Full Blood Moon in Taurus, Gone Girl, and Love Praxis, oh my.
collective work for this lunar eclipse
As we approach the full moon in Taurus/lunar eclipse (November 8th), I am thinking about damages – loosely defined for the purpose of this essay as: ‘what we do to each other.’
In David Fincher's thriller ‘Gone Girl,’ the opening and closing scenes are the same: a close up of Amy Dunne (played by Rosamund Pike) as her husband’s hand (Ben Affleck) comes into frame to fondle her hair. His eerie voiceover wonders: what are you thinking? How are you feeling? What have we done to each other?
When I first saw this opening scene, I knew Fincher had come through with a quality adaptation because he had extracted the beating heart of Flynn’s novel – a complex tale of rage and when it is and is not righteous, revenge and what it is and is not (or shouldn’t be), and the egregious crime of breaking someone’s heart.
Feminists had a field day with the ‘cool girl’ monologue delivered by Amy when it’s revealed she’s not dead (after faking her own death and framing her husband). And listen, as a former media studies lecturer and HUGE film aficionado, I was DELIGHTED watching that scene: ‘But Nick got lazy. He became someone I did not agree to marry. He actually expected me to love him unconditionally then he dragged me, penniless, to the navel of this great country and found himself a newer, younger, bouncier Cool Girl. You think I’d let him destroy me and end up happier than ever? No fucking way.’
But while media theorists were penning countless articles about whether or not the cool girl trope is useful/relevant, and whether or not ‘Gone Girl’ should be classed as a feminist film (LOL), all I wanted to talk about was how this was a total Taurus/Scorpio love story – (in serious shadow and off the rails, of course.)
By Taurus/Scorpio love story (again, off the rails) I mean the film is almost a case study in some of the most unsupportive manifestations of Scorpio who want their obsessive blood-bound love rooted in something permanent (in this life and the next) and the most unsupportive manifestations of Taurus who can be irritated by the consequences of their own actions and who can sometimes succumb to indolence and a sort of stubborn (seeming) indifference.
Now please don’t misunderstand! I am not asserting that all Taurus/Scorpio placements possess these attributes – not at all. I did say MOST UNSUPPORTIVE MANIFESTATIONS! I’m presenting the energies in an admittedly extreme way above because, well, it’s fun, for one, but truthfully, and more to the point because it’s useful to think of the signs qualities and the spectrum they exist on; then we can more honestly conceptualize the energetic and emotional landscapes of the signs and thus the personal and collective possibilities therein as we interact with the seasons and the transits.
I am thinking a lot of the personal and collective possibilities this eclipse season as we traverse the Taurus/Scorpio axis. While on the one hand the moon has a total love affair with Taurus, on the other, between connecting with Uranus, and the sun, moon, and Saturn forming a T-square, the energy is filled with a painful and pulsating tension inviting us into the practice of unearthing and executing more supportive expressions of being and loving (selves, others, and community).
And this isn’t without pain, without challenge, without loss. Because when we speak of love as politic, we know we have to contend with some complex and challenging aspects of community/being in relationship. We have to think about accountability, and what it looks like, we have to think about palatability, and consequence, and access, and interdependence, and trauma, and harm, and shame, and justice.
The Taurus/Scorpio axis offers such medicine for this ever evolving, always deepening love praxis – this practice of interdependence, this dance with who we want to be and how we want to be even when the world is on fire. (After all, who could give us a better lesson on loving through the fire than Scorpio).
Taurus wants us to ask how we can keep ourselves and each other safer and Scorpio wants us to unearth where we actually have that power.
It’s easy to identify the places we don’t have power (systemically especially and most significantly). But where do we have power? What is within our control — our reach — and what actions can we employ that have meaningful, tangible impact? How can we move into deeper understanding that acknowledgment of and exercise of our own power lends itself to more community safety? What about more personal accountability? What are we doing to create an effective arena for this accountability? How are we untangling shame from secrecy? How are we making space for complex nuance amidst seeming polarities? How are we questioning and challenging our own categorical assignments of good/bad and redeemable/irredeemable?
The more we develop our own values and find meaningful ways to live in alignment with those values (erecting and maintaining boundaries is a great example of understanding our own power), the more safety we have with each other and this safety makes more possible. Simply more. Sometimes the goal isn’t immediately having all the answers. Sometimes it’s just about having a little more — some space for more to take place.
What do we need to make more space for? How do we all move collectively to open this space? This eclipse season is asking us to be really honest (like brutally so) with the places we need to release our grip in order to make space for new ways of loving and being. It’s asking us to think of the relationship between water and earth and the connection between digging deep(er) and strong(er) roots.
It’s somehow easiest and most difficult to practice our values with our dear ones. On the one hand, many of us likely find it fairly easy to see our dear ones in their complexity, give them the benefit of the doubt, know they are capable of more/different and tell them so. On the other hand, when dear ones step outside their values or cause harm, we can find it difficult to hold. We might find it hard to believe or we might feel unable to accept their actions and want to cease contact. And listen, sometimes the consequence of someone’s actions IS that you decide to no longer be in relationship or have contact with that person. Fair. Our boundaries are always our own to set and we are allowed to decide who we are in relationship with and how. Full stop. AND Scorpio lends very supportive energy for us diving into not only our own shadowed depths but also accessing more understanding of some of the less supportive methods people can access out of alignment. In short, it can expand us.
Scorpio energy allows us to consider how we can widen our tolerance for shadow, our ability to hold painful truths, our capacity to love someone and know they’ve caused harm and call them in and communally collaborate with them to support their commitment to changed behavior. We can use this energy to further our uncomfortable understandings of the tangled web of systemic oppression and infrastructural and interpersonal harm and how to move collectively into more supportive ways of communal being.
Everyone has to decide for themselves what is tolerable and acceptable for them. And everyone has the right and (hopefully) power to erect and maintain the boundaries they want to. No one is required to be in relationship with anyone else. AND there are interesting, ongoing, and complex questions about how we are addressing and engaging with harm – how we might move away from ‘irredeemable’ toward the core goodness many believe most have and want to live in alignment with.
The Taurus/Scorpio axis offers us a roadmap in this regard. It asks us how we can dive deeper to work smarter. It asks us to boldly claim the places we do have safety + power (or could). It asks us to exert that power. It asks us to consider the complexity we offer more easily to dear ones and how we might also extend it to ourselves and to others we find less palatable. It asks us where the boundary of our love praxis lies and where we might expand that boundary. It’s not easy. Not without challenge and pain and even disagreement. But we don’t all have to agree to be moving meaningfully in the same direction. How can we further align our collective goals this eclipse season by embracing Taurus/Scorpio medicine – by surrendering the illusion of control and embracing the concept of shadowed possibility?
One thing this full moon is offering us is releasing what isn’t working in order to make possible what could. Questions might include: where do we struggle to acknowledge our own harm, mistakes, and places we step out of alignment with our values and how can we move into meaningful self-accountability? What do commitments to changed behavior actually look like and what community support is needed for this? How do we practice this? Where does the binary conceptualization of good/bad hinder us and how can we work harder to understand each other in our complexity? How can we center that core goodness while also acknowledging and addressing harm?
(Please note: the suggestion of this framework isn’t meant to excuse harmful or unsupportive behavior but rather offers us movement into deeper alignment with a communal value of possibility, of people not being left behind. Some people might choose to stay behind, and that will inevitably need to be addressed and accepted but a lens rooted in transformative justice suggests that for many folks change is possible with support and intentional healing work so what does that look like in a practical sense? It’s painful, activating, and challenging as it pushes against some of our values and triggers and tender spots so how are we going to wrestle with it?)
That’s the big takeaway this eclipse season: how are we going to wrestle with it? Because we can. We are strong, smart, and capable enough.
As always, whatever the weather, I am wishing you all ease and reprieve and expansion and joy. Reminder! My books are open AND my Scorpio Medicine Workshop: unearthing shadow through the elements + tarot archetypes will be taking place on zoom this Sunday November 13th – book in now!
In cosmic solidarity,
Tal