Come back to your senses: Taurus New Moon

Embodiment. Incarnation. Energy solidifying into form. The newly planted seeds of the Aries cycle now ending are putting roots into the Earth and mass on their new shoots. 

The Taurus New Moon initiates a new cycle on Tuesday, May 15th, 5:48 a.m. MDT at 24 degrees Taurus. Just past is the cross-quarter holiday of Beltane (Mayday) when the Sun reached 15 degrees of tropical Taurus, the traditional time for celebrating and encouraging fertility on the land. This is the heart of the meaning of Taurus: the Earth is a bountiful source of all material creation and power, and now is the time to celebrate incarnation and our ability to experience life in physical form. 

In Taurus, we come into our bodies, come back to our senses, and enjoy the pleasure inherent in material existence. 

Symbolized as a bull, Taurus is an Earth sign, giving it a receptive, inward-focused feminine energy. As a fixed sign, it builds, solidifies, maintains. Ruled by Venus, Taurus is sensual, earthy, desiring comfort on the material plane. 

Taurus is often associated with money and wealth, as these come from the Earth at a fundamental level. The fixed quality of the sign points to stability and security. The shadows to watch for are related to getting stuck in comfort and survival at the expense of fully experiencing life and real pleasure.

But wait – there’s more! This year, 2018, just hours after the New Moon, the planet Uranus shifts into Taurus for the first time in 84 years. When a slow-moving outer planet changes sign, it signals a new phase for of all of us, in this case one that lasts for seven years. 

Moving from fiery, creative, masculine Aries to earthy, Earth-focused, material reality-centered Taurus, the rebel, revolutionary and Great Awakener will shake us up in a completely different manner, likely getting us radically unstuck in areas where we cling to security and safety from external sources.

My own personal feeling – or perhaps hope? – about the movement of Uranus into the sign of material existence is that this will be a time of awakening to valuing our bodies and our planet in ways we have avoided.

In the religion and spirituality of this last millennium, for example, the body has been denigrated and devalued as a ‘cage’ containing and limiting the soul, rather than an expression of the soul and the manifestation of divine love. It is with the body that we are enabled to take action. It is with the body we can express love. It is through our material existence we can harness time and space to create change and allow healing. It is through our five senses we can experience creation by smelling a flower or biting into a peach or caressing a lover. 

It is time to value ourselves as humans, and as integral to, rather than separate from, Nature and the Earth.

With Uranus as the key actor here our awakening is not likely to be in a slow, steady Taurus-like fashion. The Earth Herself may rebel (volcanoes anyone?). Or perhaps the Uranus-ruled lightning bolts, breakdowns, breakthroughs, and innovations will show up as a wave of corporate executives quitting to found eco-villages and communal organic farms. Perhaps as the old systems break down, more of us will work to create new systems founded in love for our planet and our selves. 

There are many other takes, of course, on this New Moon and the potentially intense energies signified by Uranus (and I didn’t even mention what’s going on with Mars). For my part, I’ll stay focused on the skillful use of Venusian love, harmony and Her law of attraction to shape my dreams for what is initiated at this time. And more than anything, I will practice staying in the sensations of my body to stay in present time and the security of solid Earth underneath and within me. All the better when I get into the mountains to sit with the trees and their calm resilience.

How about you?

At the Taurus New Moon:

Don’t just smell the flowers – sit with them and enjoy them with all of your senses;

Hug anyone and everyone, including some trees;

Notice the safety and security inherent in the Sun’s warmth, the Earth beneath your feet, (even if it shakes) and your own beautiful body;

Honor your self, soul, and body;

Say a prayer of respect, honor, and appreciation to the Earth, your home.