The total solar eclipse of 8 April 2024 is perhaps the most important eclipse of the year. There is huge hype about it in social media (see: ‘The full moon’ and ‘Eclipse humor’). Besides the fact it is a total solar eclipse, it traces its path of totality across central Mexico up through Texas, striking an arc across central states and finally passing out to sea from Newfoundland. It will be the first total solar eclipse visible in the US in seven years. The next total solar eclipse will not be visible in the US until 2044. But there is more to it than the eclipse visibility in the US. This eclipse affects the US, and in important ways, and comes at a critical juncture in American domestic and international affairs. For more, read on…
This will be the 30th eclipse of 71 of the solar Saros series 139. Thus we have a waxing eclipse series approaching its apex, with the eclipse point on the north node, suggesting new starts. Solar eclipses are also commonly associated with leadership and the fact this one is in Aries points to inventiveness, new projects and thinking outside the box. Mercury is the Lord of the eclipse and retrograde.
The maximum eclipse will be roughly over Durango in Mexico, which is the best location to view the totality. It will be visible over all of North America in varying degrees, except for Alaska. For the US the eclipse strikes an arc starting in Texas, then Arkansas, Illinois, Michigan and then through Newfoundland in Canada. A full accounting of the eclipse path is outlined on the Wikipedia page for the eclipse.
The eclipse takes place at 18:17 UTC on the 8th of April 2024. That equates to 2:17 pm EDT for the East Coast of the US. The eclipse figure is below (bigger):
We will cover the dynamics of the eclipse in a bit. But there are a few matters to address first. To start, this eclipse activates one of two other solar eclipses that have taken place since 2017. The two other solar eclipses along with this one have been at the root of some of the hype about this particular eclipse. These three eclipses along with their paths are shown below (bigger):
The eclipse that is being activated by this one took place on 14 October 2023 at 17:59 UTC, in other words at the end of last year. That eclipse is still active and will show results. The culmination lines running through the US for that eclipse are the lunation, Mars and Mercury, affecting the eastern half of the nation. We will come back to that point when we look at what to expect from the present eclipse.
The first Mars activation of the 14 Oct 23 eclipse takes place at the median date of 28 May this year. Chiron opposes the eclipse point starting the last week of April with the median date of 9 May, while Ceres will square the eclipse axis on the third of May. May will be a very active month in seeing the results of that eclipse.
The culmination lines for that eclipse show the Ceres culmination going past Washington, DC, with the square to the eclipse axis of 14 Oct 2023 showing a change in thinking in the Beltway and the US think tank bubble. The Chiron culmination line runs through India, Western China and central Russia, where we might be seeing terrorist activities taking place. Groups like ISIS-K have been reactivated by the CIA/MI6 crowd in seeking to destabilize BRICS and the SCO. It is also sour grapes and desperation about NATO losing the war in Ukraine. The Saturn culmination line runs past Israel and the eastern Mediterranean. The Pluto culmination line affects all of Western Europe. The implications will become clear as we go along here.
The Mars culmination line for the October eclipse runs from the Great Lakes to the Florida panhandle and then on to Central America, where the latter will see further activity by the CIA. Mexico’s embassy in Ecuador was just raided, for instance, in clear violation of the Vienna Convention. Ecuador’s president is an American by birth, the son of an oligarch, with close ties to Washington. Mexico is on the way to joining BRICS at some point and has expressed an interest in the past, but current trade agreements with the US prevent it from trading freely with the BRICS bloc. Ecuador was also looking East and at BRICS, which is why a US puppet was installed as president in order to put a halt to such wandering eyes. The main culmination line – that of the lunation – runs by Houston (covered next) and also Central America, a line which has implications for Texan border control and the Mexican drug cartels.
Turning to the 2017 eclipse, it is no longer active, though it deserves a mention here, for reasons to follow. The 21 Aug 2017 total solar eclipse could rightly be called ‘The Hurricane Harvey’ eclipse, which caused devastation in Houston due to flooding. The culmination lines of the lunation, Mercury and Mars were all clustered around Texas. The path for that eclipse totality traced an arc from Oregon through South Carolina. Harvey’s main actions occurred during the Mars activation, Mars activations taking place roughly a week on either side of an eclipse. Harvey hit the Houston area after making landfall on August 26. Transiting Mars at that point was on the north node at 24° Leo. The median Mars activation date for that eclipse was 3 Sep 2017. For the US, Harvey was the main event from that eclipse. It equaled Hurricane Katrina in the costliest damage. The culmination lines for the lunation ran directly through Houston.
With those two earlier eclipses as background we return to the present eclipse on the 8th. And there is a little surprise, and what more superstitious people would call an omen – there will be a comet close to the sun during the eclipse – comet Pons Brooks. It will reach perihelion with the sun on the 21st of this month. We will come back to that, as comets are said to be harbingers of doom in the vernacular, bringing wars, death and disasters. To esotericists comets are the heralds of avatars. So say the Ancients. We’ll see about all that as time goes by.
However, if you happen to live along the eclipse path you may be able to get a glimpse of Pons Brooks, along with Jupiter and Venus. And just so you know, there are countless comets in our outer solar system and hundreds of known ones that pass our way periodically. Wikipedia gives us the lists (here, here and here, for starters). Wikipedia is good for such information, but pretty much unreliable when it comes to anything political and especially geopolitical.
The culmination lines for the eclipse are shown below (bigger):
With this background in mind we now get to the nuts and bolts of why this eclipse is important. Notable is the fact that all the culmination lines run through the Americas, with a complete absence of them in the rest of the world. The eclipse axis falls on the US Saturn and squares the US Sun in the US national chart, quite suggestive of a sea-change in American thinking and life. It will also bring up a direct challenge to the Machiavellian machinations of Washington. What that might be will be seen when the first Mars transit passes over the lunation point late in the evening of the 25th of May. That will mark Washington’s ‘come to Jesus moment’. The energies for that day suggest a tragic deception or illusion. We’ll see.
To get an idea of how the conversations between Jesus and the denizens of the Beltway might go this time around, we need to have a look at the previous solar eclipses that occurred on or near the US Saturn and its opposite point – a few days on either side of 5 April and 8 October in those years – as follows:
- 8 April 1902: Partial solar eclipse at the North Pole and the final eclipse of the series. Mars station on Saturn, Feb 1903, Cuba leased Guantanamo Bay to the US ‘in perpetuity’. In case you missed it, the US has one of its most notorious prisons there these days, where ‘enhanced interrogation’ practices (torture) are routine.
- 10 October 1912: Total solar eclipse across northern South America, waxing series. Two days before the eclipse, the start of the 1st Balkan War. The Jupiter culmination line ran through the Balkans. In the eclipse figure Jupiter was at the Mars/Uranus midpoint (violent people, revolutionaries). The two Balkan Wars set the tone for WWI and the future use of the ethnic minorities by NATO (Washington) to break up Yugoslavia and weaken Russian influence in the region. On the day of that eclipse the Titanic began her fateful and only voyage. The Mars, Mercury and lunation lines all ran through the area where the Titanic hit the iceberg. End of May 1913, the Rockefeller Foundation charter is approved in NY. This ‘charitable’ organization was heavily involved in eugenics.
- 6 April 1913: North polar/Pacific eclipse of a waxing series. The first Balkan War ends, paving the way for the 2nd Balkan War.
- 8 April 1921: Solar annular eclipse in the Arctic, waning cycle. Saturn finished this eclipse in September 1923. There were some events, like the Honda Point Disaster (the largest peacetime loss of USN ships in US history), the 1923 Berkeley Fire and the newspaper printers’ strike in New York City.
- 11 October 1931: Partial solar Antarctic eclipse in a relatively new series, with Uranus opposite the lunation. Two days after the eclipse Al Capone was sentenced to 11 years in prison for tax evasion. At the Uranus transit returning to its eclipse place the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped. About a week later police opened fire on 3,000 striking workers outside the Ford Motor plant in Dearborn. Four people were killed.
- 7 April 1940: Solar annular eclipse in a waning series across the Southern US. The eclipse path was across the Gulf Coast of the US and northern Mexico. The eclipse point was conjunct Jupiter. At the first Mars activation the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed due to a wind storm. The lunation culmination line ran right by Tacoma. Tubby was killed in the collapse, the only victim. Oh, and the US began drafting 16 million men to go off to fight in WWII. The Mars culmination line ran by Washington. And lastly there was the Armistice Day Blizzard in the Midwest, which killed 154 people. The Uranus culmination line ran through the Midwest. But poor Tubby…
- 8 April 1959: Annular eclipse over Australia in a waxing series. The ‘Mercury Seven’ astronauts were selected for the Mercury program. At the first Mars activation The Twilight Zone premiered on CBS. America was never quite the same after. The Explorer 7 satellite was launched. It transmitted data about solar emanations and cosmic rays for 2 years before it went dead. As far as we know it is still in orbit. The Uranus and Pluto culmination lines dominated the US – pioneers, reformers and explorers.
- 7 April 1978: Partial solar eclipse over Antarctica, waxing series. On the date Jimmy Carter put a hold on production of the neutron bomb. The last US neutron nuke was dismantled in 1996. It was never to be used. There was a double Mars/Uranus activation of the eclipse on 13 October, which resulted in Jimmy Carter authorizing the production of homebrewed beer (Remember Billy Beer? Billy was actually a Pabst man. Never tried the beer myself.). He also authorized the minting of the Susan B. Anthony dollar. It bombed with the public.
- 9 April 1986: Another Antarctic partial solar eclipse in a waning series. Two days after, the infamous FBI shootout in Miami. The FBI was outgunned and lost people. That led to changes in the sidearms issued to agents. The US was embroiled in the Iran-Contra scandal at the time. At the Mars activation William Casey resigned from the CIA. Brownsville Texas got 7 inches of rain in just two hours. There was a little flooding. The US detonated a nuke at the Nevada test site. The Pluto culmination line ran within orb of all those sites except for Nevada. The US tested nukes from 1945 – 1992, so that test was nothing out of the ordinary. The other events were, however.
With these eclipses as indicators, what do we notice? Eclipses at or near the poles (i.e. eclipses at the start or end of their Saros series) tend to have little effect concerning our present investigation. Further, the eclipse path in any solar eclipse is not a factor when it comes to the location of events. Lunar eclipses do not have an eclipse path. Instead, the culmination lines for any eclipse tend to indicate the nature and location of events with the eclipse activations by transiting planets. And usually there are not major events to be noted on the days of the eclipses. Eclipses are more of the nature of sensitizing points, to be activated at a later date by transiting planets. Our present eclipse, though, is another story. It is near the apex of its series, with all the culmination lines centered on the Americas. There is one more factor to consider.
Comet Pons Brooks is in the news again, as it has just begun to flare (produce a tail) as it approached its perihelion. As stated before, it has a period of roughly 71 years. The last time it was at perihelion was on 29 Jun 1954, which as it turns out accompanied a total solar eclipse, the latter taking place on 30 June of that year. That eclipse totality began in the North-Central US, struck an arc through Scandinavia, North-Central Europe, the Caucasus and finished in India.
Were there any catastrophes in that period? – not on the day, but at the 1st Mars activation of the 30 Jun 54 eclipse in September of that year there were some major events: the Chlef Earthquake in Algeria (where the culmination line for the eclipse ran through), the formation of SEATO security pact, the Miss America pageant was broadcast on TV for the first time (Evelyn Margaret Ay won the crown), the Totskoye nuclear exercise took place in Soviet Russia (Pluto culmination line) and the Japanese ferry Toya Maru sank during Typhoon Marie, killing over 1,100 people, which was between the Mars and Saturn culmination lines – the ‘eclipse death axis’.
The previous perihelion of Pons Brooks was on Jan 9 1884. There was no accompanying eclipse and no major events coincident with the perihelion. There was a solar eclipse just preceding the perihelion of 21 Sep 1812, which saw the furthest extent of the Napoleonic wars eastward, with the Fire of Moscow. Napoleon’s army had entered Moscow and the Russians burnt most of the city to the ground rather than let the French have their prize. This is worth remembering given our present circumstances.
History is rhyming, with Macron talking of sending French troops to Odessa. Although Napoleon captured Moscow, he lived to regret it. The French eventually retreated the following month, to face the Russian winter. They lost 500,000 men out of a force of 615,000 in that campaign, comparable to what the Ukrainians have lost in the present war. The Russians marched triumphantly into Paris in March of 1814. The French elites never lived it down. Napoleon abdicated. Odessa will be lost to the French once again this time around. This brings us to what we can expect from this eclipse.
Returning to the culmination lines for the 8 Apr 2024 eclipse, there are none in Eurasia, Africa or Oceania (Australia-New Zealand). The Mars/Saturn lines are on the West Coast of the US – San Andreas Fault, maybe? – and pass down through Vancouver as well. Mars and Saturn are conjunct in the eclipse chart, bringing focus on the one hand, but also the possibility of major destructive events. The key phrase with this one is ‘concentrated energy’, for good or ill.
On the other side of the US and for South America we have the Jupiter and Uranus lines, the two planets also conjunct in the eclipse figure. The South American nations through which those lines pass directly are Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil and Argentina. In the north those lines pass through Newfoundland and just east of Maine. They are also close to the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Haiti. Ebertin has a rather interesting take on Jupiter/Uranus conjunctions:
“N. B. It is often very difficult to assess the nature of Jupiter-Uranus constellations. They indicate, in most cases, inner tensions or strains which are then suddenly released. At one time, the author named this configuration the “Thank the Lord” position, because people having such a configuration have repeatedly exclaimed the words “Thank the Lord” after the release of the tension or strain from which they were suffering.”
The quote would apply to tensions with Haiti, for instance, where there are rumors of yet another pending American-French ‘intervention’ there, this time using foreign mercenaries. The Haitian Revolution is another defeat the French elites never lived down. Ever since then they have been intervening with the Americans to keep the Haitians down instead. But the Haitian people do love their Barbecue. Jupiter/Uranus conjunctions represent the urge for independence sociologically, as well as adventurers, explorers and inventers.
Then there is the main lunation culmination line, this time with Mercury. It runs through central Canada, the Central US, Houston and just past Mexico City. There are huge problems with the influx of migrants into the American Southwest across the Mexican border. And then there are the Mexican drug cartels, mostly in the north of Mexico, who keep the US supplied with its drug habits. There have been US senators advocating invading Mexico to control and possibly rout the cartels. The US is in the midst of a fentanyl overdose (deaths from) crisis. Actually it is also at crisis levels in Canada and Mexico, too. The Neptune line runs through the American Southwest and the Baha. The Venus line is close-by, but further east. That leaves the Pluto and Ceres culmination lines.
The Pluto culmination line runs directly through the Bering Strait and out into the Pacific, passing just west of Hawaii. The Ceres line, instead, is the only one that passes outside the US, running down into New Zealand. Kiwis will have to inform us of any mentions of sea-changes in politics or even seismic activities. Ceres does have a connection with the underworld. So what can we be looking at realistically? For that we turn to Washington and the Biden administration. Changes and crises there will have a direct carry-on effect to Western Europe (cue: NATO). We are at a major point of turning in many areas:
- The war in Ukraine is lost to Ukraine and NATO. NATO is facing a very embarrassing and debilitating defeat. But to hear it spun in the US and Western Europe, Ukraine still has a fighting chance – if only we could just send Ukraine that $60 billion of our tax dollars. And then with the Crocus terrorist attack it turns out money from Burisma was used to fund the terrorists and other such events. What did Biden know about that attack? The Russians want to know. Call the latter propaganda if you like, but what if it is true?
- The US economy is facing a major meltdown. Oh, but the economy is in great shape! We are only adding a trillion to the national debt every few months. It’s a trifle. We need a debt jubilee instead of printing money. Just remember, if you dare: It’s an election year and incumbents have to cook the books to appear viable. Economic downturns sink presidents. Just ask Bush, Sr. Oh wait, he isn’t with us any more.
- Biden’s little Zionist project isn’t going so well either. Israel is the very definition of a rogue state. There is a note here, that the present eclipse activated the 14 Oct 2023 eclipse had an effect on Israel, where the Saturn culmination line produces effects. Washington, however tentatively, is beginning to pull its creation into line, given Israel’s execution of the 7 World Kitchen aid workers and its bombing of Iran’s embassy in Syria – the latter being Iranian sovereign territory by the Vienna Convention. The Israelis are now awaiting the Iranian reprisal, which is coming sure as the sun rises if there is not an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza. Israel no longer has carte blanche from the White House.
- Biden and Trump will both be affected by this eclipse, and not in a favorable manner for either. Wait and see.
Basically, in May with the first Mars activations of both the eclipses mentioned we can probably expect to see some sort of black swan event. It will be Washington’s ‘come to Jesus’ moment. Washington has to change course or the effects for the US will be, shall we say, less than desirable. We could be looking at anything – earthquake, major weather event that causes serious damage, illness or incident removing a candidate from the presidential race, sudden economic downturn – or an attempt at some sort of event by Washington (with deniability, of course) to take the world on course to a wider war.
Or…Israel could bring on the black swan in an effort to draw the US into a wider regional war. There are rumors of such, re: diplomatic connections. Netanyahu says they have set a date for the invasion of Rafah, which Biden says is a red line, as if that mattered to the Israelis. The White House denies a date has been set. I would expect it or another major provocation to come at the end of this month – both the invasion and the greater provocation opined from diplomatic sources – when the Israelis are feeling particularly lucky. It would be their undoing. We won’t cover it here. Suffice it to say they would love to have a great victory under their belts by the 14th of May, which is their foundation day. Biden would like to get a Nobel for ending the war, too. The Resistance has other ideas.
I would have serious doubts about a wider war. We (the West) are just not prepared for it. No one except for the Israelis want a wider war. We could expand on why we are not prepared, but it would be pointless. The Israelis are desperate, though, and desperate times call for…well, you know. And on just another note, the Baltimore bridge incident is not what I would call a black swan event. It’s an inconvenience, mainly for Baltimore, but it is not affecting the US adversely. Only about 3% of shipping to and from the US goes through that port. More on that in another post.
In closing, I hear the eclipse was quite beautiful. It was beautiful, too, because it brought people from all walks of life together to view a cosmic event. And it was cosmic, man! I hope some people got to see the planets and comet, but even then, it was a big event. It portends even bigger events to come. I will be interested to see what happens in May, as I will be there in the first week of May. But in all, this has been a very interesting study in eclipses, at least for me. Stay well. Stay safe. Whatever happens, if anything, will be for the greater good. Count on it.
Featured pic from AP News
Alvin I am so grateful for all the wonderful insight and information you send out. I look forward to your letters and blog. I hope you enjoy your trip to the US. Stay safe and many blessings to you and yours.