This week starts with the sun entering Scorpio. On Tuesday, October 25, the moon joins the sun in Scorpio, and there will be a new moon and a solar eclipse in Scorpio.

Everybody has been asking me about the eclipse. It seems to be the sexiest topic at the moment. Sexy is the appropriate term to use during Scorpio season, because Scorpio is a very sexy sign.

So what’s all the fuss?

Every new moon is meaningful and significant. On new moon nights, the sun and the moon hold hands in the same sign, so that the effect of the sign is strongly emphasized. With no moonlight, the sky is dark. The energy is relatively low, but also calm, which allows time for contemplation.

This is why during new moons we have an opportunity to focus on the issues presented by the relevant sign, and work with them.

An eclipse adds a stronger affect to the new moon. Not only that the night is dark, the sun’s energy is blocked by the moon and there is an even greater feeling of darkness.

This is a positive darkness. Like the nourishing darkness we experienced as embryos in the womb before we came out to this world. It is the good, protective darkness of the seed planted in fertile soil, just before it sprouts into fresh air and sunlight.

This month, it is not just a dark new moon and a dark eclipse. They happen in the sign of darkness, Scorpio.

I grew up in the eighties, in a town called Ramat Gan, which borders with the second biggest metropolitan of Israel and the city of night life, Tel Aviv.

Since I was fifteen years old, I used to go out to Tel Aviv’s greatest night clubs. These were usually old grungy basements or garages in industrial areas.

Between the first Lebanon war and the second one, between going to funerals of young parents who died of cancer, and funerals of peers who died in car accidents, experiencing our first loves and heartbreaks, wearing our black outfits, we screamed at the top of our lungs “to die by your side is such a heavenly way to die.”

Somehow dancing to songs that talked about death, heartbreaks, and misery made sense. They talked about our reality. When great bands like The Smiths and The Cure sang about darkness, it made us feel that we were not alone in our suffering.

Most of us have a hard time accepting the dark side of life. Our culture is in denial. The Dalai Lama said it well,

“Man… lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”

To live, we need to embrace death. To experience happiness and joy, we need to embrace darkness.

We don’t want to think about death. We don’t want to deal with our dark thoughts and emotions, which, by the way, we all have. We think horrible thoughts, we feel horrible feelings, but we instantly push them aside and think good thoughts instead.

By doing this we are just making things worse. Our fears, our desires, our darkness, they do not go anywhere. They stay with us until we are willing to face them. Only then, darkness is transformed into empowerment.

I used to have a repeating dream in which I was constantly running away from someone or something. I did not even know what I was running away from, I just knew that it was terrifying. I used to awake so exhausted from running away all night, so I resolved to put an end to it.

I had connected with the warrior within me and decided that next time I had this dream, I would turn around and face the thing or person that was chasing me. When I did that, this thing turned into nothingness. The dream never come back and I become much more powerful to deal with the hardships of my life.

Dealing with darkness is hard. Even while writing this post, I feel like I should add some humor to it, tell a joke, make things a little lighter. Maybe share that Venus is going to conjunct the sun, so it will bring sweetness and beauty to the darkness. I can remind you the image of the dark embryo and the seed in the fertile earth. Because this is what darkness is.

Did you know that growth hormones are released during sleep? Our kids grow when it’s dark outside. They don’t grow in the sunlight.

Trevor Hall has an entire album called The Fruitful Darkness. In the theme song, which also inspired the title of this post, he says:

“The dark within my dark
Is where I found my light.”

In her book, The Fruitful Darkness, Roshi Joan Halifax says:

“The secret of life,” say the Utes, “is in the shadows and not in the open sun; to see anything at all, you must look deeply into the shadow of a living thing.”

This new moon and eclipse in Scorpio offers us a rare opportunity to deal with our fears, dark desires, jealousy and hatred. With all the thoughts and feelings we wished we did not have, but we do.

Ask yourself: 

• Is there something dark and heavy in my life that I avoid dealing with?
• Do I have fears, feelings, or thoughts that I suppress because I don’t want them to interfere with my joy and happiness?

If there is something dark that you still haven’t dealt with, put your hands on your heart. Acknowledge it. Accept it. Tell yourself, I have these thoughts, I have these feelings, I have these fears, I have these desires. Know that there is nothing wrong with you. It is all a part of the human condition.

 I promise you that when you do that, you will feel growth, you will feel expansion. You will find your light within your darkness.

Wishing you a fruitful new moon and eclipse, and a wonderful week,

With love,

Yael