A Small Eclipse Ritual: Under a Blood Red Moon

Photo by Black Dog Photography

The lunar eclipse of 20 February 2008 was quite pretty in the here-and-there moments that the cloud-cast sky allowed a peek.

I love it when I can curl up in a blanket in the back yard hammock and watch an eclipse with one of the kids with me, but the best seat in the house for this particular moon was on my front driveway.  I set up a couple of blankets on the driveway and brought out a small iron cauldron, about 9 inches in diameter.  I filled it half-way with kitty litter (which I’m a fan of with certain rituals) and set it a few feet on the driveway in front of me.

I pulled several candles from a box in the guest room.  They each represented something from the past year that I was in some way special but no longer pertinent to the future.  I set up most of them inside the little cauldron, with a few tapers that I wiggled down into the kitty litter to hold them up straight.  I watched the last sliver of moonlight disappear behind the Earth’s shadow, then lit the candles and soaked up the warmth.

I sat and meditated on how certain things are taking form in my life and on the things to come.  I made notes, bringing ideas into the physical realm, then sent them back again as I burned them in the little cauldron.

The candles burned quickly, dissolving into a pool of bubbling wax that seem to boil and double when it hit the kitty litter, rising up until my little cauldron boileth over.  It simmered for a while as I waited for the light to reappear.

I’d forgotten that the eclipse was to last for 50 minutes, and didn’t remember until the first sliver of moonlight reappeared.  It’s said that the effect of an eclipse lasts months for minutes.  In other words, those 50 minutes represent the next 50 months, or 4 years and 2 months that we will feel the influence of this event.

I focused on the exact degree of the eclipse and where it lies in my own astrological chart and on the things I want to grow and change and manifest in that area of my life.  And by the time the light started to return, I was calm and serene and ready to curl up in my bed and drift off to dreams.