Annie Dillard on "The Total Eclipse"

Through strange coincidences brought on, of course, by the current Eclipses, I've stumbled upon Annie Dillard's essay called "Total Eclipse." It's included in her book Teaching a Stone to Talk. Dillard is a nature writer and here she excels at talking about the mystical experience of viewing an Eclipse. While describing the earthly process of travel to the eclipse spot with her husband, the viewing of the eclipse, and going out for breakfast afterwards, Dillard describes the different layers of subconscious that she travels through as well. The people around her, the event, her place in the universe, and even the picture on the wall of her hotel room are described in surreal terms as both emotional and symbolic elements. Such an incredible essay. Saturn was at 11 Virgo for this particular Eclipse, so Dillard's essay, or at least the inspiration for it, is having its Saturn Return so I suppose the timing is right for reading this essay.

Annie Dillard
b. Apr. 30, 1945 Pittsburgh, PA

Sun 10 Taurus; Moon Sagittarius; NN 11 Cancer (c. Saturn 7 Cancer and squaring Neptune 5 Libra)

Total Solar Eclipse Feb. 26, 1979 8:54am Yakima, Washington

Sun 8 Pisces; Moon 8 Pisces; opposite North Node 18 Virgo (c. Saturn 11 Virgo & Squaring Neptune 21 Sagittarius)

Right away one can see that Dillard's Saturn-Neptune square is echoed in this 1979 Eclipse which explains the Mysticism and feelings of boundlessness and formlessness that she experiences during the eclipse. She's seeing this part of herself expressed by the Universe.

"This was the universe about which we have read so much and never before felt: the universe as a clockwork of loose spheres flung at stupefying, unauthorized speeds. How could anything moving so fast not crash, not veer from its orbit amok like a car out of control on a turn?"

Dillard's chart is strongly tied into this Eclipse Chart in many other ways. Her Taurus Sun was conjunct the Taurus Ascendant and her Nodal Axis was widely conjunct the MC-IC Eclipse axis. Her Saturn in Cancer would have been near the bottom of the chart, kind of an interesting placement for climbing a mountain in order to view an astronomical event given the goat's need to climb.

There's a chance that Dillard's progressed Moon was in Pisces conjunct the Sun-Moon conjunction of this eclipse. That would certainly explain why she hooked into it so well and felt it with such incredible intensity. Her progressed Sun was at 13 Gemini conjunct her natal Uranus at 12 Gemini.

It's really incredible to see the n.Uranus-p.Sun aspect described in the following quote in terms of "wake-up calls" and the Saturn-Neptune influence in the second half along with her Taurus Sun (value, usefulness). Although not intentionally, Dillard is basically explaining the way the astrological influences play with each other:

"We teach our children one thing only, as we were taught: to wake up.(Uranus). We teach our children to look alive there, to join by words and activities the life of human culture on the planet's crust. As adults we are almost all adept at waking up. We have so mastered the transition, we have forgotten we ever learned it. Yet it is a transition we make a hundred times a day, as, like so many will-less dolphins, we plunge and surface, lapse and emerge. We live half our waking lives and all of our sleeping lives in some private, useless, and insensible waters we never mention or recall. Useless, I say. Valueless, I might add -- until someone hauls the wealth up to the surface and into the wide awake city, in a form that people can use."

One last quote:

"It was good to be back among people so clever; it was good to have all the world's words at the mind's disposal, so the mind could being its task. All those things for which we have no words are lost."

This is explained very nicely in astrological terms: Dillard's natal Jupiter was conjunct the Eclipse's 18 Virgo North Node.