Season of Sacrifice

Pic c. Charlie Foley

I believe with my whole heart that every time something or someone is unceremoniously removed from our lives that mighty forces have swooped in to help us make space. They cut what we can't, excise what is too tender to take a scalpel to. And rather than immediately filling the void with anaesthetic or anachronism or worse, sliding back towards the abyss grasping and cleaving, we can choose to follow the stark universal cues.

Eclipses are notorious dealbreakers and all too often shine their blazing gaze on our shaky, just barely hanging in there, way past its use by date, already cracking or falling to pieces stuff. Sometimes all of it at once, a particularly brutal form of species eclipsia that can render us utterly inert in the shocking days that follow.

There is a holy method to this madness, deep magic weaved into the chaos and even the tears. Every lunar eclipse demands a sacrifice on its altar of transformation - and takes one if you won't make one. Sacrifice is a much maligned process that too often claims matrydom as its meaning, demanding applause or compensation. Another modern bastardisation of an ancient tenet. Sacrifice is from the Latin root sacrere meaning to hold sacred, its holy devotion to a greater purpose a prayer all of its own. Sacrifice and surrender are a deep bow to the vaster path of your life, acknowledging what you cannot see nor possibly know. Not yet.

Some sacrifices we make willingly, out of love for the other. Libra holds this truth deep in its Venusian heart. Anyone who parents or partners from love understands this, even when it hurts or stretches us beyond reasonable limits. The caveat of sacrifice, its unholy shadow to wrangle, is how we balance this with an equal care and love and respect for ourselves. The dance is a moveable feast or a total dog's breakfast, depending which end of the spectrum you favour.

Eclipse season is yet asking us to head all the way out on this limb. To court perfect balance between what sustains us bearing our weight and what we have to give. All in sacred devotion to evolution: ours, theirs, the world's. It always feels like a big ask. It always delivers uncommon bounty. Wait and see.


Words c. Kerrie Basha 2024