August 2026
Eclipse Season and the Vestibule Gap
Plato said time is the moving image of eternity. I don’t think that implies time moves in a straight line—quite the opposite—but if it did, let’s imagine the metaphor of a train.
With its many cars, a passenger train has a vestibule between each car, allowing passengers to pass from car to car.
I loved trains when I was a kid! My favorite part was that vestibule space between the cars. The gap! I always experienced a sudden moment of anticipation as I prepared to step between worlds. It always felt like a liminal space. A space where you could only temporarily linger.
My favorite part about entering “the gap” was the push button that opened the electric doors. I loved the feeling of slamming the button with my hand—the door would whoosh open, and you would enter that intensely loud and ominous space, the tracks whipping by beneath your feet. As a kid, I always found it exhilarating and a little scary.
If we consider the time of year when eclipses arise, it too has a similar feeling of passing through that vestibule gap. Exhilaration and excitement mixed with trepidation, anxiety, and a sense that what holds this all together is fragile and unknown. A building sense of anticipation as you know where you are about to go is temporary, but moves you into a different space.
A solar eclipse is when the Sun and Moon are conjoined and beginning a new synodic cycle. They open doors and will often represent the transition into a new phase of life, or dramatic shifts and changes around solar themes and figures.
The lunar eclipse that follows the solar eclipse happens on the full Moon in the same synodic cycle.
A lunar eclipse will often close doors. The fruits of the synodic cycle peak, and as you step into a new environment in life, the patterns of past experiences are shed. Lunar eclipses will often bring dramatic changes to the environment where they occur in one’s birth chart, or significant changes to lunar themes and figures.
Whether time actually moves in a straight line like a train is up for debate in my book, but if it did, those doorways, with their vestibules between worlds, would be akin to the seasonal eclipses we all experience twice a year.
Eclipses are dramatic and exciting times, and I like to keep this quote in mind as a touchstone during this time of year. Maria says in The Sound of Music, “When the Lord closes a door, somewhere he opens a window.”
I hope whatever doors (or windows) are opening or closing for you this eclipse season, you can enter the unknown with trust and excitement, knowing it is just a temporary vestibule to the next door of life.
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If you find yourself standing in one of those vestibule spaces this eclipse season—between what was and what is to come—Adam offers personal astrology readings to help you explore the symbolism of the moment and what may be unfolding in your life.