There’s a total solar eclipse coming on August 21st, 2017, and If you want to know anything technical about it you can visit the special website NASA set up https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/. The website is well done and a lot of fun - you can see if your location on that day will be in “the path of totality” stretching from Salem, Oregon, to Charleston, South Carolina. Astronomers love eclipses! Half of the world watches (don’t look unless you have proper eye protection!) as the Sun’s light is eclipsed by the Moon’s shadow, a sort of New Moon with benefits, and everyone gets to realize just how awesome science and astronomers really are. Why, then, are most astrologers so gloom & doom about eclipses? I have my theories but here are the facts about eclipses from a much more positive astrological perspective, the perspective of me, Monte Farber, which I've gained from my forty years as a practicing astrologer and author of the international (16 languages) best-seller, astrology classic, “KARMA CARDS: The Amazing Fun-To-Use Astrology Book & Card Set,” whose 30th anniversary edition will be published by Sterling Ethos 43 days after the eclipse (October 3rd) (PRE-ORDER link: https://www.amazon.com/Karma-Cards-Fun-Use-Astrology/dp/1454926309/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499662408&sr=8-1&keywords=karma+cards+%28sterling+ethos%29 My astrology cookbook, created with my creative genius of a wife, Amy Zerner, is SIGNS & SEASONS: http://www.theenchantedworld.net/signs-seasons Astrology can be best understood by considering it as a psychological language. In this language, the Sun represents our ego, the illusion that we, like the Sun, are in the center of our little personal solar system of family and friends and colleagues and everybody else in the vast universe of humanity. The Sun also represents our purpose, our identity as a unique individual, just as every one of the universe’s stars may be seen to have a purpose. In the language of astrology, the Moon, whose appearance goes from completely dark New Moon to completely Full Moon every 28 days or so (the word “month” comes from moon), represents our shifting emotions, our moods, and our habits. It also represents our reflections on all aspects of life as we experience it, just as the Moon’s waxing and waning is only appearing to us as such by how much of the Sun’s light it can reflect back at us. You know what happens when an eclipse occurs, the Moon gets exactly and perfectly between us here on Earth and the Sun, blocking the immensely powerful Sun’s full spectrum of energy emissions almost completely to those in the “path of totality,” (Link to NASA’s Path of Totality map (https://go.nasa.gov/2pC0lhe) and blocking a lot of it to those who will be experiencing only a partial solar eclipse. So, what happens when you allow your emotions, moods, and habits (the Moon) to block, mess with, or otherwise interfere with your purpose and, by extension, with your ego (the Sun)? You get the kind of situations that can easily be seen to be important, sometimes they can become sort of legendary in one’s life and thereby give eclipses a bad rap with astrologers. We astrologers been noticing the effects of eclipses on our clients for over five thousand years. That being said, we’re in the 21st Century now and the chart of the King and/or Queen is no longer considered to be 100% linked to the fate of their nation; we’re all rulers of our own domains now. It’s time for a new, fresh look at what eclipses mean for us regular folk. Allow me now to give you my take on how the coming August 21 eclipse will effect each of the 12 Sun Signs in the areas of work, career, friendship, and love. Will everything I say be true for everyone in the path of the eclipse and beyond? No, but I’ll bet you that you will be surprised at how much of what I say does resonate with your experience on August 21st and maybe even a few weeks beyond that. Astrology and eclipses and even some astrologers can be awesome and fun, too! ARIES: If your work involves a lot of different-day-same-job repetition or has become boring to you, the eclipse may very well incline you to actually get off of your butt and take what job security conscious friends of yours will probably see as impetuous and maybe even reckless action to free yourself from this perceived stagnation. If this job was an important part of the career path you’ve mapped out for yourself, this can obviously cause problems and leave a gaping hole in your resume and references. The same feeling of I-can’t-take-this-same-old-same-old-anymore can easily leak out and affect your friendships and especially your love affairs. If you have one, you will have to decide if making the Big Scene and/or the Big Move is worth it because the motivation to do so will be there like it hasn’t been in a long time. TAURUS: Your sign likes to prove how strong they are and the eclipse may incline you to focus all your power on both your work and your career. Your motivation? A very unusual (for you) feeling of all conditions being right for you to move your work and career goals down the field with those opposing you parting like the Red Sea for Moses. Your drive in these outward work and career areas may seem boundless and completely in harmony to you but to your friends and those you love, it may seem that your ego-involvement is over the top and spilling over into your personal life. If you can avoid the appearance of being autocratic and selfish and only out to get your own way, you can make a lot of hay while the Sun doesn’t shine (the eclipse, remember?!) GEMINI: The eclipse will bring your sign a much-needed break. In your career, the people whom you respect and have the power to help you, but who have not been doing their best to show you how they feel about you and your career, may finally have an epiphany and wake up to the fact that they need to give you the occasional kudo or three. At work, your boss may find some slack to cut for you (hard to believe, I know!) On the friendship side of the street, you may be benefited by an older and/or wiser friend, someone with lots of experience in the real world that actually means something to you beyond this older/wiser friend’s abilities as a storyteller. In love, I hope you like the student/teacher dynamic exchange because that it was is indicated in terms of the eclipse’s effect on those born during the time of Gemini. CANCER: The sign of Cancer is “ruled” by the Moon, astro lingo meaning that the sign Cancer shares many of the same qualities as the Moon, emotional, sensitive, motherly in terms of nurturing, moody. The eclipse is happening next door in the sign of Leo, ruled by the Sun, so the sign of Cancer and Leo are as different as night and day. I’m happy to report that because of the planet Venus being in the sign of Cancer at the time of the eclipse you can expect the whole thing and all of its attendant moodiness blocking ego vibe to be happening on the other side of town, it won’t affect you as much as let us say, Leos? So if you do experience the eclipse it will come to you in the form of other people acting it out for you like Kabuki theater and, from your Cancerian perspective, it will be just as difficult to relate to for you. This will be true on the work, career, friendship, and love planes of existence. It will be like you have a “Get Out Of Eclipse Jail Free” card. Count your lucky stars. LEO: The eclipse is happening in your sign so you, to whom “stage fright” is defined as your not feeling like you are on stage and everyone’s looking at you, will show us all just what an eclipse means. At work, you will point out each and every example of you or especially anyone else whose emotional intelligence is not up to your exacting standards. If you are on a career path, you will take the emotional detour and will not hesitate to demonstrate the importance of getting in touch with one’s feelings as it relates to techniques and people who can advance said career. Your friends must prepare to bear witness to one of your greatest performances because the eclipse in Leo will bring out any and all of your “Greatest Show On Earth” attitude to yourself. And, as for love? If you’re married, the “in sickness and in health” clause will get a bit of a test because the word “sick” has new meanings nowadays. If you’re in love, no worries. If you’ve been playing the part and the love ain’t there? Worries and actions and drama that might ring down the curtain. VIRGO: As the other next-sign-over to Leo (Cancer is the other one), the eclipse and all it symbolizes is also happening as if it’s going on in the house next door - you’ll hear the shouting but you probably won’t experience it in your own house unless and until the neighbors start dropping by to tell you their Tales From The Eclipse. You will gain the most benefit by pretending that either no one’s home or just yelling, “Sorry, I’m working here and can’t stop.” The presence of Mercury in one of its two “ruled” signs, Virgo (the other is Gemini), will almost guarantee that you are feeling all right, feeling yourself in a good way, ready to work at your job and on every last detail of your career. Your friends should know that if they want to spend time with you and complain in any way that they should be prepared for you to shine your “work” light onto their problems - you will in no way soften the blow when you give them your version of what is “constructive criticism.” You will let them have it in the nicest way you are capable of but it won’t be pretty. You will be the complete opposite with your love interest, forgiving them with a near saint level compassion that, in its own way, will be as remembered as is the drama queen contest going on with most of the other signs during and after this eclipse in Leo. LIBRA: I don’t know if I can find the words to describe how awesome will be the effect of the eclipse in Leo on those born during the sign of Libra! The words “ideal” and “idealistic” spring to mind. You may experience some form of “luck” that is hard to explain as anything other than one of those “coincidences” people are so happy to say don’t really exist - I think that they do and this one could be a wonderful one. At work, you may find that your working conditions are improved without you having to do even a step or a note of the the old song and dance. If you are on a career path you may very well experience the odd sensation of the keys to the doors that stand in your way being handed over to you for safe keeping. Committed partnerships will be strengthened and those starting under the eclipse may actually appear “blessed” in some real ways. Applying that astro-energy matrix to your love life could bring about a stronger marriage or a proposal if marriage has been elusive in the past. For those without a relationship, the conditions will be much more conducive to one coming into your life as if by magic. And you will find out who your friends are because they will be happy and not envious of your being in a good place during the eclipse and a bit beyond. SCORPIO: While it is usually easy for Scorpios to keep quiet, the eclipse in Leo will test your strength in this area like it hasn’t been tested since the last in-your-face idiot seemed to be begging you to tell them off. You usually don’t suffer fools gladly but the eclipse will seem to bring the Ship of Fools to a dock near you and it may also appear that every one of them disembarks with the same idea: going to speak to you. So at work and career, either take whatever time off you have coming to you or keep your head down and bite your tongue to keep it from betraying the truth that you see and others are claiming to want to hear, from you or anyone. It’s easy to see that in your friendships you are going to be tested as to who really, really, really wants to know what you think and who is just spouting off and not really caring or listening to what anyone has to say in answer to them. Lucky for you, when you love you love completely so your love affairs will stay in order because they mean so much to you and you’ll act appropriately even if no one else is doing so. SAGITTARIUS: Prepare to be the little boy in the story of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” You will unavoidably encounter a veritable party bus of people who seem to be acting like they have found “The Secret” at the bottom of their bottles of bubbly, metaphorically and literally, and the job will fall to you of straightening them out with “The Truth” in no uncertain terms. Your role as “The Voice of Reason” will be just as flamboyant and dramatic as those for whom the eclipse has unleashed the Kraken of their “I’ve go to be me!” gene - it will have to be, like setting a back fire to stop a forest fire. Your friends may chafe at your seeming to rain on their pride parade (Leo rules pride and the eclipse is in Leo), but you will, in fact, be doing them a service beyond price. I would caution restraint, however, regarding putting the verbal brakes on to any plans, ideas, and goals expressed by love interests and superiors in work and career settings with this very same ability to show all and sundry that you can see which emperor/empress has clothes and which one doesn’t…unless they ask. CAPRICORN: Your years-long period of coping with powerful and profound forces seemingly working against your interests may very well be tempered by the eclipse in Leo. This can only occur if you have been seeing these powerful forces as energies to learn from, emulate, and use to your advantage like a jiu-jitsu fighter. If you have been struggling blindly, resisting change, and thinking you can keep on keeping on by depending on the same old same old, then this eclipse will only bring false hope and the promise of relief but not the reality of it. If you have been “good” in the way I’m describing, your work may be recognized by someone you didn’t even know knew of your existence. If you are on a career path, this same energy may manifest as a promotion or other recognition of achievement. Anyone who is still your friend after the last few years is a friend, indeed, and I’m not going to worry about them and neither should you. Same goes for any love interests. The “in sickness and in health” clause has been tested and, if you’re still together, it has not been found wanting. I congratulate you. If you’re looking for love, the bright shiny pretty object may attract your attention, but I don’t think you’ll find it serious enough for the long haul. Even so, nothing wrong with a bit of fun. AQUARIUS: Those whose Sun is in the opposite sign to the Leo eclipse can expect to experience a rare phenomena: caring what other people think. Aquarians don’t usually care but the eclipse will bring out their desires to the level of consciousness and keep them there, thereby forcing the scientist in each and every Aquarian to want to do what is best for the attaining of those desires. That usually involves having to ask for or otherwise secure the active support, aka “help” of other people and Aquarians don’t like to ask for help (or directions). At work, they will seem to be imitating Mr. Spock from Star Trek on the few times he tried to act like an Earthling and put caring over logic. The good news is that co-workers will most likely like this new you. If you are on a career path the eclipse might help you stay centered on what you know you need to do to attain it, you know, the things that you know are for your own good but which you rebel against doing just because. Your friendships will be blessed by your getting in touch with people you haven’t seen or spoken to in ages. In your love affairs, you may finally realize how much you are loved. Don’t let it knock you down, just savor and, more importantly, remember this! PISCES: While not as “bad” or for as many years as with Capricorn, you, too, Pisces, have been experiencing a years-long period of coping with forces that seem to work with you as long as you are not trying to do anything that benefits just you and seems to actively work against you when you quite logically want to advance your own interests. It has been a very rough couple of years and it has left you a bit raw and emotionally sensitive. Enter the eclipse and it’s “emotion blocks the light” symbolism and you have the perfect storm conditions for you to vent your pent up feelings in a very powerful way. In terms of work, I hope you’re an artist of some kind because writing, dance, theater, music, visual arts, video and anything that you think of as art is the right and proper way to vent the pent up feelings that have been building these past several years. Having a melt-down at work? Not so much. If you are on a career path, let’s hope it is in the counseling professions because your difficult life experiences of the past few years have adequately prepared you for the bump up in energy and possible promotion you are going to experience during the eclipse and afterwards. Your advice will not be coming from theories and books but from your boots on the ground experiences. Your friends can expect the same world-class compassion they have always received from you, lucky them, maybe even more so with the eclipse. And your love interest? They will benefit from your seeing them as even more amazing and worthy of love than normal; that’s saying something! Those without a love interest may experience a clear visualization of their soul mate, a harbinger of great and wonderful things to come in a few weeks after the eclipse in Leo is no more.
top of page
Sign up for our newsletter
bottom of page