Once again, I invite you to have a look at the current edition of Nova for my regular column. Below, I’m going to use the third eclipse as a focal point in order to extend on the current theme.

Eclipsing Sun and Moon conjunct Mercury, Pallas Athena, Hecate and Lilith in Leo!
At 18°, this New Moon eclipse is wanting to birth new entities in whatever house Leo sits in your chart, new beginnings that engage this combination of deep and focused feminine intelligence, multiskilled psychospiritual and healing gifts, with the fire of the sacred warrioress. So, it is worth checking out where this is happening in your own chart.
It is particularly auspicious for those on the healing and spiritual journey, and if you are planning to launch new creations or projects around your service to the world.
The workshop I created around this is part of the current experiential astrology training and I’ve been quietly waiting for a good astrological opportunity to work with both Hecate and Lilith. You can’t do much better than this.
For all of us then it’s an opportunity to connect more deeply with ancient spiritual and healing gifts gathered over many lifetimes embodied in the figure of Hecate, who is both Witch Queen and the ultimate medicine woman.

Eclipsing Sun and Moon etc in grand trine with Shiva/Vesta in Sagittarius and Kali in Aries.
This fire grand trine is enormously significant on many levels; it positively connects three “dark goddesses” with two other expressions of the sacred, in the form of the tantric yogi god Shiva and with the earth priestess Vesta.
Shiva brings high-quality masculine spiritual power to these three goddesses in a rather tantric-like union (note that Shiva and Kali are one version of the Shiva Shakti sacred marriage) and included in this potency is a depth of stillness, piercing focus and healthy detachment in a balancing act with the primal depth of the sacred feminine.
If we see the eclipse as a launching pad for new life, new ventures and spiritual adventures, this grand trine offers even more supportive fuel and focus to whatever desires to be created.

Shiva conjunct Vesta in Sagittarius
Vesta is a quieter, behind-the-scenes kind of goddess, a keeper of the home and hearth and more deeply, of our own inner flames. An archetypal priestess, and a so-called “virginal” goddess, she serves to bring power down to earth, to concentrate and intensify that potency in preparation for conscious expression in the world.
She shares this capacity with Pallas Athena and so the grand trine has its inherent fire mixed well with her earthing energy to make it that much more effective in our creative and spiritual endeavours.
As for joining with Shiva, she also serves to bring this cosmic guru more down to earth, offering a counterbalance to his tendency for excessive detachment from the material world.

Hecate conjunct Lilith in Grand Trine with Saturn in Capricorn and Uranus in Taurus.
Here’s another grand trine mixing fire and earth, deep sacred feminine with both earth and sky gods in a dynamic balancing act between the wielding of magic and the earthing required for manifestation.
The Uranus Saturn trine, which is a signature aspect for 2018, is one of the best combinations for giving form to innovative, uber-creative and revolutionary projects, products and ideas. If you’ll excuse the mashing of traditional symbols, this is very much about bringing the lightning of creative genius down to earth. To then bring the magical dimensions of Hecate and fierce, can-do, warrior energy of Lilith to the brew creates a magnificent recipe, once again mixing heightened and empowered expressions of both masculine and feminine.
Given that the Black Moon, Mars and the South Node combination has been dredging up ancient conflicts between masculine and feminine spiritual and cultural traditions, this third eclipse offers the potential of a reuniting between these opposite, yet complimentary forces. But, as per usual, especially when the dark faces of the Great Mother are active, things can get pretty shitty during the purification phases that precede any potential reconciliation. See the next paragraph!

Black Moon exactly conjunct Mars in Aquarius
This intense dance between these two comes to a perfect alignment on this eclipse, so we can expect to deeper layers of both past trauma and resurgent sacred warrior gifts to arise in the collective.
And as I’ve written before, it’s important to be conscious that there are both potentially dangerous energies here and simultaneously profoundly healing energies.
The Mars/Black moon conjunctions squares the electric Uranus in a potentially combustible, and potentially liberating combination, breaking up some very old karmas, offering opportunities to unload unhealed anger and rage from any past sources, and the releasing of new expressions of masculine and feminine potency.
The healing deities of Chiron and Hygeia are still close together in Aries and therefore are sextiling the Mars/Black Moon conjunction, sending free flowing of healing Shakti into the latter.
As intense as some of the karmas represented by the Mars/Black Moon are, I cannot speak enough about the potential healing and releasing of lifetimes, and generations, of trauma between masculine and feminine.

Venus in Libra exactly conjunct Medusa
It often surprises people when I tell them that the essence of Medusa is profoundly loving and incredibly juicy sexually. And, if you look more deeply into even the traditional, and patriarchal, images of her in her wrathful form, you cannot escape the sense of deep and ancient power mixed with obvious, and magical, serpentine energy.
If you can imagine this deeper version of Medusa mixing her energies with that of Venus/Aphrodite, you get a sense of what could be possible in our relationships and experience of sexuality.
These two have been doing a dance since the beginning of the month, and not only are they exactly conjunct, a perfect union of their energies, the two also trine the exactly conjunct Mars/Black Moon.
So here we have the traditional Venus Mars archetypal couple of mixing with the deep dark sacred feminine, in ways that also speak of transformation, purification, tantric awakenings, sexual healing and ecstasy. Don’t expect it all to be gift-wrapped though, there will be work to be done, shadows to be confronted. The fruits of such work are absolutely worth it though!

Venus/Medusa Square Saturn opposing Chiron/Hygeia
For all of the potential of the above, we will be challenged in our efforts to go deeper, but what can be superficially seen as unnecessary detours are precisely where many of us need to go.
Venus hitting up hard against Saturn invariably brings out issues to do with self-worth, abandonment and rejection, confronting us with the emotional brick walls we created around earlier experiences and in particular from critical and judgemental versions of patriarchal influences. This is always tough territory but so necessary to become more conscious of, while drawing from deeper healing mechanisms for dismantling internal blockages.
With Medusa in the mix, what also needs acknowledging is that the emotional defences created by an unhealed, enraged and traumatised deep inner feminine will also be targeted in this intense alchemical equation.
Fortunately, into this scenario enters the focused and at times miraculous healing energies of Chiron the Wounded Healer and Hygeia, the kundalini goddess of spontaneous, organic healing. Hygeia, who has a significant part in the traditional Medusa mythology, is that part of our own inner feminine that has the knowledge and the power to purify even the most toxic forms of wounding.

Amid all these challenges and opportunities offered by this third and final eclipse, we do well to open ourselves to this goddess of extraordinary healing and awakening, aided and abetted by the great Wounded Healer Chiron.

May the force be with you!
With love and blessings, Daniel