SOLAR ECLIPSE IN VIRGO

SEPTEMBER 21, 2025 12:54 PM PST

Navigate the intensity of eclipse season with practical tools for embodied transformation

This is eclipse season, and it's proving to be one of the most intense periods many of us have experienced. There's profound reasoning behind this intensity that goes far beyond typical astrological influences. We're witnessing significant outer planet movement with Uranus, Saturn, Neptune, and Pluto all positioned at either the earliest degrees of new signs or the final degrees of signs they've occupied for years.

We're caught in what I can only describe as a karmic washing machine—being pulled between past and future, old patterns and new possibilities, release and rebuilding. It's a karmic storm where huge life themes and collective influences are hitting critical degree points and new beginning markers simultaneously.

BOOKEND ECLIPSE

This month brings us two eclipses alongside two New Moons in Virgo. We experienced a New Moon in Virgo at 0° on August 22nd-23rd, and now we're approaching a Solar Eclipse (also a New Moon) close to the South Node in Virgo at 29°. This creates powerful bookends within Virgo season, framing an entire cycle of refinement and transformation.

We're also navigating a nine universal year—a time of endings, completions, and preparing for new beginnings, often without clearly seeing what the other side looks like. This requires real embodiment: sitting in the discomfort of loss and letting go while surrendering to the unknown.

NERVOUS SYSTEM RESILIENCE

We're experiencing an actual spiritual war, and our nervous systems are being tested in unprecedented ways. The South Node in Virgo is teaching us, alongside the North Node in Pisces, that we must build strong, resilient vessels to hold this level of chaos, change, and uncertainty.

Building this resilience requires meeting our edges—the spaces that hold too much, that drop us into fear, terror, grief, or shame. These feelings aren't walls; they're gateways. Through these gateways, we discover more space, expansion, and truth.

The polarity in our systems becomes especially apparent during times of crisis. When we receive injections of fear, grief, or anger from collective events, it activates something deep within all of us. In triggered states, we're drawn toward black-and-white thinking—someone is right or wrong, things are good or bad. When we operate outside our range of regulation, everything becomes distorted.

THE GRAY

The fundamental truth is that life exists in shades of gray. This world overflows with nuance, and we cannot operate from a single truth—it's simply not possible. Holding this complexity requires a well-tended vessel and an attuned nervous system capable of holding the gray, the unknown, the space beyond contraction.

The North Node in Pisces calls us to surrender and let go, accessing that space beyond contraction. The South Node in Virgo shadow must be transformed to receive what the North Node in Pisces offers. Our edges are being tested, forcing us to examine everything we consume and decide what serves our highest evolution.

MERCURY

This week presents particular challenges as we build toward the Solar Eclipse. On September 17th, Mercury in Virgo opposes Saturn retrograde in Pisces—potentially a conflicting day. Mercury in Virgo holds tremendous potential but can become rigid, sharp, almost too clear. We're witnessing this play out in social media responses and firm, rigid beliefs that leave no space for nuance.

Saturn demands maturity, asking us to evolve beyond reactive patterns. On September 18th, Mercury shifts into Libra (offering more balance) but immediately opposes Neptune retrograde in Aries at 0°, stripping illusions and revealing what isn't working.

Later on the 18th, a grand trine in air forms between Mercury in Libra, Uranus retrograde in Gemini, and Pluto retrograde in Aquarius. This supportive energy might facilitate repair through conversation and communication, possibly calling you to speak truths you've been withholding.

September 20th brings Venus in Virgo squaring Uranus retrograde in Gemini, creating sticky energy around values and principles. Venus in Virgo can be rigid and idealistic, while Uranus in Gemini continues shaking things up—explaining why everything has felt at warp speed since July when Uranus entered Gemini.

This is where nervous system work becomes crucial. We must tend to the physical vessel that holds our consciousness, beliefs, and actions. The nervous system serves as the filter for our entire experience—everything we believe, create, and manifest passes through this system. When dysregulated, we operate from fear, which is exactly what the South Node in Virgo shadow wants to teach us about.

SOLAR ECLIPSE IN VIRGO

The entire week builds toward the Solar Eclipse in Virgo at 29° on September 21st at 12:54 PM Pacific. This eclipse closes eclipse season, following the total lunar eclipse in Pisces on September 7th. We're in the potent two-week window between eclipses, and this solar eclipse represents the closing of a significant chapter.

Virgo's medicine centers on refinement, clearing, and distillation. This season has provided the complete cycle of refinement: planting, experimenting, purging, and clarifying. The first Virgo New Moon at 0° invited us into new patterns of care. This Virgo solar eclipse demands we release what doesn't serve and fully devote ourselves to new ways of being.

You might find yourself in an in-between space. Eclipse season operates like a karmic washing machine, and we've been building toward this pressure point over the past two weeks. When any celestial event occurs at the anoretic degree (29°), it creates intense pressure to complete, realize, or finish something.

The anAretic degree carries deep karmic significance. This eclipse isn't just connected to the past month or even the past twenty years—it reaches into past lives, ancestry, and unconscious patterns. This represents rapid, uncomfortable change that can feel completely out of control.

Something seeks completion—a pattern of belief, a karmic loop. This Solar Eclipse in Virgo at 29° serves as the closing note of a karmic storm, bringing urgency and finality. It demands resolution of something that began in August, or perhaps something that originated at birth or before.

Whatever remains unaligned in the Virgo realm—body, health, work, service, rituals, devotion, practice—is being eclipsed out, stripped, purified, and reoriented. This isn't just clearing recent over-analysis; it's releasing lifetimes of perfectionism, control, and the fear patterns that drive these behaviors.

THE BODY

We're being asked to dive into the layers—the experiences, memories, and emotions held beneath these patterns—to meet them with presence, flow, love, and integration. Wherever Virgo appears in your chart, new pathways are crystallizing.

You likely had to surrender something during this eclipse season, perhaps letting go of control or reckoning with loss. What dissolved during the lunar eclipse in Pisces now creates space for refinement and restructuring with this solar eclipse.

The 29° point represents an initiatory turning point where the Virgo story reaches completion and demands integration. None of us will emerge unchanged from this eclipse season.

VIRGO, THE SACRED VESSEL

Virgo embodies the priestess, healer, integrator, and sacred vessel. It represents healing in embodied form, bringing us to practical elements we can work with for healing, growth, and service. As mutable earth, it focuses on change, transformation, and liminal spaces, finding healing through refinement, precision, and embodiment.

Virgo's highest expression involves finding comfort in not knowing while tending to the physical body and nervous system so we can hold mystery and uncertainty. We need both Virgo's grounding and Pisces' transcendence—we can't remain disconnected from earth and body, nor can we avoid the spiritual depths.

What's being revealed in our collective consciousness is the weakness of our shared nervous system and the gaps within our individual systems where we immediately default to fear and control because we cannot tolerate unknown complexity or nuance. We attempt to control narratives because it provides a sense of safety.

This represents the South Node in Virgo shadow, while the North Node in Pisces offers an invitation: "I don't know and I'm not sure, but I can be okay with that. I remain open, receiving, searching honestly, and I can hold nuance without needing everything perfect and boxed for safety."

This eclipse season reveals where we grip control for safety, where we resort to unhealthy practices, perfectionism, over-analysis, hypervigilance, and rigidity born from fear. It's about embodied devotion—an invitation to fully release what no longer works.

Part of you knows what isn't working anymore, and this eclipse won't allow passage without addressing it. This involves refining the container of your soul and consciousness—the body, nervous system, and immune system—allowing your service to flow from wholeness rather than fragmentation or fear.

I think of Virgo as a diamond: clear, precise, holding shape and form while remaining transparent and pure. This represents Virgo's highest expression—maintaining structure while staying open, clear, and discerning.

SATURN’S SOBERING INFLUENCE

This eclipse opposes Saturn at 29° of Pisces, adding significant weight to the experience. For those with natal Saturn in Pisces, this period feels particularly intense as Saturn retrogrades back into Pisces until February, when both Saturn and Neptune cross into Aries together.

Saturn insists that our spirituality, compassion, and imagination become practical and embodied. No more bypassing, no more illusions. This eclipse becomes a karmic reset point asking: Can we integrate faith with material reality? Can we unite the mystical and spiritual with the body?

We cannot bypass the nervous system or the embodiment process. Saturn demands maturity, evolution, and different approaches. We must elevate beyond the wound or integrate it sufficiently to walk through its gateway, operating from our higher self rather than our inner child.

PRACTICAL ECLIPSE INTEGRATION

Take inventory: Where are you operating from a younger, wounded part within the Virgo realm of your life? Where are you over-efforting, over-perfecting, holding onto what no longer serves, or dropping into rigidity, control, fear, or manipulation?

What rituals and practices actually nourish you right now? This isn't about more—it's about less. It's about effectiveness, precision, refinement.

This week calls for slowing down, intimate listening, fine-tuning your intuition, and examining your daily rhythms and practices. What commands your devotion? What receives your energy? Devotion manifests where you place your energy.

EXPANSION

This eclipse marks both an endpoint and a beginning, opening a new six-month chapter. We're all opening to something larger, more expansive. We're being directed to our physical vessels so we can hold whatever emerges—that new timeline, chapter, opportunity, or manifestation you've been hoping, dreaming, and praying for.

Your manifestations need a landing place, and that place exists on the other side of surrender. It's beyond the fear of letting go, beyond the fear of tending to what you need, beyond ritual responsibility and boundary setting.

This represents a major karmic clearing. While it may feel uncomfortable for many, remember that we're moving through this together. There are forces that seek to divide us as a species, which is why this nervous system work becomes essential.

We must meet the parts of ourselves afraid of existing in the in-between, the nuanced, the gray, the space of holding multiple truths simultaneously—because that's the reality of being on this planet. When we quickly make someone wrong or right, when we grasp for familiar polarities, we participate in division rather than unity.

As we evolve and navigate these in-between spaces, it becomes clear that this world contains far more gray than black and white. And that can be okay too.

Trust your body's wisdom, embrace the discomfort of not knowing, and allow this eclipse to refine you into the clear, resilient vessel you're meant to be.Soul Archaeology

— ALI OFSTEDAL

THIS BLOG IS A REVISED TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE 117 OF MY PODCAST “SOUL ARCHAEOLOGY”.

Tune into the latest episode of soul archaeology for a full energetic download. available on all platforms.