Taurus New Moon 2010 ~ May 13

[SunKat]

The New Moon in Taurus occurs on Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 6:04pm Eastern/9:04pm Pacific time at 24* Taurus. We are living in the midst of the Garden of Delight days (in the Northern hemisphere) are getting warmer, plants and trees are flowering, life is good. More than anything else, Taurus loves the peace and security of these beautiful days of May.

Taurus the Bull is an ancient constellation, one of the first imagined by our ancestors as they looked to the heavens. Known in ancient times as The Bull of Light, the Taurean Mother Goddess takes the creative phallic energy of Aries, the spark of life which animates matter and the mind, and embodies it as the power, grace, fertility and strength of the Bull. Taurus is the Mother's response to that first creative spark of the cosmic fires of life, making it blossom here on Earth.

The Bull has been an important mythological and astrological symbol since the age of Taurus, from approximately 4,000 to 2,100 BC., the age of the builders of the Pyramids and Stonehenge. The cow-headed goddess Hathor was worshipped during this age as a goddess of fertility, joy and love. The Egyptians believed Taurus symbolized the perpetual return of life, and they identified this time of year with Osiris, the promise of eternal life. They believed the celestial Bull incarnated as the Apis Bull and associated it with Osiris and the Pharaoh, sharing its qualities of a courageous heart, great strength, virility, and fighting spirit.

The Persians also worshipped the Bull and their god Mithra, the protector of Truth, was the god of cattle, wide pastures and the waters that nourished them. In sacrificing the Bull, Mithra offered this potent life to his followers.

In Crete, they trained their priests and priestesses to be bull dancers, leaping and twirling over the bull's horns to claim the power and agility and strength of the bull. The great bull leapers of Crete learned to dance with the bulls. They learned how to express power, balance and skill in the ways of the physical world. That's the Taurus lesson.

Later during the age of Aries, warrior societies counted bulls as a major source of wealth, power and potency. There are stories of the famous bulls of Ireland - the Brown Bull of Ulster and the White Horned Bull of Connaught and the wars fought over them. Bulls are still sacred in India.

Power, peace, wealth, security, Spirit incarnate, the perpetual renewal of life, these are the gifts of Taurus. How will we use them?

Another image for Taurus is the Garden, from its association with Venus/Aphrodite, Inanna, Ishtar, Hathor and the Tarot Trump, The Empress. These goddesses of Heaven and Earth, love and sexuality, fertility and joy all share the Garden as their landscape of choice. These gardens are places of green growth and peace, joy and beauty; the Garden welcomes us as a shelter for our Spirits. The Garden celebrates both the beauty of the Earth and the beauty of human sexuality.

Taurus asks us to reclaim our bodies and sexuality from the frivolous and the pornographic. Taurus knows Sex is Sacred. Taurus tells us that our body is the temple of our Spirit. How conscious are you of your body, your instincts, your senses? Now is the time to let them awaken, just as the Earth is awakening from its winter sleep.

As we imagine the beauty, peace, completeness, and joy of the Garden, we have to understand it within the context of the upcoming cardinal T-square between Pluto, Uranus and Saturn, the planets of the 60s revolution. We have arrived at the point where we have to fight for our vision in the next few years. So spend time imagining how this eternal Garden might begin to incarnate for us.

Pluto in Capricorn is at the apex of this T-square, and this planet of transformation will transform our culture and our lives, whether we like it or not. But we can't get rid of something if we don't know what to replace it with. We have to have a vision for the future. We've got to get ourselves back to the Garden, as Joni Mitchell sang.

Within this context, the transformation of the culture will not go forward unless we develop a sense of our independence and unique purpose (when Uranus and Jupiter go into Aries in June) while at the same time standing firm for fairness between people and groups (Saturn in Libra). We are called to become revolutionaries, holding the vision of the Garden as one of beauty, peace and cooperation, instead of death and power and destruction.

In this next stage of the 60s revolution, we are called to expand our sexual, social, environmental and artistic freedom to the next level. And we need to do it right. The forces of fear are strong. The old forces of domination, wealth and power are fighting back. But we will progress. New life always wins out over what is old and decaying.

So how can we engage in the fight if we stand for peace? The answer is: We need to become Earth Warriors.

The Sabian symbol for the Sun and Moon at 24* Taurus is: An Indian warrior riding fiercely, human scalps hanging from his belt. The explanation given by Dane Rudhyar is the aggressiveness of human instincts when fighting for their earthly base of operation.

In expanding on this image, I believe it is an image of the Earth Warrior. As much as we want to be peaceful warriors, we need to understand viscerally that we are in a fight to the death, the death of patriarchy, the death of the corporate state which is helping to destroy our Mother, the Earth.

In Taurus, the sign of peaceful existence and fertility, why this image of a warrior geared for battle? Is it a call to arms or a call to the imagination? I'm voting on using our imagination to let this image fill us with purpose.

The Native American warriors were up against overwhelming power in their fight for freedom. And so are we, if we are to stop the voracious appetites that drive our corporate culture. But like the Na'vi in Avatar, sometimes we have to trust that the Spirit of Life is on our side. We have to understand that the Earth is also fighting for her life and we have to help.

We have to stand up for what we value and what we believe in. That means looking at our own Shadow and seeing where we are on auto-pilot regarding what we buy, what we need for a fulfilling life, and what we'd like our society to really BE like. We need to look at western society and decide what we think is worth fighting for.

Now about those scalps! I'm not advocating literally "scalping' anyone. But let's look at the symbolism of this image. To begin with, scalping was a portable proof or trophy of prowess in war. The Scythians, Visigoths, Franks and Anglo-Saxons all practiced it. But for the most part, we usually associate scalping with the frontier warfare in North America. Unfortunately, it was practiced by Native Americans, colonists, and frontiersmen over centuries of violent conflict.

But this image is of a warrior who already has scalps, proving his prowess in battle. A proven warrior! So where is the warrior within each of us? Where and when did we go to battle for our beliefs, our kids, our country, ourselves? We need to pull that part of ourselves up and know that we can fight this battle, with ourselves and our shadows and with our governments and our corporations.

Hair symbolizes our energy and vital life force as well as strength (remember Samson & Delilah?). Head hair also symbolizes higher powers and inspiration, as well as the power of thought.

So, symbolically, this Earth warrior has to steal away the strength or energy of the thinking behind our current value system, a system that really believes the Earth can be ravaged without repercussions and raped for our insatiable materialism. In taking scalps, we have to take on the old ways of thinking and defeat them, first within ourselves and then in our society. This old way of thinking keeps us from creating a more balanced society, one that values honor as well as compassion, peace as well as strength.

What kind of society poisons its own people? What society creates constant war and keeps everyone in fear? What kind of society consumes everything until it creates a Wasteland? If we are to become Earth warriors, we have to question these values openly in our actions, our words, and our beliefs. If we want a world in the future, we have to come back into balance with the world and with Earth, and that's what Taurus wants us to do.

As horrific as the Gulf oil spill is, the American people are seeing the devastation it is causing and hopefully will begin to understand that we need to re-adjust our priorities. Our modern society has become so divorced from the body, our senses and the Earth that we might just need the bad weather and the environmental damage to "get it'. The human species seems to wait until "death and destruction' is upon us to finally do something about it. Like a cancer survivor who reclaims a fierce connection to life having defeated death, we need to see and feel, taste and smell how we are killing the Earth. And then become Earth warriors in service to the whole Earth.

Mercury turns direct on May 11 at 3* Taurus. This Mercury retrograde period in the fixed Earth sign of Taurus has brought many things to light. From the volcano eruption halting fights to uncovering financial manipulations on Wall Street and corporate incompetence and greed in the Gulf disaster, Mercury is telling us its time to pay attention to the price we pay to our earth, both our bodily health and the Earth's health.

Mars in Leo is still in a wide square to both the Sun and Moon in Taurus, pushing us to take a stand and fight for our values.

Venus in Gemini is approaching its squares to Jupiter (May 17) and Uranus (May 19) in Pisces and Saturn retrograde in Virgo (May 18), shifting our perspective and priorities, helping us connect with others who share our values and vision.

This New Moon squares both Neptune in Aquarius (May 19) and Chiron in Pisces (May 21), insisting that we imagine and incarnate a new healing vision for our world. Everything in life is interconnected, and when life is destroyed in one part of the world, all of us sustain a loss.

I hope you're all ready for a wild ride, because the next few years will call us to our purpose and our destiny. Start now at this new Moon to imagine the world you want to live in and you want to pass on to our children to the 7th generation.

Woodstock by Joni Mitchell

I came upon a child of god
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, where are you going
And this he told me
I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm
I'm going to join in a rock n roll band
I'm going to camp out on the land
I'm going to try an get my soul free


We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

Then can I walk beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel to be a cog in something turning
Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe its the time of man
I don't know who l am
But you know life is for learning


We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation

We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devils bargain
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

(Cathy Pagano, M.A., C.E.C, is a Jungian Psychotherapist and Mythic Astrologer, as well as a Soul Coach and Archetypal Story Coach. Cathy works with the tools of the imagination - dreams, alchemy, myths, astrology, symbolic language and more)