If there’s one thing I’m learning about the Eclipses it’s this: they usher unexpected, new experiences into your life. Things you’ve forgotten about. Things you might not have ever thought you’d get to claim – at least in this lifetime. And these eclipses don’t have to be in your Sun sign to affect you, be it on a house cusp, luminary or midpoint, the disappearing act of the Sun has the MOJO to move you. After all, the Sun is “The performer” of the planets – the main act – and when the curtain lifts to the Moon’s obscura, the audience silently gasps…how unexpected, how remarkable…

“How adorable!” an elegant seventy-something lady seated in the first row sweetly exclaims watching a fifty year young woman’s interpretive ragtime dance. The audience laughs.

Let me back up a second. I’ve had the dream of being a dancer since childhood but for various reasons, I didn’t get to follow it very far. Lessons would come and go with the rise and fall of parental income. And then puberty hit. I was all akimbo legs and arms….squinting at myself in the mirror, I would try to objectively evaluate my unique talent as graceful. But I wanted to dance jazz, and this lanky gazelle body had nothing on my well-endowed, curvaceous peers. I just couldn’t “put my back into it” …if you know what I mean.

That liability grew into an asset in more ways then one, ahem, in my thirties. It was last fall, after spending one too many weeks writing from home, an exceedingly mental process – and in sweats (my more depressing wardrobe pieces) – I longed to embody more than my mind. I longed to integrate the creative process with the creative person. I wanted to break out of my box. I just didn’t understand how to work within the limits of my box – without throwing the entire box away (a dilemma of a 5th house Aquaian cusp!)

Until a trip to visit my girl Holly in LA last fall who set me up with a psychic, a wise Italian Grandmother in Van Nuys, Dolores. D said to me in no uncertain terms “lady friend, why are you hiding your light under a bushel? Is your husband a jealous man keeping you at home (he’s not)? You’re super model gorgeous. YOU NEED TO BE SEEN.” It was one of the many moments I’ve had lately when the world soul speaks, through a person of light, and shoots strait through my heart. When that happens you may not know what you’ll do with that information, but the truth is the truth. You embrace its mystery…and it changes you.

I wanted to hug her.

Several weeks later, I found out about a Burlesque class at a local dance studio and took up showgirl dancing. And the rest…culminated in my very first burlesque performance last night in an energetically vibrational atmosphere I can only describe as Thelma & Louise – turbo. Or as my husband described: Chippendales night out. This was chick power, cubed.

That’s the Solar New Moon in Aquarius Eclipse smack on my Fifth House cusp, the house of creativity, performance, drama, love affairs (even with oneself!) children (the inner child) and fun! And you could also say the house of the inner genie in a bottle, the vast and unlimited talent of the true self.

So this Aquarius Eclipse got me thinking. We have this identity, this assemblage of who we think we are. We make choices around our identity “I’d never do that -or- that’s TOTALLY me!” which is in reality a really small piece of who we could be… While I had a dream of being a dancer, I never considered the universe would support that once faded dream – until it happened.

Aquarius is who we could be – it’s the vision. Aquarius is who we could be, and for various reasons…we’re too shy, insecure, humble to try… I could never…When we encounter Aquarian energy in our lives, be it a person or by transit, we enter a bold new world of radical thought. I’d never thought about it like that before… A different way of thinking, indeed a vision, introduces a different way of being. Sometimes all we need is someone else’s urging, an inner prompting, a persistent inkling… born of a question: can I risk who I think I am today for who I might become?

Truth or Dare.

And the answer, should we decide to follow a new truth, play with a dare – to experiment by matching intuition to vision to a bold new step is – YES!

(The Solar Eclipse New Moon in Aquarius takes place this Wednesday, February 6 at 7:44 PM PST, but eclipse watchers know that eclipse energies can be felt up to six months prior, or the month and a half surrounding either side.)