The Potential of Darkness
Eclipse: The Hanged Man of the Incidental Tarot
I should know this feeling by now, the creeping feeling of something in the universe—in my psyche—coming unhinged. Somehow, my inner bell starts ringing and making a ruckus when the stars align in this certain way, but I never seem to have the foreknowledge that it’s coming.
It is November of 2012, a month drenched in the intense energy of the Eclipse. Not just the Tarot card that corresponds to the Hanged Man in traditional decks, but a full solar eclipse in the southern hemisphere, and a lunar eclipse 2 weeks later. When this happened in June of 2011, I drew the Eclipse design that would become the Tarot card you see here.
All of 2012 has seemed to be a year of strife, for individuals and for nations. Radical, transformative energy is all around us, slowly ramping up for the much-anticipated cosmic shift on December 21. I don’t profess to know the ins and outs of such a momentous astrological event, or ancient Mayan wisdom, or the musings of apocalypse theorists. But I do know when the forces that drive the world are in high gear and threatening to knock me on my proverbial rear. Tides are turning, old barriers are being broken and we are experiencing a deeply moving transition into new territory. 
We are at the mid-point of growing out of an old, crumbling era and journeying forth toward a potentially great new horizon. Some people interpret this as a balancing of the polarities: raising the divine feminine up out of oppressive darkness and bringing her into balance with the still overwhelmingly patriarchal structures of our civilization. A sort of cosmic recentering.
At first I attributed much of my recent emotional angst and overwhelm to the super-charged rancor of the Presidential elections. I kept thinking, everything will eventually “break” and the steam will dissipate after the elections are over. But really, it’s just not proving to be so.
And it’s not political at all, this residue of tension. It’s energetic, celestial, cosmic. Eclipses are windows of intense transition: brief interludes when we come face to face with our fears, mistakes and burdens—even our crimes—and are given the opportunity to overcome them. But it isn’t sunshine and roses with Eclipse. It is difficult pathworking; facing one’s dark side is never a cakewalk. You have to give yourself permission to take comfort in this darkness for a period of time… know that it is temporal, and that healing follows in its wake. But as with any invaluable opportunity, it carries a risk. That dark window can also be looked at as your own ignorance, whether willful or unintentional.
Last night I came home after having written the beginning of this blog, and forced myself to take some time out. I tidied up the house, turned off the computers and phone, lit a few candles and sat down to be in stillness and muse on the Eclipse energy. I managed to quiet my mind for a period of time, which I’ve not been able to do for some weeks now, and some very uncomfortable thoughts bubbled to the surface. Thoughts that wouldn’t go away. As I lay in bed last night, processing that brief interlude of meditation before falling to sleep, it occurred to me that those thoughts weren’t truths, but fears. Deeply held fears that couldn’t be addressed in the short period that Eclipse was moving through my cosmos. But I also realized that I wouldn’t have been able to hold that mirror up to my own psyche without acknowledging and tapping into that magical marginal space between darkness and light. The task now is to work through the fears as the light returns and integrate them into my whole-self.
No pressure there.
Eclipse energy lingers. When I went out to my car this morning to head off to an extra long work day, I found that my car had been broken into and all my belongings carelessly rifled through (thankfully nothing was taken—I never leave anything of value in the car overnight). After the shock of being thus violated subsided, I realized part of the fear of the Eclipse is this: not only is it a time when the lights go out and we must come to grips with our fears, but it is also a time when chaos has a prime opportunity to exert its influence. Under cover of darkness, mischief and miscreants abound. In our necessary self-absorption and introspection, the rest of the world carries on, taking advantage of the space of uncertainty and transition—sometimes for good, but sometimes not.
It is with this knowledge that I now see the flip side of Eclipse in action. That embracing the darkness, even fleeting as it may be, allows the terrifying unknown to enter your physical space as well as your consciousness. It allows chaos, and disruption and the actual forces driving your fear to find the holes in your defenses and work their way in. That sense of residual violation is a reminder that certainty (of anything) is an illusion. Perfect self-containment is an illusion. In reality we are (no matter how tediously we tailor and control what we think the world knows of us) still subject to the random bursts and billowings of an unknown wind… and sometimes we get knocked down.
The trick is, as they say, to always get up again. Look into that mirror, acknowledge what it reflects back to you—then throw it against the wall and don’t bother to pick up the shards of glass. Let them be a monument to your growth, a reminder of the sharp and trialsome lessons you’ve come to learn, and make a new path around them.
This is the gift of Eclipse. A powerful, sometimes frightening opportunity to face the unknown, to face your own darkness and name it. To name a thing is to have power over it, after all. Then you move forward.