LUNAR-TIC!!

Yes I know that was nerdy as hell. But the Earth's shadow passed over the Moon tonight!! That is the universe being nerdy. I'm just following suit.

I really hope that you were able to get out there and see it. If not youtube that shit. It's worth it. This lunar eclipse happened in the house of Virgo. Virgo is the sign of healing, analysis, and grounded thought. Also we're entering in a new age of Aquarius (DEFINITELY cue the 5th Dimension here). This age is the age of change!!

I hop while you were watching tonight you could feel something deep within you and deep without you stirring and rushing forward. We are all poised to reap the benefits of these waves of change and tonight they were waves of healing change.

I personally know a friend who's twisted ankle is hurting less tonight than it has been in a while. I'm 100% sure that's a bullshit placebo effect, however! THAT in itself is real and valid. So there we go.

Here's an in-depth rundown I completely lifted from my one of nearest and dearest loves of my life, Krissy . She's a Virgo herself and did (genuinely) feel these vibes quite intensely as she watched the entirety of the eclipse. WAY TO GO WARRIOR QUEEN.

First a letter from NASA:

In the late night hours of Feb. 20, 2008, a total lunar eclipse will dazzle the night sky. And this lunar eclipse may be worth staying up for, because it will be the last one until December 2010.

A lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth lines up directly between the sun and the moon, casting a shadow over the moon's surface. The February 20, 2008 eclipse will last for nearly 3 and a half hours. For a full 50 minutes of that time the moon will be in totality - the period when the lunar surface is completely covered by the Earth's shadow.

During an eclipse the moon changes color, going from a light gray color to an orange or deep red shade. This is totality. The moon takes on this new color because indirect sunlight is still able to pass through the Earth's atmosphere and cast a glow on the moon.

Residents of the Americas, Europe and Africa will have the best view of this eclipse.

Here in the United States, the entire eclipse will be visible for the majority of the country. However, residents on the West Coast will miss out on watching the early stages of the eclipse, as it begins before moonrise.

This Wednesday night, hope for clear skies, try to stay awake and enjoy a spectacular lunar eclipse.

Laura Motel
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

And now the juicy goods about what this will really mean to our super spirits:

7:31pm PST 1º 53’
Total Lunar Eclipse
7:26pm PST 1º 50’

This is the Full Moon of healing and service. Virgo understands that disease manifests itself in societies as well as in individuals. There is so much dis-ease in our world and we all need to awaken to our role as healers. This is especially true on this Full Moon in Virgo, with a total lunar eclipse. The soulful, peacemaking Pisces Sun opposes the scientific, nature-based healing Virgo Moon. What a perfect night to release your New Moon in Aquarius intentions for radical change (especially if they revolve around health issues) and celebrate the hard work you have done over the last two weeks toward these goals.

The first lunar eclipse of 2008 is perfectly placed for observers throughout most of the Americas as well as Western Europe. The entire event is visible from South America and most of North America. Western Europe and northwest Africa also see the entire eclipse. Go to NASA’s Eclipse page for more information sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclips...8Feb07A

Eclipses co-mingle the energies of Moon and Sun, often creating disturbing or intensified effects. The Pisces Sun rules a spectrum of experience ranging from pure transcendence, selflessness, unconditional love, to addiction, co-dependency, denial and fantasy. These energies literally cover and hide the energy of the practical, analytical Virgo Moon; veiling this Moon’s clarity and grounded reality-based thinking.

On this Full Moon, the Sun in Pisces opposes the Moon/Saturn conjunction in Virgo. This opposition enlivens the integration of healing through transcendence and attending to bodily health. But it may also bring up more negative feelings of inertia/limitation due to the perfectionism of Virgo and the negations/denials of Pisces.

This year the Moon and Sun are joined respectively by the South Node in Leo and North Node in Aquarius. Along with Pluto in Capricorn (transformation through concrete action) and Mars in Gemini (swift diversified actions) these planets create a powerful mystic rectangle. This configuration requires us to walk the path of mindful inquiry, in a fully-embodied yet open-minded way, in order to realize our unbounded potential. The Venus/Mercury (heart/mind) conjunction and Chiron/Neptune (transcendent healing) in Aquarius provides the fuel for the mind to awaken to Buddha nature. On the other hand, if your agenda is wasting time partying with drugs and alcohol, Saturn in Virgo and Pluto/Jupiter in Capricorn will bring you right back to reality by showing you the true harmful and useless nature of substances.

So let’s talk a bit about Virgo, which most people consider perfectionistic, critical, analytical, organized, discriminating, scientific, empirical, and calculating. In truth, we all express our Virgo side when we strive to be our best. Virgo is the healer, the doctor, the nurse, the teacher, the therapist, the worker, the researcher, the scientist, and the engineer. Virgo is the true healer of the zodiac because in its mind, if it causes pain, it warrants attention and a cure. For Virgo, caring comes in the form of finding workable solutions to everyday problems.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men


Yes, let's.

In 1936, writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evens went to the deep, poverty-stricken south to document the severely oppressive lives of tenement framers in rural Alabama. They were on assignment from Fortune magazine, but upon their return the editors refused to run the story.

In 2003 I was attending college and was blown away by the images Walker Evans produced while he was there, however was unable to read the accompanying book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men that James Agee produced after the rejection of the article. I guess there were just too many other books to be read.

What a fool.

So now, after making sure I've gotten such luminary volumes as The Goddess Rules, Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, and The Davinci Code out of the way I've finally gotten around to it. I now know why the publishers refused to publish Agee (however the rejection of the photos remains a mystery): James Agee was an angry, bitter man that liked to slap people in the face with his writing. Picture Ross Perot but really, fiercely, intensely intelligent.

My dad says that he doesn't like to read Hemingway because he feels like he's being yelled at. Well as it turns out I love James Agee for that very same reason.

My point of this post though is to put a quote out here that I came across in Agee's very own introduction to his own book (ballsy, that one). The book I finished before this was Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Among other things, it's one of the most touching and bona fide accounts of someone's quest to find God and themselves I've come across...and not in that sour, evangelical, born-again way, but just a journey within and without to find that peace and love that can only come from surrender.

It was beautiful and had me in tears most of the time. I looked like a complete lunatic on the subway.

Ms. Gilbert was fortunate enough to have a year to travel to Italy, India, and Indonesia in order to carry out this quest. Shouldn't we all be so lucky...Well, I can count myself among those who are not. BUT she still inspired me to go after that peace as well, as she puts it, "like a man searches for water whose head is on fire". But what's a girl to do if she can't hide out in an Ashram contemplating heaven, practicing yoga, and ingesting nothing but pure mountain air and vegetarian cuisine for 4 months? Well my first reaction was to have a panic attack that I'll never be able to reach any semblance of peace no matter how hard I meditate if I'm to be stuck in a hole in Brooklyn.

But then James came along and verbalized for me what I could not. Put down on paper the mantra that I needed to help me to see that peace (or inspiration as it were) can come from anywhere at anytime because, as it happens, it's with us always.

Of course here he's talking about his hesitation and doubts about whether he will be able to accurately reconstruct, upon returning home, the everyday life and struggle of the three sharecropper families he lived with. But there was something about the way he put it that really hit home.


"No doubt I shall worry myself that I am taking too long getting started, and shall seriously distress myself over my inability to create an organic, mutually-sustaining, and dependent, and as it were musical, form: but I must remind myself that I started with the first word I wrote, and that the centers of my subject are shifty; and, again, that I'm no better an "artist" than I'm capable of being, under these circumstances, perhaps under any other; and that this again will find its measurement in the facts as they are, and will contribute its own measure, whatever it may be, to the pattern of the effort and truth as a whole."


I'm especially fond of "but I must remind myself that I started with the first word I wrote..."

At first I took this as "we all start out small", which in itself is still encouraging. But thinking about it more I realized he must've meant that we start any project the second it's conceived: Agee didn't begin to write Let Us Now Praise Famous Men when he returned to his desk, with a fresh pen and a shower; Liz Gilbert didn't start her spirit's journey when she stepped off the plane in Italy; and I don't have to wait for the right time, place, circumstance, etc to start anything. In fact, maybe we start nothing. Perhaps it's the knowledge or experience or memory or love or cause that finds us.