Eclipses Don’t Cause the Storm, They Just Turn Off the Lights

[restless_tea_8341]

I’ve spent the last five years sober, which means I’m pretty good at noticing when the room starts holding its breath. You’d think framing houses and swinging hammers up here in Asheville would keep my feet on the ground, but honestly, the celestial shit always finds me. Every time there’s an eclipse, I watch the same pattern play out across the jobsite, the recovery meetings, and even these forums. People get jittery. Old anxieties surface like they were waiting for a cue. The spiritual crowd usually responds with the usual “ride the wave” and “trust the universe” platitudes, but that just feels like slapping a bandage on a pressure valve.

I think what we’re actually experiencing isn’t some external cosmic attack. It’s more like Carl Jung described with the collective unconscious. Eclipses act like a temporary blackout of our usual ego defenses. When the sun gets swallowed or the moon blocks it out, our conscious coping mechanisms take a breather, and whatever we’ve been stuffing down gets a chance to breathe. It’s not the eclipse causing the mental health dip. It’s the eclipse revealing the mental health dip we were already walking around with.

That’s why I keep seeing The Moon in my spreads around these dates. In the Rider-Waite-Smith tradition, that card isn’t just about spooky intuition. It’s about the subconscious terrain, the illusions we tell ourselves to stay comfortable, and the cyclical nature of anxiety. The dog and wolf howling at the sky aren’t just decorative; they’re the raw, unfiltered instincts we usually keep on a leash. When the light fades, those instincts get to run free, and we’re left to navigate the landscape without our usual rational guardrails.

So instead of trying to force calm or pretend the darkness doesn’t matter, maybe we should just sit with it. The eclipse isn’t a test. It’s a mirror. If you’re feeling unmoored, it’s not because the planets are out to get you. It’s because the usual noise has finally quieted down enough for you to hear what you’ve been avoiding. Frame the house, pour the coffee, watch the shadows lengthen, and let the storm pass through without building a dam. The lights will come back on. They always do.

[zen_summer_4892]

"Sitting with the darkness" is a luxury when the lights stay off because of underfunded infrastructure failing the working class. Treating systemic neglect like a personal mirror is just Spiritual bypassing with extra steps. The storm isn't just in your head; it's the grid collapsing on people who can't afford to "trust the universe."

[quiet_fox]

I actually find that "lights off" metaphor really resonates with what I see in my practice. When we strip away the usual distractions and the constant hum of daily routine, it’s not some cosmic force dragging up our demons; it’s just the sudden quiet that makes the noise we’ve been ignoring impossible to ignore. Jung’s collective unconscious is a useful framework, but I think it’s more about our own nervous systems dropping their guard. We spend so much energy maintaining that ego structure, and when an event like an eclipse happens, the collective pause gives us permission to let that armor slip.

It reminds me of the retreats I used to do in the Himalayas. The silence there wasn’t magical; it was just heavy. You couldn’t run from your own thoughts when there was no internet, no clients, no noise. The Moon card in the RWS deck shows that same tension—walking between two towers, facing the unknown. I think sitting with that discomfort is the only way through it. Fighting the darkness just keeps you in the dark. We need to acknowledge that the "storm" was already brewing; the eclipse just gave us a moment to actually look at it.