the sky, explained · the dragon

there is a dragon in the sky

the lunar nodes changed signs on july 26. before the charts and the dates, it's worth telling the older version of this story — because for most of human history, an eclipse wasn't geometry. it was a dragon.

the lunar nodes are not planets. they are two invisible crossing points, where the moon's path cuts the sun's. the only places in the whole sky where eclipses can happen. every culture that watched the sky long enough found these two points. most of them noticed the same unsettling thing: this is where the lights go out.

ancient india gave the points a body. a dragon who drank the nectar of immortality. the gods cut him in two for it. he never died — he just split. the head became rahu. the tail became ketu.

rahu is the head. always hungry, no body to fill. ketu is the tail. already full, nothing left to want. when either one catches the sun or the moon, it swallows it. that's an eclipse. the light always comes back — a head with no body can't hold what it eats.

on july 26 the dragon moved. head into aquarius, tail into leo. it walks backward through the zodiac, one sign roughly every year and a half. one full lap takes 18.6 years. wherever the head and tail sit, that's where every eclipse lands until the next move.

the first eclipse on this new axis arrives august 12 — a solar eclipse in leo, at the dragon's tail. the tail is ketu: already full. it asks nothing new of you. it begins by letting something end.

the dragon returns august 28 with a lunar eclipse in pisces, the last eclipse of the old axis. both get their own entries here when they arrive.

ritualette · the sky, explained