Today, at the end of the afternoon, the sun sets over Portugal with a piece missing. Lisbon loses 94 per cent of it. Porto, 98. Bragança, 99.94. And along a narrow strip of villages pressed against the border, north and east of Bragança, it loses all of it: at Rio de Onor the moon covers the sun completely for about 35 seconds.

This is worth saying carefully, because both of the versions in circulation are wrong. It is not true that the eclipse is total in Portugal, and it is not true that it is merely partial. The band where the sun disappears entirely enters the peninsula through Galicia, crosses northern Spain to the Balearics, and its limit passes just inside the northeastern corner of Portuguese soil. Bragança, the city, falls outside by 0.06 per cent of obscuration. Twenty kilometres further north, it falls inside.

For anyone going out to look, in mainland Portuguese time:

  • Rio de Onor, total, 35 seconds. Begins 18:34, maximum 19:30, ends 20:23. The sun sets at 20:31.
  • Bragança, 99.94 per cent. Begins 18:34, maximum 19:31, ends 20:24. Sunset 20:31.
  • Chaves, 99.58 per cent. Begins 18:34, maximum 19:31, ends 20:24. Sunset 20:34.
  • Melgaço, 99.53 per cent. Begins 18:33, maximum 19:30, ends 20:24. Sunset 20:38.
  • Braga, 98.82 per cent. Begins 18:34, maximum 19:31, ends 20:25. Sunset 20:37.
  • Porto, 98.21 per cent. Begins 18:35, maximum 19:32, ends 20:25. Sunset 20:38.
  • Lisbon, 94.45 per cent. Begins 18:39, maximum 19:36, ends 20:29. Sunset 20:35.
  • Faro, 92.66 per cent. Begins 18:42, maximum 19:39, ends 20:31. Sunset 20:27.
  • Funchal, 77.43 per cent. Begins 18:49, maximum 19:47, ends 20:40. Sunset 20:56.

Note the Algarve: in Faro the sun goes down before the eclipse is over, dipping below the horizon still bitten. Across most of the country maximum falls with the sun about ten degrees above the horizon, very low, which makes an unusual sight and also a hazard. A sun that is 94 per cent covered burns the retina exactly like a whole one. Certified filter, or projection onto a wall. Never with the naked eye, not through sunglasses, not through old X-ray film.

The greatest eclipse is not here. It happens at 18:45 Lisbon time over the Atlantic at 65°13' north and 25°15' west, southwest of Iceland, where night lasts a little over two minutes with the sun 26 degrees high. The shadow comes down from the Arctic, cuts across Greenland and Iceland, crosses the ocean, and reaches the peninsula with the sun already very low. In Oviedo totality lasts 1 minute 51 seconds with the sun at 10 degrees. In Palma it lasts 1 minute 39 with the sun at 2.6 degrees, almost touching the sea.

The essentials, if you want nothing else

The delineation follows, with its sources in view, but this is what it comes to:

  1. An eclipse is not a blow that lands, it is an oven cooling slowly. The image is Cardano’s, and it is why these authors never read an eclipse as news for a single day. For this one the old rule gives about one year and ten months, so into the middle of 2028.
  2. This eclipse has a definite subject, and its owner is strong. It falls in Leo, which is the sun’s own sign, so the planet governing it is the sun itself, at home. The sun’s affairs are authority, whoever is in charge, the father, whatever occupies the centre of a group, whatever shows itself. What goes dark today is the owner of the house, inside his own house.
  3. Leo is a fixed sign, and for fixed signs the tradition reads foundations and buildings. Not what falls out of the sky, but what was already settled, what was built to last, what nobody questions because it is simply there.
  4. The scale is collective, not personal. Cardano is explicit: eclipses work more forcibly on cities, provinces and kingdoms than on private persons. Anyone asking an eclipse for a forecast of their own private life is asking the instrument for something it does not measure.
  5. It is deep in obscuration and weak in position. On the scale by which Cardano ranks the houses of a chart by strength, this eclipse falls precisely in the range he calls least efficacious. Both facts count at once.
  6. And it is late to start. By Ptolemy’s rule, an eclipse that happens on the western side of the sky, as this one does over Portugal, begins to show only towards the end of the first year, with the weight in the final part of the period.
  7. The percentage of covered sun is a measurement, not a traveller’s curiosity. It is the ruler the tradition uses to estimate the extent of what is read. Which is why Portugal does not have one single reading today: it runs from a sliver at 100 per cent in Trás-os-Montes down to 77 per cent in Madeira.
  8. There is one point where these texts are harsh, and it is the exact degree. I quote it below rather than hide it, with the three limits the same books put on it.

And for each reader, the only question that is useful here: the degree is 20°02' Leo, and what matters is which house of your own chart that is, and what it has been asking for.

What an eclipse is, for this tradition

Worth starting here, because the common idea is that an eclipse is a bad omen, and that is not what the texts say.

Girolamo Cardano, physician and astrologer of Milan, wrote more than a thousand aphorisms in the sixteenth century, and Lilly published a selection of them in English two centuries later. One of them describes the mechanism in three layers, and it is the best short description I know:

An Eclipse has a threefold effect, first powerful by reason of the conjunction or opposition on which it happens; second general, because it slowly cools, in which respect it is extended for a long time. Thirdly power which it has from the Lord of the place wherein it happens and other positions at that time.

It slowly cools. Not a blow, an oven going out. That is why these authors never read an eclipse as the news of the day and always as a matter of years.

And there is a second aphorism of Cardano’s that ought to be printed on every article written about eclipses:

Eclipses operate more forcibly on Cities, Provinces, and Kingdoms than on Particular persons of private condition, or even upon Kings and Princes, for their effects rather respect the multitude.

So the very author who catalogued the effects warns that the scale of an eclipse is collective, and that a private life is not the stage on which it is read. That is a limit written from inside the tradition, not a modern caution added from outside. Cardano sets another and even more explicit brake: no eclipse whatsoever can threaten scarcity or plague to the whole earth, and no pestilence lasts above four years in one place. These texts have a ceiling.

The lord of this eclipse is the sun, and it is at home

The first of Cardano’s eclipse aphorisms is also the most practical:

In an Eclipse it is necessary to consider the strength of the Planet then ruling, for his significations will chiefly appear.

Applying it is simple, and this year the result is unusual. The eclipse falls in Leo, and Leo is the sun’s sign. So the planet governing this eclipse is the sun itself, standing in the sign that belongs to it. In the language of the art it is in domicile, the old word for a planet in its own house, with authority over the ground it stands on. And it is daytime, which adds its triplicity, a second way of being well placed.

That changes the tone of the reading. An eclipse whose lord is weak, exiled or in fall gives a reading of something coming apart. Here it is the opposite: what goes dark is the owner of the house, inside his own house. The significations that appear, says Cardano, will be the sun’s, and the sun’s are authority, what governs, what shows itself, the father, the king, whatever plays the part of the centre in a group. This is not a diffuse eclipse. It is an eclipse with a subject.

Beside the sun, in the same sign, are three more bodies: the moon, which is the part doing the covering; Mercury, with no dignity where it stands, what the tradition calls peregrine, like someone passing through a place where he has neither house nor rights; and Jupiter, the greater benefic, moving direct. Four bodies in one sign, which concentrates the reading instead of spreading it.

A fixed sign, and a degree the tradition does not spare

The mundane authors classified first by the kind of sign. William Ramesey, in the seventeenth century, sums the rule up: an eclipse in the equinoctial signs shows its effects in religious things; in the tropics, in the air, laws and manners of men; in fixed signs, in foundations and edifices; in common signs, in mankind and kings.

Leo is a fixed sign. Foundations and buildings. It is a less spectacular reading than an eclipse is expected to give and, precisely for that, a more interesting one: what was already settled, what was built to last, what nobody questions because it is already there. The register of things discovered underneath, not of things falling from above.

The same Ramesey then descends to the degree, dividing each sign into three faces of ten degrees. Today’s eclipse falls at 20 degrees and 2 minutes of Leo, which is two degrees inside the third face. And here the tradition is not kind. For the third face of Leo, Ramesey writes: captivities, slaughters, rapines, and the profaning of holy and sacred houses.

I quote it because it is what is written, and leaving it out would pretend the tradition is gentler than it is. But three things follow, and all of them come from inside the same books.

The first is that this is the language of a world of kingdoms, sieges and harvests, written by men who watched a third of a city die of plague. When Ramesey writes “slaughters” he writes about the material of his century, and his list reads as a catalogue of what happened then, not as a timetable.

The second is that Cardano, in his fourteenth aphorism, says eclipses in fiery signs, and Leo is fiery, signify wars and slaughters, but that eclipses in earthy signs give drought and want of bread, in watery signs too much rain, and in airy signs winds and seditions. All four possibilities are grave. A system in which no option is good is really saying that an eclipse is a weighty event, not that this eclipse is worse than the others.

The third is the most concrete, and the one that weighs most here. Cardano ranks the houses of the chart by strength: an eclipse in the fourth house is stronger and more efficacious than in the eighth or the twelfth, and in the ascendant more than in the ninth or eleventh. Seen from anywhere in the peninsula, this eclipse falls exactly in the range he classes as the least efficacious, on the western side, between the seventh and eighth houses. By Cardano’s own scale, this is an eclipse deep in obscuration and weak in position.

The reckonings of time, and two sources that agree

There is an old rule for how long the reading of an eclipse extends, and the interesting thing is that it appears identically in two authors fourteen centuries apart.

Ptolemy, in the second book of the Tetrabiblos, writes that in a solar eclipse the events last as many years as the hours of the eclipse’s duration. Cardano says the same in other words: an eclipse of the moon extends its effects as many months, and of the sun so many years, as it continues hours.

Over Portugal, from first to last contact, today’s eclipse lasts one hour and fifty minutes, that is 1.83 hours. By the rule, about one year and ten months, which carries the reading into the middle of 2028. I use the full visible duration, not that of totality, which here barely exists.

Ptolemy adds a second reckoning, for the onset, and that one depends on where in the sky the eclipse takes hold. If it happens on the eastern side, it begins in the first four months. If at the top of the sky, in the second group of four months. If on the western side, in the third group of four months, with the weight in the final part of the period. Over Portugal the sun is eclipsed in the west and ten degrees above the horizon, so the third case applies: a late onset, towards the end of the first year, and the weight towards the end.

The ruler is the percentage

One piece remains, the one that links the times at the top to all of this, and it is what surprised me most when I went to the books.

Ptolemy has the judgement begin with visibility, examining “particularly those most easily observed”. An eclipse that cannot be seen from a place is, for this method, an eclipse that says little to that place. And when he reaches the question of how much of the population is covered, he answers that it is read “by the extent of the obscuration of the eclipses and by the positions relative to the place of the eclipse”.

The extent of the obscuration. The old method, with no ephemerides to the second and no shadow maps, had you measure how much of the disc disappeared and use that as the scale of what is read. The percentage was not a traveller’s curiosity. It was a quantity.

By that ruler, Portugal today holds both extremes at once. A sliver in Trás-os-Montes with the whole reading, half a minute of it, and Madeira at 77 per cent, clearly more outside. Between them, the whole mainland above 92 per cent. For this method that variation is not noise. It is the information.

The rest of the sky, for anyone who wants the detail

Anyone who reads charts will find the following. Sun and moon meet at 20°02' and 20°06' of Leo, a partile conjunction, the name given when the distance is minutes and not degrees: seven minutes of arc in this case. Mercury is at 5°07' Leo and Jupiter at 9°33', direct.

Outside Leo, the two pieces the tradition usually weighs in an eclipse are both weak. Mars at 0°55' Cancer, in fall, the worst of places after exile. Saturn at 14°30' Aries, retrograde, also in fall. Venus is well placed, in her own house at 5°53' Libra, but moving towards an opposition to Saturn that does not yet close.

Seen from Lisbon, with Alcabitius houses, the ascendant is at 17°51' Capricorn and the midheaven at 10°55' Scorpio. The eclipse happens above the western horizon, in the seventh house, 3°22' from the cusp of the eighth. I give both numbers because the traditional five-degree rule, which this house of astrology applies, reads a body within five degrees of the next cusp as already in the next house, and therefore in the eighth. Anyone opening the chart in other software will see the seventh. Either way it is the same range Cardano classes as least efficacious.

On fixed stars, one detail that is easy to get wrong. No bright star is conjunct the degree of the eclipse. Regulus, the heart of the Lion, stands today at 0°11' Virgo, ten degrees ahead of the sun, far too far. But the moon’s south node is at 29°50' Leo, which leaves it 21 minutes of arc from Regulus, and the node is not just any piece: it is the piece that makes a lunation an eclipse. The tradition gives Regulus the nature of Mars, and several authors add Jupiter.

Mars and Jupiter are, precisely, the two lords Ptolemy gives to the European quarter. The passage is literal: the European quadrant, in the northwest of the inhabited world, is similar to the northwest triangle, “Aries, Leo and Sagittarius”, and is governed by the lords of that triangle, Jupiter and Mars. Today’s eclipse falls in Leo, one of the three signs Ptolemy assigns to this part of the world. Of the two lords, one stands inside the eclipsed sign and the other is in fall.

What stays open

Two things, and I would rather say them than pretend the work closed.

The method asks for what I do not have. Ptolemy has cities judged by the chart of their foundation and by the midheaven of the nativities of those who govern them. For Lisbon that is not a reckoning done from memory, and the foundation dates in circulation do not have the rigour the method asks for.

And on the sliver of totality in Trás-os-Montes, a technical warning. The figures are mine, computed with this site’s own engine, and the edge of the shadow at the scale of metres depends on the profile of the mountains on the moon’s limb, which no ordinary engine models. Anyone travelling to see totality should trust the specialist maps and not me.

And for the reader

There is the note Lilly leaves in Christian Astrology, which passes from kingdoms to persons: the sign of an eclipse falling on one of the angles of a natal chart, and above all on the ascendant, is something he reads with great caution. Not as a sentence. As caution. And Cardano, as we saw, warns that the scale of these readings is the multitude and not the private person.

With those two reservations made, one question remains that is useful and is not fortune telling. The degree is 20°02' Leo. Where does that degree fall in your chart, which house is that, and what has that house been asking for these past months? Today, across almost the whole country, light still passes above the moon. The old method counts on that. It measures how much passed, and out of that measure it makes the rest.