A ques­tion was asked about my ear­li­er post­ing: “What is the sig­nif­i­cance of the deep­est total­i­ty of the eclipse and the exact moment of the Full Moon being the same?”

Because we are expe­ri­enc­ing a process, not a moment in time, an eclipse event will last many hours. The moon begins to enter the Penum­bra of the earth­’s shad­ow at around 1:24 pm (all times East­ern Day­light), then into the real shad­ow of the Umbra at 2:22 pm with com­plete cov­er­age being attained at 3:22 pm, that is when the Total Eclipse has begun. The eclipse is at it great­est at around 4:13 pm (yes same time as Full Moon), and total­i­ty “ends” as the Moon begins to move out of the Umbra at 5:02 pm. The Moon pass­es out of the Umbra com­plete­ly by 6:02 leav­ing it with­in the Penum­bra until it pass­es beyond any shad­ow at around 7 pm.

So the Total Eclipse times are: Penum­bral: 5 hours 36 min, Umbral: 3 hours 39 min, and Total Eclipse 1 hour 40 min.

Your ques­tion, “Why does the exact Full Moon and Full Eclipse coin­cide?” (again, the exact moment is only a moment, though per­cep­tu­al­ly to us it lasts much longer. That is the Total Eclipse runs from 3:22 till 5:02, yet it is only “exact” at 4:13).

The rea­son the exact moment of the Full Moon and Eclipse being the same comes from the fact that this Eclipse is tak­ing place almost exact­ly on the South Node of the Moon, (the point at which the Earth­’s orbit of the Sun and the Moon’s orbit of the Earth meet). The node today is at 23 degrees, 26 min­utes of Sagit­tar­ius and the Full Moon is at 24 degrees, 23 min­utes. If the Moon was sev­er­al degrees away from the node, there would still be an eclipse, but the Full Moon and Total Eclipse moments would be far­ther apart.

This is a long eclipse, but not the longest. The Moon is “mov­ing faster” now which is a fac­tor deter­mined by where it is in its cycle from clos­est to far­thest from the Earth. If it was at it apogee, far­thest, then a slow­er Moon would cre­ate the longest eclipse. The Moon was at perigee on June 11, and will be at apogee on June 23. Still it is a longer eclipse than many.

Spir­i­tu­al­ly, I do not think these “exact” tim­ings mat­ter so much. I am much more process ori­en­tat­ed than event driven…I have wit­nessed the ris­ing of an eclipsed Moon with the set­ting of the full Sun…Now that is won­drous to behold. Or a Full Moon ris­ing at the Win­ter Sol­stice. Sig­nif­i­cant cer­e­monies and Sacred Ini­ti­a­tions are held at these very impor­tant align­ments. This par­tic­u­lar eclipse is just such a beau­ti­ful reminder of the larg­er forces at play around and through us that many in our mod­ern world for­get to acknowl­edge, or experience!

For me, I want­ed to point out to my read­ers that this area of space is spe­cial; that is from here that Rays emanate from the Galac­tic Cen­ter, (where­in resides the Logos of our Uni­verse). That is what we are look­ing at tonight, and should pay homage to, when we look upon (or beyond) the Moon tonight. We are look­ing to the Divin­i­ty which ensouls our entire galaxy, the watch­er wait­ing; the head of the Hier­ar­chi­cal Host of “shin­ing ones”.