08 AUG 2017 - Total Solar Eclipse: “Many Little Birds on a Limb of a Big Tree”

June 8, 1918
– the last time a total Solar Eclipse carved a path across the United States.

World War I - the first true “world war” – was still on-going.

This war brought modern technology – airplanes, tanks and chemical warfare, spelled the end of monarchies and brought the rise of new forms of government, including communism in Russia,
China and half of Europe.

The League of Nations and its successor – the United Nations – was formed.

The Depression, World War II, the atomic age, the Cold War, exploration of space,
the break-up of the Soviet Union, the technological revolution – all since 1918.

Radio, invented in 1895, became popular beginning in 1920.

The years after brought new kinds of global communication
– television in the 1950s; the internet in the 1990s; social media platforms in the 2000s.

We take for granted that it is possible to not only know what is happening
on the other side of the world as it happens, we can also communicate with ordinary people
and hear their point of view.

More voices have been added to the daily commentary.

With this cacophony of voices, we are presented with differing versions of reality.

What was consensual truth in 1918 – or even, for that matter,
1990 - no longer is and it is hard to find something that we all agree upon.

This crescendo of differing versions of “the truth” is at the core of our current crisis
where competing perspectives on reality are espoused by angry global voices,
each insisting that the other’s version is “fake” and others are ignorant and ill-informed
– or power-hungry and malicious.

It is out of this global petri dish that Donald Trump found a platform that propelled him into power.

Over the last 100 years the US has been the de facto leader of the world and now we are going
through a huge death/rebirth process.

Under the general hullabaloo that accompanies this sort of collective event there exists a primitive and ancient fear unique to the experience of a total Solar Eclipse.

The life-giving Sun – which has shone so brightly on our country for so many years – will “die.”

We all know the Sun will return – but that’s an intellectual understanding.

Deep within us lies a far more primitive fear running along the lines of
– “What if the Sun does not return?
What if this journey into darkness is permanent?
What if we descend into chaos and confusion forever?”

The Sabian Symbol for this Total Solar Eclipse is: “Many Little Birds on a Limb of a Big Tree”
and its keynote is “A wide, and perhaps confusing, openness to a multiplicity of inspiring potentialities.”

How fitting.

Every day we hear disparate voices from around the world, chattering their version of truth.

Somehow, somewhere, there must be a unifying force but we have not found it yet.

I believe we will.

What appears to be a straight line is really a spiraling cycle.

We are in a long-term transition from the dissolving, disintegrating and fragmenting energy
of the Age of Pisces and are moving into the unified perspective of the Age of Aquarius.

Everything that has happened over the last 250 years is moving us steadily toward global unity not just as an intellectual concept but as a physical experience. There are those who are deeply afraid of this idea, although I am not sure why. From my perspective, when I look at this beautiful picture of Earth taken from outer space there is no other way to view ourselves except as one interconnected world. But what is obvious to many is resisted mightily by others. Under the resistance is fear - fear of loss, fear of somehow being left behind, fear of not mattering in the grand scheme of things. Yet each and everyone one of us does matter. We all contribute to the whole in some way, either consciously or unconsciously. Each of us is one of those birds chattering on the limb of a big tree.
As we exit this eclipse transition on August 21, begun with the Lunar Eclipse on August 7, bring consciousness to what you as an individual are releasing. Step into the newness – a new beginning, a do-over, a chance to begin again at a different place on the Spiral Wheel. Choose to exit this transition at a higher octave rather than a lower. We are all Earthlings. Peace.
By Ruby Falconer, August 17, 2017
Sabian Symbol from “An Astrological Mandala: The Cycle of Transformations and its 360 Symbolic Phases” by Dane Rudhyar, 1973.

Image: Earth from Space, Apollo 17