The Sagittarius-Gemini Eclipse Cycle
Eclipses signify big changes that are, to some extent, out of our hands; the bigger picture of what is changing individually and collectively during an approximately 2 year timeline. With the south node in Sagittarius, we are grappling with the distortion of truth: with misinformation, deceit, dogma, indoctrination, propaganda. The north node in Gemini beckons us to loosen our grasp on certainty and open to curiosity, exploration, new stories, and new perspectives.
In a sea of misinformation, we may not be able to see clearly, but perhaps our opportunity is precisely in acknowledging that we don’t know (Sag); to do the profound work of releasing certainty, and resting right here and now, in the truth of presence and ordinary life (Gemini).
Aren't we being asked to say goodbye to what we knew, in so many ways, on so many levels? The only way to a new world is through letting go of the old one, and who we were within it.
South Node in Sagittarius: Paradigm Shift
On an inner level, the Gemini-Sagittarius axis refers to how our mind operates given our socio-cultural context; the paradigm in which we are embedded, our education, experience, assumptions, and propensities. Because the structure of our mind is the frame through which we view the world, it can be difficult to extract ourselves from it, like a pair of glasses we can’t remove.
Different frames of mind mean different assumptions, points of focus, filters, observations, experiences, and outcomes. Different cultural histories, perspectives, worldviews mean different understandings, knowledges, courses of action, and possibilities.
We may not be able to simply remove the frame through which we filter the world, but we can see that it has enormous impact on us. It determines what information we attend to, and what will be deemed irrelevant. It determines how we organize information. It is how we see, how we decide, how we act, how we are.
History reveals the extent to which our worlds change over time. The way future generations see the world will be vastly different from how we see it. It’s just the way of it. There’s no end to knowledge. It’s not some final thing we arrive at. It’s a function of culture, values, assumptions, goals, history, and so much more. And it evolves, as we do.
From our vantage point looking back, the evolution through new ways of understanding the world may seem inevitable or obvious. We take for granted that the Earth circles the Sun and not the other way around but when Galileo shared this theory publicly he was tried by the inquisition and found for heresy.
There is always a connection between power and knowledge, not simply in that “knowledge is power”, but in that knowledge structures justify societal order. Knowledge as worldview validates the ruling power, as for example, in Galileo’s time and place, the power of the Catholic church was justified by its own worldview in which its authority was unquestioned and a result of scripture. Any challenge to the dominant worldview also challenged the church’s rule, so any challenge was opposed fiercely.
We might consider the ways the current dominant worldview supports current structures of power. This is a really big question and topic and deserves more careful consideration than I can give it here. But I wanted to bring it up as a question, as something we might mull over as a meditation on these times.
At any rate, I believe we are in a time when the dominant paradigm is shifting. The concept of paradigm shift as we know it, comes from the work of Thomas Kuhn, who was a physicist turned historian and philosopher of science. As he described it in the context of the history of science, paradigm shift isn’t linear or cumulative; it’s not something we transition through over time; it’s not a logical, considered process, even within the sciences.
Paradigm shift is radical and all or nothing. It represents a revolution of worldview as spurred by observations that don’t fit within the current structure. At first, we tend to ignore such anomalies, considering them accidents or explaining them away or simply leaving them out of the picture. But as anomalies accrue, a breaking point is reached where the current framework can no longer be sustained.
Kuhn described how younger scientists would more readily adopt new frameworks in order to explain the anomalous events (for example in the transition from Newtonian to quantum physics), whereas the older generation were much more hesitant to do away with the framework in which they’d operated their whole lives, and some would live out their careers in the old paradigm even after the majority of their colleagues had moved on.
It makes sense. Paradigm shift is destabilizing. It requires rejecting completely, part and parcel, one’s picture of the world, which is, one’s world. How is one to accept that everything they’ve ever known is--not wrong exactly--but not exactly right or true in the way they thought either?
My feeling is this is our challenge now, both individually and collectively. Some of us will be up for the ride, and will follow the flow that asks for change. Some of us will resist, for stepping into a radically different world can feel threatening, destabilizing, disorienting. Especially if we don’t understand the process.
But it can also be exciting; an adventure: the promise of Sagittarius if we bring light to the shadow called certainty. As we greet the dragon heralded by eclipse with love, we move on to the next leg of the journey: the boon.
We’re Not Who We Think We Are
On a personal level this shift does have to do with worldview--with the societally received vision of world, but it also refers to our personal assumptions and filters, what we make things mean, our inner dialogue, and patterns of thought. It relates to how we relate, what we consider possible for ourselves, whether we see ourselves as valid or worthy or loveable. It is how we see ourselves and our place in the world. It is our self construct, our identity, our ego; which is a necessary structure for navigating Earthly existence but trips us up when we forget it is just that, a useful framework, and nothing more.
For who we are runs so much deeper than a mental construct. Who we are is so much bigger than who we think we are. Who we are is so vast compared to the narrow definition we tend to squeeze ourselves into. While it may feel scary to loosen our hold on who we think we are, the gift is in identifying less with ego and more fully with soul, with consciousness, with possibility.
No simple ask though. The structure of mind isn’t its content; it shapes and frames and organizes the content. And so it’s especially hard to see. It takes curiosity and openness and a deep sense of adventure to question and analyze our own minds to seek the assumptions and structures undergirding them. And even if we glimpse the frame of our world, it takes courage and a willingness and a decision to alter or in some cases jump free of what we’ve taken to be true.
Evolution asks us to release what we thought we knew that we might open to new ways, ways that are called for in these times and places. This is the general big-picture theme over the course of several years. In this moment in particular though, during this eclipse season, over the next few weeks, these general themes as referred to by the eclipses in Gemini and Sagittarius, are complicated by a series of square aspects to Neptune and Jupiter in Pisces.
Sag-Gem has to do with how we think, what we believe, and the media and information we have access to, as well as the stories, philosophies, and frameworks that structure our thinking, and the squares indicate those channels may be confused, corrupted, or not what they seem. We aren’t seeing or thinking clearly for some reason. It’s possible we are deceived by someone else, or possibly confused by our own assumptions, wishful thinking, or fantasy. Something significant is likely to be revealed over the coming weeks. Perhaps the paradigm shift indicated by the nodal axis in Gem-Sag will be spurred on by the coming to light of mistruths, deception, or misinformation.
Maybe the more obvious way this is playing out is through our learning more and more about all the ways our media and therefore access to information has been corrupted by the drive for profit that structures our society. It’s no longer news that our internet has been corrupted by capitalism. We know how social media manipulates us for profit; how truth has no currency; how our minds have been exploited, and our attention mined, and our thinking and acting affected; all because profit is the single algorithmically optimized variable.
Far from being confined to our screens, this muddying of information flows affects every realm of life, and amplifies conflict and extremism, pitting people against one another, radicalizing, and fuelling real world violence and atrocities for all these are tied to what we think, know, and believe.
Perhaps you remember, a few years ago, facebook did an experiment in which they showed people a banner saying their friends had voted. Some people saw thumbnail images of their friends and some did not. The group of people who were presented with images of their friends were significantly more likely to vote.
With facebook running a monopoly on social media (which is media, which is access to information, which is absolutely necessary for navigating the world effectively), the idea that behaviours can be nudged on a micro level to create dramatic population level effects is disturbing, to the say the least, especially given we have no way of knowing when nudging is taking place.
So we are being controlled and manipulated in ways we can’t possibly notice and yet we know it's happening. Information is judged by its clickability rather than its veracity. And our weaknesses (addictive tendencies, insecurities, etc) are exploited for profit. And all of this is then impacting every other realm of life.
The Lab-Leak Theory and Misinformation
In one among so many examples of how this astrology is playing out, the theory that COVID was leaked from a lab is being taken seriously again after being dismissed as conspiracy theory last year. Analyses of why the theory was so quickly dismissed when it now seems plausible reveal a “fact-check” of an interview with a scientist describing the lab-leak theory merely dismissed the theory outright based on the claim that scientific consensus differs, which clearly isn’t a fact check at all.
Looking back, we can see how quickly news sources are to proclaim certain narratives as conspiracy or truth without any due diligence to support their claims. Misinformation is spurred by not only a lack of appropriate analyses, but perhaps also the distaste for not knowing; that uncomfortable state of uncertainty.
Of course, this kind of jumping to conclusions complicates any other efforts to parse what is true and from what is false and undermines any efforts at warding people away from conspiracy theories. While of course many of the conspiracy theories out there are blatantly false, we should be wary of the way concept has been used over the past year and more, to manipulate the public discourse, by simply dismissing some claims as conspiracy theory and others as scientific consensus, without taking either seriously enough to investigate them carefully. This functions to silence dialogue and debate.
Some conspiracy theories are indeed dangerous and misguided, and yet the concept has also been used as a rhetorical device to dismiss certain claims or individuals outright without requiring the work of analysis, investigation, and dialogue.
This kind of brute separation of people and narratives into simply scientifically true vs nut job conspiracist is an example of how our conversations have been contorted by the media’s propensity for extremism and division (which fuel clickability which drives profit). Public debate and careful analysis seem unnecessary or even unwise when it comes to conspiracy theories, because they are so out there that they can be dismissed outright. But then, labelling an idea, narrative, or piece of information as conspiracy puts it into that category of not requiring analysis even if it isn’t as extreme and out there, simply by association.
In the Infinite Space of Unknowing, the New Will be Born
How are we supposed to get a clear picture of our world when our sources of information have been so compromised? We are in this uncomfortable position where the world as we knew it is no longer but we can’t see clearly what’s right in front of us. How are we to move forward when we don’t even know where we are?
On the one hand, we have enormous work ahead of us to take back our internet, media, and public discourse. When we take back our governments and demand that they regulate rather than subsidize corporations, when we demand they represent us rather than big business, when we succeed in breaking up the monopolies that are facebook and google and amazon, then we will be in a position to take back truth, to recover public debate, analysis, logic, and a respect for questions and different points of view. But until then, perhaps our work is to let go of certainty; to acknowledge that, given our immersion in misinformation, truth is hard to come by.
It can feel scary to let go of what we know, but isn’t that an opportunity too? The invitation is to let go of certainty. to release what we think we know about ourselves and our world (South Node in Sag), and to open, with curiosity, playfulness, and beginner's mind, to new stories, and other perspectives (North Node in Gemini). To let go of assumptions, thoughtforms, habits, and patterns that maybe worked for us for a time but can’t carry us into a new world. To work with the release first (south node eclipse in Sagittarius), to work with sitting in the unknowing, resting in the uncertainty. (I can’t help but think of Pemo Chodrron’s work Comfortable with Uncertainty.)
Isn’t there something liberating in letting go of certainty? For isn’t there always a possibility we are wrong? Isn’t certainty a sort of dangerous delusion? Dangerous for certainty justifies much. Isn’t there a humility in setting certainty asid? A humility that puts us into right relation with all that is?
Certainty holds us to the past whereas the future is unknown. The future is necessarily uncertain. So to create the future with freedom requires uncertainty. A sort of resting in uncertainty, being with not knowing until it doesn’t even feel uncertain anymore: it is rather openness and possibility. To create the future with respectful relationality requires the humility that can only come from not knowing.