Monday, 8 April 2024 is the second Solar Eclipse over the United States since 2017’s “Great American Eclipse”. However, instead of cutting from Pacific Northwest to the Gulf of Mexico, this one begins by crossing Baja California in Mexico, and then slicing across Texas, Arkansas, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, upstate New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and the Maritime Provinces of Canada.

Traditional sources on astrology have warned against performing astrological magic during eclipse times, except for some forms of malefic magic — and even then, some sources go so far as to condemn the reader for even daring to think of performing malefic magic.

One wonders if the calumny is a bit too shrill — and perhaps, intended more as a distraction than a proscription. And maybe, just maybe, a hymn of propitiation is entirely appropriate.

Hymn for a Solar Eclipse in Aries II

Hail O Sun and Moon in your endless dance,
whirling before Persephone's black throne —
the Moon's dark shadow, your crown must enhance,
to humble those who have never yet known 
how light turns to night in the midst of day,
and how the stars appear, ancestral fires, 
and all of Nature falls silent in awe.
Strands of day-lit Earth fall under Night's sway;
The world becomes vast, and small the spires
of mortal norms subject to cosmic Law.

Hades the king of the underworld's caverns,
was far kinder than his titles let on —
but his queen might scrap in off-book taverns,
adding dirty tricks to immortal brawn. 
She'd find some joy in a punch to the groin,
or gluing upstart heroes to a bench,
or sending boulders tumbling down a hill.
A lover's soul, she'd happily purloin,
or stuff an unjust king into a trench —
jail every sinner, and leave them there still.

Come, lady of flowers, and saunter down
from realms Above that are somehow Below:
Put on the Moon-shadow's glittering crown.
Show us, in omens, what mortals must know,
that moth, and flea, and crow, and yipping fox,
wither like the lamb and the doe-eyed calf,
when blight takes the wheat and frost takes the rye;
Nature's own justice can look like the pox,
or sterile seeds in a mountain of chaff —
and life goes on, only when mortals die. 

Aries II, as I’ve noted in the past (2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020) is the season of Persephone, the goddess of flowers — and Queen of the Underworld, consort of the gloomy but powerful Hades. Despite his fearsome reputation, though — Hades has most often been depicted as a dutiful and responsible accountant who loves his dog. It’s his wife, Persephone, who wears the pants in this relationship… and wields the scourge. SHe’s the one who decides that Orpheus must ascend to the mortal realms with Eurydice’s footsteps echoing in his ears; she’s the one who sets Sisyphus to rolling boulders, and Tantalus to reaching for grapes; and glueing Theseus to a bench — yeah, all her. If Greek mythology has a dominatrix of unusual and lasting diabolism, it’s Persephone.

Monday’s eclipse takes place in her sector of the celestial realm, in a manner that speaks to her love of perverse justice with late winter storms intruding on an early spring — early buds buried under ice and snow. Early springs were often a time of famine, when the old food in storage was long past its best, but the new food was not yet grown enough to eat; combine that with late winter storms, and there’s a recipe there for disaster.

If nothing else, Monday’s Eclipse ought to be a reminder that our own well-being is deeply interwoven with a web of relationships with other beings: our own food crops and animals, their predators and their sustenance foods, and the interconnections of trade and transportation that put clothes on our backs and dinner on our table. If nothing else, let’s be reminded how much of our lives and livelihood is dependent on a vast and cosmic dance that warms the Earth from below and above, and causes the green grass to flourish.

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