Eclipses
A solar eclipse in Cancer points at home, family and what you need to feel safe. Every occurrence with exact dates and degrees, what an eclipse physically is, and the 18-year cycle that lets you check it against your own past.
Eclipses arrive in seasons, roughly every six months, and the seasons move backwards through the zodiac along with the lunar nodes. That means Cancer gets a run of them every nine years or so rather than one a year. These are computed from the ephemeris.
| Date | Degree | Kind |
|---|---|---|
| July 21, 1990 | 29°04' Cancer | Total, 100% covered |
| July 11, 1991 | 18°59' Cancer | Total, 100% covered |
| June 30, 1992 | 8°56' Cancer | Total, 100% covered |
| July 1, 2000 | 10°15' Cancer | Partial |
| June 21, 2001 | 0°11' Cancer | Total, 100% covered |
| July 21, 2009 | 29°27' Cancer | Total, 100% covered |
| July 11, 2010 | 19°24' Cancer | Total, 100% covered |
| July 1, 2011 | 9°12' Cancer | Partial |
| July 12, 2018 | 20°42' Cancer | Partial |
| July 2, 2019 | 10°38' Cancer | Total, 100% covered |
| June 21, 2020 | 0°21' Cancer | Annular, 99% covered |
| July 21, 2028 | 29°51' Cancer | Total, 100% covered |
| July 11, 2029 | 19°37' Cancer | Partial |
| July 12, 2037 | 21°04' Cancer | Total, 100% covered |
| July 2, 2038 | 10°47' Cancer | Annular, 98% covered |
| June 21, 2039 | 0°12' Cancer | Annular, 89% covered |
| June 23, 2047 | 1°56' Cancer | Partial |
The past ones are the useful column. If you want to know whether eclipses mean anything in your own life, look up what was happening around June 21, 2020 and the ones before it. A pattern you can find yourself is worth more than any description a page can give you.
At a solar eclipse the Moon passes directly between the Earth and the Sun. That can only happen at a new moon, and only when that new moon falls near one of the two points where the Moon's orbit crosses the plane of the Earth's. Away from those points the Moon passes above or below and nothing happens, which is why there is not an eclipse every month.
Those two crossing points are the lunar nodes, and they are the whole reason eclipses are rare. What the nodes are is covered here. The nodes move backwards about nineteen degrees a year, which is why eclipse season drifts earlier each year and why the signs they fall in change every eighteen months.
Eclipses are not scattered. They come in families called saros series, each running for about twelve to fifteen hundred years, and inside a series an eclipse repeats every 18 years and 11 days. That period is the saros: the time it takes for the Moon's phase cycle, its distance cycle and its node cycle to come back into step, which they do to within a few hours.
The Babylonians worked this out from records alone, without knowing why it was true, and could predict lunar eclipses with it. The one gap in the method is that each repeat lands about eight hours later, so the Earth has turned a third of the way round and the eclipse is visible from a different part of the world. Three saros periods, 54 years, brings it back to roughly the same longitude.
The practical consequence for a reader: if an eclipse falls on something in your chart, go back 18 years and 11 days and look at what was happening. That is the closest thing astrology has to a repeatable experiment, and it costs nothing to check.
Cancer is Water and Cardinal, ruled by the Moon, and it covers home, family and what you need to feel safe. An eclipse here points there. Because eclipses always come in pairs across an axis, one in Cancer is part of a run that also touches Capricorn, and the tradition reads the two ends together rather than separately.
A solar eclipse is a new moon, so it is read as a beginning, although rarely a comfortable one: the usual report is that something is removed and the beginning follows from the gap.
The sign is shared by everybody. The house is not, and the house is what turns an eclipse from a news item into something that happened to you. On whole sign houses it follows directly from your rising sign.
| Rising sign | House | So it is about |
|---|---|---|
| Aries | 4th | home, family and property |
| Taurus | 3rd | talking, learning, siblings, short trips |
| Gemini | 2nd | money you earn and what you own |
| Cancer | 1st | you, your body, how you come across |
| Leo | 12th | rest, grief and what nobody sees |
| Virgo | 11th | friends, groups and hopes |
| Libra | 10th | career and reputation |
| Scorpio | 9th | travel, study and belief |
| Sagittarius | 8th | shared money, intimacy and endings |
| Capricorn | 7th | partnership, marriage and open conflict |
| Aquarius | 6th | daily work, health and routine |
| Pisces | 5th | romance, children and creative work |
Because eclipses come in pairs across an axis, the opposite house is involved too. A solar eclipse in your 10th house is a career matter with something at home on the other end of it, and the tradition reads both rather than one.
Only if the degree is close to something in your own chart, within a few degrees. The next one falls at 29°51' Cancer, so look for anything of yours near that degree. That is a much higher bar than most eclipse writing admits, and it is why most eclipses pass without anybody noticing anything.
If you do not know your rising sign, you need your birth time, and this covers how to find it.
July 21, 2028, 10:55 PM ET, at 29°51' Cancer.
It points at home, family and what you need to feel safe, and reads as a beginning that arrives faster than you planned, and usually by removing an option rather than by offering one.
Because the Moon's orbit is tilted about five degrees, so at most new and full moons it passes above or below the line. An eclipse needs the alignment to happen near one of the two points where the orbits cross.
No. It matters to you personally only if its degree falls close to something in your own birth chart.
RubyAstro writes about astrology for reflection and self-understanding. Nothing here is medical, legal or financial advice, and none of it is a prediction of events. Read our full disclaimer.
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