Eclipses don’t just happen in the sky as single events. As Bernadette Brady points out, “Each eclipse is a member of a family and each family has characteristics. They belong to larger patterns called Saros cycles and those cycles have a beginning and therefore a graph for the time of this beginning, the first eclipse”. This entire cycle may well take over twelve hundred years to play out, producing eclipses once every 18 years. We must keep in mind that eclipses always come in pairs. After the first of the pair takes place, the next one occurs about two weeks later.

There are many Saros cycles going on at any given time, so we have two to four solar eclipses a year, but these individual eclipses that occur in any one year will all come from different families, different Saros Series. For example, the cycle that produced the eclipse on Monday March 19, 2007 began in 1664 and has also produced eclipses on the following dates in the following degrees of the zodiac:

February 1971 – 6 Pisces —

March 1989 – 17 Pisces —

March 2007 – 28 Pisces —

This solar eclipse is known as Saros Series 9 New North (Jansky eclipse naming system) and on March 19, 2007 it occurred at 28 degrees Pisces. So take a look at your chart and see if you have anything in the latest moving degrees. If so, it would have had a much more personalized meaning to you, as you would have been actively engaged with an issue or problem that you were dealing with in your life.

The birth chart of Saros Series 9 New North, born August 21, 1664, has a Venus-Mercury conjunction at the Mars/Pluto midpoint and Mars at the Uranus/Pluto midpoint in his natal chart. Thus, this entire series has a strong physical component in its expression. This can range from struggling with a new sport or your first yoga class to minor accidents, so if it’s an aspect of a theme on your chart, then perhaps you considered how you could use that energy more positively.

Another example is the very recent Annular Solar Eclipse of February 7, 2008 at 18 degrees Aquarius in Saros Series 10 North and the Total Lunar Eclipse of February 21, 2008 at 2 degrees Virgo.

Bernadette Brady, in her book on the subject of Predictive Astrology, says of this Eclipse series that there is a strong emphasis on communication. Although setbacks can occur with frustrations and restrictions. Energy is generally low and depleted, so it’s a good time to take life easy and not take too much on board at one time.

The effects of any eclipse usually last about six months or so. But they can also be felt about a month before it happens.