Month of the Three Moons—May 2026

The moon can only fill up once it becomes empty. It can only shine in all its glory once it’s gone through its darkest expression—Carl Jung.

May’s blossoms flutter and fall from the brief embrace of greening branches. As the sun moves through Taurus, spring swoons in the warm exuberance of summer.  Daisies and golden buttercups dance across meadows. A froth of milkwhite cowslip flanks a woodland path. Whether we live in cities made bearable by parks and public gardens, or whether we have our own small patch of earth to tend, nature calls us back home.

The constellation of Taurus rose at the vernal equinox, accompanying nature’s re-birth around 4,000 BCE-1,700 BCE. Over thousands of years, the earth has wobbled, and the Sun has shifted in what is called precession of the equinoxes. Taurus which is not simply a personality trait or a list of keywords. Taurus is a metaphor for beauty, sensuality, and indulgence. Taurus invites us to attune to the slow circles of nature, to be receptive to those things that bring us pleasure and delight.

Encrypted in the sliver fire of the starry skies this month, are three important lunations: On the seasonal cross-quarter day of Mayday, (Beltane in the old religions) a Scorpio full moon, (Beltane, May 1^st )  a perfect time to prune and weed the garden, to place an intention of release and renewal into the soil as you dig in rich organic fertiliser. And on May 31^st, the second “blue moon” of the month blazes brightly through the fire sign of Sagittarius, her upward pull nurturing leafy greens and bright-coloured annuals. The moon empties, and in the darkness of a new Taurus moon on May 16^th  we’re invited to pause, to begin again, with a new sense of clarity as we cherish our belonging in the delicate web of life. Virginia Woolf remembers a moment of new moon grace in a garden in St Ives, “It seemed suddenly plain that the flower itself was a part of the earth, that a ring enclosed what was the flower, and that was the real flower, part earth, part flower.”

Taurus is a fixed sign, some might say stubborn, some might say determined. This new moon might offer an opportunity to graft something new to the rootstock of a belief that might be gnarled with dogma—unable to grow.

Where Taurus is in our birth chart is where we must work the ground, nurture our gifts and talents, attentively manage our resources, cherish those people and things we value. 

The moon is exulted in moist, fertile Taurus. If you have a herb or vegetable garden, this new moon is the best time to plant root vegetables and salad greens and ease back on the weeding. “Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace,” writes May Sarton.

This month, on May 8^th, David Attenborough celebrates his 100^th year on planet earth. His moving documentaries have enraptured us. His pioneering work in television has brought the beauty and fragility of nature into our living rooms. The sun was in Taurus when he was born. There is no official record of his birth time – see his birth chart below. The sun conjunct the Lot of Fortune, opposes Saturn Retrograde in Scorpio, signifying his resoluteness, his ability to endure the highs and the lows of filming in locations that were so often dangerous and uncomfortable. Again and again, he has brought our attention the urgency of the climate crisis and the existential threat to all life on earth as the burgeoning human population becomes unsustainable. “We can now destroy or we can cherish. The choice is ours,” he once said.

Transiting Saturn and Neptune have passed over his natal Venus in Aries, (Venus is the ruler of his Taurus sun) as he nears the end of his life.

Another important inflection in the cadence of this month is Pluto’s station Retrograde on May 6^th.

Pluto’s intense, complex energy has been hanging heavy in the collective since its ingress into Aquarius in 2023. Pluto transits deliver obsidian hard truths, strip us of those things, thoughts, habits, relationships, we no longer need. Pluto’s passage across the heavens is ponderous, and this turning point has been building for weeks now (Pluto has been moored at 5° Aquarius since the end of March and will creep slowly backwards, accentuating this area in your birth chart all through this year and next, as something emerges, comes to life again, in your psyche.)  In the darkness of space, Pluto will station direct on October 3^rd. For those of us who have angles or planets in early Aquarius, Taurus, Leo or Scorpio, something might have to “die”, or a hidden truth may be revealed. These Pluto transits cast a long shadow.

As we move through this new era of air and fire (Neptune and Saturn in the fire sign of Aries and Pluto and Uranus in the air signs of Aquarius and Gemini) many of us feel a tension in the collective nervous system, taut and charged with urgency. In response, our own  nervous systems have become dysregulated―stuck in dorsal shutdown―or hypervigilant. Author and yoga teacher, Zabie Yamasaki says, “So much of healing the nervous system is unpacking our relationship to urgency. Sometimes what the nervous system needs is less.”

There are many ways to unpack our relationship to urgency, unplug from the collective current, and turn towards  the simplicity of less. We might take ourselves on an “artist’s date”, allow ourselves to be seduced by beauty when we visit an art gallery. We might let music fill our senses. Wrap our arms around a tree. We might start this new day with a cup of tea or coffee in a beautiful porcelain cup; a fresh flower picked from the garden in a vase on our breakfast table. We might walk bare footed into the garden and sit in silence. Neurologist, Oliver Sacks once said, “in forty years of medical practice, I have found only two types of non-pharmaceutical “therapy” to be vitally important for patients with chronic neurological diseases―music and gardens.”

Cheryl Strayed reminds us, “there’s always a sunrise and always a sunset and it’s up to you to choose to be there for it… put yourself in the way of beauty.”

To book a personal astrology reading, please get in touch: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

Fearless—Sun enters Aries—Spring Equinox—March 20 th

What would you do if you weren’t afraid? Spencer Johnson.

March. Martius. Named after the war-deity, Mars. March was the first month in the Roman calendar. In March, as nature blossomed and food supplies became plentiful, Romans went to war.

Mars was venerated as the founding god of the Roman Empire, father of Romulus and Remus. The might and ruthlessness, the pragmatism of the Roman military machine attests to the importance of Mars.

We may notice Mars energy all around us this month. Survival and procreation are embodied in the natural world as the urgent thrust of spring spills over the land in a cascade of colour and sweet song.

In the language of astrology, Mars represents our instinctual nature, our personal potency, our innate need to fight for our territory.

On March 20^th, the Sun slips into Mars-ruled Aries, marking the spring Equinox, the start of the new astrological year. The quality of light is different now. The sun rises earlier, lingers later now, as the year balances between seasons.

On Thursday, March 19^th  a compassionate Pisces new moon symbolises gentle new beginnings wrapped in the darkness of endings. Capricious Mercury turns direct (8º Pisces) the next day, emerging now as the Magician, not the Trickster. At this turning time of the year, we may still be struggling with an internal war as we face an important choice. This new moon, and Mercury now moving direct, symbolises some kind of resolution. Mars wades through the opaque waters of Pisces now, his ardour swamped by disturbing cross-currents of emotion, his vitality beleaguered by clammy fears. Mars in Pisces is subtle, more Tai Chi than karate, the kneeling warrior who transmutes brute aggression into service for the greater good.

Jupiter also moves direct (from March 11^th), exulted in Cancer, ameliorating perhaps painful or challenging circumstances. Although like all the planetary archetypes, Jupiter is multifaceted, not simplistically a “Greater Benefic”.

In May and June, as Jupiter transits Trump’s painfully vulnerable Saturn/Venus conjunction and makes a Jupiter Return in the (1971) birth chart of Iran, Jupiter’s complexity and mythic erratic bouts of rage and spite will become evident in the euphemistically called theatre of war. If we are waiting for “good luck” with an approaching Jupiter transit, we might be disappointed when lives are not enhanced in any way. Yet as we engage hindsight and insight to unlock meaning of illness, separation and loss, Jupiter’s passage through Cancer may soothe.

Saturn (fear, restriction, contraction) and Neptune (oil, gas, confusion) are still travelling in tandem through fiery Aries. Lethal drones and missiles rupture the skies over the Middle East and Ukraine. Whether we are aware of it or not, we are all bathed in the collective trauma of war. Those caught in the crossfire are mostly women and children. The economic fallout of the US-Israeli assault and Tehran’s retaliation is already impacting the cost of petrol and food prices.

Aries exemplifies the hero/warrior archetype, and its shadow, the bully-destroyer—depicted today by belligerent politicians turned commanders-in-chief. As the bedrock of our civilization shifts and cracks, revealing a new landscape, a new archetype emerges: activist digital warriors, who call for global change—Malala Yousafzai, Elizabeth Wathuti, Amanda Nguyen, Marielle Franco, are speaking out bravely against human ignorance and cruelty.

As the Victorian era ended, a 40 year old woman, armed only with a note book and pen, boarded a train heading for Bloemfontein. She was heading into a warzone.  Emily Hobhouse was born in Cornwall on April 9^th, 1860, as the sun and Mercury Rx moved through Aries making a trine to Saturn in Leo. 

The sun seared across a cloudless sky as she travelled through a devasted landscape of scorched veldt and grotesquely bloated corpses of hamstrung cattle and abandoned farmlands. She had yet to see the starved corpses of children held in the arms of their emaciated mothers. She had yet to be branded a traitor, publicly dismissed by Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, who stated that Britian’s empire was not “threatened by a hysterical spinster of mature age.” Yet still, she mustered the bravery contained in the fiery essence of Aries energy to expose war-crimes against women and children. Over 154,000 people, mainly women and children, were interned in British concentration camps during the Second Boer War (1899-1902.)

“I call this camp system a wholesale cruelty…  It can never be wiped out of the memories of the people,” she wrote.

Although a commission corroborated her findings, she was deported from South Africa. No explanation was given. Her humanitarian work was never acknowledged by the British government.

In South Africa, she is the “Angel of Love”. A woman with a notebook who challenged the might of the British military and revealed the true cost of war. Emily’s exalted Mars in Capricorn is the master warrior, tenacious in the face of obstacles.

For most of us, our hero’s or heroine’s quest is not a muscular or spectacularly brave response to the challenges of life. For some of us, an ordinary life, lived with as much consciousness and courage we can muster, is heroic even when things seem so bleak, so hopeless.  For some of us, the taming of our fears, the tempering of our innate human aggression and competitive survival instincts is a work in progress. And even though there are times when it takes every last spark of courage to unearth something positive, anything hopeful, to hold onto, as we turn towards each other in the darkness of this moonless night, Cheryl Strayed offers these words of comfort, “you go on by doing the best you can. You go on by being generous. You go on by being true. You go on by offering comfort to others who can’t go on. You go on by allowing the unbearable days to pass and by allowing the pleasure in other days. You go on by finding a channel for your love and another for your rage”.

To book your astrology reading, please get in touch: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

In memory of Emily Hobhouse, unsung hero, traitor and humanitarian, a woman who waged battle with the British Empire Builders and revealed the true cost of war.

Black Moon—Total Lunar Eclipse—March 3rd

At the epicentre of this month’s sky story, two eclipses cast out their cosmic energy like fishing lines, electrifying the collective nervous system.

On February 17^th, a new moon solar eclipse in Aquarius squared volatile Uranus, as seismic change rocks and rattles our realities. Just three days later, the Saturn/Neptune conjunction in Aries signified the seeding of a new era. Eclipses feature powerfully in the birth charts of the British Royals, and this one fatefully fell within orb of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s sun, activating his sun opposite Pluto and the 8^th and 2^nd houses in his birth chart – conjunct the cusp of the 8^th house and the second house Pluto opposition (second house: money, values, self-esteem, personal possessions; eighth house: other peoples’ money, death and rebirth, sex, and at best the recognition that radical change is needed.)  The rush of incoming energy from this eclipse (North Node in Pisces/South Node in Virgo) was shocking and undermining. Pisces is a sign associated with the victim archetype, with release and sacrifice. Virgo attends to the details with thoroughness and attention to detail. Andrew is the first British Royal to be arrested since Charles 1^st nearly 400 years ago. The House of Windsor (an expedient re-branding from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha prompted by anti-German sentiment during the first world war) has, in true Plutonic fashion, closed ranks, casting disgraced Andrew into the maw of the paparazzi, and the slow grind of the law.

Mercury is now moving Rx (February 26^th-March 20^th) and a powerful Mars squares Uranus—an accelerant that ignites Trump’s Ascendant and his own tumescent Mars in Leo.

Poet, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer writes in these jagged lines:

Illogic. deploying bombs
to achieve lasting peace—
like planting barbed wire
and expecting to grow
a rose bush.

As violence erupts and things fall apart, this month’s lunar eclipse falls on Saturn Rx in the 1979 chart of Iran. News of the Ayatollah Ali Khameini’s death in an air attack permeates the media. Astrologers tend to use two birth charts for Iran. This one is drawn for the time that Ayatollah Ali Khameini returned to Tehran, February 1^st, 1979, and seems most appropriate given the US-Israeli wave of attacks “in the heart of Tehran.”

The explosive Mars/Uranus aspect becomes muted, more ambiguous, this week as Mars moves into Pisces (March 2^nd) and Venus joins Neptune and Saturn (March 7^th and 8^th.)

On March 3^rd, the delicate light of the full moon in Virgo is obscured by the body of the earth, pulling us towards change, tying us all to a rhythmic cosmic process, directing our attention to where something is complete. Shadows may loom larger during eclipse season; revelations flash into our consciousness. Our dreams are wild or bewildering, our body calls out for deeper healing, our partner’s identity crisis detonates our marriage.

The astrological moon symbolises the soul. Author Thomas Moore, in his book, Care of the Soul, distinguishes between the spirit and the soul. Spirit seeks to rise, to transcend the personal. Soul draws us down, through the portal of the heart, into our emotions and the aquifer of melancholy that so often lies beneath our personas. In our dreams, in our off-guarded imaginings, we may become aware of a sense, a feeling, a life unlived.

Matt Licata writes, so  beautifully, “there is a movement on the path of awakening that does not lead upward at all. It moves downward into the  body, into memory, into what has been waiting.”

This full moon makes an aspect to Jupiter Rx and the Saturn/Neptune conjunction still looms large, emphasising the collective fear, confusion. Our wise bodies respond to  full moons, our instincts, emotions, visceral responses, and this full moon will be super-charged, emphasising the qualities of discerning Virgo and compassionate Pisces. Mercury-ruled Virgo’s domain is our working lives, our routines, the health of our minds and bodies. Pisces domain is poetic, soulful. This is where the aquifer of grief and compassion lie.

Air strikes and bombings continue in Iran and spreads today to Lebanon and beyond. The Sabian symbol for this eclipse (13º Virgo) is chilling: A powerful statesman overcomes a state of political hysteria – disorder takes over when affairs are not controlled with firmness and resolve.

As this full moon eclipse brushes across the imprint of our own birth chart, she accompanies us on our own tender transition as we withdraw from the hard edges of the world and assimilate, metabolise, dream, all we have experienced since the solar eclipse in Aquarius on the new moon.  Nothing is immutable in this dynamically changing world. All around us there is change and movement even though we may feel stuck or trapped in a situation right now. “Life is simple,” writes Bryon Katie pragmatically. “Everything happens at the exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don’t have to like it. It’s just easier if you do.”

For a personal astrology consultation, please get in touch: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

Source for this horoscope for Iran, grateful thanks to The Book of World Horoscopes, Nicholas Campion, 1995.