Taurus Season Redux

It is very much Gemini season (A season I love!), so I know a newsletter about Taurus seems out of sync, but it’s been a particularly wild Taurus season filled with eclipses, big planetary shifts, and my current covid state, so not much has allowed for clear presence of mind. Which - speaking of- Mercury has also been retrograde since May 10th and today (the 22nd) it slides back into Taurus until June 13th. This feels like the period of review; we may actually get a moment of recollect after the storm. It almost has two phases: while Mercury is retrograde in Taurus from now until June 2nd, we get a chance to reflect on what’s just gone down since late April (or even since the first eclipse in November 2021). This is bolstered even more so by Venus’s entry into Taurus on May 28th. Then once Mercury starts moving forward again in Taurus, from June 3rd-13th, we may really feel in our bones what matters to us again, and what to do with it going forward.

We’re currently in the midst of the year-and-a-half-long Taurus and Scorpio eclipse season that started in November 2021. We just had two eclipses on April 30th and May 15th/16th, and the next two will be during Scorpio season (one on November 8th which happens to be Midterm Election Day ). Eclipses bring a lotta lotta change, usually speeding up progress of something that was already in motion, but these eclipses have extra elements of surprise. The way these eclipses are set up is such that there is an influx of Taurus and a release of Scorpio. Uranus, the planet of shock and liberation is in Taurus, and Scorpio is the realm of all that is behind the scenes. On a personal level you may be seeing the Taurus and Scorpios (Sun, Moon, or rising) in your life going through a lot of shifts. On a broader level secrets may be exposed, shadows coming into light, a radical simplification of what used to seem so complex.

Opposite signs like Taurus and Scorpio could be described as two sides of the same coin, but I think it’s more accurately visualized as opposite points on the same circular track. They cycle around the same common themes at different stages of evolution. One may be a quarter of the way into understanding while the other three-quarters of the way through, but they’re always opposite. Taurus may seek the uncomplicated while Scorpio tends to overcomplicate. These two particularly embody the dark (Scorpio) and white (Taurus) horse archetypes. They have a common weightiness and power to them. They’re fixed, sometimes stubborn, in their ways while both striving for security. Taurus, in a grounded way, through long-standing loyalty and steady, occasionally slow, work; while Scorpio aims for emotional trust and does so by way of intimacy and deep investigation. Both are very interested in desire. Taurus, the earth sign, is in a simpler, tangible, sensual way — luxurious textures, smells, tastes; Scorpio, the water sign, tends to possess much faster, is more emotionally risky, secretive, and mysterious. Tauruses tend to set standards for classics: George Strait, Willie Nelson, Tammy Wynette, Robert Johnson, James Brown, Liberace, Bing Crosby, Ritchie Valens, Frankie Valli, Pete Seeger; while Scorpio challenges convention with loads of cryptic moodiness: Bjork, Joni Mitchell, SZA, Ciara, Frank Ocean, Brad Paisley, Lyle Lovett, Neil Young, Grace Slick, Jeff Buckley, Johnny Greenwood.

But really, when it comes down to it, if you push either of them outside of what they’re physically or emotionally comfortable with, you may get poisoned or gored.

You can apply the Zodiac wheel to almost any developmental cycle or process. If you take activism or political change, for example, then Aries - the first sign - is where you harness the energy of your immediate reaction. There’s a lot of potency in being justifiably angry and acting on it, hence the warrior archetype. They’re just not afraid to get it started and fight, if need be. Wherever you have Aries in your chart might be where you’re more impatient but also fearless. But then comes Taurus, who is not so immediately confrontational (though they can definitely still be angry), has taken the time to distill the reaction into a concrete value system and create a plan. Taurus is deciding what needs more attention to grow, and fostering the relationships to make it happen. The Taurus part of your chart might be pretty clear - or should be - on what really matters to you here; what you really like. Gemini then communicates those values, introducing multiple perspectives; Cancer takes care of the emotions that come up as you process all this new information; and so on.

Taurus is full of people with very strong values. Karl Marx (Sun, Moon, Venus, and North Node in Taurus), Ho Chí Minh (Sun, Moon, Ascendant in Taurus) Che Guevara (Sun and Venus in Taurus); Vladimir Lenin (Sun, Mercury, Pluto, and Jupiter in Taurus); Eva Perón (Sun, Mars, Ascendant in Taurus); and Florence Nightingale (Sun and Moon in Taurus). One of my favorite professors at Columbia, Kathy Boudin, died a day after the Taurus eclipse on April 30th. She herself was a Taurus with a Scorpio moon. Unsurprisingly the splashier headlines only really focused on the crime she did time for, but obituaries like this one tell the fuller story of how sweet and serious she was, and how her principles transformed in the years after. Her method of justice reform was very much about relationships cultivated within prison, and especially sustaining support for them afterwards. She often brought into class the women she was incarcerated with, to let them tell their full stories. She did activism in a truly Taurus way, with consistent patient conversation and a long-range view. RIP.

How do you know what it is you value? A quick way to find out is by paying attention to what it is you love - what art, music, and movies you like; what places make you feel grounded; what people you feel best around. Your values are codified in those things, and even affirmed despite negative experiences, or things you simply don’t like.

The past 2+ years have been about bringing to light isolation, maturity, age, suspicion, institutional collapse; these Taurus eclipses are now bringing up what we now feel is most important and putting them in very high accord. Reconnect with new vision. You may be seeing people in a new way because you now have new details (the eclipses were in Gemini and Sagittarius 2020-2021) so pay attention to what it is you now desire - the things you yearn for. These will inform the kinds of relationships that’’ll unfold over the new few years, even a new plan altogether.

I’ll leave you this time with my mom’s best friend, Linda, a supreme Taurus archetype whom I know I’ve described to so many already. Her place is a perpetual influence for me. She really does capture the essence of Taurus - in it’s grace, it’s love for the beautiful and decadent, it’s laid-back, edenic, multi-sensory world; yet it’s always with a little camp or dark humor. It could probably be best summed up in that every year for my mom’s birthday (a Capricorn) Linda sends her a cashmere sweater with a crisp $100 bill tucked inside.

Linda herself is tall, thin, and languid. Strawberry blond hair pulled up into some kind of beehive or topknot, coral-orange lipstick and a breezy jumpsuit. Usually driving a Cadillac in the rural town in Southern Missouri where she lives. Our Prius almost got stuck crossing a creek on the way to bringing some milkshakes she requested, so I don’t imagine she drives far. Her farmhouse completely transported me as a kid. It had a beauty salon, in what would’ve been the dining room, with a red vinyl barber chair, buckets of nail polish assorted by color, and every size Mason Pearson brush. She had two short-haired dachshunds named Violet and Iris. Birds in ornate birdcages in the laundry room. Louise Bourgeois-esque metal spiders hang on some of the walls —all made by Linda’s longtime partner, Bud (Aquarius), a Vietnam vet who welds in the garage. Green and purple mirror balls in the garden. Toaster waffles with blueberries and whipped cream for dinner. Pink lightbulbs in the lamps, molded soaps in the bathroom, lace, a teal rotary phone, and Bergdorf’s catalogs. Ab Fab or Nick at Night on the tiny TV. Bliss!

Marie says
look tiny red spiders
are walking
across the pools
& just as I am writing down
tiny red
spiders are
walking across the pools
She says Mom I can just see it
in your poem it’ll say
tiny red spiders are walking
across the pools