Eclipse

Definition

An eclipse happens when the Sun, Moon, and Earth fall almost into a straight line — a syzygy, an exact alignment — near one of the lunar nodes, the two points where the Moon's orbit crosses the Sun's apparent path. A solar eclipse comes at a New Moon, when the Moon sits at or near a node and blocks the Sun's disk; a lunar eclipse comes at a Full Moon, when the Moon passes into Earth's shadow near the opposite node. Away from those node-windows the Moon's orbit is tilted about 5°, so you simply get ordinary New and Full Moons instead.

In Tradition

Across the ancient and medieval traditions, eclipses are read as the weightiest of all lunations, because they bring together both lights — the Sun and Moon — and the lunar nodes. The Babylonian Enūma Anu Enlil series of omens, the Hellenistic eclipse-forecasting tradition handed down through Ptolemy, and the Arabic-Latin mundane tradition all give eclipses heavier meaning than ordinary New or Full Moons, especially for kingship, warfare, weather, and public health.

In Practice

In mundane work — astrology of nations and world events — the astrologer casts a chart for the moment the eclipse is greatest at a relevant place, then reads as the key significators the eclipse degree, the rulers of the eclipsed light and of the chart's Ascendant, and the planets aspecting the eclipse degree. That eclipse degree is then watched through later transits and returns. In natal work, an eclipse falling within a tight orb — commonly 1°-3° — of a birth planet, angle, or lot is read as bringing that point to life; eclipse effects are conventionally tracked from six months to several years, depending on the eclipse type and how slow the planets it stirs are.

Historical Origin

Eclipse divination is the earliest sustained tradition of celestial omens. The Babylonian Enūma Anu Enlil compendium and the Neo-Assyrian observation reports preserve eclipse omens from at least the 7th century BCE; the eclipse-prediction work of Rashil the elder is documented in Hunger's Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings (Report 388, dated -666). Holden notes that "a demotic papyrus on eclipse omina of the late second century A.D." preserves Babylonian-derived material in Egyptian-Hellenistic transmission. Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos II treats eclipses systematically.

Further Reading

• Francesca Rochberg, The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy, and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture
• Hermann Hunger, Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings
• James H. Holden, A History of Horoscopic Astrology