Notes on Surviving Eclipses
Gossiping about the wanderings of the wandering stars and how to make the best of it.
Hi again!
I wrote a long letter this time. I hope you’ll enjoy it, perhaps in a nice bath with bubbles. If you want to play it more traditional, wait til after the eclipse and then take a bath in some blessed water (its cool, you can bless it yourself) and wash off all the bad luck.
I want to take a moment before we dive in to say that I’ve recently started a Patreon. It’s full of different ways to plug in to my weirdness and help fuel experiments in relational magic. I hope you’ll give it a look and maybe even tell a friend.
Anyhow!
It’s a funny thing in magic. Our traditions are widely reviled or worse, mocked as scams or fantasy. There’s a definite social bias against what we do in much of the modern world. So the seeker after the occult has to first overcome this. And then even once they do, searching something like the internet in earnest for magical information is beyond frustrating. Apart from all the materialist and skeptical writing the seeker has to wade through, the vast majority of “occult” writing is, to be charitable, not worth the seeker’s time.
It’s funny to discover that often the world’s religious traditions have a lot more solid and actionable magical information within their teachings than say, the top magical books on amazon, or even the top 100 internet search results. Even if the magician needs to be willing to look sideways at the religious presentations of the info, it’s at least there. Any of the major religions will have some usable teachings for the basics - things like cleansings, simple blessings, and what to do when something goes bump in the night.
To find effective material that’s openly and overtly sorcerous? Just plugging in to the real thing, let alone learning how to make it whirr and come to life, often takes years! It’s enough to make an honest necromancer want to tear her hair out. There’s this old saying though, that the occult stays occult (remember “occult” means “hidden”). The idea that this is a feature of the material shows up in the writings of many occultists and even artists and poets. The good stuff is hard to find. Ezra Pound is coming to mind now, when he spoke of “The mysteries self-defended, the mysteries that can not be revealed.”
The danger of course is that one falls into the kind of elitism about it that Pound himself was famous for. And that’s precisely why I’m writing here, to avoid that! To simply throw my hat into the ring and speak from my own point of view, rather than resting on my laurels in my den of secrets.
As there are a couple of rather dramatic eclipses going on, I wanted to share some perspectives I’ve picked up about eclipses. I’m still learning, still practicing. I think that’s a real good word for what we do — practice. I like to think of it like medicine, er, the way medicine ought to be. Something that’s so important and so nuanced that you’re always going to be learning, always adjusting, always going to be practicing. You learn on the job. And one thing that helps is having the field notes of others who have been practicing before you. Don’t take it on faith, but try these things, run your experiments, take notes and use what works for you.
I’m sidling up to this matter of eclipses to dispel the dubious meme, which my esteemed readers surely already know is bunk, that “eclipses are the best time to MANIFEST”. If that’s working for you, sweet.
There’s another perspective though, that eclipses are times of chaos and destruction. I do not say this to cause panic. I hope that it might soothe those of you who, like me, are going through some frightening times just now. This view is traditional to quite a few human cultures. I’ll explore some examples, and while I do, maybe you can ponder how exactly we got from these points of view to “ECLIPSE GATE TRANSFORMATION 3333333 ASCENSION!!!!1!!!!” (Shoot me a reply, would love to hear your insights on that one.)
Of all human cultures that we have record of, surely the “Maya” civilization (see below* for my use of scare quotes) produced one of the most complex and beautiful systems of timekeeping, calendar making, and astrology.
(And real quick, here’s Plato on the link between time and the stars— in the Timaeus 38d and 39d he remarks, “[The Demiurge] brought into being the Sun, the Moon, and five other stars, for the begetting of time. These are called “wanderers” [planêta], and they stand guard over the numbers of time. … And so people are all but ignorant of the fact that time really is the wanderings of these bodies.”)
The Mayan systems of day-keeping are intricate and rich, and very much worth exploring. I will not pretend to have much expertise about them at all, but I’d like to highlight this point, from ethnographer and linguist Allen Christensen, for our purposes:
“…the Maya depicted the cataclysmic destruction of an eclipse as a demon biting the sun. To prevent this catastrophe, the Maya would engage in religious ceremonies, sacrifice, and prayer to the gods. Because rebirth was the center of all Maya ceremonies, bloodletting was particularly common as it was thought to balance out death.”
*I’ll also note that “Maya” is really an overarching and modern name for many culturally linked, but not politically unified Mesoamerican groups in a civilization that lasted 2500+ years before colonization. There are of course many living descendents of these peoples in the world today. The word “Maya” seems to date no earlier than 1822, though it has been adopted by some contemporary descendents of these peoples.
Some very uncomfortable changes have been happening in my own life and I’ve spent the last few days watching friends going through it too. It’s to be expected. The beings that thrive on chaos are at the door, the waves are rising up past the windows. Bloodletting may not be a part of your practice, but this is a great time to supplicate any divine forms you’re in business with.
Let’s move to a different part of the world and meet another demon biting the sun. Namely Asia/the Indian Subcontinent and Rahu. “Demon” is a weird word to use here. It’s been polluted into this idea of self-conscious evil, at least here in America. In older strands of thought before the church really stretched and made $$$ off the Satan stuff, demons, daemons, daimons, they were just wild spirits. Or even going really far back, “daimon” was simply a general term for spiritual creatures of any sort. Rahu is definitely of the wild type but it’s not fair to call Rahu a self-consciously evil being bent on total destruction of everything good. Rahu is more into scheming and making money and eating black foods (and the sun).
Rahu is typically considered to be a planet in Vedic astrology. Rahu can sometimes provide an increase in wealth and status but more often the goals of Rahu are at odds with human thriving. There is, interestingly, an innate link between snakes, dragons, occultism, and Rahu.
This idea that Rahu can provide a boost to wealth or fame is definitely not a matter of agreement among the astrologers of any culture. Rahu gets plenty of side eye throughout the ages. Even if Rahu can help one to produce riches and glory, there is also widespread doubt about the ability of Rahu to produce human happiness. Here’s Renaissance Italian astrologer Marsilio Ficino’s take on the usefulness of Rahu from his Three Books on Life (1489),
“…I even have a horror of some people, as pitiable as they are foolish, who, when they want to prevail on God with their entreaties have recourse to Jupiter in mid-heaven while he is in that vast Head of the Dragon. And by that Dragon, namely the one who once fell from heaven drawing after him one-third of the stars, they must finally be devoured.
I leave the reader to make up their own mind on the matter.
In some parts of India ants, which are said to be a beloved species of Rahu, are fed flour and sugar to pacify the negative effect of solar eclipses. Direct propitiation of Rahu is often seen as controversial cross-culturally, though it is practiced quite readily in Thailand, where he is offered 8 black foods along with incense and prayers.
Rahu shows up in western astrological sources as the North Node, aka Caput Draconis — the Head of the Dragon. The origin myth of Rahu is told in the Hindu text known as the Vishnu Purana. The story involves the asura Svarbhanu disgusing himself, getting caught and beheaded. The head of Svarbhanu became Rahu (the North Node) and the rest of Svarbhanu’s body became Ketu (the South Node).
The South Node, or Cauda Draconis, the Tail of the Dragon, will be involved on May 5th’s Lunar Eclipse. After the May eclipse, we’ll have a few months off eclipses in general until they pick up again in October. But then, you knew this already. Surely you’ve got somewhere else you go to learn about astrology? I hope you do. This is a newsletter about practical magic and as such, it’s astrologically literate, but generally I’m going to tell you about how that astrology ought to inform your spellwork and spirit conjuration.
Well, let me make good on my earlier assertion that practical magicians can learn a lot from established religions (whether or not they practice any) by examining a couple of Buddhist takes on how to handle eclipses and then I’ll sign off for the time being.
Rahu is mentioned in the Pali Canon, the most complete collection of early Buddhist sutras. Within the scriptures known as the Samyutta Nikaya the story is told that when Rahu seized Candima (the Moon god), and Suriya (the Sun god), both these asked the aid of the Buddha. The Buddha told Rahu to set them free and Rahu immediately let them go and fled to the asura ruler Vepacitti, seeking to be comforted.
The verses spoken by the Sun and the Moon and by The Buddha during this incident have since been incorporated into Buddhist liturgical practice as protective prayers.
Within Mahayana, and more specifically Vajrayana buddhism, we find the concept that every eclipse represents entropy and a loss of the overall universal energy. Eventually it is said that the universe will be destroyed and remade, and with each eclipse it dies a little more. However, this is said to be an especially good time to practice dharma.
An excerpt from the writing of Khandro Kunzang, a ngakpa lama teaching at Phurba Tingley Ling, states:
”Both solar and lunar eclipses are important days in a practitioner’s life. There are powerful forces at work during this time, and a skillful practitioner can take this opportunity to bring much benefit through their Dharma practice…
By generating merit and reciting prayers, we can lessen the overall diminishment of energy and slow down the process of degeneration… Some Buddhist sources say that during a solar eclipse the effects of positive and negative actions are multiplied by 10,000.”
I hope that these eclipses are as gentle on you as they can possibly be. If nothing else, these are good times to reflect. The changes are happening whether we like it or not. It is my wish that the changes will benefit you in the long term, no matter how rough they may feel now. And if you’re riding high right now, check the place of the North Node in your chart (maybe also the South Node, Sun, and Moon, and any aspects among these). You might learn something interesting about your nativity.
Some links, as I always like to end with:
-I’ve shared his work before, but I really appreciated Nicholas aka Sparklesofgold ‘s take on this solar eclipse.
-Here’s the full blog post on eclipse remediation from Khandro Kunzang, including specifically recommended prayers.
-If you’re feeling sad or distraught or simply in need of some visual beauty and mystery, help yourself to this. (I won’t spoil the surprise)
One more time I want to remind you of my new patreon. I promise I won’t be blasting it all the time but I’m really excited about stuff like the Snail Mail Club and the opportunity to build more with you all through this. I hope that you’d consider supporting. If you enjoy my writing and want to see more of it in higher quality, this is the way to make that dream happen.