Under a Violet Moon—Solar Eclipse, Taurus New Moon—April 30th
There is no place so awake and alive as the edge of becoming—Sue Monk Kidd.
There are times when we need to return to the Earth, to the steady presence of trees, the song of a river’s flow, where we can return once more to a place of beginning. This weekend, the Moon withdraws into the darkness, slipping between the familiar body of the Earth and the fierce light of the Sun, inviting us to silence the mind, resonate to the heartbeat of the earth’s awakening.
The union of the Sun and the Moon symbolise the sacred embrace of the archetypal masculine and feminine, and this New Moon coincides with the ancient festival of Beltane, halfway between the spring equinox and the mid-summer solstice. Now the world bursts into bloom.
This is the time when the Queen of the May arrives in a cloud of floral fragrance. Bluebells, cobalt carpets unfurl across the woodlands. Ribbons of whitethorn thread emerald meadows into a velvety patchwork. Bonfires blaze from the hilltops sprinkled with golden buttercups. Bright ribbons and frayed clooties hang from the trees at holy wells.
Out of the belly of the earth, a surge of life emerges. And above, this New Moon in Taurus invites us to draw down, to focus on our senses, to dig our hands into the earth, plant seeds that will grow.
New Moons speak of fertile new beginnings, they signify those edges of becoming that make us feel young, alive again. Author Anne Lamott adds, “how do you begin? The answer is simple. You decide to.”
Our ancestors knew of the power of these natural rhythms that circled back to the same moment, reigniting the same intention, drawing from the grooves of ancient rituals worn deep by repetition. Just like the cycles of the Moon, the four cross quarter festivals weave past and future with a charge that holds us steady, binds us to those things that matter.
Like all astrological archetypes, Taurus is layered with older associations that draw us across the story lines of the ages, to the moist fertile flood plains of ancient rivers that spilled their life-giving waters and watered the origins of humankind.
For centuries, sacred cows with iconic, crescent-shaped horns have been bound to the symbolism of the Moon. An astrological cliché associates Taurus with money, and it is on this energetic terrain that we so often feel empowered/disempowered, lacking, or abundant.
Where Taurus is in our birth chart is where we must work the ground, plant the seeds of our gifts and talents, learn how to manage our resources of kindness, bravery, presence. Yet the skies are dark at New Moon times, a celestial reminder that we must learn to see in the blackness, wait patiently until the slim crescent appears.
This is a special New Moon as it accompanies a partial solar eclipse and heralds the start of an eclipse season that will sprinkle the weeks and months till October 25th. In our brightly lit world, eclipses no longer deliver the visceral jolt they did in times when the world became dark, and the life-giving Sun vanished. In ancient times, eclipses foretold of the deaths of Kings, winters of discontent; they accompanied war, famine, disease, and floods. The root word is the Greek “ekleipsis” which can be translated as a failure to appear, an abandonment, or a leaving of an accustomed place.
This partial solar eclipse belongs to a family of eclipses that pertain to our own authority and authority figures. During this eclipse (a week before and after) we may be compelled to yet again to confront those sacred cows that perpetuate dissonant cultural myths that arose out of ignorance and denial. We can refuse to participate in the toxic negativity that pervades social media. We can look at ways we abandon ourselves when we allow others to overstep our boundaries, challenge our authority. Eclipses act like wild cards as they drop into our birth charts or into the charts of nations, catapulting us from our place of comfort, taking us to the edge. Eclipses that conjoin planets set new directions in our lives, suddenly change our perspective, confront us with choices that invite us to be more attentive to our soul. This eclipse will activate our Taurus house and any planet at 10° Taurus.
The Taurus Sun and Moon also connect iconoclastic Uranus, planet associated with Prometheus the trickster Titan who stole fire from the gods in myth. Uranus shatters the status quo, reveals gaping fissures in those things we believed to be safe and sure.
As Uranus moves through Taurus (2018-2026) we have been jolted by circumstances that have altered our course, we have crypto currencies that gobble fossil fuels as we reach the end of the fossil fuel era, financial crises that have altered our course. Uranus, like the Tower card in the Tarot, represents a toppling of a structure, a breakdown, a breakthrough, that shatters and shocks us into a new realisation, releasing a renewing surge of energy from the heavens.
At this time of emergence, we may not feel quite ready to emerge, to bravely step onto new ground, yet this New Moon is charged with the grace of new beginnings. So go back to the garden and feel the warm pulse of the earth this weekend. Unplug from the peremptory dictates of technology and go within.
Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you—Anne Lamott.
For private astrology session or to find out more about workshops and webinars, please get in touch: ingrid@trueheartwork.com
In quietness are all things answered—A Course in Miracles.
Jupiter is the roll of the fickle dice, the ever-spinning Wheel of Fortune. In myth, Jupiter didn’t stay around long, he was always off, chasing the next conquest, taking what he wanted, when he wanted to, just because he could. The shadow that stretches behind Jupiter’s cheery positivity is self-absorbed grandiosity, a cavalier entitlement, which may be highlighted this year as themes of Dionysian excess, sacrifice and suffering play out on the world stage and perhaps in the events of our own lives.
In the metaphorical language of astrology, the Libran part of our own birth chart will be illuminated at this Full Moon time as we practice the challenging art of relating to others in an uncertain world. Aries is the beginning, Pisces the end. Libra is midway, a crossroads where the old converges with the new, where the winds of change blow across our lives, exposing the roots, bringing us closer to ourselves, and to others in safe relationships where oxytocin and vasopressin activate parts of the brain associated with calm.
Just like moons and like suns,
Writes Lissa Rankin in her book, The Fear Cure, “courage is not about being fearless; it’s about letting fear transform you, so you come into right relationship with uncertainty, make peace with impermanence, and wake up to who you really are.”
The promises of peace seeded in this New Moon energy may dissipate in all too familiar falsehoods and a shared commitment to outrageous lies as Neptune and Jupiter will amplify Piscean associations with suffering and martyrdom. Nested like an assemblage of Russian dolls, flawed political decisions have resulted in our dependence on gas and oil (Neptune) which, along with the banks that finance them, are the most important source of Russia’s foreign income. As (some countries) decry the war in Ukraine, governments fund the war in payment for Russia’s fossil fuels. 
As Jupiter, Neptune and Chiron united in the humanitarian sign of Aquarius in 2009, James Cameron’s Avatar mirrored the zeitgeist of the time. Our personal and collective experience may be very different as Avatar 2 is released. Jupiter and Neptune in Pisces mirror a world-weariness, a collective post-pandemic grief that has been by-passed by governments eager for progress and profit. For those who have lost loved ones, for those whose lives have been dragged down into the undertow by loss of work or direction, everything may seem blurred, life’s pulse beat feeble. Yet in our grief may make fluid our rigid routines, dissolve our hardened habits, cleanse the debris of emotional blockages, we draw moisture into our parched lives. At this New Moon time of fresh starts and hopeful new beginnings, this beautiful quote from the first Avatar movie reminds us, “you are stronger and wiser and freer than you have ever been. And now you have come to the crossroads of destiny. It’s time for you to choose.”
Some things in life cannot be fixed. They can only be carried―Megan Devine 
Some things just can’t be fixed. Yet Virgo is a mutable, transitional sign, bringing our attention to what is growing underground in the spring and what falls to the earth in the autumn. At this time of the equinox (March 20th) light and shadow are as binary as the choices we make when we can’t or won’t see the spaces in-between, when we allow ourselves to stay distracted, to look for rainbows before we have fully felt the sting of the rain. As the seasons change, we may sense a new momentum, a desire to springclean, rearrange, prioritise, prepare for a new rhythm in our inner lives. Mercury-ruled Virgo is also the alchemist and the magician who uses ingenuity and clear vision to guide us across the threshold of change as we stay present to our own grief, or acknowlege the grief of another.
Yesterday, as the Moon entered Virgo, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release from imprisonment plunges her into the light, out of the shadow. In 2016, Nazanin became a pawn in a political power struggle after visiting Iran for three days to stay with her parents. In the symbolic language of astrology, her transits speak of redemption (transiting Neptune and Sun opposing her natal Sun/North Node in Virgo, transiting Mars/Venus in Aquarius square her Scorpio Venus/Uranus and transiting Uranus opposing her Venus/Uranus—quite literally, freedom!)
As the barest inkling of renewed life begins to emerge for humankind after months of prolonged uncertainty and life-shaping sequestration, a deadly percussion of explosions rocks Ukraine, ricochets across the world.
Planets, like history, move in circles and cycles. The last time Neptune and Jupiter met in Pisces was on March 17th 1856 (18° Pisces) when the Treaty of Paris deprived Russia of access to the River Danube, humiliating and stripping Russia of power at the end of the barbarous Crimean War.
And one by one the nights between our separated cities are joined to the night that unites us—Pablo Neruda.
Pluto’s opposition to Mercury in America’s birth chart (2017-24) reminds us that the foundations of The Land of the Free are dug deep into the black earth of genocide, slavery, and appalling exploitation of the natural world. Mercury presides over communication, intelligence, propaganda, paranoia, media, and travel. Old certainties are unmoored.
Mercury, Venus, and Mars escort Pluto this month, accentuating the caution, contraction and discipline that has been attributed to the archetype of Capricorn, a sign ruled by frugal Saturn.
Pluto will be in Aquarius from 2024 to 2044 as we begin to make reparations for historic injustices and re-image a world where exploitation of people, animals and nature will be relegated to his-story and we (hopefully) begin to address the collective grief and trauma that defines the experience of so many people whose lives are still curtailed by inequality and blatant injustice.
Love is fearlessness in the midst of the sea of fear— Rumi
Our entire birth chart, and more specifically, the archetypes of Venus and Mars, describe our innate responses to our environment; the myriad ways we love or defend ourselves from the soul mate we long for. Mars is the warrior god. In so many cultures, he has been associated with the masculine principle, with fierce gods of war. To the Greeks he was Ares, his name emerging from the root, “to destroy” or to be “carried away” which is so often experienced in the ecstasy of falling into love when we are carried by our desire, within reach of our holy longing.
We expect so much from our partners, in love, and as we continue to live with the existential anxiety of the climate crisis, those relationships that have sustained us—friendships old and new, the intricacies and vagaries of family relationships, the encounters with our virtual tribe or colleagues at the office—we absorb and embody experiences that take us down the twists and turns, repeats and spirals, back to ancient themes.
Now let us welcome the New Year, full of things that have never been—Rainer Maria Rilke.
In the ever-changing sky, Saturn and Uranus are still in a discordant square all through 2022 and 2023, a celestial symbol of clashing points of view, polarities, and divisions, as these ancient mythic enemies confront each other in the heavens and an old order collides with the new. Saturn transits arrive as the henchmen of stasis that often thwart our efforts to move forward, yet they present as circumstances that grow us up, if we’re willing to learn. When these two archetypes face off in the heavens, they reflect tension, upheaval, limitations of freedom, resistance, and rebellion. In our own birth charts, transits of Uranus break us open, shatter and destabilise those things that are too tightly defended or have outlived their purpose.
As tensions mount, scapegoats will be driven out, minorities become criminals. A Saturnian policing bill now targets Roma, Gypsy and Travellers in the UK if they “trespass” in places that have not been designated for them. In 1930 Saturn and Uranus were in Square and between 1933-1939, the Roma and Sinti were interned and murdered by the Nazi Regime.
December, the diamond-frosted clasp linking twelve jewelled months to yet another year—Phyllis Nicholson.
For so many, this has been a difficult year. A year that has tested our patience, our integrity, our ability to temper our desires. We may have found ourselves in a strange landscape—a world that has changed. Friendships may have altered, truths may have shapeshifted, divisions deepened. Free floating anxiety clouds political agendas and a stealthy manoeuvring for power continues as Pluto moves through Capricorn and Saturn presses his boot heel on pleasure and possibility. Yet, for all we know, beneath the surface of our lives something is emerging, inching its way forward, as we transition into a new way of being.
Sometimes you need to scorch everything to the ground and start over. After the burning the soil is richer, and new things can grow. People are like that, too. They start over. They find a way―Celeste Ng. Little Fires Everywhere.
Jupiter, the astrological ruler of Sagittarius and Pisces, is an archetype so often imbued with a tincture of loss and longing. Despite our prayers, despite our positive affirmations, the veils of illusion go up in flames, our lives are scorched to the ground.
For astrology consultations in 2022 please get in touch: ingrid@trueheartwork.com