Full moon lunar eclipse at 8° Gemini November 30 2020 2:30 am MST

Welcome to eclipse season (again). This is the sixth of seven eclipses in 2020 (most years we have four to five), just one of the many reasons astrologers have been looking at and talking about 2020 for years (another BIG reason? The Jupiter-Saturn conjunction coming up on the winter solstice, December 21—stay tuned for more on that next month).

Full moons can always heighten emotions, and eclipses amplify and complicate this—so if you’re feeling tired, emotional, irritable or just out of sorts—hold tight, dear one, it will pass.

I for one have been laughing like a maniac one moment and bursting into tears the next (not altogether un-Gemini-like, they are the twins—but definitely Gemini in its less-evolved, more eclipse-y form).

Eclipse energy is chaotic and points to times of big beginnings and endings. The two weeks before and after an eclipse is not a good time to make decisions (often information, surprises and changes will come in during eclipses that shift how we feel or even what we have available to us).

It is a good time for taking in information, listening to ourselves, to our guides or higher powers, and to those we care about. And for rest and purification.

We have a lunar eclipse now in Gemini and a total solar eclipse on the new moon on December 14. Use December to regroup and begin to dream into 2021—and avoid setting intentions, doing magic, charging crystals, or making big decisions or commitments until we pass through this season.

Gemini is ruled by Mercury, the nonbinary god of communication, language, learning, writing, and business (you can recognize the etymological roots in commerce and merchant). Gemini is an airy, flighty, flirty sign, that is also deeply in love with learning and communicating about everything. Gemini goes for breadth over depth, but is brilliant in its ability to draw connections between wildly disparate things—the consummate sign of creativity.

Gemini, however, can get us too much in our own heads, and it’s useful to balance that with some strategies for embodiment and reconnecting and reintegrating with our bodies.

The sun is opposite the moon right now in Sagittarius, sign of learning, spirituality and travel—expansion—asking us to begin to dream into our larger selves and visions of the world. The sun will move through Sag from November 22 to December 21, and will draw our attention even more squarely onto these themes at the solar eclipse here in two weeks.

Full Moon Lunar Eclipse Creative Ritual + Writing Prompts

Lunar Eclipse in Gemini Ritual Bath

Eclipses may not be great times for setting intentions, but they are good times for recharging and reconnecting to your creative self. Gemini is a highly intellectual and heady sign that can be nicely balanced with the deep embodiment of bathing in warm water.

Here is a recipe for a Mercury-flavored purification bath and visualization. Take in the next few days and/or throughout the next four weeks.

- Combine 1 cup baking soda and 1 cup epsom salts in a warm bath with some combination of the following herbs or oils: lavender, lemongrass, marjoram, skullcap (make a tea with these herbs as well to relax and sleep deeply!).

- Light an orange and/or black candle (orange for mercury, black for purification).

- While in the bath, feel into any places of tension or tightness in your body. Breathe into them, and let the heat and salt of the bath help you relax those places even further. Visualize these tight places as blocks and constriction in your creative and emotional body. See what blocks you can loosen or shift with your breath, gentle awareness, and the soothing power of water.

- Then spend some time daydreaming into what creative plans you would like to make and experience in the coming year. Stay loose, don’t try to figure out how you’d do this or whether it’s possible—just daydream for the pure pleasure. Enjoy!

Full Moon Creative Writing Prompts

Gemini Full Moon Creative Journaling Prompts

1. Write on your current relationship to embodiment. What does embodiment mean to you? When are you in your body? When do you leave it or check out? What can you do in the next two weeks to reconnect with or stay connected to your body?

2. Allow your body to speak. Sit quietly and focus on your body. See what body part draws your attention. Bring your awareness there, gently. Now, keeping your eyes soft or even closed, write from the perspective of that body area. What is it saying to you? What does it need?

Lunar Eclipse Fiction Writing Prompts

1. Bring one of your characters to mind.

2. Now think of a couple of major changes or surprises that could happen in that character’s life that would rock them, shake them to their core perhaps (and subsequently push them into new versions of themselves?). You can make a list if that’s useful. These may be things that will or could occur in your plot, or it may be something that wouldn’t fit your narrative, but will give you deeper information about your character.

3. Write a scene in which they are confronted with this shocking change or surprise.

4. Now write a scene where they are “on the other side” of this shock, so to speak; sometime in the future where they’ve reckoned with, come to terms with, evolved/devolved in response to this event or revelation.

Photo by Rodolfo Sanches Carvalho on Unsplash