New Moon & Annular Solar Eclipse in Aquarius

Your soul needs your ego to get out of the way.

This is a friendly reminder for your nervous system that we have eclipses every year; astrology is pattern recognition, and within patterns, we can find both comfort and clarity. In the white noise of shock and awe and with a lot of ‘once in a lifetimes’ being thrown around, it’s easy to feel swept up in the rush to make the most of every aspect and transit. Let’s just take a deep breath together right now. I hear people say they’re afraid they’ll “miss a window” for something important. Here’s the thing — you couldn’t miss your own karma if you tried. That’s like trying to jump during an earthquake; the ground is moving beneath you, regardless.

A quick energetic roll call in this moment, just to name a few; we’re feeling the approach of Mercury retrograde in ten days, Saturn and Neptune are holding hands in Aries, the year of the Fire Horse is here, and eclipse season is kicking off in a new oppositional axis: Aquarius and Leo. (The nodes themselves don’t change signs until July, but are close enough in degree to the luminaries.)

All of which to say, it’s more important than ever that your dreams and actions are aligned. The added context of old hurt, lingering questions, and misunderstandings could be a cosmic emetic for big changes on the horizon. Where is your ego resisting a necessary liberation? Where is change more needed than you thought? What are authentic and sustainable measurements of collective engagement and stewardship in your life?

(You might notice karmic familiarity relating back to the last time the nodes were here, around December 2007-August 2009. On the flip side, the north node was in Leo between May 2017-November 2018. It’s likely that you’re building on, excavating, or clarifying karma related to those windows as well. Out of the eclipses over the next few years, here are the ones in Aquarius and Leo.)

Annular solar eclipse on February 17, 2026 at 28° Aquarius
Total solar eclipse on August 12, 2026 at 20° Leo
Annular solar eclipse on February 6, 2027 at 17° Aquarius
Total solar eclipse on August 2, 2027 at 9° Leo
Penumbral lunar eclipse on August 17, 2027 at 24° Aquarius
Annular solar eclipse on January 26, 2028 at 6° Aquarius

Personally, I love eclipses! Or rather, I treat them with the same respect as a big dog with a spiked collar sniffing my hand. They’re heavy-handed nudges that demand your attention. Look away for a moment and you’ll get dragged by the leash of fate. Eclipses are a pressure cooker for the choices or delays that have already been underway in your life. If you’ve been sitting at a crossroads, an eclipse may force your hand or expose the truth behind your confusion or indecision.

Eclipses are a reminder that we can feign confusion to others, our ego can tell us funny little stories, even our subconscious actions can lead us along a half-lived life… but we cannot lie to our karma, and our karma will never lie to us.

Eclipses are an activation of fate, and come with the reminder that you cannot outsmart it — whether from fear, obstinance, sheer will, or wishful thinking. (I should also clarify, when I use the word fate, I do not mean some passive path that you stumble into without effort or choice or reflection. I mean a magnetic compass your soul follows like a beacon, while the path you take is littered with the perils and triumphs of free will. Eclipses can clear the road blocks or smash the foundation; that part is up to you.)

I work with solar eclipses as an examination of ego, identity, and the subsequent erosion of any filters or falsities we’ve found comfort in, but are ultimately upholding an old paradigm of self. You’re meant to be outgrowing an identity that changes the way you show up in the world. It’s okay to feel like your life is a half-shoe size too small right now. [Insert another deep breath here.]

Entering a new eclipse axis is like sitting down to learn the rules of a new game. You might come to realize that what you thought was a winning hand, are useless cards within a new ruleset. Give yourself grace as revelations emerge that might not have been on your radar until now. If an issue comes up that you thought had been healed or dealt with already… This karmic activation is offering a fresh vantage point from which to examine what still requires attunement in your life. When a new eclipse axis is activated, it can feel like the universe is reshuffling the deck.

Aquarius and Leo are bound together in constant oscillation between finding freedom from convention and still having skin in the game. The seeds being planted today must be fertilized by the liberation your ego is resisting.

At a Cancer degree (28), this eclipse is also an invitation to tend to the home front first before the stakes grow in size over the next couple of years. It’s an added context clue that before making any sweeping changes externally, you might need to tend to your roots, family, and home. To acknowledge the intimate pockets of resistance, the small yet mighty revolutionary acts like apologizing to your sister or forgiving your mother. As overused as “be the change you wish to see in the world” might feel, if your personal praxis doesn’t hold up behind closed doors, how will it ever take its first breath in the world? We’re feeling stretched for a reason.

This new moon is ruled by Uranus, so it’s likely your nervous system or sleep is feeling affected. With Aries in the mix, focus on personal regulation before big external changes. You can’t unrip the bandaid, so give yourself space to figure out what rings true first.

Peaks on February 17, 7:01am Eastern time, 28° Aquarius

9 Tips for Locating a Transit in Your Own Chart

1st house: This new season of change is kicking off in your house of embodiment and identity. You’ve done an inordinate amount of work to be comfortable in your own skin, and it is still okay if you can see where to push even deeper. Not in some never-ending quest for self-improvement, but as a permission slip that you are allowed to re-introduce yourself as many times as necessary, as frequently as necessary, the way your phone might go through regular software updates to run more smoothly. Consider what parts of your identity you are maintaining out of familiarity and what elements of yourself you could embody just 10% more. That direction will soon feel irrefutable as this eclipse season evolves.

2nd house: As this new eclipse season kicks off in your house of stability, values, resources, and financial matters, a few things could be happening. First, permission to realize you might not want what you thought you did. Despite how much you may have already invested in a specific path, this eclipse season is activating your houses of personal and external resources to liberate you from a sunk cost fallacy that feels half-empty. Larger conversations around that will come, but for now, consider what elements of your financial and tangible well-being are yearning to be reinvented beyond the bounds of what is “responsible“ or safe on paper.

3rd house: What used to interest you might be a total snoozefest now. Your interests and curiosities are evolving with you, but there’s a chance that your voice is known for a specific topic. If you have pigeonholed yourself into a certain lane or platform, you might notice you’ve been feeling uninspired or disillusioned lately. Your curiosity is not static or finite, and over the next couple of years, your voice is being fine tuned as an instrument for more. Until then, ask yourself what interests feel dead in the water, where you’re forcing yourself to stay focused, and if there are any topics of study or interest waiting in the wings for you to make a little more space for them.

4th house: You might be realizing you don’t want the life you thought you did; it could be big things like kids, marriage, mortgage; or it could be the apartment you’re renting, the town you took a chance on last year that still doesn’t feel like home. This new eclipse season will oscillate between highlighting your home and career, and it’s important to remember these areas of life are forever linked together. How do your choices in one affect the other? What would you change in one of them with a little more liberation in the other? Kick off this new season by examining the choices between both areas more deeply. Are you putting off change in one, for fear of disruption in the other?

5th house: Your initiation into this new eclipse axis is calling into focus what it means to be seen; the distance you keep between yourself and your art, between your dreams and the community that needs you to fulfill them. Take this moment to reflect on what you would create or prioritize if you “had more time“ or weren’t afraid of being judged for being a beginner or changing your mind again. Without judgment, can you tell the difference between what feels creatively alive in your spirit and what falls flat? Eclipses initiate a call and response within the spirit, and this might require you to reconstruct what it means to show up in the world around you and be the champion for your own creations.

6th house: What is worthy of your devotion? When you consider consistency as an act of love and a spiritual practice, you’ll feel less obliged to force effort where it does not feel natural. This is not to say that your effort must always be fueled by passion; there are days where even the right path takes work. But when you survey your daily habits, the commitments and trials that take your energy and therefore define your life, take note of the reasoning behind them. This new eclipse season is activating the difference between obligation and devotion in your life. What deserves more of you, and where are you feeling called to divest your energy?

7th house: The relationship you want is on the other side of the freedom you’re afraid to ask for, the boundary you’re worried will push them away, the conventions you were raised adhering to. This new eclipse cycle is activating your houses of relationships and personal identity. This work does not necessarily have to be done alone, nor does it spell doom for an existing relationship. But it is putting themes of avoidance and enmeshment under a microscope. What relationship growth edges do you foresee over the next two years? What is a small act of liberation you can choose now?

8th house: This new eclipse cycle kicks off by activating your house of privacy, personal depth, and inheritance — both tangible and spiritual. Over the course of this new cycle, your house of finances and stability will also be spotlighted. Consider where you must be internally liberated to create room for stability in the future. Your mantra for this new cycle is, “as within, so without.“ You don’t owe the world proof of your evolution, healing, or growth. Only you get to decide when a chapter is done, and and it’s important to honor where you feel complete, what doesn’t need to be played out any longer.

9th house: Allow the guiding visions of your life and future to reveal themselves to you, and change if needed. Even if it’s a path you invested many years into studying and mastering, even if it would seem crazy to deviate… You cannot outsmart the tides of fate as they pull back the curtain on what actually wants to be created in this area of your life. What elements of the larger vision of your life could you begin to self-liberate from, and what tender seeds could you plant in that space? What dreams, ideas, places, goals have been sidelined due to lack of nutrients, time, feasibility? They will become louder and louder over the next two years. Start a dialogue with them as soon as you can.

10th house: The career change you’ve been considering can no longer be put off. These next few years are a deep attunement of purpose. You may discover an area you’d like to alchemize deeper within your current space, or you might need a karmic nudge from the universe to trust your timing and try something new altogether. Career changes are scary, especially when we’ve built a reputation as being seen a certain way and offering a specific thing. The universe rewards action, and momentum is more self-sustaining than starting and stopping, questioning and rethinking. Think about your work life balance two years from now. What is required of you now to live that life in the future?

11th house: The frequency of your friendships is shifting. This can feel a little destabilizing, because we are deeply communal beings. This new cycle calls into focus the authenticity of your community and the subsequent effect it has on your confidence and conviction in your fifth house. If you’re too busy trying to fit in and keep certain relationships alive, you will, in turn, stay out of step with your own creativity and muses. Consider who in your life requires a performance in order to maintain the relationship. Examine the communities that no longer align the way they used to, or the way you had hoped. It is important you share these observations with yourself, and eventually them if that feels supportive. Not every ending has a villain.

12th house: Your subconscious realm is entering a major software update. Your relationship to spirit, any escapist tendencies or issues of avoidance, your relationship to substances, even your general outlook on spiritual areas of interest are all subject to karmic reevaluation over the next few years. This is in tandem with the activations in your sixth house, calling into focus what is worthy of devotion and where consistency is needed to build the life you only dream about. There’s a sobering and obvious effect thanks to the Aries ingresses, so take notice of what is becoming more clear now. Replace “I can’t believe I didn’t see that” to “thank goodness I still have an opportunity to do something about it.”

To the moon and back (pun intended),
Ocean Pleasant