Lost and Found—Sun in Taurus—April 21st
There’s that defining moment. That softening in the belly. That strong, sure surge of love that expands our heart. That knowing, that welcomes us home to our natural rhythm, to where we belong. As the pulse-beat of nature’s rhythm of the seasons alters, and the Sun moves from the urgency of Aries into the slower, more deliberate cadence of Taurus, we may feel a renewed sense of Being as we join the circle of community at places of worship, as we visit friends and family and nourish ourselves with the sweet comfort of heartfelt connection.
Then there’s the dawning recognition that it’s our fear of loneliness or privation that keeps us in a root-bound relationship. That we’ve bound ourselves to a group or its leader who demands unquestioning allegiance. That we’ve amputated our Being, buried our creativity, pruned our intelligence, denigrated our sexuality. There’s the deep grief of losing something precious, something we thought we had found, but that got lost along the way.
Sharon Blackie writes of this sense of alienation that so often seeps into our life quite gradually when we lose our belonging, when we fall out of our natural rhythm. “I felt no love for this world, no sense of belonging. I felt separate from it, closed in, claustrophobic. Some days, walking through identical grey suburban streets to school, I felt as if I were being buried alive.” 
The disillusionment and disorientation as we uncouple, or bravely break away from a group or a community can be a devastating dark night of the soul, as Andrew Harvey describes his break from his guru in The Sun at Midnight.
Taurus, despite its association with the muscular bull, is associated with what the Jungians call “the feminine” that which we denigrate and plunder in our insatiable desire for more wealth, more success, more oil, more mono-culture. We may feel constricted, tamed by our way of being in the world, buried alive. As Uranus moves through Taurus (2018—2026) we may be jolted by circumstances that startle us enough to alter 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, that releases a renewing surge of energy that surges down from the heavens, through our crown chakra.
On April 19th, a “blue moon” at the power-infused 29° point, illuminates those threads that still lie in disarray, those unresolved power struggles, those uncomfortable relationships we may have wrestled with at the Equinox on March 21st when the Full Moon was at 0° of Libra. This graceful Libran Moon may shine her light on a false belonging, a sterile psychic landscape, devoid of beauty and harmony, a place we have been lingering for far too long.
Libra’s realm is relationship, fairness and equality. This Full Moon squares Pluto, demanding the truth, a more authentic way of relating, a more vulnerable, honest, way of repairing. The Moon sextiles Jupiter, reminding us of what we truly long for, where we’ve stayed small, lost the comfort of true belonging.
Mercury hurried into impetuous Aries on April 17th, to meet Chiron, the archetype of the wounded healer. Venus joins the fire dance as she steps into Aries on April 21st, so we may sense an urgency, a decisiveness, a passion to reconnect perhaps with something we have lost, something we must find again.
This month, Pluto, the god of the Underworld, turns Retrograde on April 24th, just a few days after the Sun’s entry into Taurus. Pluto is moving through Capricorn along with the South Node and Saturn intensifying and complicating matters of the physical world, highlighting the “masculine” qualities that we glorify in our culture. Pluto has been moving through Capricorn since 2008 and will remain in Capricorn until 2023. Beneath the dark underbelly of the mountain goat we find the Tyrant, the Dictator and the Scapegoat. Here we can lose ourselves in fear of change, fear of diversity, fear that’s real or fear that’s imagined. The South Node of the Moon stirs up the past, brings detritus to the surface. The Saturn/Pluto archetype reflects a global rite of passage that will test our integrity and our resilience. For those in authority, for those who manage power, this cycle will test capability and morality as fundamental changes in the systems of government and business, the management of our earth’s resources, will reach a crisis point, the tipping point from which there is no return. 2020 US Presidential hopefu
l, Marianne Williamson writes, “Our problem is not that we don’t have power, so much as that we tend not to use the power we have.”
So what is this thing we call “power”? How do we become empowered, how do we know if we truly belong? If we have planets or angles between 20° and 25° of Capricorn, Aries, Cancer or Libra, 2019 and 2020 herald opportunities re-unite with the lost parts of ourselves, tenderly nourish, nurture our “feminine” essence into manifestation, as the North Node is in Cancer, the Magna Mater. Here we must journey to find our place of true Belonging. That soft breast of nourishment, tenderness, community, creativity and collaboration, where gender, race and sexual preference are gathered with acceptance and embraced with Love. Where we share generously without fear of lack or competition. Where we deeply love our wrinkles, the soft curves or floppy parts of our bodies. Where men and women can cease striving for bigger and for more.
The “feminine” that has been denigrated, distorted, disowned for thousands of years is still there. We see her in the soft contours of the land, the urgent thrusting of lime-green leaves, the artists brush that sweeps turquoise and violet across the tangerine skies at sunset. We know her indomitable presence in the strong walls, the deep foundations of Notre Dame that rises from ancient pagan foundations, a visible reminder that we are never lost. That there is a natural rhythm, a steady pulse beat, an all-loving heart that calls us home to that place of our true Belonging.
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It arrives suddenly, unannounced, concealed in a swirl of dry wind that scatters a shroud of ash over life as we knew it. It blinds us in the glare of a nuclear sky. Out of the blue, news that buckles our knees, shatters our world into shiny, sharp shards that embed themselves in our heart. At that moment, we know. Our life will never be the same again.
The Sun conjoins Chiron on Wednesday, a suggestion that the road ahead may not be easy. That stiff upper lips and stoicism was not what M Scott Peck had in mind when he said, “Life is difficult.” We may feel flawed; our flame of creativity and passion may be extinguished by worry or sorrow. We may not feel like Xena the Warrior. Chiron pierces through our illusions, our judgements, and in our pain, we may be emboldened by our courage, our inexhaustible vitality.
It takes great courage to submit to the call to visit those secret vulnerable places in our heart, to weep away the pretenses, to risk tenderness.
And now you’ll be telling stories
Most of us doggedly resist change, pay lip-service to diversity, avoid new beginnings. We’re hard-wired to take the path well-travelled. And yet, on some level, most of us know that the external props in our lives are as flimsy as straws when the wild wind blows. Nothing and everything has changed.
Uranus remains in Taurus until 2026, shaking and jolting us from the steady rhythm of our cossetted lives, widening the fault lines in our relationships, swallowing the earth from under our feet. As we ricochet from our rut, Uranus may escort epiphanies that separate us from what we love and value, pushing us over the edge. Uranus destabilises, brings anarchy, chaos, revolution and rebellion. Uranus is the Sky god who brings innovation on winds of change.
When we’re shook up and shattered, on our knees, we may receive a flash of insight that directs us to a new bend in the road.
For those of us who like our lives anchored by certainty, the world may seem a precarious place right now. As our plans are sucked into the undertow, we may be cast adrift from the raft of our faith.
Chiron, in our birth chart, represents that place where we are maimed, irrevocably scarred, by the unfairness of life, where we discover that bad things do happen to extremely good people and that what goes around doesn’t always come around in any satisfactory or just kind of way.
In Pisces, Mercury drapes our dreams in silken images that sparkle and inspire. He withdraws from worldly concerns, submerged in fantasy, delighting in music, art or poetry. He aids emotive expression of our thoughts, our feelings, our heartfelt concerns. Yet, we can also be prey to delusion, confusion and misunderstandings in those deep and often murky waters where the two fish swim.
Love is an act of the imagination. We daub our lover with our oldest longing. We paint his lips with our most noble and generous magnificence. Love photo-shops her imperfections. Love ennobles his good qualities, assigns them with mythical powers. In our love’s vow we talk, we touch, we seal our dreams with a kiss. We know that we are beautiful. We feel young again. Alive, in a way that we haven’t felt in years.
We dis-own our passion and vitality, clutch at things we feel we can control. We blinker our eyes and stop being curious. Our entire birth chart, and more specifically, the archetypes of Venus and Mars, describe the myriad ways we love embrace, or avoid, Love and Erotic Desire. In myth, Venus was not faithful. She delighted in variety, she evoked jealousy. She defied the patriarchal Greek and Roman morality. In our birth chart, she leads us down to the Underworld to experience orgies of love and humiliating loss, then urges us to emerge again, re-newed, stronger, wiser, eyes wide open.
Love is a creative act of the Imagination. Its realm is rarefied, intangible, briefly captured like an exquisite butterfly where it flutters to the sound of music, poetry, the wind whispering through the trees.
Anais Nin wrote so poignantly, “Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we do not know how to replenish its source.” So how do we replenish Love’s source? David Schnarch writes, love and desire are “not a matter of peeling away the layers but of developing them—growing ourselves up to be mature and resourceful adults who can solve our current problems.”