08/27/2026
A deep partial lunar eclipse happens this week on August 27–28. I write about the imminent Lunar Eclipse in my newsletter. The link to it is in the comments.
Here's some preliminary info: Eclipses are thresholds and hinges rather than omens of peril. What, precisely, are these portals good for? What can we do with the rare leverage an eclipse offers?
The Moon is the ruler of our habits: our moods, our reflexes, the part of us that runs on autopilot. It governs the conditioned self, the creature of routine, the inner automaton that gets us through the day without our having to think too hard.
Most of the time this machinery is invisible to us, since it's automatic. We don't notice the grooves we run in and may mistake our reflexes for our choices.
A lunar eclipse changes that, at least for a few days on either side of the event. As the Earth's shadow slides across the Moon, the familiar machinery of our habitual self is briefly thrown into relief.
It's dimmed just enough that we can see it for what it is. The trance flickers. The automaton freezes mid-gesture, and we can catch it in the act.
This is uncommon leverage, and I urge you not to waste it. In the days before and after a lunar eclipse, we have extra power to wake ourselves up out of whatever trance we might be in. We can come to attention about some sleepwalking, robotic part of our psyche that has been steering us without our full consent.
It's a ripe time to outwit and wriggle free from a bad habit and deprogram a negative behavior pattern. And here's the crucial second half, the part that makes the difference between a hollow resolution and a genuine transformation:
We don't simply abstain. We substitute. When we evict a stale compulsion, the vacancy it leaves won't stay empty for long. So we move quickly to install a positive pattern in its place.
We decide, while the lucidity lasts, who we would rather be while we're on autopilot, and we start grooving the new track before the old trance reasserts itself.
