express my innermost thoughts to a tree (see…I’m super weird!).

Who truly knows us? Who do we let in? And why don’t we?

The more I abandon the second face in order to keep the first one safe, the more I abandon myself.

And as within, so without.

If we don’t abandon ourselves then the world won’t abandon us either. If we do, the world will. We are the only ones who need to fully love and accept ourselves as all that we are.

When I first started my Instagram page it was pretty anonymous. I didn't use my full name and I didn't have anyone following me that crossed the barrier between known and unknown. I started by sharing lessons from 365 Tao: Daily Meditations - the lesson and my experience of it. The world felt new and entirely magical - the universe was talking to me - guiding me - and I could share what I felt because I wasn't worried about being judged or being seen. My real life and this weird part of me was entirely separate.

But transiting Mars is now in Cancer, on top of my natal Saturn, telling me the fear is real but it's time and my Aquarian Venus and Jupiter, poked by the eclipse, whispered to by Pluto, want me to bare my soul to the world. To cut away the restriction and the barriers that tell me it isn’t safe, that I’ll be rejected for it. To unite my two faces and present to the world as who I am. In truth.

It's time to reveal my true self. To stop hiding. To stop performing. To get real.

Always a Process

When I sat down to write about the Leo eclipse I thought I was going to explain the astrology. Instead the eclipse explained something me through the words that came and the thoughts that followed. It brought into the light once again the shadow that I've always carried and has shaped my life - the fear that being fully myself will cost me belonging.

That is the nature of the process. The lessons don't arrive once and then leave us alone. They return, in slightly different clothes, until something in us is ready to meet them differently. The same fear, the same pattern of hiding, the same quiet calculation of what it might cost to be seen, only this time it is playing out in my public arena rather than in my romantic one.

What I have come to know through nine years of paying attention is that we are always in process. Whether we know astrology or not. Whether we are on a conscious healing or transformative path or not. Whether we have any language for the spiritual side of life or not. We are being schooled. We are being tested. Through the experiences we have, the decisions we make, the directions we choose, and the way we react to what arrives.

The Universe speaks in signs and synchronicities and in the thoughts that suddenly appear in our heads. We think they are our own, but they can wake us from our automation or show us our shadow.

I learned this by listening to my own inner wisdom long before I found the teachers who had already mapped the territory. Learning to listen was itself a necessary step.

The eclipse didn't give me new information. It simply made the old information impossible to ignore. And once it is visible, the only real choice left is whether I stay inside the pattern or finally decide to let the second face stand in the light.

Back to you

What process has this eclipse initiated in you?

How are you tuning in to listen to your own inner wisdom?

What old versions of yourself are you being pushed to let go of?

What more authentic parts are you being asked to let shine?

If any of this is stirring something in you and you’d like to look more closely at your own blueprint and how the current sky is speaking to it, I have a 20% discount on all readings booked in August (redeemable any time this year). You’re welcome to book online, or message me (at the bottom of this My Story page) or if you’d prefer a gift card and to decide when later find that here.