The Wheel of the Year: Beltane
The Spring winds are still blowing swift and cool, but the Sun is warming the air, rain is falling, coaxing the forsythia, daffodils, tulips and azaleas to blossom. The trees are already unfurling their green leaves or opening up their blossoms.
The Wheel of the Year has moved six-weeks further into the New Year, grounding in the season of Spring. The Spring Equinox winds have given way to Beltane’s beauty.
Beltane arrives in the middle of Taurus, officially on May1st but astrologically when the Sun hits 15* Taurus, which is on May 5th this year. May 5th is also the Scorpio Full Moon lunar eclipse, which occurs a few minutes before the Sun hits 15*. So like the first Aries New Moon which occurred the day after Spring Equinox, we have a major alignment of the new season with the lunar cycle, and an eclipsed lunar cycle at that.
This all points to major shifts and changes during this flowering Beltane season. Since Beltane ushers in a season of growing warmth, color, light, fragrance, beauty and sensual energy, don’t fight it! Let your body feel the energies rising, and listen to what it tells you about life. That’s what Beltane’s gift to us is. To experience the pure beauty of life, whether in a flower or a child, in a beloved animal companion or a friend or lover.
It’s time to experience the enchantment of life as Nature comes awake again, because this is the energy that will fuel us through the rest of the year. Aphrodite, who is the goddess to call on this Beltane season (May 5 – June 21), is the enchantment that radiates from things and beings and enraptures the senses with its smile. This is the way to experience the beauty and charm of this season of Beltane: a time of flowering and extraordinary growth as Nature slowly unfurls herself, trailing beauty wherever she goes.
Beltane is a magical time, when the veils between the worlds are thin (as they are at the opposite gateway of Samhain), and the powers of life return to us (for more on Beltane). The more open you are, in your body, your mind, your heart and your imagination, the more you will gain from this bountiful season. When we align ourselves to Earth’s biosphere, we align with her energy and her purpose. Right now, as Spring is grounded in, her energies of life and growth and passion are strong and growing. And they are available to us – if we attune to them.
Beltane occurs while the Sun rises through the signs of Taurus and Gemini. Fixed sign Taurus is the time of embodiment. Mother Earth takes the fiery life energy of Aries’ Sun and uses it to create Nature’s bounty. In a slow, sensuous dance, Sun in Taurus adorns Mother Earth in beauty, warmth and fragrance, grounding in life. When the light grows as the Sun rises even higher North in the sign of Gemini, the rhythm of life quickens and life spreads out and thickens. Vines grow longer, fruits start to emerge, flowers blossom in profusion. People and animals go out into the light and mingle. The light urges us to connect and communicate, to explore and to be curious.
Gemini is a mutable sign, a liminal time of transition between the season of Spring Equinox and the season of Summer Solstice. By the end of this Beltane season, we will have come halfway around the Wheel of the Year, from the birth of the Light at Winter Solstice, to the full Moon fullness of that Light at Summer Solstice.
While our world seems to be in crisis, (out of chaos a new form arises) the best thing each of us can do is learn to take care of ourselves, so we can help others in the future. A good way to do this is to learn to ‘know yourself’ (journaling, therapy, astrology, meditating) and then to attune to Mother Earth and her seasons. When we ground into the cycles of nature, we learn to understand how to live in balance with nature and ourselves.
So stay true to the season (although down in the southern hemisphere, you’re celebrating the Dark and Samhain), and celebrate life. Life returning in beauty and freshness.
Aphrodite, Goddess of Beltane
Aphrodite the earth-born Kore is also sea born, as becomes an island Queen, but more than any other goddess she becomes Ourania, the Heavenly One. . . She is the only goddess who in passing to the upper air yet kept life and reality. . . .As man advanced in knowledge and in control over nature, the mystery and the godhead of things natural faded into science. Only the mystery of life, and love that begets life, remained, intimately realized and utterly unexplained; hence Aphrodite keeps her godhead to the end.
I’ve been working on my book on Aphrodite, the Solar Feminine goddess who initiates our souls to help us discover what we love and are here to create. So I’m excited to share some of what I’ve learned about this ancient and powerful Goddess. And why Aphrodite is the Goddess to call on to guide us through this beautiful season of embodiment and growth.
In earlier Athenian myths, Aphrodite was called Aphrodite Urania, the eldest of the Fates. This is the heavenly Aphrodite, the one who speaks to us about the Cosmos, daughter of Uranus, the god of Cosmic Laws. In most ancient cultures, there is a trinity of goddesses who control our individual fate – the Spinner, the Alloter and the Unturnable/Death. Our modern culture tries to forget that we all have a Fate, but we’re beginning to remember that we all have something unique to add to life, perhaps laid out in our natal birth charts.
If Aphrodite is an older version of this archetype of Fate, then love must be an intrical part of working out our fates here on Earth. For Aphrodite is the Goddess of Love, of Connection and of our body’s Wisdom. These are the tools of Fate - that we find ourselves through love, through our connections to people and animals, and most especially through our inner Wisdom. If Free Will also asks us to accept our Fate – to meet what comes to us in the best possible way, rather than rejecting what comes-- then honoring Aphrodite and her gifts might make that acceptance sweeter and easier to deal with. Love and beauty, truth and great sex can do that!
Aphrodite of the Greeks, Venus of the Romans, is one of the most vibrant archetypal images of the Goddess that has come down to us from antiquity; the aspect of the ancient Goddess that was never totally forgotten, the form of the Goddess written about and romanticized down through the ages until She truly embodied 'the mystery of life, and love that ‘begets life'.
Aphrodite is the Goddess who combines the spiritual and natural worlds, spirit and body. She does this through Her essence. She embodies the energy of connection, for She brings everything into relationship, from electrons to people. As Goddess of Beauty, she connects us to Truth, which is the ultimate reality because Beauty is the true reality of a person or thing. She is the Goddess of Love, love that is rooted in the body and which is playful, sensual, and erotic. As Goddess of Sexuality, she engenders all physically passionate love: non-marital and marital, heterosexual and homosexual. As Goddess of Wholeness, she drives our individuation and awakens Psyche within us.
She is Aphrodite Ourania, Queen of Heaven, who was in the Beginning and who created all the worlds. She is that spiritual Love we call compassion, the love which unites us in our humanity and makes us all One. She is the Wisdom that teaches us greater consciousness, in her role as Soul/Psyche’s initiator. Her energies fill us with longing to connect with ourselves, with others, and to create Life!
What makes Aphrodite fascinating is that she is liminal. Liminal means pertaining to a threshold, a boundary. What this means is that Aphrodite bridges physical reality and metaphysical belief. She opens us to our imaginations and our inner visions and then generates the passion to manifest our intentions.
Aphrodite is also the flower maiden, for her sacred space is a garden, where we work with nature to create beauty, pleasure and peace. Aphrodite brings together the wild and the tame to open us to the wonders of life, just as she unites people and animals in the pleasures of sexual union.
Starhawk wrote that Beltane is a time when ‘sweet desire weds wild delight’. This is Aphrodite’s gift to us as Spring deepens and blossoms. While Spring is a time of youth and innocence, each year we can become young again if we let ourselves merge with these energies. We just have to take Aphrodite’s bath and renew our virginity, our wholeness and our bliss. So let Aphrodite guide you for the next six weeks. Take delight in the sights, sounds and smells of Mother Earth renewing life and let your own body be renewed.
Friday is Aphrodite/Venus’ day. Take time to delight in life each week!
Natalie Merchant has just written a song about Aphrodite where she calls on her for help. This is another aspect of Aphrodite -- she helps those of us who ask!
The Astrology of Beltane’s Season: May-June 2023
Taurus is the fixed Earth sign of the zodiac. It roots in the new energies of the year. It is the sign of embodiment and when the Sun moves through Taurus (here in the northern hemisphere) our senses wake up after a long winter’s sleep. This is the time to give form to, nurture and develop the vision that has been percolating within us since Imbolc (February 2).
As our senses awaken, we look at the pleasures that life affords us. Massages, delicious foods, fragrances, beautiful fabrics and art fill us with possibilities of enjoyment. Think of the Tarot card of The Empress – she who fills the land with abundance and beauty. This is the power of Taurus – to build, to shape, to make the Garden. This leads to Taurus also ruling over material resources, wealth, security and contentment.
We just had a solar eclipse on April 20th at 29* Aries, a critical degree of completion, linked to the Taurus North Node. This second Aries New Moon shifted the lunar cycle so that for the next 18 months or so, the Full Moon in a sign will come before the New Moon. This shift gives us a different perspective on our lives, crossing from one sign to the next within a cycle.
That solar eclipse was squared by Pluto at 1* Aquarius, pushing us to evolve our relationship to Earth and each other. Here in the US, if corporations can be protected under the law as ‘individuals’, Mother Earth should also get that right as She already has in other countries.
We’ll be feeling this solar eclipse energy for the next year as Pluto moves back and forth between Capricorn and Aquarius, hitting 29* Capricorn squaring the 29* Aries Solar Eclipse. What new energies do you want to cultivate since Aries is the sign of new beginnings. If you have planets at the end of a cardinal sign or the beginning of a fixed sign, you’ll be dealing with power – either your own or others.
Speaking of Pluto. Pluto turns retrograde on May 1st our official Beltane, and will back up into Capricorn again on June 11th to continue to deconstruct the old framework of our world’s governing structures since Pluto entered Capricorn in 2008. We now have a bookend for its time in Capricorn – another bank failure. Let’s see if it’s dealt with differently. Hopefully, things are changing. Look at old patterns that you take for granted and know that by 2024, things will probably look different. Change is evolution, and that’s what Pluto brings us.
2023-2024 are transition years as Pluto returns to Aquarius on January 24, 2024 until September 2, 2024, when it will return for its last look at Capricorn (during the U.S. presidential election) before heading into Aquarius for good on November 20, 2024 until January 20, 2044. Hopefully, Pluto in Aquarius will unite us as we deal with the most important issues our world faces – climate change, freedom and equality and peace.
Taurus-Scorpio Lunar Eclipse, May 5, 2023
This Lunar Eclipse in Scorpio/Taurus is a South Node Eclipse, so watch for things in your life to come to a completion. All Full Moons are about a culmination, but with the South Node in Scorpio, this is about shedding old skins, letting go of a past cycle and moving on from past traumas. Understand what the trauma was about, and work to heal it now. Look for old secrets, deep wounds, compulsive patterns. What habits and patterns do you need to move away from?
This Lunar Eclipse is especially potent as it occurs on the power gate of 15* Taurus, Solar Beltane, with the Sun conjunct Uranus, the planet of change and awakening. When we let go of something, we need to fill that empty space with something new or else the old patterns creep back in. To help you fill in the blanks, go out into Nature and feel your body. Work to release any toxins your body is dealing with. Clean out and give your body a break. Awaken to your senses and connect to Mother Earth’s energies. Uranus in Taurus opens us to revelations about our embodiment, so let this energy help create new patterns and behaviors. Also, expect the unexpected, especially if this Lunar Eclipse aspects any of your natal planets. It’s hitting my Sun/Venus conjunction in Taurus, and I’m paying attention!
This is also the Buddha Full Moon, Vesak, when the Buddha was born, achieved enlightenment under the Bodhi tree and later died. The fact that this Full Moon engages the energies of both groundedness and transformation tells us a lot about how we can be spiritual beings having a human experience. What the Buddha taught us is that our culture and all its trappings are just that. Traps that do not nourish our soul’s essence. Once we can step away from all those made-up desires that our culture offers us, we can find our own wholeness.
Mercury went retrograde on April 21 at this same 15* Taurus and will conjunct the Sun on May 1st, so our mind knows that it’s time to listen to our body as well as listen to the Earth. Taurus is the sign of our foundation, our grounding. As the old world collapses, it’s a great time to take back our authority. At the Lunar Eclipse, Mercury conjuncts the asteroid Vesta, our inner priestess who guards our fire, our energy and our creativity. Taurus rules money and resources, so think about money and finances and how these issues might change for you. Put some cash aside. Find new ways to deal with the details of life before we head into the summer. This Mercury retrograde has been all about the details. Mercury turns direct on May 14th at 6* Taurus.
Jupiter at 25* Aries just conjuncted Eris on April 23rd, the dwarf planet who is the warrior of the heart. It’s time to fight injustice and not be afraid to follow your heart. Jupiter will be finishing up its time in Aries and will go into Taurus on May 16 for a year – going retrograde at this same 15* Taurus of solar Beltane and the Scorpio Lunar Eclipse on September 4th. So Taurus will be highlighted for the year, and since Jupiter expands whatever it touches, we’ll be dealing with issues of beauty, nature, money and resources.
Jupiter in Aries squares Mars in Cancer at this lunar eclipse. Mars is the ruling planet of this Scorpio Lunar Eclipse (along with Pluto) as well as Aries, so where have you neglected to take care of your body, your family, your sources of nourishment for body, mind and Spirit? Jupiter expands things, so watch out for Mars anger, especially around family and self-care issues. Cancer is the sign of our soul, what makes us uniquely ourselves. Don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself now.
Venus, the ruler of Taurus, is in the last few degrees of Gemini, opposite the Galactic Center. It also squares Neptune in Pisces, opening us to other dimensions of reality. What do you need to communicate and to whom? What are you listening to? What is your truth? What do you really love? Venus, like her sister Aphrodite, rules beauty, love, money, the Arts and our inner Wisdom. In Gemini, she likes to talk and explore and satisfy her curiosity. See who and what you link up with in the next week.
Venus leaves Gemini for Cancer on May 7th, where she’ll stay until June 5th, when she enters Leo. She is an Evening Star now, but once she enters Leo, she will quickly descend in the evening sky and disappear for 15-23 days in the glare of the Sun before she re-emerges as a Morning Star. Venus goes retrograde on July 22, 2023 at 28* Leo and will turn direct at 13* Leo on September 3rd and will finally leave Leo on October 8th. As you can see, Venus retrograde lets Venus linger in Leo for four months, where she’ll spark your creativity and sense of play.
Venus in Leo is warmhearted, generous and playful and just wants to express herself in many ways. Girls just want to have fun! She is the Queen and enjoys her pleasures and her power. This is the time to honor our solar Feminine nature. More on this in my Summer Solstice newsletter.
There’s a Taurus New Moon on May 19th at 28*25’ just a few days before the Sun enters Gemini on May 21st. Gemini is a mutable sign, a transitional time between late Spring and early Summer. Gemini is ruled by Mercury, which will move out of Taurus and into Gemini on June 11th, just an hour after Pluto moves back into Capricorn, forming a trine with the planet of evolution. Can you see a pattern here? It’s time to change how we think about our lives and our world. As the early feminists found out, the personal is political. If we want a better world, we have to step up, speak out and do something about it. Once you know what is important to you, you will want to make sure that those governing us don’t take away our rights.
Saturn turns retrograde at 8* Pisces on June 17th until November 4th. It’s a great time to ground in your spiritual practices this summer.
This is a time to relax and enjoy life. Even in the midst of chaos. Ground into yourself with breath-work, meditation, some form of qi gong or yoga. Relax and enjoy the Garden!
Blessed Be!
Cathy
In beauty I walk
With
beauty before me I walk
With beauty behind me I
walk
With beauty above me I walk
With
beauty around me I walk
It has become beauty again
Navajo Blessing Way
