8 April 2024 · Dallas

Four minutes for which the airports stopped

About forty-four million people lived inside the path of totality, and as many again travelled to it. Schools closed, hotels sold out a year ahead, and counties in Texas declared emergencies — over traffic.

The shadow made landfall near Mazatlán and crossed Mexico, thirteen US states and six Canadian provinces. The longest totality — four minutes twenty-eight seconds — fell in the Mexican state of Durango. For comparison, the 2017 maximum was two minutes forty-two.

Counties in Texas declared emergencies in advance — not because of the eclipse but because of millions of cars on roads built for tens of thousands. Schools closed. Airlines scheduled flights along the path.

The chart of that minute

Look at the first two lines after the ascendant. The Sun and the Moon stand on the very same degree of the very same sign, and even in the same house. That is all an eclipse is: a new moon is the Moon catching the Sun in longitude, and an eclipse is a new moon where the Moon also happens to sit at the right height for the shadow to reach Earth.

Mercury was retrograde that day, at the twenty-fifth degree of Aries, right beside both luminaries.

How this reads

The Nine of Swords is the card of night-time dread: not about the event but about how it looks at three in the morning. Fitting, since eclipses have always frightened people in exactly that way — not by what happened but by what it seemed to be. The astronomy answers precisely: nothing happened, the Moon simply passed between Earth and Sun, as it does monthly.

The numbers check out, the card came from an algorithm, and a reading stays a reading.

All articles