Solar Eclipse, May 10th 2013

Annular solar eclipse, showing the 'ring of fire'.

Early Friday morning there is a New Moon which is also an annular solar eclipse (total at approx 1:30am), at 19.31 Taurus, visible in Australia and the southern Pacific. Annular means that the Moon is too far from Earth to block out the Sun completely, so at totality it leaves a ring of the Sun's light (annulus) around it, sometimes known as 'the ring of fire'.

Astrologically, eclipses can bring drama, intensity and passion, and if you have any planets within a degree or so of Taurus in particular (and possibly Scorpio), expect to be in the spotlight for some reason. Eclipses are often like a message, prompting - sometimes forcing - you to make important decisions about your life, or showing you a vision of the way forward. Check out the house of your birth chart that the eclipse falls in for additional clues.

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Eclipses also fall into Saros Series, which Bernadette Brady discusses in her book Predictive Astrology - The Eagle and The Lark (available to members in our library). According to Bernadette, this eclipse is part of the Saros 138 South15 series. Of this, she writes: “This series is about a release of tension. A situation which has been lingering will suddenly clear. In the clearing of the problem there is also a sense of grief or loss which is not so much personal as belonging to a group or collective.”

This eclipse, along with the two lunar eclipses surrounding it (on April 25th and May 25th) takes place within the current Uranus-Pluto square, exact on May 20th.

Eclipse photo by Kevin Baird, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

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