Between the Moon - Ep 22: The Slippery Fish Eclipse with Bronwyn Simons

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

In today’s episode we explore some of the themes, symbols, and approaches to practicing self-study in relationship with cycles for the upcoming eclipses. Show notes below and image sources …Themes in this episode include:* Regular rhythmic repetition of eclipses* Nodes as crossroads, meeting place, relationship between the luminaries* Dream recall full body chills* Offerings for gateway gods* Nodes: where we encounter the mystery* Surrendering to the sacred, and/or analyzing the details* Pisces/Virgo axis* Themes of dreams, spirituality, creativity* Making offerings (is there a right way?)* Protocols for working with Spirit* Leaving space for grace and opening* Rearrangements in physical and energetic realms* Exploring different configurations* Uncertainty, disruptions, unsettling quality, fears of lack* How much instability can any infrastructure take?* Contemplation of fulfillment and sensation of longing* Compassion and bathing in forgiveness* And more…Pardon me while I take a side quest and study medieval calendars for the rest of my life, lol. So many fish that got away!!Lunar nodes are a point in space where the orbit of the moon crosses the path of the sun. This alignment happens about every six months like clockwork. These nodes change signs about every 1.5 years. They are always in retrograde motion, moving “backwards” through the zodiac. Right now they are in tropical Aries and Libra, but this one is crossing the line ahead into Pisces.Phases of the moon are gradual.Eclipses are sudden.How do you want to be in relationship with this cosmic alignment?The Metonic cycle or enneadecaeteris (from Ancient Greek) is a period of almost exactly 19 years after which the lunar phases recur at the same time of the year. Look back to fall of 2006 for the echo of this current eclipse season.Have a question or comment? Share on the Substack post for this episode.Love this podcast? Leave a rating or write a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify - it’s such a great way to support this work.Thanks so much for listening! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themoonismycalendar.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome, dear listener, to Lunar Currents, a special feature on the Between the Moon podcast with myself, April McMurtry and predictive astrologer Bronwyn-Simon-Simonds. Lunar currents is a moonly conversation about embodying the living sky, exploring how astrology helps us enter into the mythic nature of our life story, and musing on our relationship with time, creativity, intuition, and many other magical connections. Okay, real quick, if you haven't heard yet, the 2025 edition of the New Moon Calendar and Journal and Lunar Wall calendars are available for presale in the shop. So you can head to the moon is my calendar.com. And if you've already ordered yours, thank you so much. There's

been so much support just in these last two weeks since the presale started. So thank you for ordering your calendar in September. They will start shipping in November, and if you want to get one, I would recommend going to the shop. And also, I have done some renovation on the website. So there's some new beautiful pages and resources that are there. I also have not been posting on Instagram. I haven't even announced the pre-sale there. So if you only connect with the moon is my calendar and me on Instagram, then you probably have missed those links.

But yeah, there's a way to get on the mailing list and all that good stuff. you don't miss anything. Okay, let's dive in. On today's episode, Bronwyn and I explore this eclipse season, this fall of 2024, the full moon, September 17th, eclipse in Pisces, and then leading up to the new moon and the eclipse on October 2nd in Libra. So eclipses are one of my favorite topics to discuss and explore and be curious about. I've had very profound and life-changing experiences on and around eclipses, which is part of what led me to follow my own curiosity about. What is going on? Is there some kind of relationship here that for each of us, there are perhaps unique eclipses that affect us in different ways.

And in this episode, Bronwyn and I explore some of the qualities of this eclipse. There are some very practical suggestions, ideas, and tools for experiencing and paying attention to and supporting yourself in this time, as well as both of us sort of following our intuition and sharing from our own lived experience, there's a point where I'm sharing something and that that reminds Bronwyn of a dream that she had the night before.

And so we're following these threads. And what I really hope with this conversation, too, is that it can serve as a template for you as a listener to feel into your own relationship with the eclipse. as you listen and sort of witness what we are sharing, it really is an opportunity to support your practice of self-study in relationship with cycles. There's some beautiful imagery that comes through and ways to think about how you look for different signs and themes that may be arising, especially for those of you with creative practices that work with imagery and themes in your own journey that may be connected to your stories or healing and connection and relationship that some of the themes around these eclipses may provide you with some fertile ideas and dreams

and imagery to work with. Okay, so let's dive in to today's episode. the slippery fish eclipse, pausing at the crossroads and a stress test for the containers in our life. Enjoy. So if you'd be willing to introduce yourself as an intro into this episode and kind of share what you've been up to recently. Yeah. Thank you. Hi. I'm Bronwyn. I'm a consulting astrologer and astrology mentor. I live here on Beautiful, Vancouver Island. And what I've been doing lately is bringing together more of my creative practices with my astrological practice, reawakening the magical spirit worker within myself. I'm in my second Saturn return, and I feel like a lot of threads of work are coming together

that have been separate for maybe a whole Saturn cycle. So I'm doing lots of exciting stuff right now with my astrological writing and teaching and learning. Thanks for asking. Yeah, thanks for sharing. And what I'm hoping for and excited for this conversation is to give listeners a chance to almost like try out different avenues and approaches for relating to the eclipse.

Yeah. You recently wrote and published an article on Substack about this eclipse and referred to it as a slippery fish, which I love as we were turning around and trying to take hold of this eclipse. It just kept slipping out of our hands. It actually felt like that. It really did. I was forgetting that I used that exact phrase, and that's what we were just doing before we started recording, even just doing. something as simple as trying to track back to what the repetition was of this eclipse cycle, and it kept slipping out of our hands. Yeah, so there's something beautifully immersive and slippery about this eclipse, I think, and we just found it frustrating, but I think there's also an element of release, like a catch and release with this button. Yeah, really great.

Even as we were approaching and talking about having a conversation, the words like the fish that got away. Yeah. This came into mind because in the tropical zodiac, this eclipse is at 25 degrees Pisces. So towards the end of the last sign of the zodiac. And so they're almost, yeah, that feeling of, oh, I've got something in my, like it's right there. And then, oh, the fish that got away. and not that that is inherently bad for something to slip away or to swim off or be released back into the ocean. So, yes, we explore ways of how to relate to an eclipse.

One way is through the sign of the zodiac that those eclipses are taking place in. And that was that kind of slippery point of the full moon happens at a particular degree. And that magical spot of the node, that hot spot, that meeting point, I feel like you use some words that were really poetic, too, to talk about that meeting up point. That could, that, if it's not total, then that is often in a different degree and can sometimes cross over into a different sign. so there's this like straddling. At some point it has to shift from one sign to the next and then there's this overlap. That's where we are. Right. That's such the vibe of this lunar eclipse too,

the way it activates all the outer planets and just speaks for much larger cycles in a really profound but subtle way. Yeah. Every couple of years we might get an eclipse or two that are crossing the line as the nodes approach the cusp of another sign, the nodes moving backwards through the zodiac or what we think of as backwards. As they are now, they're reaching the end or the beginning of Ares Libra, and by next year they're going to be into Pisces Virgo. So we get this oddity, this slippery fish of an eclipse where the nodes, which usually are, we think of as the eclipse activators and the sun and moon will be on the node. or near the nodes in the same sign for an eclipse.

And this slippery fish has slipped into Pisces ahead of that north node and is giving us some insight and glimpse into what's to come for the next couple of years once the nodes make that transition as well. But yeah, in those spaces between, we sometimes get an eclipse that doesn't exactly fit the pattern where we're dealing with the luminary being in a different sign than the nodes. That's what we've got. Not with the sun. The sun is going to be back on the node in Libra.

So it's a simpler situation with the solar eclipse. It's coming up in two weeks. But this lunar eclipse is in Pisces. It's almost like the fish went out to scout, like scout up ahead. Yeah. What is the fish scouting out of? up ahead. And then as you mentioned, so in two weeks on the new moon, there'll be a new moon in Libra, and that is a solar eclipse in Libra as well, October 2nd in Pacific time. There's this

almost technicality that I remember first learning about eclipses. First of all, that there's a pattern that repeats. It's not just out of the blue. It can be a blindsiding experience if you're not pacing along and tracking along with what's happening and unfolding. Something can seem to come out of nowhere. But first, when I learned that there's this pattern of every six months, this cycle and season of eclipses, to rely on as a, yeah, just this touch point in the year, that those are going to be two touch points, six months apart. So that I think is the first for anyone who's sort of beginning of so much can be hyped up, right, that it's like, oh my gosh. But something in the nervous system, for me at least, seems to

settle when it's like this is a part of the rhythm. It's a regular rhythm. Every six months, we do a little course correction. And I think, of course, we think of eclipses as these rare and unpredictable events because we associate eclipses with full solar eclipses with that sort of maximum event. That those actually happen more frequently than we know as well. But for them to happen in the exact place on the planet where you are, is a really rare event. I think that's what we grow up being aware of with eclipses.

But then you learn that actually know they come paired a solar and a lunar and they come every six months. Sometimes they're very partial. Sometimes they're happening like this solar eclipse. If you're in Southern South America or in Hawaii, you'll see it. But the rest of us don't see it. So yeah, connecting it back to that regular rhythm of every six months. And I think there's a piece there too about understanding what the nodes are, which are these mysterious things.

When we first start learning astrology, sometimes we hear them called the nodes of fate. And we know they're not actual bodies in the sky, but we don't really like, what are, what is the node? And they really are just the defining points of the eclipse. They're where the moon crosses that apparent path of the sun, the ecliptic. So they're literally the eclipse points. and because the relationship between the moon and the sun changes, the theoretical kind of space in the sky that the node takes up changes as well.

They're an expression of the relationship between the lights, which is pretty cool. And the place they serve in the chart is that eclipse place, that place where we enter into or come out of the other world. So they are mysterious and strange, but they're also actually pretty easy and clear to define just on an astronomical level. They're a meeting place. They're that meeting place of the luminaries.

It's almost, as you were speaking, that feeling of like, all right, let's meet at the crossroads. Yeah, exactly. In six months, let's come back together and meet up. And that kind of regular meeting then, when we have a practice of self-study in relationship with cycles and when we're paying attention to the cosmos in our own life and the collective unfolding, that kind of meeting at the crossroads. That's, to me, what's exciting about eclipses is it's almost like, there's that rock over there.

We're going to stop and sit down and maybe have like a glass of water, like, rehydrate, take a look around at the scenery, like what's changed in the landscape before charting the course. but to me it feels like this pause for regrouping and the fact that the sun and the moon are meeting up and then when we layer in the astrology of the significance of what sign that's in and how it might be interacting with our own charts, then we can like tell stories and make sense of it. Yeah, it's meaning making or meaning recognition, something like that. I love the contemplation of the crossroads.

I have to share that when you said crossroads meeting at the crossroads, I got full body chills because I realized that I had quite a vivid dream last night about the crossroads that are here. I just moved into a new neighborhood. And I'm always aware of what the closest crossroads is because as well as being that place where you were saying like where we stop and take a break, where we look at the signs and consult the map, see where we're going. The crossroads, of course, are also that place where you go to make magic,

the place where you go to leave offerings for certain gods, like the gateway gods, like Mercury and Hakate. And the crossroads are, if not a universal, at least a cross-cultural symbol of that place where we encounter the gods or where we encounter the mystery. It really is a good analogy for the nodes because it's a practical space where we make choices about where we're going. It's also a deeply magical space where we honor the gods. And in my dream, I was looking at this local little meeting of streets, it's a quiet neighborhood, just a little meeting of streets, and noticing that a lot of people have left offerings,

and I was sort of checking out the offerings, like some people really maybe didn't quite know what to do. and weren't doing it appropriately or whatever, I thought it was appropriate. And, yeah, it was just kind of being, I guess, a little judgmental about all the different offerings at the crossroads and having thoughts about that. But how interesting, the streaming of the crossroads on, you know, the eve of this, or the eve of the eve of this lunar eclipse. So I love bringing in that symbol of the crossroads. And how, like within the context of this season of the year, being Virgo season and having that kind of an overactive Virgo analysis and sizing up and judgment of-

It brings in the Pisces Virgo piece too. Instead of just surrendering to the sacredness of it, I'm there over-activating my Virgo discernment to cast judgment on other people's offerings. Yeah. Well, I wonder how this just in weaving in practices and practical magic around how to be in honor of and in reverence of this moment of meeting of the sun and the moon and the nodes. They're all in the same neighborhood. How that meeting, how we fit in, you know, is like these human mortals fitting into that bigger. stage and play of of eclipses that have it's like they have their own process and I've you know when I feel into it and just in that churning and turning that happens like this is another kind of pass through how we might be in relationship with with all of it so possibly something along the lines of the fish that got away what offering might be anything in connection with Pisces, with our own dream life, with signs and symbols that might

be coming through. And what did you say, just like surrendering to the sacredness of it all, whereas, you know, what can help with having some discernment of not just getting carried and swept away by something is like, wait, I'm going to keep a foot on shore to make sure I'm not going to like fully surrender. But all of that, like with sleep, like what happens if what it feels like to fully surrender into sleep and to dream life into the Pisces matters. What's available for that? And then what's available for the part, the Virgo part that wants to have a judgment or have an opinion about it or have something to say about it or have some kind of, it's almost like bringing back some detail from that that can be analyzed, looked at possibly more critically. Yeah, those are just some thoughts.

So, April, how do you approach an eclipse moon differently than you might, like, how or does your lunar practice shift around the eclipse moons? I feel like I put on these, like, these extra awareness glasses, goggles that I see events happen. through especially things that reroute, like that's not business as usual of things getting rerout. So I am just, it's like my awareness comes up to look for particular things that may stand out as out of the ordinary. And this particular, the approach to this eclipse season, there's been something around like really honoring the readjusting and doing things differently to take a slower pace

and to not just push through, like waiting back if there's an accident on the freeway of like not just, well, I've got to get to the place I'm going, so I'm just going to go anyway, but actually like, I'm going to hold back. And isn't this interesting that there's an eclipse coming up too, that it's almost like that feeling of a surge or a power outage. of just like having the candles for the backup, like the metaphorical candles. Yeah. When things really don't go according to plan and noticing who might be getting edgy about that,

if I'm getting, you know, out of sorts. So there's a lot more deep breaths sticking to a morning practice to start the day in a way that's calm. because it can, yeah, there can just be more things that feel like are getting sort of knocked off balance. Yeah. But the piece about what you brought up about offerings, I feel like that's a place that I'm moving towards. And I don't like really following rules about that.

And yet I know there's certain protocol when working in like spirit realms and all of that. So I'm just, again, like listening, carrying things in a way that there's just like a different energy at play than just a full moon. And so it's, yeah, there's this like listening, I would say. That opens up a whole other thread that I would love to talk to you about some time, which is just that about the protocols of spirit work and where what each of us, how each of us arrives at our own protocols. I don't think that that's, I mean, that's a huge conversation and maybe not for today.

But I would love to follow that thread with you at some point. Because it's something I've been thinking about a lot. We need protocols, but we need our own, in a way, self-created, but very carefully created protocols. And I have my own set of protocols around eclipse work. One thing that I've noticed is when I share those. people sometimes don't like what I suggest. Because what I suggest, especially around the solar eclipse, which is the new moon, right? A solar eclipse always and only can happen on a new moon.

And I think we all have, those of us that are engaged in lunar practices, we have attachment around, especially our new moon practices. And a lot of that is about the virgoan aspect of it. Like what am I planning? What am I creating? What am I organizing for this next cycle? And my suggestion and my personal protocol is to suspend, suspend that for an eclipsed sun.

And I didn't make this up either. There's a reason I integrated it into my personal protocol because, you know, this is part of many different traditions. And it really is not to be prescriptive, but to offer that space for surrender. Because sometimes we get so Virgo busy or Gemini, in my case, Gemini busy in our own hands, mercurial busy, all the thoughts, all the ideas, all the conceptions and plans and words, that we literally don't leave space for grace and opening and the wisdom of the universe, if you will, or the wisdom of your higher self or the wisdom of your God, however you think of

that, to get in there and open things up for you. And that's what eclipses do. They provide that moment when the energy is arrested for a minute. it's like in acupuncture where you just stop the flow for a minute. So that the flow then can release into you in a new way. And if you're busy thinking and writing intentions and doing your usual ritual during that time of quiet, it's not that it's not about should and shouldn't. It's about giving yourself that gift of grace and space just during that eclipsed moon.

Like we have every other moon of the next six months to get nitty gritty. And I love that. I love to set intentions on the new moon that are deliberate and willful. Come on, I'm a tourist. I like to get my will in there. But yeah, and if I'm strongly encouraging this, it's because I do find that people push back against it. They want to do a ritual or they want to set their intentions because they think it's going to amplify. And I don't think that's really what the eclipse is doing. It's not amplifying. It's, I can't find a word, but that's, it's not amplify. I wonder if it's, what came to me was like a rearrangement.

Yeah. That connects to something a couple days ago. I rearranged the furniture in my bedroom that had been that way from like six, seven years. And I was like, man, this energy is just all in. one kind of place it feels like a different flow wants to happen like you're saying like the energy in the body and and ways that that can be blocked or when channels are open so i rearrange some like very heavy furniture to find out that the dresser didn't fit and overlapped onto another piece of furniture that um that it just wasn't going to work as

much as I wanted it to and as much as I were like, you know, it was a lot about getting the dust bunnies out from under the bed and finding all kinds of hair clips and things that had fallen places and been lost, which have now come in handy and are like back in circulation, things that were like just hiding under there. And it wasn't something I planned. It was like a kind of a haphazard type thing that just felt like it possessed me to do is to, to, to, to, move things around just to shift the perspective enough to say like what would it look like if this was all a different configuration, just even if it was for one night, which actually that's all it was because my husband is like, this is not going to work. I was like, can we try to

make it work? He's like, really, you're going to try. It just doesn't. And there's only one way that the furniture will fit. Unfortunately, but I wanted to just try something else. And so when I heard you talking, it was like, that's this like practical application. And, my life of what eclipse energy can offer is what if there is a different perspective or configuration that you've never thought of or considered and maybe it's not necessarily going to be the one but the act of moving things around of shifting of leaning and clearing and you know actual like that physical spaces um i'm just paying attention and in my lunar practice noting this down in my new moon calendar journal that that happened because it may echo

something farther on down the road in terms of another shift that was facilitated by this rearrangement and exploration of something that seemed improbable and not realistic and not going to work necessarily. But like sometimes I feel like, well, why don't we just let ourselves try that thing? is it a feel that feel of failure oh my gosh fear of failure or worry of i wasted this day doing this or this time or this money or this something to not have it so called work out so maybe there's something you know in our lives that just like to it feels like the energy of like what if i just entertained or explored something or just created some breathing room that would let an idea slip in that wasn't me like you're saying with the intentions it's not me like creating those from you know from the mind heart but like from all the places within but to sort of like here's this breathing room what might like that little slippery fish like what might come swimming in

yeah yeah it's it can be so hard for us just to give ourselves that grace and space and here's a built-in opportunity every six months to allow that. That's what I try to hold with me during that. I think of it as like this opening or this portal between, like we're just entering into it. And I find it can start at different times. Like it was kind of expecting it to start with a new moon because it often does even if it's not an eclipsed moon. But I haven't felt it. It's like this tangible, energetic space that we move into between eclipses. So I'm looking forward to being in that space. Sometimes it's a whole lunar cycle. Sometimes it's just two weeks. I think we might just have the two weeks this

time between the lunar and solar eclipse. But for me, things feel tangibly different. It's like there's just a little extra glimmer, but also a little bit of extra uncertainty in that space. And I think maybe it's this feeling that leads us to feel uncomfortable. comfortable or disrupted around eclipses. And if we just play with the idea of allowing a different relationship with that uncertainty, with that kind of twinkle with that, because there's an unsettling quality to it. If we play with what it is to feel unsettled, not that it's always going to be great.

I mean, sometimes eclipse seasons bring difficult things. But I think if we allow, again, it's that idea of surrendering or allowing ourselves to just experience that unsettled feeling to know that there's bookends. There are clear bookends on it. It's not going to go on forever. And yeah, it's like you spending that one night with the bedroom in a different configuration. Like, well, okay, but let's just, it's not comfortable.

It's not going to work long term. But let's just see what comes in if we sleep with this one night. And that's what we're doing. That's what the eclipse portal brings us, what these two weeks give us the opportunity to do. Get uncomfortable, but maybe find the magic in the discomfort. And that said, I don't want to be bypassing or sugarcoding the fact that these are also times when we see wild things happening in the world, when people can get into a space where they're disrupted or literally triggered, it is something that we see.

Because there is that lack of stability in the energy, it leaves room for the unexpected, which if you have a beautiful container around your life already, inviting in the unexpected can be a delight. And most of the world is not like that. there isn't a lot of safety, sadly, in the world. So bringing in instability is often the thing that tips things over from manageable to unmanageable. So we can also expect to see that.

It's a stress test in a lot of ways for the containers in your life and for the containers that the world has created. And there is that element. And it's not about instilling fear or treating the eclipse as something like some kind of dark magic that's, it really is just that quality of destabilizing and how much stability is there and how much instability can any given structure take. We do see things destabilizing during that period of time. Yeah. That's so helpful to have in perspective and awareness and thinking about it like a story. stress test.

And whether that's offering more compassion to somebody else, maybe shoring up that container and that boundary so that there's not someone else's. Yeah. That's like flowing in, but also, yeah, feeling into whatever practices for holding the space in between, it's like this corridor, passage space. or where we want to be individually and also collectively on the other side of, you know, this is also midway through the eclipse season as the equinox. Yeah.

I'm feeling, though, like, that feeling of the night closing in. Mm-hmm. That there's not as much light available. And just on a visceral sensory. level how things are shifting, like for the animal body's perception of light at this seasonal time of the year along with the eclipses added in. Yeah. And that's another piece that whether or not it feels delightful and magical really

depends a lot on the container that your life offers. I was just having this conversation yesterday with my husband about the ability to enjoy fall being kind of reflective of one's privilege because just at this point in my life, I feel like I'm able to really enjoy the things of fall. And I get it. I finally get it about embracing that coziness and wanting to do sweaters and stew and candles and all of that good stuff. there were years when we were living on a little island and we were pretty low income and like householding and really you know living this very rural in some ways kind of tenuous and outside of the of kind of marginal life not in the sense not in a negative sense because it was something that we had chosen would be much more difficult if it wasn't a choice but I did not enjoy

fall during those years because it was like, oh, do we have enough firewood and do we have enough money for firewood and which parts of the house have we not built yet? Like, we were out there living this rural island life. And it was different. I was not into the cozy stews and sweaters and beeswax candles because I just didn't have the comfortable container economically, I guess mainly economically to make that possible. Not that those weren't really beautiful years in a lot of ways, but I guess I was a little bit of a tangent, but it's kind of that same idea, like what is the strength of your container? And we all go through different periods of our lives when different parts of the container are more vulnerable to stress. And that combination of the impending autumn

and the instability of eclipses can either kind of, you know, if you're in a position of privilege like I am now, I can be enjoying the magic of that psychic instability and making my stew and burning my candles and decorating my doorstep with pumpkins and all the things. But that's a reflection of the space that I'm in now. It's just life stability-wise. Yeah. And there's other elements to that as well as economic. There's, you know, our mental health or the stability of our relationships. I think that there's a starkness to that at this time of year and when things open up a little bit that we can see the places that maybe where we don't feel supported. Yeah. I keep coming back to that kind of that reconfiguration. of what might be asking for to be reconfigured.

Yeah. There is more support needed in different areas, whether it is physical health or mental health or in relationship and in caretaking and, you know, for me with kids. And I feel like I'm still in this back to school, nonstop after school. Like another thing I was just there and now I'm going back. And so much energy. What kind of tips into an overdoing space? And I'm so mindful of that after year after year getting sick in the fall and winter.

And from just going with the overdoing because that was the mode that everyone else seemed to be in. So it was like there wasn't really an alternative presented. And that's what lunar tracking and the self-studies presented. Oh, what if I'm pacing with the season, pacing with the phases, taking like that pause at the crossroads. with the eclipses, having the awareness up of what might be feeling or going out of sorts for me or for others around me and what is my response or reaction going to be. There's just other layers of awareness that are there that can potentially bring more ease. However, there is that like a known uncertainty.

So there isn't a kind of a guarantee of how things are going to unfold or work out. but I just, as we wrap up, I kind of keep feeling into like this fish that got away that there's like something slippery and what it would feel like to just like let that go. Or is that something like a dream to really actually kind of go in that direction and chase, like try to catch up with down the road? I'm wondering if there's any other themes or imagery that you wanted to mention. I was just thinking about how much of this conversation has truly been Pisces talk, how we have talked about boundaries and recognizing what's our own and what belongs to others and how we've talked about that thin line between. And then there's the wordless part too, but I'm just thinking about how Pisces is both

our deep surrender in spirituality and it also holds things like poverty and the feeling of isolation. So I guess it's that thin line again between isolation and retreat, those kind of 12th house Pisces questions and of all of the feelings that can come up with Pisces stuff. And we've got Saturn, the moon, and Neptune, all in Pisces with this eclipse. So you might find yourself as well really on that edge of questioning whether that That's the beauty, the creativity, the surrender, the prayer, the comfort of spiritual surrender that's coming to you with Pisces or whether it's some of those Saturnian fears or the

little bit of dread of the impending dark and the way and fear of lack because we all have that. It's like you were saying, it's our animal bodies. So I think it's really natural for us to be riding that edge through this eclipse and that there's going to be a broad spectrum of feelings and we're really going to be feeling those feelings. And that Pisces really contains a lot of both our spirit and the abundance of creativity. It's ruled by Jupiter, but also some of those fears of lack.

and those are natural contemplations for this time of year. And again, that idea of just allowing some of that in so we can look at it. And as you were saying, it can help us to see what are the containers that do need some attention over the winter. Also that ability to tap into our longing and allow the sensation of longing to inform us about what we're going. what we can and need to create in our lives. It really is just such an opportunity that we get every six months to do this contemplation. And this one, I think, has a really special flavor

of contemplating some of those bigger questions of fulfillment in our lives. And yeah, yeah, I'm just. It's a beautiful eclipse and it's going to bring a lot of potential opening. And I think allowing the questions that come up to be open-ended for a while is going to be key. Yeah. Yeah. I'm planning a bath for myself.

My lunar eclipse, like the protocols, I think about this every eclipse season of what are those protocols. Yeah. And just having like, I'm going to bathe myself in forgiveness. What if that was just like a moment for like bathing ourselves in forgiveness and what that would, gosh, what that would, you know, shift on the planet. Yeah. To have waves of forgiveness. And yeah, there's a lot there even in, you know, unpacking. But that's just kind of this starting place for where this particular cycle.

and river leading up to the full moon. Pisces eclipse has like brought me, brought me to. Yeah. Salt baths, yes, all the salt baths, prayer and meditation. If you work with minerals, you know, getting out your beautiful rocks or crystals, grounding yourself in the solidity of the natural world, I always suggest that people schedule themselves, lightly for the next couple of weeks, just again to give yourself that grace.

Pay attention to your dreams and your waking dreams. You might want to, especially thinking about honoring the Virgo Pisces axis, at least be aware and observant of those places that you go for the shadow comforts, maybe. Yeah, I don't want to be prescriptive and tell people not to do. do, but just being aware, I think, of those places, whether it's scrolling or an extra glass of wine, that these are times when those things can catch up with you and just do what you can to honor yourself and comfort yourself in ways that are really life affirming.

And I think, like what you said, the grace and self-forgiveness is really, if you said self-forgiveness, but you said something that. Oh, yeah, bathing, bathing in forgiveness. What a perfect place to leave it, I think, bathing in forgiveness. May we all be able to do that for ourselves and each other. Well, thank you, Bronwyn, for sharing this conversation, this meandering Pisci and, yeah, conversation. And, yeah, you can, for those of you listening,

you can find both of us on Substack now and sharing creativity, such a great creative outlet. And yeah, thanks for listening. And please share this conversation. If you feel like there's some gems that you've received and want to share that with others. We'll see you next time. Have a beautiful eclipse season.

And please follow me on Substack. I'm so excited to be there and I'm giving lots of my creativity there. So come and follow me. It's going to be a fun journey. Yes, I will put Bronwyns. link for moon wisdom, astrology, and the esoteric zodiac. Yeah. That link will be in the show notes. Thank you. Oh, I love these conversations. Thanks, April. Of course. My pleasure.

If you like this podcast, please subscribe, leave a review, share it with a friend, all the things to help it reach more people who will benefit in some meaningful way. I'm April, and I'll be with you next time on Between the Moon. now.