An eclipse is a New or Full Moon that falls near one of the Moon’s nodes. At a New Moon the Moon is between the Earth and the Sun; if she is also near a node, she is on the Sun’s path, and her shadow falls on the Earth. That is a solar eclipse. At a Full Moon the Earth is between the Sun and the Moon; if she is near a node, the Earth’s shadow falls on her. That is a lunar eclipse. Most months the Moon passes above or below the line, because her orbit is tilted about five degrees to the Sun’s path, and nothing happens.
Because the Sun passes a node twice a year, eclipses come in seasons about six months apart, and each season holds at least two, one solar and one lunar about two weeks apart, occasionally three. The seasons drift earlier by about nineteen days each year as the nodes move backward through the zodiac. There are four to seven eclipses in any year, and Moondark lists every one from 2026 to 2031 with its kind, its degree, its node, how much of the light is covered, and where on Earth it can be seen.
A solar eclipse is total, annular, partial, or hybrid. Total when the Moon covers the Sun entirely; annular when she is too far from us to cover it and leaves a ring; partial when only part of the Sun is bitten anywhere on Earth; hybrid, rarely, when the eclipse is total along part of its path and annular along the rest. A lunar eclipse is total, partial, or penumbral, depending on how much of the Moon enters the Earth’s dark inner shadow. A total lunar eclipse turns the Moon red, lit only by sunlight bent through the Earth’s air.
Solar eclipses are seen only from a narrow path; lunar eclipses are seen from the whole night side of the Earth. Moondark says whether the eclipse is visible where you are, weather permitting, and it gives the reading either way, since astrologers hold that the eclipse acts on the sky whether or not the sky is watched. The Sun is never safe to look at without eclipse glasses, even when most of it is covered. The Moon is always safe.
Astrologers read a solar eclipse as a New Moon with the volume turned up and a lunar eclipse as a Full Moon with the volume turned up, beginnings and revelations that arrive with weight. The node matters: an eclipse near the North Node is read as an opening, near the South Node as a release. The degree stays sensitive for months, and eclipses repeat in families every eighteen years and eleven days, the Saros, so that each one has elders. Moondark’s eclipse pages give all of this, and its eclipse readings, one for each eclipse through 2031, are written for the degree the eclipse falls on.