By Amanda Painter

On Saturday, we have a New Moon right at the midpoint of Taurus — the Beltane zone, when the ancient Pagans celebrated the fertility of the Earth by having sex out in the fields. I’m supposed to tell you all about this interesting chart, and I will; but to be honest, I’m still ruminating on some of the events and recurring themes I encountered last week while I was away, during the Sun’s first conjunction to Uranus in Taurus.

So if you’ll pardon the indulgence, I’m going to start there and will make my leisurely way to the astrology. You know how a Taurus hates to be rushed.

With the gracious support of my Planet Waves colleagues, I was just immersed in a weeklong intensive class in Orkney, Scotland — a particular method for freeing the breath and voice for theater — taught by its 83-year-old originator (and fellow Taurean) Kristin Linklater. It was a rather spontaneous opportunity, though it built upon my 2018 trip there for the same purpose.

During last year’s class, Uranus — “The Awakener,” the cosmic sparkplug — made its preliminary ingress into Taurus. During my trip this year, the Sun made its first of its annual conjunctions to Uranus in Taurus between now and 2025. I already knew before I got the email for the class (three weeks before it started) that it was exactly the way I wanted to return to the sense of ‘being in process’ that had marked last spring; the moment I noticed the Sun-Uranus conjunction would be occurring, it was like a bell rang.

If you’re at all familiar with how the zodiac signs relate to the body, you know that Taurus rules the neck and throat — making a voice class almost cliché. You’re probably also familiar with the famous Taurean resistance to change, and the potential stress which moments of transformation — even those dearly longed for — can present for those born under this sign. The fear of the unknown, of grieving what must be lost along the way to gaining and growing, can be an obstacle.

Yet there is something about the ability to choose being in a process, particularly something that allows — or better yet, demands — full physical engagement, stamina, mental focus and emotional attunement that seems (to me, at least) ideally suited to whatever Uranus is bringing to its current sign. Amidst the exhaustion, the doubts (do I really belong here with these more experienced participants?), the total oversaturation of new concepts, new feedback from within myself, new failures, new awareness, new friends, new ways of moving and sounding and hearing, I was brimming with gratitude to be in a situation that required such complete focus of mind, body and energy.

There simply was no time or leftover energy to fear change. Likewise, I had no room within me for the seemingly unrelenting distractions I had been grappling with for far too many weeks. That was a huge relief: to be in a process so intensive, so highly structured, so clearly calling to me, that my mind could not wander over-worn paths. Now that I am home, I’ve found some of the distraction has returned, at least to a degree; clearly I have something left to figure out about this.

In any case, over the course of last week, I kept mental (and written) note of certain synchronicities, small details that caught my attention. Just before I began my trip, regular Planet Waves reader Geoff Marsh noted the resonance of my breath-and-voice class with solar Taurus and the Sun-Uranus conjunction, and suggested that I keep my eyes open for the bright blue of the throat chakra. On the plane, I began reading a striking essay by Rebecca Solnit titled, “The Blue of Distance,” from her collection A Field Guide to Getting Lost. An excerpt:

“For many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away. The color of that distance is the color of an emotion, the color of solitude and of desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not. And the color of where you can never go. For the blue is not in the place those miles away at the horizon, but in the atmospheric distance between you and the mountains. ‘Longing,’ says the poet Robert Hass, ‘because desire is full of endless distances.'”

True, the blue of the horizon is not the same shade as that apparently ascribed to the throat chakra. Yet, to encounter so immediately on the journey an essay about the color blue caught my attention and spoke to me, even if I’m still interpreting its whispers. When I arrived at my geographical destination, the slatey blues of the far-off hills of Orkney drew my eye each time I stepped outside, calling my thoughts to their permanent ‘there-ness’ and my continual ‘here-ness’, to the qualities of longing and how to appreciate them even while progressing toward a goal.

I had said to at least a couple people before I left for Scotland that I had no idea if the class would spark a desire to become a Designated Linklater Teacher (a considerable commitment and investment, and I am still a newcomer to this work); I only trusted that in making the choice to attend the class, something might open up or emerge — and that this something might expand on a known goal, or it might point me in a new direction. Either way, ground would be covered both literally and metaphorically; and no matter where that put me, a new horizon with its own distant blues would unfold.

Other moments of recognition popped up, during the class and in the couple of days I spent in transit getting home and arriving (such as the realization that in one of Eric’s essays about Uranus in Taurus last week, he featured a WPA photo by Lewis Hine — a favorite image of mine — and that in another of Solnit’s essays, read in quiet moments after class, she mentioned another of Hine’s photos). But the next one to really grab my attention came after I was home and looked at the Taurus New Moon chart: the asteroid Psyche at 14+ Aquarius is square the Sun and Moon at 14+ Taurus. Yet again, it was another of Solnit’s essays (also titled “The Blue of Distance,” but separated from the previous one in the book) that offered resonance.

The piece centers on the narratives of so-called ‘captives’ who, separated from their original families and communities, transform into vastly new understandings of themselves — to the degree that what had once been familiar is now alien. Solnit likens the process of such profound change to being like that of the caterpillar becoming a butterfly: that there is no mythical half-caterpillar, half-butterfly inside the chrysalis at any time; instead, the caterpillar must completely disintegrate and decay, then reform its molecules into this wholly other creature. She writes:

“But the butterfly is so fit an emblem of the human soul that its name in [ancient, formal] Greek is psyche, the word for soul. We have not much language to appreciate this phase of decay, this withdrawal, this era of ending that must precede beginning. Nor of the violence of metamorphosis, which is often spoken of as though it were as graceful as a flower blooming.”

I suspect that is one reason why Taureans (and so many others, really) shy away so often from needed change: decay is cast as unpleasant and an end, rather than as part of the life cycle that then fertilizes new life; violence is scary and often painful, though we are continually forming and finding ourselves through minor acts of ‘violence’ — conflict, confrontation, disillusionment, shock — in daily life. Taurus is the sign of the body’s senses; it is solid, fixed earth. And we as a culture often do not focus on the best metaphors or examples of transformation that happen to something so seemingly solid as a body. As Solnit notes for the butterfly — and for humans — after the long process of decay there is generally “this crisis when emergence from what came before must be total and abrupt.”

Even so, she does not leave things there:

“But the changes in a butterfly’s life are not always so dramatic. The strange resonant word instar describes the stage between two successive molts, for as it grows, a caterpillar, like a snake, like Cabeza de Vaca walking across the Southwest, splits its skin again and again, each stage an instar. It remains a caterpillar as it goes through these molts, but no longer one in the same skin. There are rituals marking such splits, graduations, indoctrinations, ceremonies of change, though most changes proceed without such clear and encouraging recognition.”

This speaks to me of the kind of process I am in currently; it feels much less like complete decay, or like the crisis of emergence. Much more like a caterpillar at its instar phase — or perhaps I am just before, or just after such a thing? I am not sure. But as I said, Solnit’s reference to the word psyche as an ancient Greek word for butterfly caught my attention, as it also means ‘mind’ or ‘breath’ — and I had just spent a week focusing my mind on allowing my breath to ‘fly’ in and out unhindered, to use one of my teacher’s preferred verbs for that action.

And there, in Saturday’s New Moon chart (set for 6:45 pm EDT / 22:45:23 UTC) is the asteroid Psyche making that square from Aquarius. Eric has long interpreted this object as relating to a mental, emotional or ‘psychic’ wound that feels as though it can never be healed — though the recognition of the wound necessarily holds the ability to heal, given the needed support and tools. I am wondering, however, if it might be functioning in this chart rather more like the in-flight — the ‘inspiration’ — of breath: the action or provocation that releases us from the momentary ‘death’ after the previous breath; the crisis of fear and decay and not-knowing impelling us toward the next stage of change.

I do not know if the butterfly, in its liquid form, retains consciousness; if it did, I would imagine it might feel very much as though it could never heal from such utter dissolution. And yet, it does. In fact, it does more than heal: it begins a whole new, more vibrant, more mobile life as something completely and utterly different.

Likewise, the other minor planets in close proximity to the Taurus Sun and Moon on Saturday speak of similar states of conflict or stuck-ness (even death) and emergence, birth and upliftment; I’ve used many of Martha Lang-Wescott’s delineations here. Flanking Psyche in Aquarius are Crantor (a centaur planet — they are generally associated with awareness and transformation), and Circe (helping, acting as a facilitator).

In Scorpio, opposing the New Moon, are Dziewanna (named for a Slavic goddess of the hunt, forests and wilderness — a nod to some Beltane themes), and Poseidon (uplifting people and ideas, psychic vibrations, intellectual or spiritual influences). Leo presents us with Apollo (attracting recurrent or familiar crises, banging one’s head against a wall, going against the odds), and Praamzius (the Lithuanian god of the sky, peace and friendship).

Coming home to Taurus, you might ask yourself which of these asteroids speaks to you more: Astraea (blocked closure; an inability to read beginnings and endings or to ‘let go’ of things, people or events); or Industria (industriousness, or facilitating the recognition of career interests, abilities and matters).

Note also that today the Sun makes its conjunction to the asteroid Lempo, named for a Finnish fire and fertility goddess, which is still close by the New Moon. It’s a fitting nod to the fiery, lusty, procreative energy of Beltane already strongly inherent — declared, even — by the position and timing of this particular New Moon.

So I’ll end with this: I have no idea where you might be in your own Uranus-sparked process, or if you’ve even identified one for yourself yet. You may feel blocked, or stuck, or resistant; you might be ruminating the signs from the universe and slowly (with occasional flashes of spontaneous action) making your way toward a distant blue horizon. Maybe you’re in the throes of the dark mystery of decay, or fully in the crisis of emergence. Perhaps you just want to fuck in the fields and get on with your day.

Through any or all of that, though, see if you can notice your breath — where it is in your body, what is says of your mind, and how it carries your soul. Somewhere in that flow and flutter, housed in flesh and bone, an answer might call out.

Yours & truly,
Amanda Painter

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