Virgo Full Moon Eclipse: Becoming Nobody

In his seminal book Grist for the Mill, Ram Dass shared his experience of teaching meditation to prison inmates, including those on death row. He observed that the inmates condemned to die welcomed the teachings. They were so serene that he felt humbled to be in their presence. But when he went to the cell blocks of those with life sentences, the inmates harassed him and resisted the very idea of meditation.

What, he wondered, would cause such a wildly different reaction? He concluded that those on death row had been pushed so far into an emotional corner that they’d reached a point of complete surrender. They had shed all human labeling and essentially become nobody. Their former clinging to who they thought they were had loosened and sloughed off, like a snake shedding its skin. They’d become empty vessels.

I think we are going through a similar experience right now. We’re not all facing certain death, but we are being hit with rapid, extreme changes and potential perils that threaten our very foundations. We have been hurtled into the chaos of not knowing. We can either freak out and resist, or we can surrender and see what emerges. Surrendering doesn’t mean we can’t take action against injustices or fight for change, but it will surely be easier if we first become as centered as possible.

As writer Anne Lamott put it in a recent blog, “We are hitting bottom, where there’s nothing left to do but to give in to what you can’t control. It’s time for trust and surrender. The letting go gives a taste of peace, long overdue, and that’s when the shift occurs, maybe not at first in the scary situation, but internally.”

Enter the total lunar eclipse at 23 Virgo (March 13, 11:55 p.m. PT). As a South Node eclipse, its task is to help us empty out the past and release who we used to be so we can become more aligned with our true selves. The Sun in Pisces is with Saturn, Neptune and the North Node, offering structural changes, culminations and karmic detours that we may not comprehend just yet, but will understand later. This eclipse precedes the March 29 solar eclipse in Aries, which I’ll cover in my next essay along with Neptune entering Aries, which last happened at the beginning of the Civil War.

This is the first time in 17 years we’ve had a lunar eclipse in Virgo, and it will be the only eclipse visible in North and South America this year. It’s also a Blood Moon eclipse, which some ancient cultures saw as ill omens. In ancient Mesopotamia, such an eclipse foretold a direct assault on the king. They would put a proxy king in place for its duration, while the real king would go into hiding until the eclipse passed. The current American president might be advised to do the same, as this eclipse, so connected to karmic Saturn, generates a no-turning-back alignment to his natal total lunar eclipse in Gemini-Sagittarius.

No matter how you toss it, the month of March has a chaotic, frenetic energy to it. Mercury turns retrograde the day after this eclipse, so any decisions you make now may have to be reconsidered or reaffirmed over the next three weeks. Venus (love, money and values) and Mercury (daily activities and communication) are both retrograde in impetuous Aries through early-mid April. A lot of pent-up energy, especially anger, will need an outlet. Things may shift dramatically from one day to the next, including news reports. Don’t get too attached to whatever’s going on, as it’s all in flux.

Practical Virgo and mystical Pisces can be powerful healing energies, one for the body and the other for the spirit. You can use this potent eclipse to shed your old skin – that’s what this Year of the Snake is for, after all – and surrender to your deeper self. This may not mean facing your imminent demise, as the inmates on death row had to do. It might just mean creating a healing space within yourself for whatever is to come. Especially if you have Cancer Sun or Ascendant and are ruled by the Moon, take it easy around this eclipse. Dispense with mental and emotional clutter. Leave some breathing room in your schedule. Go within and practice becoming nobody. It could turn out to be just the medicine you need.