Tag Archives: Taurus

Reflections from the Perfectly Imperfect

The View from the Other Side

By Amanda Painter

At last, the major astrology of this week (this month, really) has occurred: Mercury is retrograde in Pisces as of Monday; Uranus is in Taurus as of yesterday, and the Pisces New Moon is separating. As I write this, it’s all so fresh that I’m still getting a feel for whether the edginess and sense of anticipation I’d been experiencing has dissipated.

Utility poles in Orkney, Scotland, the day after Uranus — the cosmic light socket — ingressed Taurus in May 2018. Photo by Amanda Painter

I’ve tried to think back to last May, when Uranus first dipped into Taurus, to compare how I felt and what was going on for me, to see if there are any correlations. I have to confess, though, I feel like last year’s ingress was easier somehow.

That could be more the result of time softening the edges of memory than an actual contrast. But I’m curious to hear whether anyone reading this has a similar sense of it all.

I know that last year, like this year, I was involved in a theater production; immediately after, I traveled to Orkney, Scotland, for an intensive workshop on voice and breath for theater. It was during that workshop that Uranus entered Taurus. I recall feeling busy before the trip; maybe a little overwhelmed; but when Uranus actually made its move, I was simply focused completely on the workshop and on exploring my surroundings when I was not exploring my own breath and voice.

So I’ve been wondering: was it partly being in a strange place, on an adventure of self-discovery, that aligned with the energy of Uranus and therefore seemed to smooth the change? Are my situation and activities somehow less in harmony with Uranus this year? Was it the resonance of a voice class with the sign Taurus (which rules the neck and throat)?

Or does this year’s edginess in the lead-up relate more to the succession of other planets we’ve had hanging out in the final degrees of signs? Maybe having Chiron in the sensitive first degree of Aries, conjunct Salacia, is providing more agitation than I’ve been giving it credit for?

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Getting Ready to Get Going

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By Amanda Painter

Even though the calendar page will turn to a new year in a few days, the astrological year still has most of a season left to it. Yet the sense of one thing ending and something new beginning is still strong — and there is some major astrology on its way to support that sensation, even if the timing is not exact.

Photo by Amanda Painter

For one thing, Uranus will station direct on Jan. 6. This means that ALL the sign-ruling planets will be in direct motion for a spell — Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto (the Sun and Moon are never retrograde).

If that doesn’t sound like a cosmic green light to finally move important projects forward, I’m not sure what does. I don’t know about you, but after the continual feeling of limbo I experienced with this year’s inner-planet retrogrades, I’m really looking forward to a phase of momentum and traction, even if it’s brief.

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Expressing What’s Real: Scorpio Sun Conjunct Venus

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By Amanda Painter

As I write this on Wednesday morning, I’m hearing reports of explosive devices discovered at the homes of Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton, and also at the CNN offices in New York; this is following an explosive found at the home of billionaire philanthropist George Soros on Monday. By the time you read this, there will likely be more information available; but as I write, I’m most interested in the accompanying astrology. (Ed. note: as of Thursday morning, we’re up to ten suspicious/explosive packages sent to eight people.)

Photo by Amanda Painter, taken at the 2016 annual Sacred and Profane Festival on Peaks Island, Maine.

As if the party or parties responsible for these actions had consulted an astrologer, this all unfolded in the lead-up to Wednesday’s Taurus Full Moon conjunct Uranus (the explosive planet), opposite the Scorpio Sun (secrets, death, other people’s money). Close to the Sun in Scorpio is retrograde Venus — ruler of the Taurus Full Moon.

Sometimes it’s just astonishing how well the aspects mirror the themes of events. By now I shouldn’t be surprised, yet it can still catch me off-guard.

I’m curious whether it’s possible that the connection of Venus to laid-back Taurus is a factor in the explosives being discovered before they could detonate. Is it something about the retrograde quality? What is the significance of the lunar nodes square the Full Moon configuration; is it some kind of balancing point between what we know and what we don’t know, or a choice between paths of action?

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What’s New with You?

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By Amanda Painter

As we emerge from yesterday’s Gemini New Moon and whatever you experienced with it, the theme of “new” appears to be carrying forward. Questions you might ask yourself include “Where in my life do I need something new?” and “What am I willing and able to do to seek, cause or attract it?”

Crescent Moon two days after last month's Taurus New Moon, viewed from the Kristin Linklater Voice Center in Orkney, Scotland. Photo by Amanda Painter.

Crescent Moon two days after last month’s Taurus New Moon (and Uranus ingressing Taurus), viewed from the Kristin Linklater Voice Center in Orkney, Scotland. Photo by Amanda Painter.

Note that since this astrology is happening as Mars prepares to station retrograde in Aquarius on June 26, those questions could have a background quality of feeling like you’re standing in contrast to everyone around you. You may want to track that over the next few weeks.

Since the Gemini New Moon made contact with a variety of objects around the zodiac, notice whether you feel like you had to juggle or synthesize several very different encounters, influences or perspectives. How is that process going for you? Do you feel closer to clarity on a particular issue or further from it?

With Mercury — the planet of the mind — in Cancer as of Tuesday, and Venus — the planet of receptivity and relationships — in Leo as of yesterday evening, you might be noticing a slight shift in how you’re perceiving and responding to those around you. Mercury in Cancer could be enhancing sensitivity (both empathetic and reactive); Venus in Leo tends to be compassionate, but with an inclination toward drama and a little more willfulness than is usually associated with Venus. Both of these planets are involved in aspects today and tomorrow that will likely emphasize these shifts in mental and emotional tone — as well as how you’re thinking and feeling about what kind of newness you need.

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Tilling the Ground

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By Amanda Painter

We’re in a week marked by movement and an impulse toward something new: on Tuesday, we had the Taurus New Moon, and Uranus entered Taurus; yesterday Mars entered Aquarius, and formed a square to Uranus. Between the adjustment phase that comes with planets in new signs and the fact that we’re going to get an echo of this energy later in the year, these recent movements are worth a closer look.

Post-pussywillows; photo by Amanda Painter.

First, think for a moment about the idea of tilling the ground when gardening. “Tilling” does not refer to harvesting the fruits of your labors; it’s not tending the plants during the growing season; and it’s not the actual seed planting that seems to start things off, either.

Tilling is what comes before all of that. It’s the preparation of the ground: preparation in the form of disrupting what had become settled, compacted, and dormant. Whether you use a horse-drawn plow, a small rototiller, an industrial-size agricultural tiller, or just a shovel and rake, this step is crucial for the planting and growth to come. Space must be made in the soil for best results in the months to come — the stabilizing roots can then reach further and draw more nutrients, allowing the rest of the plant to flourish.

Seasons of change work the same for human beings, though the process is often less ritualized and can happen any time of year. We fall into habits and routines; we get comfortable and stale; we allow limits to restrict us and lose sight that we can challenge them and push back. As a result, we often need to go through a conscious phase of disruption to make the space in which our next phase of growth can emerge and develop. You can think of it less as chaos and more like introducing a little room to reach your roots further, allowing you to branch out into the unknown.

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Opening the Parachute for Uranus in Taurus

Earth Day 2018 — Order out of Chaos

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Editor’s Note: Apologies for not managing to get this posted in time for Earth Day! But then again, EVERY day needs to be Earth Day. — Amanda

By Steve Guttermann

I was a high school senior when the first Earth Day was observed on April 22, 1970. I remember thinking at the time, “Maybe we have a chance.” Founded by U.S. Sena-tor Gaylord Nelson, the day gave voice to an emerging national consciousness, “channeling the energy of the anti-war — i.e. Vietnam — protest movement and put-ting environmental concerns on the front page,” as described on the Earthday.org website.

Mountain apacheta; photo by Jennifer Sadhana.

For the past forty-eight years, however, many things have kept our country focused on a divergent national consciousness. These can create distractions that stop us from being the kind of people we would like to be and living the kind of passionate life we crave. Each of us has or will experience soul-darkening and light-extinguishing loss.

So, we may agree that Martin Luther King, Jr. was right when he wrote this in his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail: “It is the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time is neutral. It can be used either destructively or constructively.”

In other words, by itself, time does not heal anything.

For many of us, a major part of any lasting solution to acute pain and loss resides with our relationship to the planet; or, more specifically, through an intimate relationship with the natural world. It seems it takes right action, within the contexts of time and space, for anything positive to occur, whether it is societal progress, healing or personal evolution, all of which are intimately connected. And all of these are tied to our relationship with the planet. Life is rife with examples of people who found and find healing and purpose through a deepening soul connection with the land.

I know Middle East and Vietnam war veterans who recovered both sanity and sanctity after their service in the military through passionate service to the natural world, and share that with others. I know parents who have lost children who do the same. Often, earth-honoring ritual is involved.

Ritual, or ceremony, is a way to bring order out of chaos and healing out of loss. A ritual might be traditional, part of a cultural response that has been around for centuries. Or, it might be entirely personal. Yet, it seems to always entail a release of something within us that no longer serves us. The Quechua/Inca word for this is hucha. Hucha is energetic density, spiritual dis-ease generated through discordant actions and interactions. It is not viewed as inherently “bad” or negative. Think of its release as spiritual manure that is willingly absorbed and transformed by energies of the earth.

Ilya Prigogine won the 1977 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on the thermodynamics of non-equilibrium systems. His studies also brought two opposing views together, these of classical physics: chaos and order. Prigogine’s work suggests what other scientists thought impossible — that order could come out of chaos. I won’t get technical but the point is that his work suggests how the two great themes of classic science, order and chaos, which coexisted uneasily for centuries for scientists because they were simultaneously observed, are being reconciled in a new and unexpected synthesis.

This is a game changer. Basically, Prigogine mathematically showed that when systems break down, some reorganize at a higher level, which means they can sustain a higher energetic input than before the breakdown. Some social scientists embrace his findings because of their applicability to human systems.

Joshua Tree Apacheta; photo by Yola Dunne.

Systemic breakdown is scary, but without it a system might do a patchwork repair on itself and continue to function “normally,” while limping toward total dysfunction and entropy. Think of political and economic systems or human relationships as examples.

Should we intend to get back to normal or intend to get better? How many myths, legends and heroic quests revolve around getting back to normal? I think we know the answer, and doubt the following conversation would ever be uttered in any tale of renown or with a first grader.

Q: What do you want to be when you grow up?
A: Normal.
Q: What do you want to do when you grow up?
A: Get back to normal.

What if there is a better way?

As Joseph Campbell explained in his book Hero with a Thousand Faces, the heroic journey is a journey of breakdown through the Dark Night of the Soul to break-through. The secret to the success of the breakthrough is to be cognizant that the breakthrough is not just more of the same at a higher level, but a totally different way of handling energy through greater awareness and right action. Paradoxically, the journey breaks us down and gives us what we need to break through to break free. We can’t get back to normal, not even in a quantum anything-goes universe. That is why earth-honoring ritual can be a crucible of healing and a cocoon of metamorphosis. It creates new and highly energized connections.

Understanding the heroic journey will help bring more light to the order out of chaos quandary. In the scheme of conscious evolution, everyone and everything is journeying back toward the Source and everything is temporary. So breakdown is temporary, and much of how long a breakdown lasts depends on our actions and us. This applies to wanting the Dark Night to end. We have to go through it to get out of it. As we go through it, we often stop wanting and let go of what drove us there.

The correlation between Ilya Prigogine’s work and the Dark Night of the Soul is that breakdown is natural. It is a requisite for our evolutionary journey. Without the sacred space of ritual we may break down and stay down because we never release what needs to go. Within sacred space we release, recover, re-assemble, re-organize, get up, and, if we do this with an emerging conscious intent of not just appreciation but self-reflection and evaluation, the journey will extend in multiple directions. It will take us to the below and inward to recover our soul or discover any other revelatory treasure, then bring us back to the light and beyond, dispelling victim consciousness for hero consciousness.

Our entire planet is going through a Dark Night right now. Our reconnection with it requires intimacy rather than mere sustainability. An intimate reconnection will channel the necessary outside energy via a new state of consciousness. It is a neces-sary step before we can stop systemic breakdown and rebuild at a higher level. Putting the planet’s needs before our own is the rite of passage we need to willingly accept to attain true adulthood and become fully human.

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For those interested in a fantastic “Earth Day” ritual that’s great any time of year, here is a link to how to build an apacheta.

Mini-apacheta made of crystals; photo by Steve Guettermann.

As Justine says in the video, an apacheta is a “multi-purpose” sacred rock cairn. Apacheta is a Quechua word that means, “bring together.” Awahoo and Justine used some large foundation stones. It is not necessary to use stones that big; the size of the stones and of the apacheta itself is up to you. If you have questions about this video, please contact me. I can also put you in touch with Awahoo and/or Justine.

Building an apacheta is a great communal, school, family or individual ceremony. It really is a happy time! The joy and charisma brought to ceremony enhances the release of dense energies and invites lighter energies to join in.

Steve Guettermann is a freelance writer and “teaches” critical thinking at Montana State University. He is currently studying Peruvian shamanism under don Oscar Miro-Quesada, and published an article in the 2016 Planet Waves annual edition, Vision Quest. Steve’s email is migratoryanimal@gmail.com; you can also visit his website.

The Sacred Space of Self, the brand new 2018 Spring Reading, is now available for pre-order. This set of 12 video presentations will cover Chiron’s transition into Aries, and Mars retrograde in Aquarius over the summer. Pre-order soon for best value.