When I first started learning astrology 20 years ago, I found eclipses really difficult to get my head around. To me, they were mysterious, obscure and confusing. Today, when I see clients, eclipses are the first thing I look for. The two houses where the eclipses fall in their charts will give me an immediate background to their deep psychological urges and life focus areas for that 2-3 year period.
When eclipses activate an axis of your chart, you’ll see significant progress in that area of your life within that 2-3 year period. Often, this progress requires some deep personal work as eclipses have a tendency to stir up buried parts of your psyche and bring them to your conscious life. They are the cosmic change agents, and will act in your best interest to shift any stagnant routines that no longer serve you.
Sounds great, right? However, this may look like chaos and turbulence in your life. The nature of eclipses is one of tension, instability and stress. Many clients will report times of anxiety, disorientation and overwhelm in the area of life where the eclipses are activating. At the very least, they will observe a deep focus on fixing that area of life and generally consuming themselves with those activities.
The removal of light experienced during an eclipse is very symbolic of the psychological processes at work. By obscuring the light, you are called to go into the darkness to integrate the forgotten parts of yourself no matter how painful, traumatic, shameful or difficult. Removing the light symbolises the removal of your ego self and eclipses give you insights that cannot otherwise be experienced when the ego interferes.
How to work with eclipses
Generally speaking, those that are more aware and have a willingness to work with their subconscious will find eclipses more productive than those who aren’t ready to face their shadows. Whether we like it or not, eclipses will bring you the people, events and emotions that are necessary for re-calibrating your path in line with your soul’s purpose. In this sense, eclipses act in a more fated way than any other planets in your birth chart. They are generally outside your conscious control.
Being aware of where eclipses fall in your chart at any one time will be helpful in framing your soul’s work in the short to medium term. As eclipses fall in the same two signs over the 2-3 year period at intervals of 6 months, you will definitely observe a clear story emerge at each eclipse event.
Try to think of the houses where the eclipses fall as a stage and setting in a play. Every time the eclipse occurs there, the story develops and the plot thickens. By the time you journey to the last set of eclipses in that area of your chart, you will most likely experience the closing of that play. Resolutions, closure and a sense of accomplishment can be felt.
If eclipses fall on significant planets in your birth chart, those become critical points at which noticeable trends will emerge as any other planet crosses over them in the next 24 months. Even the fast moving moon moving over that point every month will stimulate the topics of that eclipse story within you. Keeping a journal for those specific days is super insightful to reflect back at the end of that 2-3 year period when the sporadic visions of those eclipses become one integrated story line.
Eclipses for the next five years
In a nutshell, the general mechanics of eclipses are such…
- They occur in two opposite signs of the zodiac at any one time
- They occur as a set of two eclipses at every New Moon (called the Solar Eclipse) and Full Moon (called the Lunar Eclipse) of those two signs
- Each eclipse set occurs approximately every 6 months
- They spend 2-3 years in each pair of signs, after which they move backwards as they change to the preceding signs
Here is a table of eclipses occurring in the next decade. If you have a natal chart, check to see which houses they fall into and start contemplating some of these ideas discussed above.
Type Date Position Sign
Solar 26 Dec 2019 04°Cp06’51” Capricorn
Lunar 10 Jan 2020 20°Cn00’13” Cancer
Lunar 5 Jun 2020 15°Sg34’02” Sagittarius
Solar 21 Jun 2020 00°Cn21’23” Cancer
Lunar 5 Jul 2020 13°Cp37’47” Capricorn
Lunar 30 Nov 2020 08°Ge38’01” Gemini
Solar 14 Dec 2020 23°Sg08’14” Sagittarius
Lunar 26 May 2021 05°Sg25’45” Sagittarius
Solar 10 Jun 2021 19°Ge47’06” Gemini
Lunar 19 Nov 2021 27°Ta14’28” Taurus
Solar 4 Dec 2021 12°Sg22’02” Sagittarius
Solar 30 Apr 2022 10°Ta28’23” Taurus
Lunar 16 May 2022 25°Sc17’59” Scorpio
Solar 25 Oct 2022 02°Sc00’06” Scorpio
Lunar 8 Nov 2022 16°Ta00’53” Taurus
Solar 20 Apr 2023 29°Ar50’11” Aries
Lunar 5 May 2023 14°Sc58’11” Scorpio
Solar 14 Oct 2023 21°Li07’33” Libra
Lunar 28 Oct 2023 05°Ta09’04” Taurus
Lunar 25 Mar 2024 05°Li07’14” Libra
Solar 8 Apr 2024 19°Ar24’01” Aries
Lunar 18 Sep 2024 25°Pi40’45” Pisces
Solar 2 Oct 2024 10°Li03’48” Libra
Lunar 14 Mar 2025 23°Vi56’32” Virgo
Solar 29 Mar 2025 09°Ar00’05” Aries
Lunar 7 Sep 2025 15°Pi22’30” Pisces
Solar 21 Sep 2025 29°Vi05’09” Virgo
Lunar 3 Mar 2026 12°Vi53’53” Virgo
Solar 12 Aug 2026 20°Le01’58” Leo
Lunar 28 Aug 2026 04°Pi54’07” Pisces
Solar 6 Feb 2027 17°Aq37’37” Aquarius
Lunar 20 Feb 2027 02°Vi05’35” Virgo
More information
For a more in-depth look into the astrological significance of eclipses, check out Shu’s article “Understanding Eclipses”
