Today, 29 April 2020, at just a bit after 5pm, the Sun enters Taurus II, which Austin Coppock called “a Linga-Yoni”. The Hellenistic era assigned this time period in the 36 Airs of the Zodiac, a fragmentary work, to the Horae — a group of feminine deities representing both the hours of the day and the seasons of the year, named Eunomia, Irene, and Dike. More on them in a moment.
For those who don’t know what this is, it’s a ceremonial object from Hinduism — an abstract representation of the phallus of a god, and the vagina of the goddess. Round peg, round hole, nicely fitted together… Sexual union, the procreative element, the pleasures of sexuality and the renewal of springtime, all of these are the images of the Second Decan of Taurus, no matter how much we veil them in Puritanical prudery on the one hand, or Maypole dancing on the other. It’s still a pole in the hole, no matter how you look at it, and if you squint at it properly, you’re likely to see a sex joke in there somewhere, right up to the moment that you realize that it’s not a sex joke, it’s actually, genuinely, for-real outrageously sexy. Yet when we look at the deities of the Hellenistic era, we see Eunomia, whose very name means “good law”, or living under a rule of behavior that brings about success. Irene’s name means peace: not the oppressive peace that a conqueror imposes on subjects, but the peace of a community that needs not make war, for they have all that they want. Dike, whose name means Justice, implies a potent and deep fairness, and a sense that everyone gets what they want. Expressing this triad as “sexy” doesn’t do it justice, really, but consider that this is a community of equals, in which neither patriarchy nor rape have a place; in which there is freedom to give and receive pleasure; and in which honor, duty, and law bring about joyous outcomes. Yeah, actually. That’s PHAT: Pretty Hot And Tempting. Let’s take a look at the planetary placements, and then consider the horoscopes.
Planetary Placements
We find the Ascendant in the cardinal sign of Libra, normally associated with the autumnal equinox in the northern hemisphere. It may be a colder spring than usual, leading to the delay of flowering and fruit; it will also be a time of “beginnings of endings”. Last time, we saw the beginning of new things; this time we see the beginnings-of-consequences. Decisions to stand apart from the world, or to engage with it, will start to bear fruit in the next ten days… but the full rewards are likely not yet visible.
The Lot of Fortune is in the third house, the realm of Kith and Kin, short trips, simple learning, and extended family. It’s a good time to identify the people you’re prepared to hang out with this summer, whose attitude toward self-isolation and social distance matches your own, and find ways to make common cause with them more profitable and easy. At the same time, recognize that this Lot is cadent and in the part of Sagittarius called “The Horse’s Skull” —not much money to be found in beating a dead horse past its bones. Focus less on money, and more on shared prosperity with immediate neighbors, wherever possible.
The South Node, the Imum Coeli, Jupiter and Pluto are all in Capricorn in the Fourth House… The Jovial lord of grace and mercy and ease sits at his desk, uneasy and completely without grace, beard uncombed, doing his work by videoconference, surrounded by the noise and bustle of the household and completely unable to think. The children are tugging at his sleeve, asking for help with yard-work or math problems or a history assignment; a spouse wants him to put on a mask and risk a trip to the store. He’s discovering the joy of being at home, of course… but he’d like to be AT HOME, instead of having WORK at home with him. Pluto brings the toxicity of Covidia to life, too — all decisions are made from a place of unknown terrors, with little clarity in underworld gloom, of where to go or what to do next.
In Aquarius, Saturn and Mars each offer their own complex take on the current state of affairs. While the fifth house ordinarily rules pleasures and children, Covidia was originally identified as a disease of stale air: clogged lungs, poor oxygen uptake, and a breathless and listless lack of energy. Saturn brings the slowness and the weariness of age, and the loneliness of exile, while Mars cuts and burns through the knots of muscle and sinew that knit us together, both one to another, and flesh to spirit. The distance between them is as wide as heaven and earth — and each of them occupies a Decan it rules, making them as ferocious as warriors in their own tanks: swift and implacably bent toward the ruin of their opponents. To us, they are unseen foes, too small to understand — or make war upon them. Our only choice is to scatter and retreat before this onslaught, and be dispersed. Regrouping must come later.
Neptune, who brings dreams into reality and disperses the real back into illusion, taunts us over the rim of a chalice filled with a dark red liquid: does the cup offer eternal life and health? or death through some sort of bloody corruption? There’s no way to discern the contents of the cup, really — it’s just as likely to be a magician’s party-trick as mystic cure; just as likely to be a foolish game as it is to be doom in a bottle. It’s too early in a time of pestilence to be clear about what will cure and what will slay; don’t be quick to line up for proffered remedies.
The Sun in in Taurus, the exaltation place of the Moon, while The Moon is in Cancer, her own domicile. It’s an unusual sort of reception, where the pleasant pastures of the bull-sign receive the Sun like the brother of a favorite friend; and the Moon sheds her light on the world from the heights of the sky, asking her brother Sun to go pick up something she left at a friend’s house. The friend herself, Venus the ruler of Taurus stands between the two planets in Gemini, invisible to both but warmed by their friendship and communion. But what is it that the Sun is picking up?
In this case, it’s a pair of miscreant rogues known as Uranus and Mercury, the sky’s own Fred and George Weasley — hardly twins, yet united in a sense of tricksy, fun-loving mischief-making. They’ll be playing merry havoc on your career and reputation in the next ten days — bringing your children or your pets in on Serious Video Conferences™, letting your half-dressed elderly parent video-bomb your meeting with your staff, and bringing video trolls into your screens. They’ll play games with your prescription medicines, too, and give you a combination of true and false news about the stalking predator called Covid-19 — but they’ll never tell you which part of the news is true and which part is false. The news about death is going to be pretty serious these next ten days… try to find some wisdom from your ancestors in all of this. More on that later.
Venus in Gemini, in the ninth house, suggests that most of my readers aren’t going anywhere particular right now. On the other hand, it’s a good idea to turn your hands to a few craft projects, and maybe teach yourself some skills that you wouldn’t normally pursue: women, and feminine-oriented persons, you may want to think about swinging a hammer or taking up a home improvement project, while men could invest some time in baking, cooking, and even a little knitting or sewing or mending. Households have always needed a LOT of labor, and this labor has been neglected for years, sometimes decades, in our cultures and countries — it’s time to reorient your labor to the ground and home where you stand.
The Moon, The Midheaven, and the North Node are all in Cancer in the tenth house. Our public reputations and careers are going to try to demand more time of us right now, but try to recognize that this demand is relatively illusory. The Moon’s placement, tropically in the Tenth Mansion which is the Brow of Leo, indicates that many are likely to gain good news of promotions, leadership roles, and increasing strength and health in their careers — but many others will be subject to the sidereal effects of the Seventh Mansion, “the praying hands” of desperate supplication… eager to seek benefit and advancement, yet fully dependent on outside forces beyond their control. It’s a good reminder that in any crisis, there’s always some who can forge their own path, and others that are dependent on the coattails of others. Which are you?
Horoscopes by Rising Sign
Libra: Work from home whenever possible, no matter how difficult, and question EVERY supervisor who suggests you need to come into the office: ask about cleaning procedures, IT support for work-from-home, hazard pay, social distancing. Make them put it in writing. If you have children living at home, establish isolation procedures every time you come home from a distant workplace environment; they may be at greater risk than you believe..
Scorpio: Your finances may not be able to take much more of this kind of “fun”, and neither can you. Agree to try out a few new things with a partner; experiment and direct your learning process, but carefully. Track your spouse or primary partner’s well-being a little more closely and carefully than normal.
Sagittarius: Watch your household finances carefully; bills pile up quickly, and income is something you must acquire yourself. Take care of immediate relatives and neighborhood, but keep communicating the magic of hope and wisdom widely. Your partner may come to rely on your money-management more than they want to.
Capricorn: You can be household boss, or house-manager, but not both. Establish with your family members under one roof, some appropriate delineations of your areas of responsibility, and stay in your own chosen zones unless asked. For your own happiness’s sake you’re going to have to intrude on your partner’s money-management realms far more than they’re comfortable with, though. Do so gently and carefully, and recognize that it’s needed even if not quite welcome. Make sure you highlight the ways in which your partner is nurturing, caring and an important part of your life — not a suppliant, but a full partner.
Aquarius: You have to take care of yourself. Establish boundaries and be prepared to hold people at arm’s length, or farther. Prod them away with a stick if need be — distance may be all that’s keeping you from a ventilator-bed. Communicate to immediate family the need to make home a safe and secure ward, but expect that inadvertent ‘poppings of the bubble’ are to be expected and don’t lose your cool. Try to take that sort of work where you can be on top of things and the source of excellence, rather than the labors that keep you waiting for the results of others’ efforts before you can do your own part.
Pisces: Quarantine or social isolation has probably got you feeling trapped in a net — surrounded by difficult-to-navigate boundaries, friends who seem to be off their rocker (or too much in the hot-seat), and a family that overwhelms you with too much discomforting information. Your partner is at much more risk of illness from working beyond your own envelope-of-safety than you are, though — at least for the moment. Establish appropriate safety measures for them, and be the cruise-director at home, creating both safe and caring space and needed relaxing entertainment.
Aries: Spare some time to think about someone else’s needs for a little while — most obviously your spouse or partner who is trying to stay balanced in all of this. Surprise communications challenge notions of effective financing of your life. This “working from home thing” is kind of like a fire-house, dousing you with emotional issues that quench your inner fires to get stuff done. You have big career goals, but they all seem to be on hold right now.
Taurus: Does death feel a little too close to make you comfortable right now? Does it seem like the veil between worlds is a little thin? Be open to communications about death, and what comes after: you and your partner are going to need to have some clear if surprising conversations about what you hold dear and what you care about, and who gets what if one of you passes on. You’re doing a great job of creating a nurturing hearth-and-garth, a warm and loving home for your extended kin; but your desire to go off on adventures is actually putting people you care about at risk: treat distance as the habit of a professional, at least for now.
Gemini: At last, you have the proper nest in which to be alone, secure in your creative identity, able to pursue a lively and creative leisure! All these lovely craft-products, ready to turn into lovely things! All this potential! If only there were some way to get someone else to do it, and do it well, with all the skill and talent that they have! Someone you were related to, who was obliged to do it. It would be so much easier than doing it yourself, wouldn’t it? Stop dreaming. There are some things right now that anyone could do… maybe better than you, maybe worse. But thinking about it won’t make it so.
Cancer: No matter if you’re a leader or follower, your nurturing side is in demand as you coach upward to your bosses, and downward to your subordinates. Everyone needs your guidance and assistance these days, don’t they? Maybe not your partner or spouse; they seem to be in a command room off on their own, managing affairs you don’t really understand. It’s likely bringing you a lot of grief and them a lot of worry… and eating their time and life in unpleasant ways. Questions of death and legacy and inheritance are nagging at you, and you might be nagging others about those issues; but that may not solve anything immediately. Best to start the conversation, even if it doesn’t end right away.
Leo: The darkness your friends and colleagues are going through likely feels like it burdens you most heavily; you may know people who are quite close to you who are wrestling with illness and its legacies. You still have work of your own that needs doing, and you can’t let yourself become too distracted by the troubles of the wider world: focus! In your own bubble (which is unfortunately not a useful stage right now), nurture the qualities that will be needed in the world to come: the generous and magnanimous heart, and the humbled, prayerful suppliant, ready to ask for what’s required.
Virgo: Feeling lonesome? Of course. Yet going solo in self-isolation may just be the right thing. However, your own labors are likely to involve some risk-taking you’d rather not be doing; and you’re going to need to go slow, manage expectations of what you can do in a crisis, and set some really clear boundaries. You also need to take some time to go wild, if only for yourself — loosening up is always really challenging for you, but right now connecting with wildness is one of the few ways you’ll be able to make it through. Go digging in the dirt and find some ways to root yourself to where you are. At the same time, ‘tunnel through time and space’ with letters and journal entries to your future selves. Leave a legacy of who you were at this time in your life. Create a memento that shows what you gleaned from an otherwise-barren time.
Colophon
I use iPhemeris for my charting software, and screenshot it to make charts. I use Christopher Warnock‘s The Mansions of the Moon as the basis of my Moon placement delineations, and Austin Coppock‘s 36 Faces as the basis of some of my planetary delineations. Neither gentleman endorses me. My own book, A Full Volume of Splendour and Starlight, is now available as PDF download from my Etsy website.
Any errors in these columns are my own.
If you’d like to schedule a consultation with me, you can find additional information on the Services and Classes page.
If you want to read some of my other astrologically-oriented poetry, To the Mansions of the Moon is a collection of hymns to the angels of the Mansions mentioned in these columns. For the Behenian Stars is a collection of hymns to the first/brightest sixteen stars. The Sun’s Paces are hymns to the thirty-six Hellenistic-era deities and ascended souls of the Greco-Egyptian Decans-calendar. While not astrological, Festae contains hymns to some of the older Roman gods and spirits from the calendar created by Numa Pompilius, the second ancient King of Rome.
