Eclipses as Ouroboric Fields

Eye in the Snake, An Illustration by shruti krishna via cosmos.so

I believe eclipses aren’t isolated events that happen to us.

Rather, they’re energetic, ouroboric fields containing a theatre of archetypal forces that reveal hidden material. They offer us swells of data meant to reveal truth. Eclipses are neither good nor bad. They are inflection points of sensation and data.

Most of us have been taught to engage with eclipses as big, dramatic, solitary moments on the calendar that we brace for, survive, and then move on from. And this framing robs us of the threshold medicine that is available during eclipse season.

Eclipses create seismic energetic fields whose effects last at least six to nine months after they pass. And if we know anything about how energy fields work, it’s that they have no hard boundaries. There are no crisp edges. Energy fields don’t suddenly drop off or switch on and off like a light. Instead, the edges of the field blend and fade. These portals are ephemeral, felt weeks before they arrive and linger for months after they’ve passed.

It is my belief that eclipse portals don’t necessarily begin on the exact day of the eclipse, even if that’s when we might most feel their effects. They start in the lunar cycle before the first eclipse and fade to a close in the cycle that follows, giving us time to review everything that happened and integrate what we’ve learned by creating new rhythms, new patterns, and new stories to live by.

Then six months later, we do it all again.

Eclipses are Ouroboric

Eclipses are ouroboric in this way. The buildup feeds the climax, the climax feeds the cool-down, and the cool-down begins feeding the next cycle. They’re vortex-like processes that build over time, and when you start seeing them that way—when you begin perceiving eclipses as breathing, living vortex-dragon-like threshold processes instead of as static calendar events—you can actually weave more coherent meaning throughout your eclipse season experiences. You can start piecing everything together into a coherent narrative you’re co-creating with the lunar cycles, versus bracing for and recovering from lunar calendar events.

Personally, this is the only way that eclipses make sense to me.

There is a buildup and there is a cool-down.

And there are all the places in-between that become choice points, inflections, thresholds, sudden events. And the transits paint the picture for how we can move through these events. The planets offer archetypal insights for the quality of energy that is moving through, offering us an oracular snapshot for what our specific lessons are, and how to integrate all of the information we receive in a way that keeps us whole, honest, and attuned to ourselves, versus always in a constant state of recovery and catching up.

The Eclipse as a Mythopoetic Arc

When I see the mythopoetic arc of eclipse seasons and what they have the potential to unearth in us, I see that they start to phase into view in the lunation period before the eclipse period and begin to phase out of focus in the lunation period after, while the effects of the eclipse still remain.

From this viewpoint, Eclipse seasons contain three new moons and three full moons that hold the full breadth of the themes meant for integration. They are an Ouroboric Dragon, eating its own tail, reaching in and out of themselves.

We can use the stages of alchemy to track this experience:

• Phase 1: Nigredo — Loss — the darkening and precursor
  → January 18, New Moon in Capricorn, Gate 60: Acceptance and Limitation
  → February 1, Full Moon in Leo, Gate 33: Retreat and Rapture

• Phase 2: Rubedo — Sacrifice — the actual eclipse period
  → February 17, New Moon in Aquarius, Gate 30: Collective Desire
  → March 4, Full Moon in Virgo, Gate 64: Confusion
  → revisiting end of summer themes.

• Phase 3: Albedo — Coming of Light — the integration and retrieval
  → March 18, 2026, New Moon in Pisces, Gate 22: Grace
  → April 1, 2026, Full Moon in Libra, Gate 18: Correction

Further, I believe that eclipses are not necessarily times to be outside traipsing around and receiving the full brunt of the energies on our skin.

Eclipses are lunar menstruations that happen twice a year and are meant to be spent in inward journeying, doing shadow work preferably with community, and internal processing.