Forever's Gonna Start Tonight: Coming Down From the Total Solar Eclipse

An astrological look at “Total Eclipse of the Heart”

The Total Solar Eclipse finally happened earlier today. Although I was not in the path of totality here in Oregon, I got a Pac-Man-esque partial view using eclipse glasses. I actually saw more this time than I did at the October 2023 Solar Eclipse when I was in the path of totality but thwarted by cloudy weather.

I still have electricity and internet access. As I expected, the fearmongering leading up to the Solar Eclipse was revealed to be just as ridiculous and overblown as the campy 1980s imagery of the “Total Eclipse of the Heart” music video.

I started looking at “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler in relation to today’s eclipse thanks to a Facebook meme shared by Co-Op Records of Moline. It turns out that the music video is 5:33 long — and, if you click around on the map at timeanddate.com, you’ll see duration of totality varies by location. I wonder whether the meme was recycled from a previous eclipse; New York Post reported that the song had a 500% increase in sales leading up to the August 2017 Solar Eclipse.

A unique connection between “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and today’s eclipse is that “Total Eclipse of the Heart” is part of the album Faster Than The Speed Of Night, which was released on April 8, 1983, in the United Kingdom according to Wikipedia. The album is therefore having its 41st birthday today.

In the United States, the album came out in September 1983. However, the US release of the single “Total Eclipse of the Heart” took place the day after a Solar Eclipse in June 1983.

If you’re new to astrology, here’s how to tell by looking at a natal chart whether the person in question was born, or the event in question happened, close to an eclipse. Look for the North Node, and then see whether the Sun is either close to it (conjunct the North Node) or across the chart from it (opposite the North Node, conjunct the South Node). Then, look for whether the Moon is either close to the Sun (New Moon) or across the chart from it (Full Moon). A Solar Eclipse is a New Moon close to the North Node or South Node, and a Lunar Eclipse is a Full Moon with the Sun on one node and the Moon on the other.

The chart for the US release of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” is visibly close to an eclipse by this measure. The Sun at 21° Gemini is close to the North Node at 25° Gemini. The time of the song’s release is not known, but a noon chart has the Moon in Cancer — just past a conjunction with the Sun in late Gemini.

Sure enough, Googling [solar eclipse June 1983] brings up Wikipedia’s confirmation that there was a Solar Eclipse on June 11, 1983.

Much like today’s Solar Eclipse was complicated by the presence of Chiron near the North Node, the June 1983 Solar Eclipse had Mars near the Sun and North Node in Gemini and Neptune near the South Node in Sagittarius.

Bonnie Tyler herself, time of birth unknown, has a Sun-Mars conjunction in Gemini, T-squared by her natal North Node in Pisces and South Node in Virgo. She wasn’t born at an eclipse, but she was born halfway between eclipse seasons. Her natal vibe therefore resonates with the June 1983 Solar Eclipse.

Tyler turned 32 three days before the eclipse. “Total Eclipse of the Heart” has been her biggest hit to date. An eclipse close to one’s birthday can be a catalyst for powerful positive change.

An eclipse close to one’s birthday can also cause upheaval in more negative ways. My father turned 29 on the same day “Total Eclipse of the Heart” was released in the US, so a day after the eclipse. He spent a big chunk of the mid-1980s experiencing a medical crisis — achalasia, a malfunction of the esophagus. This was ultimately resolved with surgical intervention shortly before I was born in 1986, although it likely contributed to the esophageal cancer that killed him 33 years later. I don’t know the exact date that he became ill, but sometime between his birthday in 1983 and his birthday in 1984 seems like a reasonable estimate. The June 1983 Solar Eclipse opposed Neptune, the planet of spirituality, and that makes a lot of sense for what I was often told about his medical crisis provoking him to go on a spiritual quest.

Today’s Solar Eclipse is trine my Leo Sun, so it has been pretty good for me. I have recently enjoyed a big influx of new subscribers from being mentioned in a post by

Frederick Woodruff

. That pushed me over the 100-subscriber mark, which I find wildly exciting.

Meanwhile, all 121 of us still live in a world where Jean Nolan recently speculated to his 539,000 subscribers that the Moon might be an artificial structure controlled by “dark forces.”

Why do that many people feel compelled to completely give up on reality? Obsessing over the Solar Eclipse clearly filled a need for Jean Nolan, others like him, and their frighteningly numerous followers. Now that the eclipse has come and gone, they can’t pin their anxieties on that anymore.

As Bonnie Tyler howled, forever’s gonna start tonight. The poorly hidden hope that some wildly dramatic event would lift us out of the malaise of routine life is gone for the time being. Tonight, we are back to our problems — seemingly forever.

I’m not saying that eclipses are insignificant. Astrologers can often tie things like relationship drama, job losses, health concerns, and deaths in the family to eclipses when they study transits to people’s birth charts.

No one gets through life without things like relationship drama, job losses, health concerns, and deaths in the family, though. If that type of stuff doesn’t affect you personally this eclipse season, it probably will some other eclipse season.

People generally don’t want to experience pain. Perhaps placing blame on shadowy elites so powerful that they might have even manufactured the Moon seems easier than accepting that pain is a normal part of human life. Today’s eclipse conjunct Chiron, however, might be asking us to consider whether our attempts to escape pain are only creating bigger problems.

To speak to Jean Nolan’s concern about elites, I will say there are people in positions of power who have made bad decisions — and sometimes the worst bad decisions have come from a place of sincerely believing it is possible to eradicate pain on a collective level. However, incompetent and corrupt leadership is just another one of those problems that always has been and always will be with us. I don’t think those of us living today are unique in having that experience, although we may know more about it than our ancestors did thanks to the internet.

The mythical Chiron was originally immortal. However, he ultimately insisted that he be allowed to die because he had suffered a painful wound that he wasn’t able to heal.

Why would anyone want all the ups and downs of mortal life? There isn’t an easy answer, and I don’t think it’s good for one person to force their own answer on another. I do think we need to start asking the question before we ask another celestial alignment for a level of redemption it’s not equipped to deliver.