This year's Scorpio Full Moon arrives during Beltane (May 1-5), the Celtic earth festival that celebrates the beginning of Summer. The Wheel of the Year describes the process of life, death and rebirth here on Earth. Beltane is the time when "sweet desire weds wild delight." It is a time for our hearts to rejoice in life and love and passion. We are called to engage in the wild flow of life, our blood pumping through our veins with renewed strength, our hearts opening to delight as we become one with the blossoming Earth.
At Beltane, we dance around the Maypole, weaving the masculine and feminine energies of life and love, hope and expectation. And so, each year Life is renewed. Beltane is another fire festival, symbolizing the next leap of light here in the northern hemisphere. You'll notice that the light will increase dramatically now as high summer approaches. The bonfires we light at Beltane give us back the light of renewed hope for the coming year. When we leap over the Beltane fire, it cleanses us of any lingering darkness, and brings us luck and fertility. It is during Beltane that the veils between the worlds open and the Faerie folk come out to dance with us. So go outside and enjoy this time of beauty and delight.
This Scorpio Full Moon is also called the Wesak Moon, the most auspicious day in Buddhism, for it celebrates the birth, enlightenment and death of Buddha. In this energetic opposition between Taurus and Scorpio, we are all called to the great union with Nature and the heavens, celebrating the Divine within Nature and within ourselves. Like the Buddha, we are called to acknowledge the divine spirit in our human nature as we overcome and release the emotional demons that plague us and separate us from our spiritual inheritance.
Taurus and Scorpio
Taurus and Scorpio are both powerful signs, fixed in nature, strong in intent. Fixed signs (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius) ensure the continuity and solidarity of life. They concentrate the energies of the four seasons. Taurus concentrates the dynamic springtime fire of Aries into viable life forms. Scorpio concentrates the dynamic autumnal energies into emotional strength.
When the Sun journeys through the sign of Taurus in the northern hemisphere each year, the Earth adorns Herself in beautiful flowers, sweet breezes, green leaves and grass, colorful creatures, trailing vines and warming waters. Taurus seduces us into going out into Nature, calling to the sensualist in all of us. All our senses come alive with the up-rushing energy enlivening Nature. Nature calls us to pay attention to our bodies and our planet. What we discover is that our truest Self is wild and beautiful and wants to dance! Is that how you see yourself? If not, you're missing out on the greatest joys of life.
Taurus, the sign of the Bull of the Mother, is fertile, lush and abundant. It wants to manifest something that sustains and values life. It cultivates steadfastness, love of the material world, beauty (especially in physical forms), the Muses and Art, stubbornness, security and even enlightenment, because Taurus is also associated with illumination and the opening of the third eye. As a Taurus, I learned about opening my third eye through a dream in which someone nailed eagle feathers into my third eye. I had to learn to use my creative imagination with wisdom and spirit. Otherwise, the imagination gets colonized by the capitalist imperative to BUY THINGS instead of creating beauty.
In Taurus, we learn to tame our carnal appetites and use our creative imagination to feed our souls and build a life that brings us beauty, peace and happiness, because it knows what's of value. Taurus values the body, the senses, as well as the eternal truths of the cosmos. Conscious Taurus values Life, unconscious Taurus values possessions. Since we all have Taurus energy in our birth charts, you might want to look at what you really value and how you've expressed that in your life. At this point in our history, we need to understand Taurus' lessons, because our accumulation of too much "stuff' is endangering the world. There's always time to change, even though the Taurus within each of us can get stubborn about giving up its many things. A balanced Taurus knows which one thing is of more value than all the many things on sale. It will choose the "pearl of great price' every time. And that is the security of knowing our own soul's desires.
Scorpio sits opposite Taurus on the astrological wheel. It is the sign that ushers in the winter, a time of growing darkness and the death of the year (in the North). Where Taurus is a fixed earth sign, Scorpio is a fixed water sign. Since we all know that water is in constant motion, the fixed nature of Scorpio has to deal with some stagnant emotions. These are the demons that the Buddha had to face and release. This is why we describe Scorpio as the sign of death and rebirth. It is an emotional death that Scorpio seeks. All those long-held, negative feelings festering in our souls - betrayal, loss, death, bitterness, disappointment, anger, resentment, revenge, loneliness, fear. In Scorpio, we can't deny these feelings anymore. But what do we do with them? We can either let them make our choices for us, or we can choose to release them. The liberation that comes from releasing these feelings brings us to a re-birth and a renewal of our emotional lives.
The positive side of Scorpio is that we listen to our emotions and follow them. Scorpio is strong on introspection. It's all about what's going on inside us. So many people tune out their feelings and instincts when they come up against society's values. Scorpio gives us the emotional power to stand up for what we really need and want. Scorpio's sexuality is based on emotional intimacy, not on how sexually promiscuous we can be. The sexual revolution of the 60s, especially for women, got hijacked by the patriarchy. Sexual freedom isn't about treating casual sex as an itch that needs scratching -- it's about making each sexual encounter meaningful. Women's sexuality is still under attack by the patriarchy, and so our wild sexual authenticity gets twisted into our little girls giving blow-jobs to the boys in schools. Scorpio's sexuality is meant to create deep emotional bonding, and until we all feel comfortable in our skins and our sexuality, sex will continue to be about domination rather than partnering.
Venus and Mars
Eros is "the drive toward union with what we belong to---union with our own possibilities, union with significant other persons in our world." Rollo May
Venus and Mars are the ruling planets of Taurus and Scorpio, meaning they focus the energies of these two ways of being. Both of these planets go retrograde this year, renewing themselves and their goals. It's interesting that both Gemini and Virgo, the signs Venus and Mars retrograde through, are ruled by Mercury, the god-energy of Mind and Intuition. It seems we have to start using our minds and our hearts together if we want to fulfill our highest potentials this year. We have to let Aphrodite and Eros awaken us to our Divinity.
Mars is also the ruler of the sign Aries, which is concerned with our self-identity. With Uranus traveling through Aries, our Mars energy has been trying on new identities to live by. Whether we feel we are leaders, warriors, healers, bards, mystics, adventurers or farmers, we are being asked to assume a larger identity in the world. This Mars in Virgo retrograde has been a time to fine-tune that identity and the desires it constellates.
Mars went retrograde on January24, 2012 at 24* Virgo and turned back to direct motion on April 13 at 4* Virgo. Mars symbolizes our desire nature Eros, as well as our warrior nature Aries. Mars is the god who grapples with life, bringing us those things we desire enough to work and fight for. The retrograde Mars turned within to fine tune those things within us that needed to be healed and analyzed.
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