A New Moon is a time to plant seeds for the coming lunar month. A Taurus New Moon is especially fertile. What Taurus needs and wants is peace, beauty and security and the perfect place to find that is in The Garden. And we are supposed to be the good stewards of that Garden. We seem to be failing at our purpose. This is the time to take care of our personal garden as well as our Mother Earth.

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Make Love, Not War!

It's significant that this year the planets Venus and Mars come together three times in the sky, signifying a re-balancing of these two archetypal energies. Our collective destiny (the North Node of the Moon) will be finishing it's sweep through Venus-ruled Libra this year, modeling a more just, diplomatic and balanced way of handling relationships, while the old war-like habits of the South Node in Mars-ruled Aries need to be let go of. Our cosmic instructions are clear. Love rules the day. Compassion and Wisdom have to be brought to the table.

Venus also rules (directs its energies) this New Moon in Taurus and she is all for making love, and not engaging in war unless love is at stake. The planet Venus is named for the Roman version of the Greek Aphrodite, the primordial Goddess who arose from Mother Ocean's union with the severed phallus of the sky god, Uranus. This myth tells us a deep spiritual truth about life here on Earth: In the Beginning, our collective unconscious (Mother Ocean) took in heaven's generative codes (Uranus' phallus) and gave birth to our collective evolutionary purpose, which is to embody the archetypal energy of Aphrodite: Love, Beauty and Wisdom and the awakening of Psyche/Soul within each of us.

Sadly, patriarchy's need to repress this spiritual goddess energy has created inequality between the sexes as well as an imbalanced reliance on left-brain rational thinking. This vital, feminine archetypal energy has been twisted into unconscious, violent sex, pornography and a constrictive ideal of beauty. And even more important, our ignorance of the importance of right brain, feminine consciousness has brought about a loss of Wisdom.

Re-balancing the masculine doing energy of Mars with the feminine being energy of Venus entails centering ourselves in our true being before deciding how we want to do things differently. Mars is at the service of Venus; our actions arise from our essence; our head is at the service of our heart. These energies are part of our makeup--we can redeem Venus' archetypal powers by engaging in sacred sexuality, by creating beauty in our lives and by tapping into the Wisdom of the Anima Mundi/ World Soul. A re-valued Venus can free the Imagination, help you know yourself and your values, and acknowledge your role as caretaker of Mother Earth.

The archetypal energy of Taurus is The Garden--a place of beauty and wonder and peace. In the Garden, we can let go of the world's worries and surrender to our senses. In the Garden, we just have to BE. Venus rules the senses and her ancient temples were Gardens. As that wise man Jesus once said Look at the lilies of the fields. They neither toil nor spin and yet they are arrayed in more splendor than even Solomon in all his glory. The magic of beautiful flowers is that they can make us forget our cares and center us in the moment.

What would happen if we set up our tents in the Garden for a while? Long enough for us to remember our sense of wonder and delight at Earth's bounty and beauty. Long enough for us to step outside our cultural conditioning and discover other visions of Being. Sadly, that moment of beauty will make us more aware that our culture destroys that beauty and peace for the sake of expediency, selfishness and greed.

The sign of Taurus asks us to be Stewards of this Garden Paradise which is our Home. We are failing at this.

This Taurus New Moon offers us a chance to change the way we relate to Mother Earth, and our own bodies, personally and collectively. Humans are part (an unruly part) of Earth's biosphere and we can choose to be her spokespersons. With Mercury's retrograde a day after this Taurus New Moon, spend time thinking outside the box and open up to new ideas and visions of living and loving. As we shake off the patriarchal paradigm of life, we have to find a new vision to take its place--a more holistic, just, compassionate, sustainable vision of life here on Earth.

Mercury is retrograde from May 18 to June 11. So prepare yourself to re-think your life, re-do what needs doing and re-orient yourself to a new world. The Sabian symbol for Mercury going retrograde at 14* Gemini is: Bridging physical space and social distinctions, two men communicate telepathically. This symbol asks us to consider transcending the limiting beliefs of our culture and connect (a Venus trait) to each other in new and seemingly mysterious ways. We are here to evolve!

Taurus New Moon, May 17-18, 2015

This Taurus New Moon occurs on Sunday, May 17^th at 9:13pm PDT and on Monday, May 18^th at 12:13am EDT/ 4:13am GMT. A Taurus New Moon is an especially fertile time to plant a seed of a new thought, a vision, a plan or a goal. Plant a literal seed to symbolize your plans and then nurture them to help them grow strong.

The Sabian symbol for the Sun and Moon at 27* Taurus is: An old Native woman selling artifacts of her tribe on the streets. Our culture needs to return to basic community values and rebuild our communities and the world in more peaceful ways. The old Wisdom to accomplish this is still available if we look for it in everyday life. The Alchemists said that Lady Wisdom stood in the streets, offering herself and her wisdom to people, but they ignored her. We can no longer afford to be so blind.

Taurus asks us to consider our resources and our talents and decide how best to use them. If we still stand in patriarchy's corner, our goal is probably to make money. If we step away and ask what our purpose is, we'll discover alternative ways to use our resources that will benefit us as well as the Earth.

So how is Venus channeling this Taurus energy? Venus is in Cancer, the sign of the Mother, our emotional body, our home. Creative and family-oriented, Venus in Cancer connects us to our inner truth. Venus is also in a very positive trine relationship with Neptune in Pisces (exact on May 16^th), helping us bridge many dimensions in our search for Self.

The Sabian symbol for Venus at 12* Cancer is: A woman nursing a baby whose aura reveals him to be the reincarnation of a great Teacher. This symbol speaks to each person's ability to reclaim our past-life experiences to sustain us in this lifetime. We have to nurture the divine essence within and bring that knowledge forward into our lives now. We are more than this one lifetime. Our souls are comprised of many lives, many experiences, many talents. Venus here calls to those spiritual energies to awaken within us.

Venus as well as Taurus connects us to our five senses, while Neptune connects us to our metaphysical senses--our intuitions, our visionary experiences, our mystical connections to Earth and others. We'll probably be on sensory overload if we include those beyond the five. Venus squares the Nodes, challenging us to make love not war. When we stop fighting and start listening to ourselves and each other we'll discover our real needs and hopefully, start taking care of them. With Venus in the spotlight, we have to nurture ourselves--body, soul and spirit!

Venus in Cancer will also connect with the still potent Pluto/Uranus square. On May 21^st, Venus opposes Pluto retrograde in Capricorn and squares Uranus in Aries on May 25^th. Venus will carry this revolutionary energy forward, especially when she connects with Mars again for their second and third meeting later this summer.

Mars is in Gemini opposite Saturn in Sagittarius. Saturn is making sure that our belief system is being revised, while Mars is open to the new possibilities that the Gemini mind will come up with. And Saturn's discipline and focus guarantees that Mars won't be impulsive about what needs to be done.

On May 16^th, Jupiter in Leo joins the asteroid Juno. Juno is Queen of the Gods, Jupiter's wife and goddess of relationships. In Greece, she was called Hera, the wife of Zeus. This mythological couple needs redeeming from patriarchy. Zeus never fulfilled his obligation to Hera, who is the Goddess of the Full Moon. His role was to 'perfect' Hera's energy, but the patriarchal mindset refuses to give that power to the Feminine. Hopefully, we are at a point in our evolution where she can be given her due. When the masculine supports and 'perfects' the feminine spirit of life, we will live with outer equality between the sexes and an inner balance between our feminine soul and our masculine ego.

We have a choice before us. We can be complacent and stick with the patriarchal story, or we can envision a new story to take its place. If we choose the new story, we have to incarnate it and give birth to it. Now that the intense Pluto/Uranus square is behind us we can truly begin our work of creating a just and peaceful world. That's what Taurus desires above all else!

Walk in the Light,

Cathy

Woodstock

by Joni Mitchell

I came upon a child of God

He was walking along the road

And I asked him where are you going

And this he told me

I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm *

I'm going to join in a rock 'n' roll band

I'm going to camp out on the land

I'm going to try an' get my soul free

We are stardust

We are golden

And we've got to get ourselves

Back to the garden

Then can I walk beside you

I have come here to lose the smog

And I feel to be a cog in something turning

Well maybe it is just the time of year

Or maybe it's the time of man

I don't know who I am

But you know life is for learning

We are stardust

We are golden

And we've got to get ourselves

Back to the garden

By the time we got to Woodstock

We were half a million strong

And everywhere there was song and celebration

And I dreamed I saw the bombers

Riding shotgun in the sky

And they were turning into butterflies

Above our nation

We are stardust

Billion year old carbon

We are golden

Caught in the devil's bargain

And we've got to get ourselves

back to the garden

Siquomb Publishing Company

Authors Website: http://www.cathypagano.com

Authors Bio:

Cathy Pagano is a spiritual advisor and Jungian psychotherapist, storyteller, author and teacher.

She is the author of a book on the return of the Goddess, "Wisdom's Daughters: How Women Can Change the World".

Cathy trained at the C. G. Jung Institut-Zurich in dream interpretation, has an M.A. in Counseling Psychology in Feminine Spirituality, and is a certified Life Coach.

As an astrologer and storyteller, she weaves the Cosmic Stories written in the stars. From The Bard's Grove, she writes about emerging archetypal themes in movies and books.

Cathy works with the tools of the imagination - dreams, alchemy, myths, astrology, symbolic language, storytelling, ritual - to awaken the Soul's wisdom.



I believe that Americans are called to a higher consciousness at this point in our history. We are called on to live up to our ideals and create the country our forefathers imagined. Inner consciousness needs to be acted upon for social justice.



Cathy believes that our writers and artists must take up our responsibility to create art that inspires, teaches and heals our humanity.



Cathy writes about political, psychological/spiritual, and cultural issues.