I’m writing this the Monday morning after Palm Sunday. That’s unlike me, all the other newsletters were written in insomniac bursts of inspiration at 4am around the full moon. I guess the waxing moon part still applies…
I had made a note of a word and a quote long ago, and it must have been simmering in my brain behind how my celebrity crush is a Taurus Sun, which was my fall back topic in case I was desperate. Ironically, since liking Hakuoki and being an astrogirlie is the full extent of my personality, he is not in that game.
But it’s true that, as a Scorpio Rising, I have a Taurus VII house, and I have spent 7 seasons of 30 Rock practically in love with Jack Donaghy even with all of the parody of a Republican vibes, back when we still thought reality could never be that bad.
Taurus is also Empress energy, and I struggle with that so much it’s still an unfinished chapter in my spiritual memoir I have been writing. There are aspects of Taurus energy that I have in my blood, of course; being of Italian and French descent I’m not a stranger to pleasure. In all its forms, not just sex, which seems to be the implication of the word for people in more puritanical cultures.
It was fascinating to read Elizabeth Gilbert’s food adventures in Italy, somewhat unrelatable but also a reminder of the impossible standards put on Italian women (I can’t buy clothes on the high street over there unless I buy plus size, when I can buy a small in the UK).
The word I noted was Makarios. A Greek boy name that means “blessed”. A word that in their pagan culture was used to talk about the gods, and that often in the Bible gets translated as “happy”. I think that, to our culture, both words sound awfully limiting of what the word makarios likely meant.
To me, it seems more aligned with the meaning of words we commonly see thrown around in Manifestation spaces, like abundance. Happiness is a fleeting feeling. Makarios seems to me more about the contentment that comes from a deep-seated knowledge that you are, and will be, fine.
In that respect, Christian writers who paint the so-called Beatitudes in the Gospels as something counter-cultural against the hedonistic pagan culture miss the point. Jesus was hinting at the same contentment underlying the carefree attitude of the gods.
In the Christian worldview, the poor and suffering are meant to find it in their trust in their god rather than in material circumstances, but it’s not like the gods on Mount Olympus found it in their ambrosia either.
They found it in their own divinity. And that, my friends, is the paradox of Taurus season, which focuses on the material
The duality of the signs places it on the other end of the axis from Scorpio, the sign of the deep waters. Taurus brings us back into the realm of the tangible so that we don’t get swept away by the emotions in the transformational whirlwind of that sign.
At the same time, Scorpio brings us out of the material realm, hinting at how there is always something spiritual hidden behind the mundane surface of needing food and shelter, and a comfortable one if you please.
The more I deconstructed Catholicism, and more specifically the brand of traditional Catholicism I was surrounded by, the more it came to my attention that we were just reheating the leftovers of Jansenism and a long history of gnostic controversies.
There is room to read the tenets of small-o orthodoxy in such a way that it’s consistent with a positive view of the body, but it’s a fine line into a hierarchy that sees the spiritual as superior.
It goes without saying that, as the author of a newsletter titled “Witchy Musings”, the grey area was significant enough for me to walk away from it all.
Perhaps that’s why I find Taurus energy so hard to work with. That, and the female hormonal cycle making it a bit harder than for cis-men to appreciate the body I was given most of the time. There are, however, other sides to Taurus energy than the homebody with the hygge vibe.
Like all the Earth signs, Taurus is ambitious and reliable, and being a fixed sign it’s steady. It’s often depicted as inflexible, but I don’t think that’s fair. It’s one of the signs ruled by Venus, and in Traditional astrology no planet is in detriment there (Pluto is if you use Modern astrology, and I have some opinions about that).
The Moon, however, is exalted in Taurus.
This, perhaps, is the key aspect. Taurus energy is the ultimate symbol of emotional safety. Even the bull itself looks strong and sturdy, and like it can take up all your burdens and carry them for you with minimal effort.
It’s easy to think of Taurus and the II house it rules for all of the Venusian themes on a superficial level, but there can be a layer underneath all the luxury and sensual pleasures. Safety in many forms is one of them.
It’s true that you can have expensive items and be broke, therefore unsafe, but if you think about it on a body awareness level, comfort was how humanity evolved from our earlier ancestors. We found shelter, discovered how to build fires at will, made clothes out of animal skins, started cultivating and raising our food instead of hunting and foraging, started building better shelter than caves, then fortified them and so on.
Our history as a species is one long thread of seeking safety. The makarios gods of Olympus are safe in their powers, having defeated the Titans and the heroes of humanity. The makarios of the Gospels are safe in the knowledge that they will get to Heaven to be with their god in an eternal state of bliss.
And you, where are you safe? This is my invitation to you this Taurus season.
Until next time, keep living in wonder,
What I’ve been loving this month
📚 This beautiful reflection about awe and how it makes our life worth living (it feels timely with my guest on the podcast tomorrow coming to talk about the possibility of life in the Cosmos)
🎧 This exploration of the II house with Astrologer and Christian mystic Rob Baily on the home-body podcast
📺 Fran Drescher’s semi-autobiographical sitcom Happily Divorced, written with her ex-husband and creator of The Nanny. Hilarious look at the meaning of love in all forms. I also loved Hindsight (also free on Freeve) but I don’t want to recommend something that ended on a cliffhanger.
Watch it free on Freeve (Amazon)
🥘 Spring greens salad with mixed grains, figs, and grilled Halloumi. Lusciously Tauran (from the last Taurus Moon)
🖤 The weather has been so nice over the weekend I was able to get out the leather jacket and resume my life as a Ranmaru Kurosaki impersonator.
What’s been happening in my world
My new website is finally LIVE.
We’re half-way through season 2 of the podcast (Ep 5 is out TOMORROW). If you haven’t listened to it yet, you really should check out the episode about dreams with April Scheffler, it’s full of goodness.
Also the episode from 2 weeks ago about eclipses is a good one since tomorrow it’s the second new moon in Aries and first eclipse of the new eclipse season.