Dancing with Darkness

'tis the season of change; eclipse inspired musings on transitions

It’s virgo season and eclipse season so naturally, I’ve been thinking a lot about transitions and the fertility of darkness. The sun’s time in mutable signs (pisces, gemini, virgo, sagittarius) always aligns with the time of year when one season is transitioning into another. Thus, all mutable signs carry similar qualities of adaptability, uncertainty and in-betweenness.

In the northern hemisphere, virgo season marks the shift from summer to fall. Commonly referred to as the harvest season, it signals a time to gather the fruits of one’s labor in preparation for cooler months. As a mutable earth sign, virgo represents the meticulous process of sifting through, refining, and ultimately transforming the chaos of the material realm into practical gems. To me, it’s the magic of actualizing nature’s highest potential. But this virgo season, I’ve been thinking about the role of darkness in this process? How does darkness aid or interrupt this transformation?

A harvest moon rising. Credit: Beautiful Fireworks / Getty Images

Tomorrow’s full moon in pisces is not only a Supermoon but it also coincides with a partial lunar eclipse along the virgo-pisces axis. This is an introduction to what this round of eclipses has in store for 2025-2026 as the aries-libra eclipses gradually come to an end by early next year. At the same time, Jupiter continues it’s journey through Gemini and Saturn is in Pisces. In astrology, all of these celestial movements point to the theme of c h a n g e.

So it’s not surprising that change and all of its discomfort, uncertainty and potentiality, has been top of mind for me lately.

As a pisces rising, I’m no stranger to the constant changes, movement and organized chaos inherent in the embodied earthly experience. But as a taurus sun, I wouldn’t say I always thrive in these conditions. My ego would prefer to lean into the things I tell myself I have control over rather than trust my ability to adapt. So despite the awareness that change is always happening, experiencing change is typically quite jarring to my nervous system.

This brings me to the felt “in-betweenness” of this moment in my life as I’m currently experiencing changes on multiple levels. My day job situation is in flux, I’m recently engaged and planning a wedding, I’m sharing my art and practicing vulnerability publicly in a way I’ve never done before. Then there’s the more macro-level changes: I’m breaking up with learning through hardship, embracing relational values that reflect my authenticity, listening to my inner authority, accessing my sovereignty. I know that the micro day-to-day changes I’m navigating are intimately connected to and supporting the macro-level changes. But I don’t know how all of it will pan out. On that, I’m in the dark. I’ve been here before. It is both familiar and unfamiliar.

But, my response to the dark feels different this time. Rather than run from it or brace for its sharpness, I feel compelled to look at it, move through it, and explore it’s shapes and ambiguities.

Ain’t It Strange by Maze ft. Frankie Beverly (1979)

Since the news of Frankie Beverly’s passing on September 10, 2024, I’ve been listening to a lot of Maze and I’m in awe of the beautiful music they created. This song came on as I was working on this piece and the timing and theme couldn’t be more fitting.

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Because this relationship to darkness is new for me, it’s been a strange adjustment. So much of me is conditioned to avoid darkness. And if I must confront darkness, the goal has always been to overcome or conquer it. Even in times when I’ve told myself I’m trusting God, my actions have still been rooted in fear and control, my attachment to outcome grew stronger even as I claimed to be surrendering. This is because I thought surrendering meant relentlessly pursuing an external light so that I could be “saved” from the clutches of darkness. And an external pursuit can only be validated externally.

But in this season of change, I’m being called to trust the wisdom of my inner light to guide me through darkness with more curiosity and less judgement. Darkness wants me to see it in a different light. It nudges me to consider the darkness of the womb and the tremendous evolution it contains. Consider the creative process itself which requires the creator to venture into the void of the imagination and sift through darkness in order to uncover the jewels that lie in the deep recesses of the mind. To learn from darkness and allow it to feed my internal light. What new skills or untapped potential can only be revealed in the dark?

Even as I type this, I can feel the resistance.

How can we bring about our desired outcome if we aren’t constantly outsourcing our power/our light? How can we remain in the safety of the light if we aren’t actively running from darkness?

In the following journal entries, I contemplate darkness – ways I feel resistant to it and ways I feel called to it.

Journal Entry 8.22.24

When do children learn to be afraid of the dark? I know this is a nature vs nurture question but I’m curious about the nurture aspect because in those first nine months (give or take), the darkness of the womb is all we know. The womb is dark and we are safe. The womb is dark and we are nurtured, held, transformed. We have no way of knowing or guaranteeing our safety yet we grow anyway because it is our nature. In the beginning, darkness protects, grows and shelters us. What is it that then turns darkness into isolation, abandonment, and fear?

I don’t remember exactly when I began to fear the dark. It might’ve been after watching one too many scary movies. Or perhaps fear of abandonment gradually solidified loss and darkness as interchangeable. At a certain point, the night light became my sanctuary. A reminder that I can still see in darkness, that I can still be in control.

The way we’re socialized to relate to darkness seems deeply connected to our relationship with control and the unknown. In western society, so much of what we know depends heavily on what we can “see” followed by our other senses. This allows for an over reliance on what we can see and know by western standards and underutilization of what we can feel, sense or intuit.

But these associations between observability and that which is “known” are often not as reliable as we’d like to believe. One of the reasons I love learning about quantum physics is because it reminds us that our perception of reality is extremely limited. And because of that, a decent amount of what we think we know about reality is unstable, mutable, shapeable.

We use things like measurement, and light to make us feel better about what we think we know, to make us feel like we’re in control. Darkness disrupts this patterning and forces us to come to terms with the ever present unknown, ever present instability, ever present change. So we run from it rather than learn to work with it. Transitions invite us to work with it.

Journal Entry 8.23.24

I find myself in a familiarly unfamiliar darkness in this current juncture. I think I’ve lived so much of my life in anticipation. Anticipating outcomes, responses, sequence of events.

Questions I’m Asking Myself:

• What does anticipation serve? Why do you anticipate?

• What is darkness? How did you come to know darkness?

• What do you do when the darkness of transitions renders you unable to anticipate (in the ways you’re used to)?

• If you’ve connected your agency to the ability to anticipate outcomes, then does the darkness take away your agency?

• In situations when you have a hard time anticipating what’s next, what do you do? How does it feel? How has it felt in the past and how does it feel now?

This current period of transitions has come with a lot of contradictory feelings. I feel both apprehensive and trusting… I feel like I should be afraid/panic but I don’t actually feel the urge to do that…like I should be disciplining myself through fear and hardship but that approach doesn’t fit as easily as it used to. There’s this mysterious hope that isn’t obviously explainable but I feel afraid that the “un-explainable” hope I have will go away when the rubber meets the road. I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop. I feel like I’m navigating two versions of myself that want to respond to darkness differently.

There’s the version that wants a certain level of material security; this version also still places a decent amount of importance on other people’s perception of me, wants to fit in/meet people’s expectations, feels that these things are connected not only to acceptance but also to livelihood. This version urgently moves toward goals that may not be true to my zone of desire out of fear. This version feels pressure to measure myself and my value based on external metrics.

The other version wants to let my intuition lead me to opportunities that resource me spiritually, financially, emotionally, socially, etc. This version wants to water and nourish my creative projects and feels fulfilled in the journey of surrendering to the dark womb where my fears are held and my creative potential gestates.

Journal Entry 9.1.2024

Today feels lighter than yesterday. Yesterday, the burdens of binary thinking felt heavy – conformity vs. individuality, progression vs. regression, personal growth vs. collective growth. These choices planted seeds of constriction in my chest. But some part of me felt like a choice was necessary, as if choosing would resolve the tension.

Most of what I was thinking about had less to do with me as an individual and more to do with how I enter and engage the world/culture around me. What role am I meant to serve in the grand scheme of things? Are there any templates for how I fit in?

For me, one of the more challenging aspects of this transitional period of my life has been navigating the loss of templates I once leaned on for guidance. These dominant templates for how to live life structured my goals, decisions and even what I thought I was capable of. Go to school, get a job, start a family, etc. For a while, I thought my purpose fit pretty neatly within these templates. Sure, there were some deviations but I was determined to make it work. But as my purpose gradually comes into sharper focus, I’m realizing that the old templates don’t feel quite as comfy. That adjustments or even new templates altogether may be needed.

I think yesterday’s frustrations/discontent was an expression of grief. Grieving the comfort that the old templates seemed to offer, grieving the acceptance, the perceived community. Contending with the implications of the old templates - what they demanded, what beliefs they upheld.

This is where the binary thinking comes in. I was stuck in the either/or loop. We either commit to the dominant templates we’ve been conditioned to follow or we embrace a new one that requires more innovation, trust, and may at times feel lonely in comparison to the other option.

meme from @thedeathalchemist on IG

Yesterday’s heaviness was a result of straddling templates and the discomfort that comes along with that. The pressure to choose was a looming cloud. Today, I wonder if a choice is even necessary. At least in the way I was thinking about it yesterday – as this unilateral decision that inevitably overrides certain parts of me.

Maybe there’s a reality where the choice unfolds through a series of trial and error, commitment to self trust, and surrendered action no matter the outcome. This reality leaves room for heavier days like yesterday while also opening my perspective to the ease of radical acceptance.

Acceptance that transitions are never as clean cut as my nervous system would prefer. That straddling may be a part of the process and there’s no value judgement on that. How do I honor the discomfort of the straddle while staying attuned to the needs/opportunities of the present moment. How do I answer the calling of the present moment without knowing the outcome?

You listen, you receive, you trust, you follow.

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P.S. some eclipse medicine before I go

• this episode of Embodied Astrology featuring Ari Felix has so many gems; Ari’s recent substack post “How to shortcut The Process™️” was also some much needed medicine as I worked through some of the tensions I explored in the journal entries shared above! see both below:

How to shortcut The Process™️

• had to circle back to add in this episode of For The Worldbuilders. Ayanna’s substack and offerings through Seeda School and the Treehouse has truly been an answered prayer for me. This episode resonated so deeply with me in this time of transition. The reminder that “the journey is the return on investment” was so necessary:

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