Solar Eclipses: a Total past, & Annular Future
A Total Past
The Earth was just a baby when the Moon formed. Google results for the questions “How old is the Earth / Moon” spit out 4.543 and 4.53 Billion years, respectively. So, our Satellite came into existence just a short ~13 Million years after our planet pulled itself together around the Sun.
Its formation was likely caused by another Mars-sized planet, which scientists refer to as Theia, colliding with the Earth. You can learn more about the “Giant Impact Hypothesis” in this great video by PBS Space Time.
At the time, the Moon was much, much closer than it is now. This proximity had some notible effects:
The Moon had a higher gravitational influence on the surface of the Earth, increasing tectonic activity, and causing huge tides when the oceans coalesced.
Its closeness caused it to whip about at a breakneck pace around its orbit, making “months” shorter, the Moon sprinting through its phases.
(The most important fact for our discussion) Such nearness made the Moon appear absolutely gigantic in the sky.
The Moon began very close to the Earth. Aligned with the Sun, the Moon is “New”.
The Earth was, of course, greatly affected by the collision as well. The crash with Theia is a likely reason for the 23.5° tilt of Earth’s poles, compared to the plane of the Solar System. The newborn Moon matched this tilted path in its orbit, crossing is plane, the “Ecliptic”, and ascending northward at one point, and half-way or 180° around, crossing it to go south again. These opposing crossroads are called the North and South Lunar Nodes.
The alignment of the Moon with the Sun at a Node causes Solar Eclipses to occur!
In this deep past we ponder, these Eclipses were more than Total, they were Super-Total, with the gigantic black disk of the New Moon devouring the Sun completely, since it appeared much larger than our parent star in the sky. There was no visible Corona, the atmospheric rays of light around the Moon in the images of Solar Eclipses you might think of (like the one pictured below), only a huge black shadow.
The Total Solar Eclipse of 1919, proving Einstein’s Theory of Relativity
An Annular Future
The Moon drifts about 4 centimeters away from Earth each year. This is virtually imperceptible on human time-scales. But in cosmic-scales, 4 billion years amounts to ~100,000 miles. At 240,000 miles from us now, the Moon has roughly doubled its distance from the Earth since its formation.
With just a bit more time (less than 1 billion more years), the Moon will be too far, and therefore appear too small to ever cover the Sun Totally again. At this point, when it aligns with the Sun at a Node, Solar Eclipses will always and forevermore be Annular.
An Annular Solar Eclipse, the logo for Annular Astro
Annular is a Latin word for “ring-like” describing a Ring of Solar Fire visible all the way around the black disk of the New Moon. Anything made up of concentric circles can be described as Annular. For a deeper look on the subject, you can read this article where I defined Annular further, with more examples of natural Annuli.
A Hybrid Present
Humanity exists within the needle-in-a-haystack of spacetime where the Moon has moved out just far enough to be proportional to the Sun’s size. I know that sounds confusing, so let me put it mathematically:
The Moon is 400x smaller than the Sun, and is currently 400x closer than the Sun.
The fact that these two numbers are the same at present is what gives us exactly Total Solar Eclipses, where the Moon covers the Sun so perfectly, it reveals the Corona, Latin for Crown.
However, there is one additional factor to take into consideration: the Moon’s orbit is not perfectly circular! It is slightly elliptical, or oval in shape. This gives a slight difference in distance at different points of the Month, with the closest point called the Lunar Perigee (also known as Priapus), and it’s furthest point called the Lunar Apogee (or Lilith).
The North Lunar Node is referred to as “Rahu”, the disembodied head of a Dragon, by Astrologers of the Vedic tradition
So, when the Moon crosses the Sun at a Node while near to its Perigee, we observe Total Solar Eclipses. But when nearer to Apogee, we instead see the “Ring of Fire” of an Annular Solar Eclipse.
The amount of factors or synchronicities that had to converge to produce a reality where human beings are conscious in a time and place where we can witness both Total and Annular Eclipses is “so improbable, that it kind of makes you start to ask some really big questions”, as Joe Scott puts it in this excellent video.
The Hybrid Eclipse Chart of April 19, 2023
2023’s Solar Eclipses
On April 19/20th 2023, a Solar Eclipse occured visibly over Oceania. It was not classified as Total or Annular, but instead as a Hybrid of both. This reveals that the Moon was so perfectly close to that 400x distance from the Sun that the slight deviations of where from upon the Earth one viewed it determined which type was seen.
During the lunation, the Luminaries met at the North Node, while square or mid-way between the Lunar Apogee and Perigee, at the Moon’s most precisely average distance, and therefore, size. Again, this should emphasize how perfectly in the bullseye of this phenomena we are living: it’s not just that we can see both types, but that we currently see both types in equal frequency, and Hybrids when right in the middle.
Annular Solar Eclipse = Sun + Moon + Node + Lilith
Soon, on October 14th, an Annular Solar Eclipse will occur visibly over the continental United States, the last easily accessible one for Americans to see for the next few decades. This one occurs at the South Node, and only about 50° from Lilith, making the Moon quite small as it crosses the Sun to proceed Southward. This time, the Luminaries will align quite close to one of the most lovely and auspicious stars in the sky called Spica/Chitra, the wheat that Virgo holds.
Regardless of one’s individual worldview around whether the occurrences in the sky have any correlation to the lives of people, or the circumstances happening on Earth’s surface, it should be crystal-clear, and uncontroversial to state that we are living in an era of great and awesome significance. I might even suggest that life could develop in other places in the universe, and never have such an amazing spectacle to observe from their planet. Though, we might also posit that some of these factors are necessary for life to evolve, at all.
The Annular Creator
I have a very special connection to the phenomena of Annular Solar Eclipses, because I was born beneath one! I arrived very traumatically, by emergecy c-section, on May 9, 1994 in Phoenix, Arizona, just a few hours before Sunset. After my mother and I recovered through the night, we were released and left the hospital the next morning, May 10th, another time when an Annular Eclipse occurred visibly over the United States.
The elements that combine to form this alignment are my Sun, Moon, South Node, and Lilith all together in the 8th House of Taurus. It took me many months of consistently studying my chart to figure this out, and that struggle was a large part of the reason why I made the Annulus in the first place: to help others understand the most important parts of their astro charts much faster.
And, of course, it is where the Annulus got its name, and why its design is Annular.
Brandon’s natal chart, inventor of the Annuli
Having meditated deeply upon them, it is my personal gnosis that Annular Solar Eclipses are more related to the Future, while Total ones have to do with the past. Astrologers will argue that the direction of time impacted is more related to which Lunar Node the Eclipse occurs. but I’ve also shown above how there will come a time in the future when only Annular Eclipses occur at. Both are highly impactful, but I hope I’ve shown to you clearly in this article that the future is Annular. The Crown has a message about what came before, while the Ring has a promise about what lies ahead.
The Hybrid must then imply a truth about the present moment…
We sit at an event horizon, where reflection is muddied, and prediction is futile. One must only consider the accumulating effects of human activity on the climate to grow existential about our past. One must only consider the progress of exponentially developing AI technologies at this moment to blow their own mind about the future.
But it is my belief that we can (and should) take these moments to find mental, emotional, and spiritual comfort in the auspiciousness of the cosmic moment we inhabit. How fortunate we are to live to witness these celestial wonders while we are here. How blessed we are by the ways they have taught us about greater truths of reality (such as in the Eclipse experiments that proved Einstein Theory of Relativity correct). How envious the inhabitants of Earth in a billion years will be of we who got to be here now.
My vision is hopeful, that in that distant future, they’ll still be using Annuli to recount this epic story of our time. ⭕️
