Astrological Maundering 5: The Solar Eclipse of 12 August 2026

In Memoriam: Geoffrey Cornelius

Geoffrey Cornelius and his book The Moment of Astrology (from https://nightlightastrology.com/years-one-two-resources/)

I am going to dedicate the first few paragraphs of this blog to the astrologer Geoffrey Cornelius, 13 January 1945 – 27 August 2024. I am writing this on the second anniversary of Geoffrey’s passing. I only knew him for five years, and had no contact since I left London and the Astrological Lodge in the autumn of 1983, so I didn’t know that Geoffrey had died until recently. But what an impact he had on my life in just five years! I was very moved to hear the news and instantly sought out on-line material to remember him and found the podcast by Chris Brennan, a two-hour interview to which I listened with great interest.

Geoffrey made several momentous contributions to the world of astrology. First of all, he regarded astrology as a form of divination and not a quasi-science. You can read his arguments in his major academic work, The Moment of Astrology: Origins in Divination (2002 edition published by The Wessex Astrologer). Astrology’s basis on the movement of heavenly bodies and the measurement of time has the unfortunate effect of presenting it to many interested people as some kind of science. This results in the view that there must be something in the universe, a law of ‘as above, so below’, a kind of subtle cosmic causality that we haven’t fully discovered yet. But Geoffrey points out that other forms of divination, the Tarot or the I Ching, for example, would not lead anyone to postulate some kind of universal system. As divination, they work as one-off readings of symbols which somehow and mysteriously make sense in human lives. Astrology is like this. Even its classic central idea, the birth horoscope, is symbolic and not based on a universal law by which things get imprinted with a cosmic blueprint at their origin. The concept of beginning is itself a symbol.

So how does it work? The answer is that we do not know; it is a mystery. We have neither scientific nor metaphysical basis for it. In the world of theology, some of the best theological writing remains modest and cautious in the face of the mystery of God. So it is with divination (which has more often than not been linked to religion at various points in the history of cultures). Previous generations have passed on to us systems of reading symbols which have the potential to play a role in the understanding of our lives, and it is up to us to use the available traditions and creatively read something into them. But we will not be granted the gift of understanding some grand theory of how it all works.

Geoffrey’s second great contribution consisted in arguing that astrology is a serious discipline and a craft. The marginalisation of astrology in the modern scientific world can lead people to accept just about anything in astrology because it has no official standing; you can make it up as you wish without a great deal of learning. This is certainly where I came into it when I moved to London in 1978 after only a couple of years or so of interest in astrology. But my membership of the Astrological Lodge over five years, in the company of Geoffrey and others, such as his partner, Maggie Hyde, taught me that, just as in theology, a lifetime of study and practice is required to plumb astrology’s depths. It is complex, philosophical, and includes a rich history. Therefore, astrology – and divination more widely – is a perfectly appropriate subject for higher education. Geoffrey successfully pushed for its inclusion in the curriculum at the two Canterbury universities, and through support of Nick Campion’s Sophia Centre, at the University of Wales Trinity St David.

My career in theology and religious studies owes a great deal to Geoffrey’s influence at the Astrological Lodge in my late twenties. When I entered university as an undergraduate, having left London and the Lodge behind, I had already gained a strong sense of the historical context of religious ideas and of the power of symbolism. This gave me a head start which helped me to move smoothly from undergraduate to postgraduate, and then to a lecturing job. Despite moving into Roman Catholicism and the world of theology, I never renounced astrology and other forms of divination that I learned about during my formative years, and practiced them from time to time. And given that now, in retirement, I have returned to looking at astrology a little more closely again, it’s a most appropriate time to pay tribute to the teacher who once remarked to me that there were several contacts between our horoscopes. That gave me a certain sense of pride as a young man eight years his junior but, as I look back, I reflect that those contacts described the fact that he would have a profound impact on my life although I wasn’t able to return the favour to influence his.

The 1999 Solar Eclipse Revisited

In my last astrological blog on the total solar eclipse of 1999, my general thesis was that the eclipse chart, with its grand cross including the Sun, Moon, Mars, Saturn and Uranus presented a convincing astrological reflection of some of the major global problems of the twenty-first century. I looked at the chart with reference to Nostradamus, who made a brief interpretation of the eclipse horoscope over four hundred years before it occurred, and read it according to the priorities of his own time. It is impossible to reconstruct what exactly he thought, but the two ideas that seem to stand up, now that we can look back on events, are a lacuna between periods of conflict, and the revival of some kind of human ruler or regime, which could be interpreted in our own times as a return to despotic, expansionist leadership in Russia, or a Western countercultural movement which seeks to overturn human rights progress, or both. Neither are welcome, and both resonate with a very difficult horoscope.

[Note: I will present the horoscopes of the eclipses discussed here, and some of the more detailed analysis, in another blog to follow this one.]

Another of Geoffrey’s wise maxims was to remind astrologers that they are participants, not mere observers, in the horoscopes that they interpret. They can help to make things happen; observation changes things. The principle of observer participation is true of all acts of interpretation, including those in the sciences and humanities. For the 1999 eclipse chart, I am most definitely a participant observer. It caused me some discomfort in my previous blog not to be able to answer the question as to how long the circumstances reflected in that horoscope would last, as they are certainly making me anxious, especially so as I have married and now have a little daughter in my later years. I yearn for a change for the better.

As far as the European countries and the United States are concerned, these problems include, it seems to me, a serious threat to what might be called the ‘Enlightenment project’, the steady progress of belief in human rights and social justice over three centuries, which reflects the concept of the Age of Aquarius (the subject of another of my blogs). They also involve a return to the very dangerous ‘Cold War’ standoff between Russia and the West. I did not mention climate change in my analysis of the 1999 eclipse, but it is clear that a renewed arms race, major conflicts, and the failure of international diplomacy, along with right-wing climate change denial, are the perfect storm for a global catastrophe.

I believe in the Enlightenment ideals that are reflected in the astrological concept of the ‘Age of Aquarius’. They include at least these four principles: (i) the progress of science as an empirical discipline independent of politics and religion; (ii) the rule of reason and law, also independent of politics and religion; (iii) clear and transparent democracy with accountable leaders; (iv) human rights and social justice, enshrining the autonomy and independence of the individual, equal opportunities, and the belief that all human beings are fundamentally equal in value, the vulnerable ones needing and deserving care. I could add the integrity of borders and the autonomy of nations, but this is a late addition, and very poorly observed, including in the West. The Enlightenment project has run its course frustratingly slowly since the eighteenth century, but it gained some pace in the West after World War II because of the galvanising effect of the horrors of that period, although of course there have been many reversals and betrayals of its principles. But, until recently, it has at least been acknowledged as the broad aim of Western societies. It is the apparent recent abandonment of those ideals that is of great concern to me and to many others.

I interpreted the opposition between the Sun and Uranus in the 1999 eclipse horoscope, both in their own signs, as representing the balance between knowledge and empathy that should characterise progress in the Aquarian Age. I regard an opposition between heavenly bodies in a chart as a tension which can nevertheless evolve into a productive balance through care and hard work. The difficulty in achieving a balance between knowledge and empathy during this particular period of history is symbolised by the eclipse itself, where the Sun is darkened, and by the square aspects from the Sun and Moon to the planets traditionally regarded as malefic, Mars and Saturn. The 1999 eclipse horoscope is full of tension, conflict, and danger.

The 2026 Solar Eclipse

I am now going to offer a reading of the chart for another total solar eclipse, that of 12 August 2026. And so, again not just as an observer but also as a participant, allow me to present my interpretation of this more recent eclipse as a prediction of, but also a prayer for, the return of reason, law, and human rights to the centre of the agendas of European and North American societies (and elsewhere too).

I note that the two twenty-first century eclipses that occurred in the U.S.A., the first in Leo again (21 August) and the second in Aries (8 April), happened in 2017 and 2024, in the first year of Trump’s presidency and then just before he was re-elected for a second time. This might reinforce the view that the eclipsed Sun represents the blotting out of reason, international co-operation, the rule of law, and human rights.  However, let me say at once that I am not attempting to offer some general theory of eclipse horoscopes, beyond reiterating the obvious and traditional belief that the eclipsed Sun represents something or someone important and central which will be endangered for a while, if not overturned entirely. Eclipses, both solar and lunar, are very common, and the total solar eclipse of 12 August 2026 is the eighteenth such phenomenon in the twenty-first century. Total solar eclipses are rare in a specific location (London, for example, won’t see one between the eighteenth and twenty-eighth century), but common if you take the world as a whole. A general theory would take a lot of observations, and I’m not sure whether it would result in very much.

So why am I choosing the eclipse of August 2026 in particular? Well, it is the successor to the 1999 eclipse in two respects: firstly, it is the first one to cross mainland Europe since 1999 and, secondly, it occurred very close to the zodiac position of the 1999 eclipse in mid-Leo, one day of the calendar apart (11 and 12 August). Therefore, it might offer a symbolic continuation to help us answer the question as to how long the circumstances reflected in the 1999 chart will prevail. Because the Sun is again in Leo, we should probably understand the 2026 eclipse in terms of a re-emphasis on the problems of the 1999 eclipse horoscope which, in addition to renewed hostilities between Russia and the West, include the decline of a society based on human rights and empathy. However, the far better aspects to the Sun and Uranus in the 2026 chart give me hope that these dangers are able to be overcome, and this may occur before too many more years have passed.

As we will see, the question of climate change, which I did not mention in my reading of the 1999 eclipse, now comes into the equation, which will not surprise anybody after the heatwaves and wildfires of the last couple of years, and the disturbing scientific data. To my mind, there is an enormous disjuncture between climate change denial and the clear experience of the reality of it. It is extraordinary that the Reform party, who have gained power in some English councils, are refusing even to admit that climate change exists when devising policy and allocating budgets. What would happen if they governed nationally? In America, Trump is calling the science of climate change the greatest scam in history. Yet, the evidence for dangerous climate change is there for all to see.

While Mars is rising in its own sign of Scorpio in the 1999 chart, in the 2026 one it is setting in Cancer, in its fall. It has a close conjunction with Ceres, which sits not at the highest point of the horoscope, as in the 1999 chart for France, but at the highest point of the zodiac, just three minutes of arc from 0 Cancer. How to read Mars conjunct that little-understood dwarf planet Ceres (the subject of another one of my previous blogs)? Online interpretations suggest a zealous mother protecting her young but, considering world events in 2026, Ceres conjunct Mars portrays quite strikingly the climate change crisis, with its heatwaves and wildfires, both in Europe and North America. Ceres is a mother, yes, but also Nature itself; she brings on winter in anger at losing her daughter. The idea of vengeful Nature makes sense in terms of climate change. Mars in Cancer is the hot anger of a mother, and Ceres is Nature making itself felt in the world of excess carbon emissions. The T square in which Mars and Ceres sit in tension with other planets includes Neptune retrograde in Aries, surely climate change denial attempting to deceive us, and Venus in Libra. I see the strong Venus in Libra as representing justice; climate change will never be just, as it affects the vulnerable more than it does the powerful.

In general, Mars is not as powerful in 2026 as it was in the 1999 chart. The situation in Ukraine and Iran might belie the possibility that the warmongers are beginning to lose out, but certainly the protagonists are not looking as if they are gaining much in either of those conflicts. But it is still a very critical time.

In the 2026 horoscope, the Sun and Moon are not involved in any conflicting aspects (square or opposition), which is something of a contrast with the 1999 one. They have one positive aspect, a trine with Saturn. Another body which is not in any opposition or square aspect is Uranus, which stands in a positive aspect, trine or sextile, to five planets: Pluto, Neptune, Mercury, Jupiter, and Venus. There is a grand trine which includes Uranus, Pluto, and Venus. You could say that Uranus is the central jewel in the crown in a ‘bowl’ shape stretching around 240 degrees. (Uranus also has a close 75-degree aspect to the Sun and Moon - interesting, although I’m not sure that the astrological tradition has much to say about 75 degrees!).

In considering the 1999 chart, I identified Uranus as the planet representing the reasoning and thinking so important in the Aquarian age. Uranus indicates detachedness and independence of thought, in which discrimination and nationalism have little place, but in which scientific discovery and critical - including self-critical - analysis are vital. Its much better placing in the 2026 eclipse, albeit this time in Gemini, might offer some hope for the reassertion of Enlightenment principles after a period of regression in some societies. Furthermore, the 2026 horoscope has Aquarius reaching the Ascendant at just about the moment the eclipse reached the mainland of Europe on the north coast of Spain, thus making Uranus its ruler. The eclipse path crossed Spain, just clipping the territory of Portugal, before the eclipse came to an end in the Mediterranean.

If my reading of this chart is correct and my prayer is answered, it would mean the demise of the Reform and Restore parties in the U.K., and the end of the domination of the Republican party by Trumpian MAGA enthusiasts in the U.S. These movements, along with others in some European nations, are preventing us from making the urgent moves we need with regards to tackling climate change and other serious challenges in global well-being. An even greater obstacle to global co-operation in solving our challenges is Putin and his war of reconquest. Let us pray for the end of his regime in Russia, too. I am not sure how far these horoscopes for European eclipses should extend west to the U.S. and east to Russia, but given that we are all affected by everything that happens in Washington and Moscow, for our hopes and prayers to be answered, we probably need change in those places as much as in the E.U. and U.K. As it is, the 1999 eclipse path crossed the Black Sea and the 2026 path began at the furthest north point of Arctic Russia.

Recent setbacks for the MAGA movement and the Reform party in events and polls might make my prediction more likely and foreseeable (we hope), but to predict the lessening of tensions between the West and Russia is bolder, perhaps.

A Brief Note on the 2027 Solar Eclipse

A total solar eclipse – again in August although earlier on the 2^nd – returns to Spain in 2027, this time brushing its southern coast and moving east across the Mediterranean to cover, most interestingly, Mecca. In this chart, Uranus once again sits in a central place in a bowl shape of positive aspects. This time its grand trine is with Mars and Pluto, and its sextiles are with Neptune, Venus, and the eclipse itself. This reinforces the positive feel of the 2026 chart; yes, an eclipse usually heralds danger but this horoscope again lacks the striking afflictions of the 1999 eclipse. There is a close sextile between the eclipse and Mars in stark contrast to their square aspect in 1999.

The more difficult aspects in the 2027 chart are not too terrifying: a very wide (nearly eight degree) square between Jupiter in Virgo and Uranus, and a square between Mercury in Cancer and Saturn in Aries, but Mercury is only a few minutes of arc from escaping into Leo. As far as Ceres is concerned, it has just entered Virgo and is conjunct Jupiter. It is also very close to the fixed star Regulus (which is the nearest prominent star to the ecliptic). Once again, Ceres holds a prominent position, reflecting the importance both of the contribution of women and of Nature in world affairs.

And, to return to the first paragraphs above, Uranus in the 2027 chart is only two weeks from its first cyclic return to its position on the birth date of one Geoffrey Cornelius.

Mary and the Solar Eclipse Charts

I have talked about prayer in this discussion of the eclipse charts, and you might reasonably ask: prayer to whom? The answer for me is Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, for whom I have felt a strong devotion since the 1980s. Mary is united to Christ, I believe, in such a way that prayer to one is at the same time prayer to the other. It is Mary to whom I pray that the nations can rally against the far right, make peace, and present a united front to meet the considerable challenges of the twenty-first century, including progress on the Paris agreement on climate change.

Not far from the north coast of Spain, there is a Catholic shrine in the mountains of Asturia, Covadonga, which lies on the path of the 2026 total eclipse. Covadonga has significance for the question of European Christian and post-Christian ‘identity’ vis-à-vis Islam, as the shrine commemorates the survival of Christianity in that region alone during the Moorish Islamic conquest of Spain. It seems to me that a revival of the Enlightenment project and the Aquarian ideal must involve good relations between Islam and the Christian and post-Christian culture in Europe and North America. Hatred of Islam seems to have become a badge of honour to those who would derail our democracy and systems of social justice. Covadonga is a Marian shrine and, in the question of attitudes towards Islam, Mary’s role is pivotal. She is highly prominent in both Christianity and Islam. One of her major shrines in Catholic Europe is at Fátima in Portugal, named after the daughter of Muhammed.

[I write about Fátima and Catholic-Muslim relations in a chapter of Marian Reflections on War and Peace: Trauma, Mourning, and Justice in Ukraine and Beyond, edited by L Skof, E A Holmes, P Smytsnyuk, Routledge, 2025.]

Drawing on my relationship with Mary, I have developed a strong sense of optimism that the international political scene can improve considerably in a reasonably short space of time. The 1999 eclipse chart includes a grand cross, while the 2026 one has a bowl shape of 240 degrees (with 120 degrees free of heavenly bodies). The bowl shape is easily imagined as the open tomb. Therefore, the 1999 to 2026 arc of time moves us from crucifixion to resurrection. All this, in addition to the much more positive horoscope of 2026 compared to 1999, leads me to suggest that we may soon be passing beyond the negative circumstances represented by the 1999 eclipse, which therefore means an improvement of relations between Russia and the West, an internationally co-ordinated battle against the worst effects of climate change, a renewed commitment to the human rights agenda at least in Europe and the U.S. (and other allied countries), and the restoration of the principles of the Enlightenment project. This I pray for and predict to occur within a very few years. We should certainly see a clear manifestation of this change by the time of the next U.S. and U.K. presidential and general elections.

Let it be!