Mini-muse 015: Eclipse altar
+ Join me this spring on a European retreat
Hi little coven.
Later this week there’s a full lunar eclipse. In honor of it, I offer this little post as an altar of sorts… below you’ll find Eclipse art, poetry, music, and some words of my own. I hope you’ll find something worth carrying with you this week, as the moon blushes for us.
But first, three things:
The replay of last night’s tarot journaling club, with guest teacher
, is live here. Consider using this spread to discover an archetype that will guide you through eclipse season.Next week in journaling club, we’ll be revisiting our Tarot Muse for 2025. If you haven’t spent time with that recorded workshop yet, find it here.
This spring, I’m bringing tarot and creativity programming to two European retreats! If you’re looking for a creative getaway, check these out. I’d love to see you and support your writing goals and creative wellbeing in person!
🖋️ Write Type Retreat (Spain, April 27-May 2) – I’ve joined the faculty for this intimate writers’ experience and will be leading a hands-on Tarot for Writers workshop, plus offering plot and character development support throughout the week. Two spots are still open. Details here.
🌿 The Reboot Retreat (France, May 22-26) – I’ll be on-site at this affordably-priced, broader wellbeing retreat for a day, leading a tarot journaling session and offering private readings for attendees. More info here.
Engage with these images, words, music and prompts as you feel drawn over this week…
From my book, The Shadow Path:
Eclipses capture the imagination and speak to us on a deeply unconscious level about the vastness, mystery, power, fear and wonder that define the depths of the human experience.
… Eclipses compel us to look beyond the veil of the normal, to appreciate the strange, arresting beauty of what happens when darkness and light dance together.
The term ‘eclipse’ has also become a poetic way of expressing when one way of being takes the place of an old one – a step into something greater than what was before. In the march of time, the future always manages to eclipse the past. A new love can eclipse an old heartbreak. A spiritual epiphany can eclipse the world view you once held. The depths you discover on your Shadow Path can eclipse who you thought you were.
Julian Anderson’s 1997 composition The Crazed Moon was in part inspired by a lunar eclipse in the spring of 1996… Consider listening whilst doodling… what versions of the moon in eclipse can you conjure to this sonic drama?
Here’s NASA’s record of the eclipse that Anderson likely witnessed:
You've seen only a planed circle of moon,
the white wafer; the low sky's flat penny
grow into that dime, flipped in the turn
taken by the earth,
until you see
what's won from behind its veil of brightness
by the lunar eclipse
a red marble,
a pinball of blood and it's your shot, a ball
of red clay before its pinch into a bowl,
what I want to say and its look
that far away from it.— from Ed Robertson’s poem, Lunar Eclipse
Tell me in the comments:
What elements of this eclipse altar are you feeling inspired/compelled by?
What would you like to add to the altar?
What have you been musing about lately?
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