Believe it or not, we are knee-deep in Venus season. For those of you who are listening to the podcast, you know that Theresa and I have been looking ahead to May & June with great enthusiasm for some time. And indeed, this is the season for our planetary benefactors—Jupiter and Venus—to shine. I suspect that mid-May through the end of June will offer sweet, sensuous blessings to many. But if I am being honest, the opening act of Taurus season has felt rougher than I expected. If you—like me—feel suspended somewhere in the liminal portal between past pain and future horizons, I offer these thoughts:
In these past two weeks, I have cycled through the elated highs of significant personal breakthroughs and the despairing lows of fearful mental backlash. As Jupiter and Uranus finally conjoined in Taurus on April 20, the fixed earth sign of Venus, I have been forced to wrestle deeply with the nature of fear: both with my particular, individual fears and with the role fear plays in defending the stasis our brains seem to crave
In Taurus, we like to feel stable. We want the earth to hold us in a firm, securing embrace. We crave a steady pace in the area of life that Taurus represents; we expect the planets that occupy this sign to act predictably, accumulate protectively, soothe gently, and change slowly. But the disruptive, independent, liberatory planet Uranus possesses little synastry with this yin Venusian territory. The erratic outer planet has been sending shockwaves through this hardy, resistant ground since 2018, and with the collaboration of Jupiter, this month feels like the culmination of Uranus' long and transformative transit. Jupiter and Uranus will not conjoin in every zodiac sign in one lifetime, so it is rare and special to experience these forces working together in any area of life. Jupiter brings an expansive, cohering quality to the disruptive, upheaving force of Uranus, and the combination can support long-lasting, transformative change. That change can be a blessing, but it doesn’t mean our experience will feel easy or that we will even recognize the blessing when we stand in the center of the quaking.
Venus entered Taurus earlier this week, and as the ruler of the sign, she possesses a kind of final authority of approval over matters related to her territory. And it feels, to my mind, enormously auspicious that she should enter into the fray on the heels of the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction. Venus can add the final aesthetic dressing to their plans; she can deepen our sensory experience of blessing; she can bring enjoyment, recognition, social support, union with others over the machinations of this great change, and even more importantly, harmony within ourselves. But even as the key-holding ruler of Taurus, her ingress into the sign faced a formidable challenge this past week: her first-ever square to Pluto in Aquarius. Taurus is the fixed earth sign of Venus. Aquarius is the fixed air sign of Saturn. The square between Venus and Pluto across this fixed territory plays a tense, harsh chord that grates against the most stubborn attachments of the mental and bodily spheres. In this tense aspect, our minds revolt against the change Jupiter and Uranus have been enacting, and this resistance, led by Pluto, guides us into the deepest, darkest ravines of the unconscious. In a mental revolt, the primary instrument of violence is thought; and under the spell of Plutoean inspiration across the fixed signs, our thoughts are likely to wander into fear as our unconscious grasps for all the mental scaffolding that seeks to protect us from uncertainty and change. But as Tess has mentioned on the podcast and so frequently to me in private; much of what we fear is simply our own feelings. Feelings we’ve buried and long avoided, protected by crystallized narratives about the dangers and impossibility of change. Narratives that try to protect us from reexperiencing past shame as well as both real and imagined harm.
This transit, brief as it was, had the power to trigger a process so deeply ingrained in our minds that even Venus, in all her glory and power, could not stop it. At the same time, Mercury, the planet with perhaps the most rulership over our minds, passed through his own portal of mental anguish in Aries. As the sign preceding Taurus, Aries is both out of aspect from this Venusian realm and representative of qualities, behaviors, karmas, and attachments that can block or undo our progress in Taurus. So piling onto the harsh aspect between Pluto and Venus, we have Mercury struggling to regain speed in Aries, retracing his steps through the path of his recent retrograde, headed towards his third and final conjunction with Chiron. This is a valiant, but painful journey the messenger planet is undertaking. Chiron represents a deeply felt wound—a source of real and imagined invalidation. A place where we feel we cannot measure up. In the birth chart, Aries is the twelfth house from the perspective of Taurus, a location where we store unconscious material related to the Taurus aspect of our lives. I can’t help but read certain poetry into the timing of the solar eclipse in Aries mere weeks before the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in Taurus, and one of the primary features of this eclipse was its conjunction with Chiron—representing, in many ways, the eclipse of a wound; an attempt to flush out something painful, a deeply felt insecurity that holds us back from expressing ourselves fully. But like a real fleshly wound, to heal it, we must first clean it out and there is no way around experiencing pain in that process (part of what made this past eclipse so pronounced for many of us). But now with eclipse season passed, leaving many of us eager for relief, we are still waylaid by Mercury, who is lagging behind the pack, still completing the tedious and painful process we are ready to escape. But to skip this part of the process would be to our detriment; Mercury is bringing the awareness of Chiron into the mental space. We are making sense of a wound, picking it apart, trying to understand how we acquired it, and attempting to dismantle it so we can move into the freedom Uranus has been clamoring for and which Venus and Jupiter have both arrived to bless.
This weekend brings relief from the Venus-Pluto square; she’s gaining distance from the Lord of the Underworld as she separates from their square and deepens in joy and familiarity with her home sign. But Mercury pushes into the heart of Chiron tomorrow and Monday, perfecting their conjunction just in time for the new moon in Taurus on Tuesday. This is an opportunity to gain awareness of the mental patterns of fear, despair, and avoidance we use to negate our potential and resist change. Awareness does not equate to defeat, but if we recognize the patterns and the consistent narrative shape of our fears, perhaps we can watch our fearful thoughts with the protective distance of engaging with fiction, instead of empowering the fear with the capacity to derail us. This is the hope anyway. My hope, at least, and maybe yours too.
Change is inevitable, and frequently fear’s most insidious crime is to rob us of active collaboration with the process. None of us can control our path, but we can shape and prune and nurture the life we encounter along the way. We can encourage growth in one direction or another. We can collaborate with other beings to pave mutually beneficial roads. But fear can banish us from every aspect of the process, leaving us convinced that the shape and quality of the path are predetermined. What I most love about astrology is the role it can play in this process of collaboration. The longer I practice, the more weary I become of the self-defeating nature of prediction. The power of astrology is not in determining what will be, but rather identifying when and how we might be most supported in becoming.
I hope each of you feels deeply into this process of becoming as we traverse into the heart of Spring. Our minds should feel a lift as Mercury clears Chiron and gains speed towards the middle/end of the week, and I hope the Taurus new moon brings sweetness and a sense of renewal to everyone. Try to remember that Jupiter and Venus are confirming a process that has long been in play, in a unique way for each of us, and I hope we can each recognize, appreciate, and celebrate how far we have come in the process.
MAY UPDATES AND SUBSCRIBER BENEFITS:
FREE LIVE SESSION:
Theresa and I will hold a live session for the Taurus New Moon on Tuesday, May 7th at 5 pm PST. We will take questions about anything we discuss on the show; you can ask questions about your birth chart, spiritual practice, meditation, planetary relationships, or anything else! This is a supportive community space, and all our subscribers are welcome. Zoom link here!
VENUS WORKSHOP:
In honor of the season, Theresa and I are going to hold a 2-hour workshop on all things Venus, on Saturday, May 18th at 10 am PST. This workshop will coincide with the Venus-Uranus conjunction and prepare us for the superior conjunction of Venus and the Sun in early June. I will send out a separate description of the workshop very soon, but the intent is to explore the relationship between Venus and pleasure. We will talk about how our charts might support and/or block our access to pleasure and remedial ideas for deepening our love and intimacy with the Venus aspect of ourselves. The workshop is free for paid subscribers, and there will be a suggested donation of $20 to $30 for attendees. You will have to register in advance and provide your birth chart information. All logistics coming in a separate post soon.
SPECIAL READINGS:
Jupiter’s year-long transit through Gemini begins on May 25th. I will be offering a special 30-minute reading to discuss the specific openings and opportunities the transit will trigger over the next 12 months. This reading is of particular import to anyone with luminaries or major planetary placements in Gemini, as well as all mutable rising signs (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, Pisces). Jupiter's transits are particularly luscious to work with because he represents expansion and blessings. He moves slowly enough to make a significant impact on every sign he visits, while also fast enough to generate momentum. This transit can be viewed as a kind of collaboration between Jupiter and Mercury, two planets that can feel at odds in their approach, but I think, in this case, the collaboration will bring a much-needed change of pace and a sociable enlivening. The most impactful piece of this transit is likely to occur in the first couple of months, so it will be of great benefit to jump into the flow of it armed with information about how to take advantage of the openings it represents. Cost will be $65 for the general public and $35 for paid subscribers. So take advantage because I want to meet you and talk about happy things!
I am also offering subscribers an indefinite discount of $30 off my "Astrology of Now" check-in. This is a quick reading to address the immediate demands of the astrological moment, ideal for short-term scheduling guidance, advice for navigating important opportunity windows, or support with presently difficult circumstances. It’s an opportunity to check in about any present matter at a very inexpensive rate. I won’t do any advance preparation and won’t go into any deep birth chart analysis, but I can provide context around a present circumstance and some guidance about the timing of completion and resolution. With the discount, the cost will be $45 for paid subscribers.
Discount codes beneath the paywall.