Insights for the Month of Taurus

April / May 2020

I tend to think that the issue for Taurus is the struggle between being and doing. And so… 

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.

-Wendell Berry from Standing By Words

April 19
Sun enters Taurus: 10:45 AM EDT:
Taurus is about real things, their smell and taste, color and shape, texture and sound. The doors of perception, the senses, are found here. Although it’s long been forgotten in our world of hyper consumption, these sense doors are ground zero for our values. We like the way some things look and feel but not others. These preferences underlie the innate integrity of our senses which has little to do with greed or grasping. It just is what it is.
In the current unreality of our enforced confinement one positive side effect might be more being, less doing, a reawakening of simple pleasure and some awareness of core values. Our collective values create our economy. Uranus in the sign of Taurus, is the planet of deep change, revolutionary change, inevitable change. It has been hard at work crashing the system. There never was a better time to ‘be the change’, the one you want to see. 

April 21 
Sun square Saturn
Fresh out of the gate the Sun in Taurus encounters obstacles, restrictions, limits and the seeming impossibility of dealing adequately with them. Never have we needed to remind ourselves more that if it’s in the way, it is the way. Take that in fully before you make effort. We need resolve and commit to tackling the obstacles of the present moment. We waste a lot of energy looking for someone to blame and worrying about the future. Of course and however… if there are issues to straighten out you would surely see them today. Everything is easier to accomplish after the New Moon. Coming right up.

April 22
New Moon: 3 degrees of Taurus: 22:25 EDT
And a Happy Earth Day to you!
This new Moon is positioned neatly between the square to Saturn (yesterday) and the upcoming conjunction with Uranus on the 26th. Our intentions need to acknowledge the overwhelming circumstances that we are facing as well as our ingenuity and potential for dealing with them. Given that this is the territory, and that you, most likely, have accepted the mission, what is your intention toward moving through the next month? Not your pie-in-the-sky intention, not your longing to ascend and have it all behind (although we all would have it behind us). Rather your intention on the most practical of levels. The actual New Moon in the eastern time zone comes late in the day. There is time to identify, hone and fashion our intentions. Savor the process. Prepare today for that which you will declare tomorrow. One thing we have is time. Use it to be as present as you are able to the moment you are inhabiting. So says, Taurus! 

April 25-26
Mercury square Pluto and Jupiter
Every misunderstanding; especially in these times of unknown outcomes; every thought, word or idea that falls outside of its intended target is an opportunity (honestly!) to look in another direction, over here, not over there. To see the inner workings, the powerful projections and the deeper problems. Be willing to go beyond the field of right or wrong.  It won’t be the last time. Practice makes perfect. Or at least creates aptitude. We are learning so much in these strange days.

April 26
Sun conjunct Uranus
Pluto stationery retrograde
Fear and the rapidly changing world we are facing are riding like highwaymen, together through the strangely constructed days and the deep dives we take at night in sleep or wakefulness. Are we melting like candles or changing our notion of what matters? It seems our society is in a period of vivid, surprising, and most likely, enduring transformation: Call it quantum change. Uranus likes that. It is everywhere. It’s a revelation of sorts when we come to understand that being is always possible even when doing is not. To do this, to allow this we must be radically rooted, or rooted in the radical awareness of some kind of essential beingness. Pluto likes that.

April 27
Mercury enters Taurus
When the mind is anchored in the body we think with our common sense(s). In this way we are less likely to subvert reality with denial. 

April 28
Mercury square Saturn
A lot happens, often on an inner level, when obstacles appear. We can simply throw up our hands and stamp our feet in frustration or we can wrestle and wrangle with our problems which builds a kind of mental muscle.

April 30
Mercury conjunct Uranus
If you were hoping for an Aha! moment now’s your chance. It may come via a smell or a sense, when you least expect it. Perhaps we need to ‘rejoice in the things that are present; (as) all else is beyond …’.

May
Venus will be retrograde in May and June. Maybe you have seen her in the western sky after sunset. Maybe you have cast your wishes in her direction. Her journey reminds us we have a lot to lose. That every loss changes us. That life goes on and that loss and gain are inextricably connected. As the poet said: Loss is the great lesson even as she reminds us that happiness, when it’s done right is a kind of holiness…

May 3
Venus square Neptune
Many of the things we believe we must have are more about feeding addictions than true necessities. So be it. Humans have addictive tendencies. Opening to the awareness of this is the best way to change it.

May 4
Sun conjunct Mercury
Stand your ground. Be as fully present as possible. Observe your body, its posture and the myriad of felt senses within. There is much going on in and on this body of yours. Best to be with it than with out it.

May 5
North Node enters Gemini (South Node in Sagittarius)1:50 AM EDT
Our karmic task shifts from the issue of responsibility (although this is always important) to that of belief. The story we tell ourselves about what we are experiencing truly matters. We have witnessed firsthand the consequences of the ways in which governments all over the world have managed the handling of Covid19, for better and worse. Most of us have done what they asked in an attempt to protect as many as possible. Now and for about a year we must meet our challenges as we balance faith against opinion. We must try to avoid the pitfalls of dogmatic fundamentalisms, to listen with a good ear – as unbiased as possible. This is how we turn fear into wisdom. Don’t believe anything just because someone said so. Ask yourself a lot of questions.

May 7
Full Moon: 17 degrees Scorpio: 06:45 AM EDT
Mercury sextile Neptune
We’ve been through a lot. There is more to come. Everything is changing. Transforming. Becoming. Talk is cheap, yet birds sing in the morning, waking the sun and we are more aware of caring for and about each other than we used to be. The nature of time itself seems to be changing. Possibly we are spending less of it. It feels less like a commodity than it used to. Our metaphors are changing. We are spending less time in favor of inhabiting each moment. Presence at any time of day or night dispels fear.  

May 9 & 10
Mercury trine Pluto and Jupiter
What are you learning? What do you feel called to investigate? No matter what the subject matter you are learning about yourself and the sustainability of your life. Are you transforming your fears or are they transforming you?

May 10 (continued)
Sun sextile Neptune
Open your senses to the world around you. Imagine you are not a separate entity but a part of a great whole. An ingredient in the soup of the universe. Alive for now. Connected. Perhaps this does not require imagination but rather a willingness to stop imagining yourself as apart from the rest of life.

May 11
Saturn stationery retrograde
Mercury square Mars
Mercury enters Gemini
Things are what they are. We cannot ignore the conditions of our existence. Frustration is part of these conditions. Things are not exactly the way we want them to be. Some of our social distancing has been rich in solitude or even connection with those in our household, a gift. Other times, more akin to kind of privileged imprisonment. The situation itself did not change but our feelings did, from moment to moment. That’s why we call them e-motions. They are always in motion. Stamp your feet, butt your head and snort if you must (Taurus style) even as you know and will come to experience: Nothing lasts. Everything changes.

May 12
Mercury trine Saturn
Having joined the airy planets (Saturn in Aquarius and Venus in Gemini), Mercury, the messenger encounters the rock and the hard places of reality. Be curious. There is always something to learn. It’s a good starting point for a more beautiful world

May 13
Venus stationery retrograde  conjunct Vesta
Mars enters Pisces
Ancient peoples looked to the heavens as a way to understand our situations and predicaments down here on Earth. They innately understood that everything in nature is a reflection of everything else; that the messages in the stars were largely about our ability to receive them. As humans have developed technologically we have all but obliterated the ‘above’ in the sense of actually reading what might be written there. Between light pollution and space travel our relationship to the cosmos has profoundly altered.
Still, Venus does her dance. Five time in eight years she appears to descend into the underworld which is to say she vanishes from the sky as she is pulled toward the fiery rays of the Sun. This journey is a prototype for grief and loss as well as the inevitable return to a life transformed on account of what has been lost and the determination to live into what remains.
Venus will be retrograde from today until June 25th. She is still the evening star but somewhere between late May and about June 6 she will conjunct the Sun and disappear. Then she will return as morning star, reminding us that we are still here, those of us that are still here. That life goes on and we must focus on the things that matter which may have changed since first She went retrograde.
So here, in the first leg of the journey, what do you need to let go of? What has been taken from you? How can you grieve your losses? Relinquish is a good word for this part of the retrograde. We are, many of us, grieving the loss of people we love, of a way of life and the expectations inherent in that way of life. Venus in the first half of the retrograde is permission to grieve. Permission to feel the losses. In Gemini she reminds us to avoid things that distract us from our feelings. She asks us to be curious about what we might learn in the realm of descent.
Mars, the troublemaker, will be more significant at the beginning of June. But there is a promise in his ingress to Pisces of an ocean of feeling wanting to crash on the shore.

May 14
Jupiter stationery retrograde
Jupiter’s station, so close to Venus’ must be interpreted in this light. True to the nature of its fall in the sign of Capricorn, Jupiter certainly slowed or maybe stopped travel as we know it, in its tracks. Now what? Some of us are disappointed because we can’t show the kids the Eiffel tower or visit the shamans in Peru. Others are terrified because they can’t cross the border to safety. Some of us are sad because we can’t visit our relatives in faraway places. Jupiter, the judge, is harsh when it’s not beneficial. In Capricorn it wants us to acknowledge the costs of travel. Not just the financial cost but the cost to the planet. In 2020 Capricorn is struggling to find its way back to its original mandate which is ‘The right use of resources’. So consider the notion of travel: Astrologically travel is part of a larger construct including culture, higher learning, religion and philosophy. It’s also about our ability to envision the farther shore. How has travel restriction changed your expectations? Most important, what do you see on your horizon?

May 15
Sun trine Pluto
Mercury sextile Chiron
Where do you feel empowered? Each of us has a place, small or large, where we feel this. It’s not something to be acquired, like stamps in a collection. It’s something to express and in that expression to find a sense of constant becoming and transformation as we allow (or block) the Great Spirit to express within and through us. This what Life does.

May 17
Sun trine Jupiter
Whether you’re home alone or spending lots of time with your near and, hopefully, dear the authentic expression of self continues to be the theme of the moment. From the ashes of our time inside will come many things. Some good, some bad. But you, and you alone are the One who lives your life in the here and now. I leave you, this month, with a reflection from a book titled: Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.

“I wondered whether the stars can see us and if they can, what might they think of us? Do they really        know our future? Do they feel sorry for us? For being stuck in the present time, with no chance to              move? But it also crossed my mind that in spite of all, in spite of our fragility and ignorance, we have        an incredible advantage over the stars – it is for us that time works, giving us a major opportunity to          transform the suffering, aching world into a happy and peaceful one. It’s the stars that are imprisoned        in their own power, and they cannot really help us they merely design the nets, and on cosmic looms        they weave the warp thread that we must complete with our own weft. P.404