Decans and Dragons
The Mysterious Power of Eclipses
One day, more than a decade ago, I was working in a newly planted orchard alongside my helper Salvador, Don Chava to his friends and family, who is now 90 years old, and at that time was a very spry and active elderly gentleman in his late 70’s. He was born in 1934 in a rural district in the state of Zacatecas, Mexico. Definitely a man from another time and world, he remembers the first automobile in his village, as well as when the first airplane flew over, and hearing the first record player. Without getting lost in a biographical digression, working alongside Salvador, who was my principle helper on the farm, as well as my good friend, was an amazing experience in cultural exchange. He is a devout Catholic of a rather conservative, but extremely kind and loving, orientation, his worldview is strongly magical. He was raised in a world of tales of magic, witches and fantastic creatures, buried treasure, an enchanted universe in which God holds all things together, magic is real, and nature is very much alive with spiritual presence. His faith is so strong that when he prays for something, it usually comes to pass. His skill in tending plants, matitas, he called them, was unsurpassed. I was many times amazed at his deep connection to the spiritual world and to the plants he tended. Our friendship was an inspiration to me and definitely changed my outlook on both farming and spirituality. He is, in short, a true cunning farmer.
One day when he turned to me while we were weeding the young fruit trees and said (in Spanish), “You should hang horseshoes in these trees to keep them from being damaged by eclipses.”
“Eclipses?” I replied, not sure if I was hearing the Spanish right. “You mean when the moon passes between the Sun and the Earth and everything goes dark?”
“Yes. They harm plants.”
This was before I had ever studied astrology at all and it sounded like a bit of quaint superstition, I mean how could an eclipse harm plants? I have always tried to follow the Farmer’s Almanac’s instructions for organizing farm work according to the sign the Moon is passing through and its phase, whenever practically possible. Which on a farm it often isn’t. But this was something different.
I have also always been alert to snippets of the lore of agricultural magic when I come across them, so my ears perked up a bit at this. I have long been a fan of Celtic folklore and I knew that iron was believed to have apotropaic properties, and is regarded to be effective for repelling fairies, for instance, and I figured the iron was supplying the major part of the “effective virtue”, as it were.
From then on I hung every scrap of iron that I found while digging in the garden from the limbs of the fruit trees to prevent them from being damaged by harmful spiritual forces. Salvador saw this and said, something to the effect of, “That’s fine, but it has to be horseshoes for eclipses.”
I didn’t really think about this particular piece of folklore until I read the Picatrix, and began to study astrology and astrological magic several years later (when Uranus was transiting my Ascendant, as it happens). The medieval compendium of astrological lore and magic, the Picatrix, tells us that the aspects of the Sun and Moon (lunar phases) affect the composition of the elements in all composite things, saying, “Eclipses affect the Sun, the Moon, and the Fixed Stars and influence them to the harm of other composite bodies”. The author clarifies that the Sun, Moon, and Stars, are not harmed by the eclipse, but rather change the energetic quality which emanates from them, saying the “reason harm to animals, trees, and other composite bodies from eclipses of the Sun, Moon, and other planets happens is because the four elements are altered, changed, and damaged.”
When I read this passage several years later, I immediately thought of Salvador and his horseshoes. The Picatrix, in fact, was originally composed in Al-Andalus, Moorish Spain, and a link between Arabic astrological magic and Mexican agricultural folk magic is not out of the realm of possibility. I spoke recently with Salvador’s wife, and she told me tradition of avoiding eclipses and using what we would refer to as apotropaic magic to ward off their ill effects is one of great antiquity, having been passed down from generation to generation since time immemorial.There seems, however to have been a lost rationale for what initially seemed to be an example of a quaint rural superstition. It is interesting indeed that the astrological symbol for the two points in the ecliptic where it is intercepted by the Moon’s eccentric orbit resemble horseshoes, one points up (the descending node) and the other down (the ascending node). These are the points in the sky where eclipses can occur when the Sun and Moon pass over them during their orderly trips through the heavens. It seemed to me that the necessity of the horseshoe shape for warding off the damage caused by eclipses was related to the symbolism of the lunar nodes.
A brief explanation of the astronomical phenomena of the eclipse and its astrological significance is probably in order before we proceed to our discussion proper. Eclipses are celestial events which happen when either the shadow of the passing Moon covers the disk of the Sun, a solar eclipse, or when the shadow of the Earth falls across the disk of the Moon. Because the plane of the Moon’s orbit is slightly at an angle to the path of the Sun through the sky,which is known as the ecliptic, (in terms of heliocentric astronomy, it’s the plane of the Solar system containing the orbits of the Earth and all of the planets), there are only two points at 180 degrees to one another where the orbits coincide. These are known as the nodes, and their astrological symbols resemble horseshoes, as discussed earlier. In astrology the Ascending Node, also known as the North Node where the orbit of the moon ascends north of the ecliptic is known as the Caput Draconis, the Head of the Dragon, and the Descending Node, the South Node, is known as the Cauda Draconis, the Tail of the Dragon. The head and tail of this celestial dragon, obviously a relative of the Chaos Monsters of the primal creation myths, are symbols of powerful forces which introduce chaos and uncertainty into the world here below the heavens. Lunar Eclipses can only occur when the Moon is in opposition to the Sun, that is during a Full Moon, and the converse is true for solar eclipses, which only occur during new Moons, or when the Sun is conjunct the Moon. The alignment of the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth are precise during these events, leading to an enhancement of the tidal forces normally in operation during new and full Moons, making higher than normal king tide events.
Many cultures worldwide have feared the uncanny occurrence of an eclipse, when the effulgent radiance of one of our celestial luminaries, either the Sun or the Moon, is suddenly blocked by a shadow. Apotropaic rituals to aid the eclipsed Sun or Moon are recorded worldwide, on ancient Babylonian tablets, and in the medieval penitential books from Northern Europe to name just two examples separated by thousands of years and miles. It is indeed one of the strangest experiences to have the brilliant sunlight of a warm spring day suddenly replaced by eerie twilight. Everything becomes hushed, a cool breeze begins to blow, strange crescent shaped shadows begin to form under the dappled light beneath trees, on the whole it is a very odd sensation indeed. Likewise, a total lunar eclipse can blacken or redden a brilliant full Moon, giving an indescribable spooky or eerie feeling to an otherwise beautiful moonlit night.
Since ancient times, predicting the occurrence of both solar and lunar eclipses has been the purview of astronomers who in antiquity often belonged to the priestly caste. These days they are predicted years in advance and nobody is caught by surprise anymore. However, that wasn’t always the case. Predicting eclipses seems to have been a preoccupation of humans all over the world throughout history. When a culture gets complex enough and can produce enough agricultural surplus to feed a crew of workers, in many cases, one of the first projects to which that work crew gets assigned is the construction of earthen or stone observatories to plot the movements of the Sun, the Moon, and the stars against in immoble background. There is evidence to suggest that this was one of the purposes for the construction of the famous megalithic monument Stonehenge, which could be used, according to researcher Gerald Hopkins, as a digital computer for the prediction of eclipses by tracking the movements of the Sun and Moon. All across Europe similar but smaller circular arrangements of stones were constructed by smaller communities to track celestial movements. Across the Atlantic, not far from where I am writing, in Kentucky, Ohio’s famous Serpent Mound is believed by archaeologist William Romain. to have been created to commemorate and predict solar eclipses. In ancient Mexico, the Mayan culture also developed a sophisticated calendrical system and were able to use not only their advanced mathematics, but also their meticulously constructed stone celestial observatories to measure the movements of the Sun and Moon and to predict eclipses with great precision. We could continue to list the sophisticated astronomical achievements of ancient cultures from Egypt and China to Mesopotamia and the Americas, turning this brief essay into a book length work, but we will keep our focus narrowly on eclipses for the time being.
All of this begs the question as to why ancient people were so concerned with predicting eclipses?
In ancient cultures the orderly motion of the planets and stars of the celestial world represented the divine order which prevailed upon earth. Unusual events, like eclipses, which seemed to occur outside of the common course of events, signalled disruptions to the divine order and were regarded as omens of misfortune, like wars, the death of kings, doughts, floods, and plagues. The ancient Babylonians created an elaborate system of divination based on the occurrence of celestial omens, such as eclipses and planetary transits, which later developed into what we would consider astrology today. In the Neo-Assyrian period (7th century BCE) highly skilled scholars developed a practice of reading celestial omens. They created a “compendium of celestial omens” on clay tablets known as the Enuma Anu Enlil, in order to keep the rulers informed about the latest celestial intelligence regarding matters of national security. (In the Path of the Moon: Babylonian Celestial Divination and Its Legacy, Francesca Rochberg). At times when eclipses portended danger for the nation, the Babylonian astrologers performed apotropaic rituals to avert the danger.
Symbolically the eclipse represents the temporary victory of darkness over light. Nearly universally believed by traditional cultures worldwide to be the result of demonic forces overwhelming the luminaries in a violent struggle, for example, the Norse myth of Skoll and Hati, the two wolves who pursue the Sun and Moon, hoping to catch and eat them on the day of Ragnarok, the final battle between gods and men. In Hindu mythology the Lunar Nodes are known by the names of Rahu and Ketu, the head and tail respectively of a cosmic demon, Svarbanu, who attempted to steal the amrita, the celestial ambrosia of the gods, from the Moon and was beheaded for his crime by the god Vishnu. Enraged, the severed head and tail continue to pursue the Sun and Moon to this day, causing eclipses. We have already met the Seven demonic brothers of Babylonian mythology in other essays, among whose many crimes are causing eclipses by assailing the Sun and Moon, Shamash and Sin. Incantations from cuneiform tablets depict the prayers to be said during the apotropaic rituals to give aid to the Sun god and the Moon god, and restore order to the cosmos. And of course the symbolism of the Head and Tail of the Dragon reminds one of the Great Dragon of the Apocalypse, “And another portent appeared in Heaven; Behold a great red dragon, with seven heads, and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars in Heaven, and cast them to the Earth. (Revelation 12: 3-4, emphasis mine).
The destruction wrought by the sweeping tail of the Great Dragon is possibly an allusion to the destructive power of the Descending Node being exaggerated beyond its normal scope in the cataclysmic events envisioned by St. John of Patmos. However, it could easily be a symbolically relevant coincidence, a synchronicity, because according to scholar Adrian Pirtea, the image of the Eclipse Dragon was unknown in the West in the first century CE, when the Book of Revelation was written. The imagery of the Eclipse Dragon comes to the West via the arrival of Persian and Arabic astrological thought to the Byzantine Empire in the Medieval period. In the 11th century, Byzantine astrologers began translating texts from Arabic into Greek such as the treatises of Masha’allah, which refer to the lunar nodes as ra’s al-tinnin, the head of the dragon and dhanab al-tinnin, the tail of the dragon.
It is yet another fascinating coincidence of the association of the serpent archetype with the eclipse that the serpentine form of the famous Serpent Mound in Peebles, Ohio, which depicts a giant serpent devouring what appears to be an egg, perhaps representing the Sun, could have been inspired by an eclipse and have been an observatory used to predict them. We really don’t know exactly what significance the phenomenon of eclipses held for the builders of megalithic monuments like Stonehenge and prehistoric earthworks like Serpent Mound, but the fact that early people allocated the labor to build these structures in the first place indicates the central place that celestial observation in general and eclipse prediction in particular had in their worldviews.
Perhaps the ancient concern, which Earth mysteries researcher John Michell referred to as an obsession, with prediction of eclipses stems from the complex interaction of the Moon’s magnetic field with that of the Earth. According to Michell:
“The strength and direction of the current varies according to the certain phases of the sun and moon. The sun imposes a daily rhythm modified by other influences including that of the lunar cycle, for the moon exerts the same influence upon this invisible flow as it does on the tides. The full moon produces a marked increase in magnetic activity around noon with a quiet period just before sunset. The effects of the other bodies on the flow of current has not yet been estimated but J.A. Fleming remarks in Terrestrial Magnetism, ‘it is but natural to infer that a similar influence emanates from the planets or from the distant stars’. To interpret the flow of terrestrial magnetism it is therefore necessary to watch the heavens as closely as the compass.”
“Of all of the astronomical events that influence the Earth’s magnetic field,” Michell continues, “ the most dramatic is an eclipse of the sun or moon. When this takes place, the magnetic activity normally stimulated by the eclipsed body greatly diminishes with considerable effect on the regular flow of terrestrial current. It is therefore highly significant that the ultimate purpose of many of the prehistoric stone observatories of Britain and elsewhere was the accurate prediction of lunar eclipses.”
According to Michell, the fascination of ancient astronomers with eclipses and their prediction stems from their geomagnetic effects, which early people were more aware of:
“No plausible explanation has ever been put forward for the quite remarkable interest which prehistoric men showed in acquiring advance warning of an approaching eclipse. But if their science had any meaning at all, they must have had a purpose in directing so much of their effort towards this end. From the evidence of old beliefs and legends it appears that an eclipse is traditionally an event to be feared, against whose effects certain precautions should be taken. It is inconceivable that the ancient astronomers with their highly advanced observational science and cosmology could have been ignorant of the circumstances in which eclipses occur, and these familiar and predictable events could hardly have produced merely unreasoned or superstitious terror in those who understand their exact nature and cause. Yet the prehistoric dread of eclipses has survived in many parts of the world up to the present day. There must have been some good reason why, 4000 years ago, people were nervous of eclipses and took extreme care to gain warning of their approach. The only physical effect they could possibly have anticipated was the sudden interruption to the even flow of the terrestrial magnetic current, for this is the one way in which an eclipse affects proceedings on earth.”
This is all very fascinating, although I resist explanations for astral phenomena that rely on an overly physical basis, such as the geomagnetic explanation for early peoples’ interests in eclipses. There are surely more factors involved than geomagnetic energies and gravitation, there is mythology and symbolism, and there are spirit forces unleashed by the movements of the planets. The geomagnetic energy is surely part of the explanation, but according to the philosophy which informs the metaphysics of the Picatrix, and the Platonist worldview underlying much of traditional astrology, there is a noetic level of reality beyond the physical that informs the manifestation of the physical events we see in the world around us. On this level there is a profound sympathy between the motion of the heavenly bodies and Earthly events. When the Picatrix tells us that eclipses and other planetary transits cause harm or benefit to the composition of the four elements which make up living things, it is speaking about the noetic sympathy between the motions of the planets and life below, which releases what the Arab philosophers referred to as ruhaniyyat: celestial spirits, intelligent spiritual entities responsible for the thematic and archetypal patterns of our lives. There may indeed be a physical basis to some of the effects discussed by astrology in general, and eclipses in particular, but these physical effects are not exclusive of the spiritual forces which arrange reality according to the symbolic patterns represented by the signs, decans, and planets involved.
Likely there is a complex interaction of several influences, an interaction between the geomagnetic forces, which we may term the telluric current and the celestial spirit forces that ancient people were aware of and that they harnessed for what we would today consider magical purposes, using the interaction to enhance the power of their working. Colin Wilson, speculating on the purpose of the lunar alignments in the ancient sites we have been discussing, says that “Primitive religious observations were an interaction between man and nature, between the human mind and the earth forces. You could say that their purpose was to propitiate the gods, or to keep the earth ‘sweet’... Did the eclipse of the moon increase the earth forces in some way so they could be used for ‘magical purposes’.... It is conceivable that the priest –or shaman– was somehow able to unite the forces of his own mind with those of the Earth at such times, and transmit the power to the leys [ley lines: theoretical lines of Earth energy in the landscape].” If you add the celestial spirits, to Wilson’s speculative theory, then you get closer to my even more speculative theory: That the Earth energies linked to the spirit forces of the celestial realm by the power of the human mind which unifies the two, and that both of those energies are especially powerful at the moment of an eclipse. My conjecture is that the ancient architects of astronomical earthworks and megaliths were also astrological magicians, who used their knowledge of celestial movements to elect times for ceremonies when the celestial forces were most potent and to know when to perform apotropaic rites to prevent harm to their communities from eclipses.
We now turn to the study of astrology in our search for clues about the occult power of eclipses. In traditional western astrology eclipses are seen as events that disrupt the flow of life force from the luminaries, the Sun and the Moon, to the Earth. 17th century English astrologer William Lilly said that “an Eclipse is no other thing than a privation of light from one of the Luminaries.” As with the astrologers of ancient Babylon, eclipses are believed to affect all areas of life from the lives of nations to those of individuals, even being correlated with natural disasters such as earthquakes, droughts and crop failures. Eclipses are considered to be portents of change and upheaval and the house position of the nodes in the natal charts of individuals and the mundane charts of nations can give some clue to the astrologer as to where to expect the resultant upheaval. Now, there are usually two solar and two lunar eclipses in a given year, occurring when the transiting Sun and Moon closely approach the lunar nodes. Usually a pair of eclipses, a solar and a lunar eclipse occur within two weeks of one another at the lunations, the new and full Moons, and then again about six months later when the transiting luminaries approach the opposite nodes. The nodes themselves slowly move through the Zodiac, mostly against the order of the signs, what would be considered retrograde motion in a planet, taking about 19 years, (18.61) to make a full cycle through the signs, a process known as nodal precession.
This value is also the number of years in the lunar standstill cycle upon which lunar alignments in the earthworks and megalithic monuments were based, it is also very close to the length of the Metonic Cycle “discovered” by Meton of Athens in 432 BCE, which enables the synchronization of the Lunar and Solar calendar. Meton discovered this number on the basis of exhaustive observations from his observatory near Athens, that 19 solar years and 235 lunar months is nearly the same period.
The North Lunar Node, the Caput Draconis, is considered a benefic influence for the most part and can represent, if well aspected, the influx of helpful energies or influences entering into the life of the native or nation. Conversely, the South Lunar Node, the Cauda Draconis, is considered malefic and represents energies flowing out of the life of the native. These points are not celestial objects, but can aspect planets and other important points in a natal chart. According to astrologer Judith Hill, the North Node represents a “power surge” and the South Node represents a “power outage”. Since eclipses can only occur at the points represented by the nodes in the natal chart, the eclipse itself will be experienced as either a surge or an outage, according to Hill. If they conjoin a natal planet, then expect a surge or an outage of that planet’s energy in the life.
Likewise the natal house and sign the eclipse occurs in will also influence the character and part of the native’s life or of the life of the nation indicated by the signification of the house. For instance, a South Node eclipse in your 7th house, which represents, among other things, marriage and romantic partners can signify said partners leaving the life. Not, always though, and interpretation of eclipses, like any other astrological factor can be tricky. Eclipses also affect the opposite houses strongly as well, for instance while the South Node is removing energies from the 7th house, the North Node is bringing new forces to bear in the 1st house, which represents among other things, the native him/herself, health and other factors.
According to English astrologer William Lilly, many factors influence the quality of the eclipse, for instance, the elemental triplicity of the sign the eclipse occurs in, and the planet ruling that sign. If the sign in which the eclipse occurs in is a cardinal sign, its effect is less lasting , if fixed its effects endure for some time afterward. In addition, he delineates the effects produced by eclipses in the specific decans (the 10 degree segments which divide the signs of the Zodiac) in which they occur. One of the things I appreciate about William Lilly and other traditional sources is that he is interested in delineating the real world effects which follow eclipses and are predicted by them, events in politics, nature, agriculture, and personal lives. He doesn’t just regard astrology as symbolic of psychological transformation, but as portents of actual change in the circumstances of life.
While researching this essay, I have found several sources that list the effects of either solar or lunar eclipses in each decan of the zodiac, giving 36 basic delineations for each. The delineations I have found seem to be based on a work by William Lilly dating from 1652, and bearing the cumbersome and yet descriptive title: An Easie and Familiar Method Whereby to Judge the Effects Depending on Eclipses, Either of Sun or Moon. I haven’t yet found Lilly’s source for this material, but it reminds me in some ways of the decan list in the Testament of Solomon, a work of magic and demonology dating from the early centuries of the Christian Era and having much in common with the methods and mindset of the Greek Magical Papyri. In the section which discusses the decans, which are animal headed demons, they are called by King Solomon, telling him in Pauline language, “We are the 36 elements, the world-rulers of this darkness (the material world) and each tells Solomon which disease it causes and by what angelic power it can be controlled. The powers of the decanic daimons are based on astrological melothesia, or the belief that the signs of the zodiac rule over the parts of the body. To cite one example, the sign Aries rules the head and illnesses of the head, so when Solomon summons the spirit of the first decan of Aries, and asks him, “Who are ye called?” The first decan of Aries answered, saying, “I, O Lord, am called Ruax, and I cause the heads of men to be idle and I pillage their brows, But let me only hear the words, ‘Michael, imprison Ruax,” and at once I retreat.” The first decan of Aries is thus named as the source of headaches, which can be cured by appealing to the power of the Archangel Michael. Many amulets from this period have been found which have been constructed according to this system, adjuring a daimon responsible for illness by the power of an angelic or divine entity.
The decans have their origins in ancient the ancient Egyptian sidereal calendar system, where stars or groups of stars marking 10 degree segments of the 360 degree circle of the sky (many of these are not located on the ecliptic), each decan having its heliacal rising, rising before the Sun, every 10 days or so. This made a long lasting calendar which formed the basis of the Egyptian civil calendar. Each rising decan was the god of that time, presiding over fortune and misfortune and particularly over illness. Each was assigned rulership of particular parts of the body and could be propitiated to effect a cure. In the Hellenistic Era the decans were associated with different ruling planets among the seven traditional planets and assigned to the 10 degree segments of the Zodiac, thus integrating the two distinct systems.
Tractate XVI of the Corpus Hermeticum tells us the decans “have been assigned the territory of mankind, and they oversee human activity. What the gods enjoin them they effect through torrents, hurricanes, thunderstorms, fiery alterations and earthquakes; with famines and wars, moreover, they repay irreverence.” The decanic daimons, continues the tractate, “are many and changing, arrayed under the regiments of stars, an equal number of them for each star. Thus deployed, they follow the orders of a particular star, and they are good and evil according to their natures - their energies, that is. For energy is the essence of a demon. Some of them, however, are mixtures of good and evil…They have all been granted authority over the things of the earth and over the troubles of the earth, and they produce change and tumult collectively for cities and nations, individually for each person. They reshape our souls to their own ends, and they rouse them, lying in ambush in our muscle and marrow, in veins and arteries, in the brain itself, reaching to the very guts. The demons on duty at the exact moment of birth, arrayed under each of the stars, take possession of each of us as we come into being and receive a soul. From moment to moment they change places, not staying in position but moving by rotation. Those that enter through the body into the two parts of the soul twist the soul about, each toward its own energy. But the rational part of the soul stands unmastered by the demons, suitable as a receptacle for god.”
The decans were seen to be the entities responsible for the administration of fate, according to the Egyptians, and the Hermetic tradition which inherited much of their wisdom. From them, and other celestial daimones come the seeds of fate or fortune which our natal horoscope records, as the tractate says, they enter into us and take possession of us “as we come into being and receive a soul.” They move by rotation around the spheres of the heavens with the motion of the stars from which they stream, bringing all of the accidents of Earthly life which are shown by the transits to our natal chart.
It is believed that the ancient Egyptians called upon the decan spirits and their destructive powers for the defense of Egypt at specific times when they were most potent. In the later tradition of Hermetic astrological magic the decans were used similarly, to fashion magical images for a variety of purposes, for healing for instance, but for offensive purposes as well, according to the nature of the decan and sign it is found in. The Picatrix has several lists of the magical powers of the decans, here called faces, and images to capture their potency.
To return to our topic, eclipses, it is my contention that in some way these celestial alignments are particularly potent events which channel the daimonic forces of the decans into the elemental world in which we live, particularly their wrathful sides. Lilly’s list of effects of eclipses in each decan is so similar to the kinds of events mentioned in the Hermetic tractate quoted above, famines, wars, plagues, death of famous people, droughts, storms, etc. The idea that specific themes, turns of fortune or misfortune could be associated with celestial events, particularly the close conjunctions and oppositions of the Sun and Moon that are eclipses in specific degrees of the Zodiac traditionally associated with particular deities or celestial spirits since ancient times, is an extremely intriguing one, and one that I would like to explore further. I ask that the reader will indulge me for a moment to examine the effects of a particular recent eclipse .
On April 8, 2024 at 2:21 EDT a total solar eclipse was seen across the continental United States. Tradition tells us that the effects of eclipses are felt globally, but are particularly potent in those regions where they can be seen and experienced. This region included our farm which experienced 99% totality. Although I am suspicious of eclipses and aware that people in many cultures avoid being outside in the rays, I nevertheless enjoyed the surreal experience of sitting outside with some family, friends and neighbors and watching it get eerily dark, cool, and still in the early afternoon of a warm spring day.
The eclipse occurred at 19 degrees Aries 24’, in the second decan of that sign. According to William Lilly’s booklet, solar eclipses in Aries, a cardinal fire sign, if they fall in spring, “destroy the growth of such herbs as spring out of the earth, and the budding and blossoming of trees.” When Mars, the ruler of Aries, is the ruler of the eclipse, says Lilly, “he generally is the cause of corruption in regard to his too much dryness, and especially when he is in a fire sign (he wasn’t but the eclipse was). When the events pertain unto men, he stirs up wars, seditions, internecine risings, and tumults, imprisonments, banishments, besieging and taking of towns and cities, popular tumults, the frowns of princes upon several of their subjects…He inclines Kings and Princes unto tyranny, violence injuries and injustice, In the air, he stirs up extra-ordinary sultry blasts and great heat, hot pestilent winds, pestiferous and infectious thunder, lightening, whirlwinds, immeasurable droughts. In the Sea he occasions impetuous storms… he occasions and signifies scarcity of grain, and of all such things as are produced out of the earth, either causing untimely heats, whereby nourishment sufficient cannot come to maintain the root…”
You get the idea. Does that sound like the news from last summer to you? The wars, scandals, political theater, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes? Just wait, we’re not finished with Lilly yet. We still have to read what he says about eclipses in Aries and specifically the second decan of that sign.
“Eclipses of the Sun or Moon in the fiery triplicity do declare death of herds of both great and small cattle, and the banishment of some great King, Prince, or eminent man, or his imprisonment…” An eclipse in the second decan of Aries, says Lilly, “brings to some King, Prince, or eminent officer to prison or restrain of liberty, it adds sorrow and danger of death to him, destruction of fruit trees, and it portends the rottenness or putrification of such things as the earth produce, whereby both man and beast are afflicted.” I’ll just leave the political bit right there, the reader can likely remember the headlines last summer. But as to the agricultural prediction, it too is spot on. Farmers in the eclipsed region had to contend with a record drought which afflicted the exact region that experienced totality or near totality during the eclipse. Our garlic was “corrupted” by a blight which I have never seen in my nearly 30 years of growing garlic, our fruit trees failed to yield (the horseshoes have long since fallen off), the yields from many crops were much lower than they should have been, owing to heat or disease. We had unexplained losses of animals as well, including a stillborn calf, which was the only time that had happened on our farm. All of this would not have surprised William Lilly.
Is all of this mischief the work of the daimon of the second decan of Aries, the spirit which the Testament of Solomon calls Barsafael, but who goes by many other names?
Lilly’s predictions for eclipses in this decan are uncannily correct and although events like those described above could be said to be happening all over the world, the fact that the eclipse and the events described by Lilly almost 400 years ago coincided in the same nation during the same season, is shocking. If there is consistency in the character of eclipses, maybe when they happen we are indeed seeing the wrathful face of the decan spirits (pun intended). The peaceful and helpful face we see when they are well dignified and their ruling planets are passing through them. At such rare times they are used for making images for magical purposes, including astrological medicine, an ancient practice made famous by Renaissance magician Marsilio Ficino.
I have tried making some of these myself, and they seem to be effective. In particular a talisman for the first decan of Taurus, that I carved into selenite at a propitious time, when Mercury, the decan ruler, was transiting through it. I chose this decan which governs the neck to help cure neck pain due to a pinched nerve resulting from arthritis. (Incidentally, the flareup of symptoms occurred while the south node was passing over my natal Mars in my 6th house of health, at the time of the April 8th eclipse discussed above, which occurred in my 12th house, affliction and injury). The pain and tingling miraculously cleared up, coincidentally perhaps, even though the MRI indicated severe spinal stenosis and the possible need for surgery. I am still symptom free, thanks possibly to Sôou, the spirit of the 1st decan of Taurus.
And finally, lest the reader think that eclipses are all omens of gloom and doom, and the ones ruled by malefic Mars and Saturn often are. On the other hand, eclipses ruled by Jupiter and Venus are more positive, signalling abundance and good fortune, according to Lilly, those ruled by the Sun and Mercury can go either way. But that dear reader is a topic for another time.
If you are interested in finding out what the eclipses and other celestial happenings have in store for you please get in touch by direct message or email and we can set up a consultation. I am what I would consider a student astrologer, so my rates are reasonable.
Bibliography, Recommended Reading, and Works Consulted:
Warnock, Christopher, and Greer, John Michael, The Complete Picatrix, Adocentyn Press, 2011.
Wilson, Colin, The Mysteries, Perigee, 1978.
John Michell, The View Over Atlantis, Abacus, 1973.
Greenbaum, Dorian Gieseler, The Daimon in Hellenistic Astrology, Brill, 2016.
Avelar, Helena, and Ribeiro, Luis, The Heavenly Spheres, American Federation of Astrologers, 2010.
Hill, Judith, Eclipses and You: How to Align with Life’s Hidden Tides, Stellium Press, 2013.
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