The glasses were plastic and cardboard, and looked a lot like those 3-D glasses they give out at movie theatres. When I put them on, I couldn’t see a thing. I didn’t dare take a step. It felt odd to be wearing glasses which completely blacked out the world around me. But when I looked up, there it was: a gold coin, a thin disc in the sky, the only thing that still existed. Only someone had taken a little nibble out of one side. The eclipse had begun.

I kept going out on the balcony to keep watch, grabbing the plastic sunglasses every time I went out. When I put them on, the world would fall away. There would be nothing but sun, and every time I looked at it, the bite was bigger. The sun was disappearing. I lit a candle, hoping to call it back. But clouds came up, the wind started to blow, and I had to take my candle inside.

The rain spattered on the balcony, and I closed the windows. Outside, out of my view, the sun wrestled alone with its dragon. I waited.

An hour or so later, it was as if nothing had happened. The clouds parted, and the sun re-emerged, victorious. She was whole, miraculously reformed. I wondered then what I had seen. Was it a struggle, with some malevolent force trying to consume the sun? Or was it an embrace, in which the sun loses herself in her lover?

When night came, and we rolled away from the sun as we always do, she unfurled all her most subtle ribbons of color for us. Yes, she was back. Even now, in night as dark as the sunglasses I wore earlier, I know she is blazing somewhere.

Perhaps it was because I paid attention to her for a few hours. Perhaps it was because I wore the magic glasses which enabled me to see her, and to see nothing but her. What I feel now is a sense of intimacy with the sun. She went through something, something akin to a death or a birth, and I was with her.

Where will this take me? Perhaps it will bring me home to my true self.

Today’s total solar eclipse occurs not just on the first of August, but on the ancient yearly holiday of Lammas. It’s the pagan festival devoted to the first harvest, and it’s a time to celebrate the fertility and vitality of the sun. This is a fire festival, when artistic work is shared, when people sing and boast, and when passions spring up in unexpected places.

The sun is always very powerful in August, since she is in her own sign of Leo, and now Mercury, Venus, the moon and the south node are also in her sign. Symbolically, the sun is about individuality, about the drive to become oneself. The sun is our basic source of energy, the battery we run on. Without her, we would just be cosmic dust, floating about in the vast cauldron of space, never coalescing into anything, silent and unhearing.

Having become something – entities, beings, named and self-aware – we keep taking in energy from the sun and endlessly create. We create paintings and cities and children and dramas and laws and gardens. We do this joyfully, constantly risking ourselves to express what we have inside.

August is that kind of month. There is great transformative power in this eclipse, and so it’s not a month for the faint-hearted. This is the month in which the Democratic Party will break out of its white-boy mold and nominate an African-American presidential candidate. This won’t save us from ourselves, for sure, but it is a big change.

Although the month begins with heaps of that sun-drenched Leo energy, it quickly moves into Virgo. Venus enters Virgo on August 6, Mercury on August 10, and the sun on August 22. Saturn spends the whole month in Virgo. Mars is in Virgo until August 19, when it moves into compromise-oriented Libra, in time for the convention.

Leo is about glory, and Virgo is about work. And so we begin August soaking in all the sun’s gifts, becoming stronger and more positive, becoming more and more ourselves. And then we ask the question, “What do we do with all this energy?” And the answer comes to us from Virgo, from the mutable earth sign that ends summer for us.

Things become more logical, more organized and linear, under the Virgo influences. The flamboyance of early August fades into a sensible, plain-living attitude. The urge will be to fix things, not to buy new ones. People will eat their leftovers, weed their gardens, wear their old sneakers, and make decisions based on common sense rather than the Leo urge to look good.

Things don’t always proceed in a purely logical fashion, however. Mercury, Venus and Mars all have to move through the opposition to Uranus, the planet of change. This is like jumping an electric fence. Mars does it early, on August 6, and then Mercury does it on August 22 and Venus on August 23. These are all accident-prone times, when the hard-working energy of Virgo collides with something that can’t be predicted and doesn’t make sense.

Obama still has hard aspects to his Mars, and so it continues to be a physically dangerous time for him. Luckily, the Saturn/moon square is moving away, so as August moves on, he gains some vitality. He’s been emotionally and physically exhausted, but things are improving for him.

McCain has just now reached the point of exhaustion, with Saturn right on his sun. He’s not only worn out but quite discouraged. And the eclipse makes a square to his Uranus, also quite accident-prone, so I wouldn’t be surprised if some major problem presented itself in August, in his life or in his campaign.

However, McCain regroups by the end of the month, and August’s second new moon – on the 30th – is quite lucky for him. It happens on his birthday, and Mercury is also conjunct its natal place. So he will be ready for all the ceremony and attention of the convention, and will manage to pace himself quite well through it all.

And which one has better aspects on Election Day? Actually, neither of them have particularly good aspects on that day. I will probably not be able to resist making a prediction as the day gets closer, but for now, I’m holding off.

This is the month when the sun is at its strongest, and the sun makes everyone stronger, more beautiful, and more worthy of attention. We all soak up this dramatic Leo energy, and this is especially true of people in the public eye. But since this is also the month of a total solar eclipse, the sun has something else to say to us this August.

There’s always something more, under that dazzlingly bright light. There’s always a hidden face, going through deep and necessary transformations. I know. I saw it, and felt it. And I expect to feel it for a long time.

Index of Jenny Yates' Writings on Lesbian.com