Happening opposite to the American Sun, the eclipse on July 5th is about the distribution of life and death within the empire that is the United States.

The lunar eclipse on July 5th is opposite to the Sun of the United States of America and Sirius, the dog star. This star, which sits at about 13º in Cancer, is a dog, a wolf, and a coyote.

In her book, Transits of Empire, Jodi Byrd quotes from Alexis de Toxqueville a supposed eyewitness account of the removal of Choctaw people from their land:

“The Indians had their families with them; and they brought in their train the wounded and sick, with children newly born, and old men upon the verge of death. They possessed neither tents nor wagons, but only their arms and some provisions. I saw them embark to pass the mighty river, and never will that solemn spectacle fade from my remembrance. No cry, no sob was heard amongst the assembled crowd; all were silent. Their calamities were of ancient date, and they knew them to be irremediable. The Indians had all stepped into the bark which was to carry them across, but their dogs remained upon the bank. As soon as these animals perceived that their masters were finally leaving the shore, they set up a dismal howl, and, plunging all together into the icy waters of the Mississippi, they swam after the boat.”

In her essay, The Companion Species Manifesto, Donna Haraway writes that:

“Dog people like to forget that dogs were also lethal guided weapons and instruments of terror in the European conquest of the Americas, as well as in Alexander the Great's paradigm-setting imperial travels. With combat history in Vietnam as an officer in the US marines, Akita breeder and dog writer John Cargill reminds us that before cyborg warfare, trained dogs were among the best intelligent weapons systems. And tracking hounds terrorized slaves and prisoners, as well as rescued lost children and earthquake victims.”

America is a dog nation. America has settler dogs, associated with pioneer life, and police dogs, who are trained using the same tactics as old slave patrols, and indigenous dogs, many of whom were killed by settlers. Americans are dog obsessed. The way we talk about breeding and pureblood parentage carries over in how we talk about dogs.

The eclipse is an alignment of the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth. The Sun and the Moon, as the luminaries, are always about power. The Sun represents capital, sovereignty, and the center. The Moon represents money, the market, and the borders. The Sun is the diurnal body and the Moon is the nocturnal body. Achilles Mbembe writes that “The history of modern democracy is, at bottom, a history with two faces, and even two bodies—the solar body, on the one hand, and the nocturnal body, on the other. The major emblems of this nocturnal body are the colonial empire and the pro-slavery state—and more precisely the plantation and the penal colony.”

Mbembe defines necropolitics as the distribution of death from the cultural capital of power outwards. Kalindi Vore defines biopolitics as the extraction of living matter from the colonies towards the cultural capital of power. In a settler colonial nation, these colonies are not geographically external to the capital but also exist internally. In other words, the eclipse is about the distribution of life and death. Happening opposite to the American Sun, the eclipse on July 5th is about the distribution of life and death within the empire that is the United States.

Cancer

Remember that emotions are your wisdom. Your grief is your wisdom. You are allowed to let them exhaust you and allowed to exhaust them. When you are exhausted, building a network that cares and protects is as much a protest as marching in the streets. Follow your stomach about what is trustworthy and what is now. There will be police set ups and media scripts. You know what is true and false based on your experience only.

You will not feel comfortable this month. We all have a role to play and yours is to force the things obstructed by the status quo—you will need to force them because they are new. Make sure that you have plenty of support around you.

Leo

Go against the morality that was taught to you always. You will need to unlearn some of your own masochism to do so. Chances are, there are situations in which you punish yourself. Stand against penalization as a culture which teaches both innocence and criminalization, both preciousness and expendability, both savorism and victimization. What makes you American? Are you really okay with these things?

You don’t need to open a book, really. Just listen to people, sit with yourself, and remember your experiences. Put things in context and perspective. Develop wisdom over dexterity.

Virgo

There will be a lot of misinformation. There will be bots that push news out of the circuit. There will be police organizing deception and provocations. There will be whiteness as distraction. There will be things that happen and contexts that are lost.

Your job in all of this is to figure out where strategies should move us towards and with whom alliances should be with. Your job isn’t to figure out all of the facts but simply the best way forward—the best way to protect people and keep the movement strong. As you make judgment calls, you will need guidance from elders and ancestors. Make sure that you accept their stories.

Libra

You keep asking yourself where your place in the world is supposed to be but, the thing is, there’s no answer to that question in a settler colonial nation. Instead of focusing on who or where you’re supposed to be, just decide what your work will be. Decide what role you have to play in all of this. The roles that you are supposed to play will not be easy.

Learn to distinguish between the feelings that are meant to disappear and the feelings that will guide you around like a compass. Some feelings are just meant to happen and disappear while others are supposed to extend into the future. Integrating grief into your life is about knowing the difference.

Scorpio

Are you a good boy or a bad boy? This is a question about reframing your loyalty. Doubt is your intuition today. Doubt, in the biblical world of CS Lewis, was one of the more famous devils. That means that it is one of your strongest allies. Some systems of power can’t stand up to doubt. Your job is to plant seeds of doubt in the right places.

Practice knowingness over knowledge and practice criticality over cynicism. Practice opening windows rather than closing doors. Practice learning old instincts over learning new tricks. Practice internal validation over performing goodness or badness. Practice doubt over loyalty.

Sagittarius

It’s your job to hold still. Very still. Remember: we are interested in long term revolt. Audre Lorde said that a revolution is not a one time event. Think about what it means for revolution to sustain itself, for revolution to build itself, and for revolution to protect itself. Think about what it means for movement to grow. You understand that it is the slow emotions that end up mattering the most. Get yourself ready to engage and plan your own struggle on the scale of decades—not hours, not days, not weeks, not years, but decades.

Practice support and protection this month. A lot of the time, these things require very little action. A lot of the time, they are about hiding the right things and showing the right things. Your wisdom will tell you what to show or hide.

Capricorn

This isn’t supposed to be an easy time. It won’t be. You won’t feel comfortable and it will be up to you to build safety for yourself and the people that it is your duty to protect. When things are going hard, remember that you don’t have to do everything at once and that you do not have to earn hope when it is freely offered. Refrain from doing things the hard way just so that you feel like you are doing something. Things are hard enough. Look for the solutions that align.

It is more worth it for you to build revolution into the structure of your life rather than for you to create the need for sporadic, big, emotionally intense decisions every now and then. This will be more daunting and harder because it will require you to build modes of support and protection that don’t exist yet. It will require you to make decisions over accounting for reactions.

Aquarius

You have the special talent of leading without speaking over. Use that talent. Octavia Butler writes in Parable of the Talents that talents are meant to be used and not buried. She writes that using your talents to create false feelings of safety rather than change is a type of burial. When you bury your talents, you are burying the future self that you were meant to be.

Use the things that you are good at. Write, speak, gather, and infiltrate. Trust your awareness to know when the time is right. Build connections between the gaps that only you know exist. There are jobs here that only you can do. Find them.

Pisces

Don’t be afraid of messing up. This is about being uncomfortable. You will say the wrong things and spread the wrong information. Trust the people around you to tell you when you need to listen. Do the things that you are moved to do and spend the time needed later on to reflect on what you wish you knew. Heal your relationship to being called out by allowing it to happen and letting trust build through your response to the call out.

You don’t need to know everything in order to struggle with other people. You don’t need to be a saint to be a revolutionary. You don’t need to be a writer to be a storyteller. You don’t need to be an academic to be an alchemist. Stop thinking about the things that you don’t have. Stop holding yourself back from what you were meant to be.

Aries

Don’t be afraid of having feelings and for surviving. Let yourself feel all that you need to feel. Grief is a complex mixture of emotion and global grief is a weight of its own. Grief is anger and sadness but grief is also the need for other people. You will need to be around other people in July. You need people to hold you and protect you, to protest with you and feed you.

The grief that you feel isn’t just yours. There are so many other people with you. Don’t let yourself tell yourself that you’re not allowed to feel and don’t allow yourself to tell anyone else that either. There will be a lot of contradicting facts at play. All your knowledge is in your emotions. Feel them, understand them, and know them.

Taurus

Because you are talented at inspiration, you will need to listen and to listen well. Make sure you understand what strategies you are inspiring action towards.

In the history of political struggle in America, every action has been deliberate and every alliance strategic. Do not let any heartfelt feelings put people in danger. There will be false alliances and misinformation that is designed to stir people in the wrong direction. You are responsible for matters of the heart, which is only concerned with truth. Make sure that your truth protects people like an arm that wraps you up. Understand, also, that your truth isn’t for everyone—that there will be people who cannot hear you. Your job isn’t to make anyone listen. It’s to speak and to listen in the ways that you can.

Gemini

Understand that no one is going to protect you until we solve the problem that is foundational to this country, which is the problem that black death is built into white power. While this issue is still a problem, you will not have security, comfort, or safety. There is no way to protect yourself outside of asking for justice. Without justice, there is no safety.

Don’t fetishize cultural belonging. Citizenship is a property under whiteness. It is less important that you find belonging and safety in the way things have been than that you accept and shape change so that you have the means to protect yourself. Commit to actions that you can do that bring you closer to this goal. Move with people in all aspects.