The story told by the upcoming Penumbral Lunar Eclipse, a Full Moon occurring on July 5 at 13°37 Capricorn, 7:12 AM UTC, is as much about the culmination that accompanies every Full Moon as it is about the shade that intertwines with every light.

It’s about tall monoliths — pillars that carry the weight of our existence, walls that divide and cut us off from the periphery of our very own vision, high mountaintops we strive to conquer, about their unquestionable visibility and tangible presence. It’s about the shadows they cast and what either proliferates or withers away in the absence of light. It’s about hard limits and soft nuances, about rigid, binary structures and grey areas, born of an imperfect alignment that reveals without exposing, conceals without expunging.

A Penumbral Lunar Eclipse occurs when the Sun, Earth and Moon are aligned; the Earth blocks some of the Sun’s light from directly reaching the Moon’s surface and covers the Moon with the outer part of its shadow, also known as penumbra. Being the penumbra much fainter than the murky core of Earth’s shadow, it causes a faint dimming of the lunar surface. Penumbral lunar eclipses are subtle, almost guileful — you could hardly tell the difference between a Penumbral Lunar Eclipse and an average Full Moon to your naked eye, but the darkness is still there.

This Full Moon closes out a cycle of Eclipses on the Cancer/Capricorn axis, once more pulling structural changes into focus, casting a light on our individual responsibility in the grand scheme of things, and asking us to deal with the dark side of the power we wield, the shadow we ourselves cast while reaching out for the light, but also with the side-effects of solidifying our judgment into shatterproof dogmas: the South Node in Sagittarius may not be within orb of conjunction to the Full Moon in Capricorn, but its presence is felt. Every belief that doesn’t hold space for the complexity of the real world is bound to create blind spots, holes in our understanding. Every attempt to appear virtuous without considering the consequences of our actions across the board can only result in more cognitive dissonance, more distortion, more oppression.

That shadow is ours to acknowledge and own. Even though this might mean acknowledging that several elements of our lived experience are not as steady and unshakable as they seem. Earth is the realm of paradoxes. Of both/and. Humans partake in this play of contradictions ever since the dawn of time. Many of the hierarchies, conventions and beliefs we base our life on haven’t changed ever since.

But with Saturn, ruler of this Full Moon, currently Retrograde, in close proximity to Jupiter and Pluto (both Retrograde as well), and with Uranus forming a close trine to the Moon, there is room for exploration. There are margins circling the core. There is subtext close to the surface. There is the opportunity to review and revisit our choices, the parts of ourselves we have condemned to exile for the sake of our worldly pursuits, the commitments that are no longer aligned with the person we have become, rules that no longer apply, promises we’re yet to fulfill — to ourselves, to those whose voices we vowed to amplify.

Too, Chiron in Aries squares this Full Moon, a dash of ruby red in shades of grey. Rage demands a seat at the table. The rage of the survivor, of the abandoned, of the disenfranchised — because every tomorrow that doesn’t honor and uplift what was once erased is but a yesterday in disguise. Whatever you plan to release at the time of this Full Moon, don’t dismiss or silence the demands of your angry, wounded Self, the cries for justice echoing from every corner of the world. Don’t flee from the discomfort. Don’t push pain and passion into the shadow.

Pull them into the picture, allow their reality to set in.

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Image: Wilfried Sätty (1939-1982), Illustration for ‘The Annotated Dracula’, 1975.