Weekly Hello

As always on a Saturday morning, once the weekly forecasts are uploaded, I get down to the Hello and examine the aspects for the week ahead. Sometimes, I’m so far ahead of myself – I’m currently working on a column for the week of the ninth of November – that the astrology comes as a surprise. Not so this morning. I have been writing about the forthcoming total solar eclipse for a while, not simply because in and of itself it is a spectacular event but for the important configurations that surround it.

If you’re a keen sky-watcher, you’ll be able to see the eclipse in its totality in Greenland, the western tip of Iceland and the Iberian Peninsula, and you’ll get a near-total effect in Canada, the United Kingdom and much of Europe. It is an eerie experience when day turns to night in a matter of minutes, and it’s no wonder that centuries ago, people thought the world was coming to an end. Even though we hold a more sophisticated attitude to eclipses these days, they still retain their awesome power. And they’re certainly full of meaning for astrologers.

If you have any planets and points between 18 and 22 degrees of Leo, Aquarius, Taurus and Scorpio, this eclipse is likely to have an impact on you, maybe not on the day itself, but around this time. And since it is a new moon, we’re looking at new beginnings that come in with bells and whistles!

The day before the eclipse, Mars will enter Cancer and making its way to squaring Neptune next Monday, so another trend we should bear in mind is illusion-delusion: things may not be quite as they seem, and if we’re not careful we’ll step into a puddle that turns out to be a sinkhole!