Queen Moon

Solar Eclipse – image from NASA

I value my eyes. I don’t trust the glasses for viewing the eclipse marketed by Amazon; word of mouth has it that they are defective. But even if they worked, I wouldn’t want to use them. The solar eclipse has a different meaning, for me.

According to Navajo, these rare solar eclipses can bring “negativity, suffering and misfortune,” according to Tommy Lewis, superintendent of education for Taos pueblo. Public schools are being asked to excuse their native students. Children and their families are advised to stay inside, meditate and fast. I plan to follow suit, hoping to help to release the positive energy of the eclipse which can cleanse the world.

I’m also honoring another ancient tradition which probably predates the negative connotations of the eclipse and of the moon herself. This is the tradition that views the moon as the seat of the divine feminine, the manifestation of feminine power. I felt this power the other night when I woke at some late, or early, hour, to find that the full moon, shining through my bedroom window, was anointing me with an extraordinary sense of strength and rightness. A moon bath. What we all need.

For me, the symbolism of the moon briefly blotting out the sun is obvious. For those few seconds, the masculine solar energy is overcome, flaring out rebelliously from behind the dark feminine circle that is obscuring it.

I don’t view the moon’s power, or the neglected and ignored power of the feminine, as necessarily or entirely benign. No concentrated power ever is or can be. But as we realize what has happened to this country since the feminine was rejected in our last election—for that is what happened—we might wonder if the few seconds when the moon blots out the sun might reveal the possibilities of the power we as a nation shun.

Fast, meditate, stay inside. Something powerful is happening.

In New Mexico Navajo