New Moon Solar Eclipse | January 5, 2019 | 15 Capricorn 25’
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single; thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil (ignorant), thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness.” Matthew 6:21-23
The New Moon Solar Eclipse in Capricorn, in which both the Moon and the Sun are dark, is an opportune time to contemplate the eye and the light and the darkness. In Qabalah the sign Capricorn is associated with Key 15, the Devil, that ridiculous construction of humans to rationalize why things are not as they should be. Also associated with this Key is the Hebrew letter Ayin, equivalent to the English ‘O’. Ayin means eye, as an organ of sight.
Matthew speaks of the eye, not the eyes. We are admonished to keep that eye single. This refers to something organic and functional in a metaphorical or spiritual sense--the inner eye--God’s providential eye.
“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. The light of the body is the eye.” The references to treasure and heart, may be likened unto the Sun, which may be likened unto the Son, which may be likened unto the Central Ego. The Sun is the light and the heart of the body. The reason we follow the Sun and Moon in the lunations is because the light illumines our whole body of affairs.
In the next chapter (7:3-5), Matthew says: "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”
Shouldn't I remove the beam from my own eye, that the light of my body may shine upon my affairs on earth? What if, instead of belaboring the faults of my brother, I tended to my own, which is the bigger problem, being that it is a beam?
The New Moon Solar Eclipse finds both the Sun and Moon in the Capricorn sector of chart, at the time of the year when we may feel world weary. But the message that allows our safe passage, is that the light shines in the darkness. The darkness is the mind that is split off and appeasing or serving that which is feared. What if we made sure that our mind remained always in the light, focused on the light, even in moments of temporary darkness?
The planets of the Sun-on-ascendant chart have 9 of the 10 planets in the eastern hemisphere, in favor of self-responsibility, and the responsible thing is to remove the beam from one’s own eye, which may be represented by the square to the Mars-Uranus midpoint in the 4th of the inner life. The square between Capricorn in Aries is about confronting the outer world with inner integrity. In the face of worldly pressures, “I gotta be me.”
“Cast out the mote,” is interesting language because the suggestion is that this is mind over matter and tending to self instead of offering to “pull out the mote” of my brother’s eye. Let me get my own mind right. Let me not get stuff twisted. Let me not create devils for myself. Let the errors already created starve for lack of attention, because their construction is only the work of my creative attention. It looks organic, but it is not real and so cannot live if I do not recreate it.
Mars is in Aries, the sign it rules. I am responsible for my inner state, even if I create in agreement with hundreds or thousands of others. I can pull my thread and go home, go centered, go optimistic, go bright-eyed.
Practicum
Ponder and try this. “This above all, to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as night follows day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” – William Shakespeare.
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