The Sun enters Taurus III The Prayer Beads on May 10, 2024 at 12:06 am EDT. It’s an apt name that Austin Coppock chose for this decan, given that ancient sources associate it with the Litai, or the spirits of the prayers; the Chaldean order assigns it as the first decan belonging to Saturn. T. Susan Chang called it Fail Better, nicely framing its relationship to the 7 of pentacles — which Pamela Colman Smith as the patient gardener standing guard over his crops.

I’ve previously written about Taurus III in 2023, 2022, 2021, and 2020.

Taurus as a whole is ruled by Venus, but these last ten degrees are administered by Saturn. It’s helpful, I think, in these days immediately following the Met Gala, to consider the role of “women of a certain age” — my own mother, now in her mid-80s, spent decades chasing elegance and style, from her first job as a clerk in the ladies’ garment department at Bergdorf Goodman, to a period of making her own clothes from Vogue patterns. I see her, runway-ready, in old family photographs, and I think that she could have been an influencer if social media existed when she was in her 20s, or 30s, or even 50s or 60s. But today — she simply doesn’t give a shit what you think of her. Her style is as elegant as ever, but ever more minimalist — a plain black dress with a pop of color in a belt or a shawl, a vintage cloisonné brooch, a white kimono blouse with smocking, or a celadon cardigan. Her sense of style has become even plainer these last years, and she dresses largely to serve her own happiness and convenience. You are not her audience — and you never will be.

Saturn’s administration of Venus’s creative inspiration and love of beauty looks something like that minimalism. It is an eight-tatami-mat room in some monastery or palace in Japan. It is a quiet one-person room in a Refugio on the Camino de Santiago across northern Spain. It is a plain dorm room for a student with a single Chinese scroll in exquisite calligraphy: “Time is more precious than marble; once cut, never restored.” It is a group of monks singing the melismatic chants of Matins on an ordinary Tuesday… or a line of Buddhist nuns in single file, walking alongside a flooded rice paddy, going to beg for their daily rice.

But it should be understood that in the right hands, minimalism is a weapon. A friend of mine once showed me a string of prayer beads he’d made, of beautiful black stone beads weighing only five grams apiece — on a strong steel cable. The whole thing weigh almost a pound and a half, and he could smash oranges or make soda cans explode by twirling and whipping one end of its loop at the thing. There wasn’t any doubt that it could hurt someone. And minimalism can also be a kind of armor, too — it says, I have more important things to worry about than getting dressed in the morning. Barack Obama was a master of this, who had a wardrobe designed carefully to limit how much decision-making he had to do about clothes: save brain power for the important things.

It’s not to say that maximalism doesn’t have its place, though, even under Saturn’s watchful eye. Permaculture is teaching us that gardens thrive when the right mix of plants are clustered together in arrangements called guilds or companion planting. The exuberance they show when they come up together is delightful, but also requires that they lean on each other and support one another even in their diversity… and when we have doubts or difficulties, we all rely on powers we don’t understand, or we turn to one another for support, like sunflowers. Sunflowers, of course, are heliotropic plants — their big blooms follow the sun across the sky as they grow… and if they can’t see the sun, they turn to face each other.

For the Greeks of the second and third centuries of the Common Era, before Christianity became the standard mode of worship for the Mediterranean littoral, these ten days were given over to the Litai: a word that literally means “the prayers.” At some level, Mediterranean pagans thought of prayers as individual spirits that were formed of some interaction between mortal breath (pneuma) and soul (nous) to rise to the heavens or down into the earth or out into the world so that the gods would not only hear the petition, but could see and speak with it. Letter-writing wasn’t as common, back then, and so you’d often send your amanuensis or scribe to deliver a message verbally. Since your secretary had helped you compose your idea to your friend or business partner or enemy — they’d know your thoughts intimately, and could give not only the message, but also the nuance of the message.

What if your prayers really were like that? What if speaking the prayer aloud, and all of the thought and nuance that went into it, made it into a living person who would go and speak to your god for you? And… given that the messenger is waiting there, in the hall, for an answer, why wouldn’t your god at least hear the message? Wouldn’t you send back an answer, if your friend sent his buddy all the way across town (in this traffic!) to ask you a question in person?

Maybe this is the week to think about your prayers like that — not simply as voiced ideas and dreams, but as your personal and living herald gone to present your case directly before the throne of the divine. A prayer is not just a message — it’s a living advocate for your cause. Speak your thought clearly and without mendacity, and send it heavenward.

The dodeks, or twelfth parts, of Taurus III are devoted to Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces and Aries. Like the cycling of prayer beads or the journey into minimalism, it begins in the search for utilitarian goods and services which are deliberately chosen. Then follows the suspicious wisdom of Aquarius which critiques attachments even as it looses them. Pisces represents the fresh doubts that plague us even as we go further into the mantras of the beads or the wisdom of Marie Kondo… ending in the pile of papers and materials to be burned — and the match-strike of Aries.

Planetary Placements

With the Sun below the horizon, were’ looking at a Night Chart, but it’s one in which there are no planets above the horizon — the Sun and Saturn are somewhat strengthened in domestic affairs, but Venus, Jupiter and Uranus are under the beams; the Moon is new but already set, and no planets grace the midnight sky over my location. This puts considerable pressure on domestic matters and household affairs — and with four planets in the Fifth House, and one or two in the Second, Third, Fourth, and Sixth houses, it’s likely to be something of a financial roller coaster in the next ten days until the Sun enters Gemini on 20 May 2024 at 9:00 am EDT.

The Ascendant is in the middle decan of Capricorn, the Pyramid, associated with the three of Pentacles and with the idea of structures and scaffoldings — intellectual, material and financial. Hygeia, the goddess of good health and medicine, rules this part of the chart… but in the ongoing aftershocks of the Coronavirus (is it really gone?), it’s hard not to notice that good medicine and health and hygiene are themselves created and controlled and managed within intellectual, material, and financial scaffolds that feel a lot more like barracoons — an ugly old word that sees less use today, but that means “a temporary holding pen for slaves and convicts awaiting bulk transport.” Increasingly, to go into a health care facility is to risk having your pocket picked or your soul plucked from your body, or both —subservient to systems that are intent on making illness profitable, no matter the cost to person, family or nation.

In the Second House of finances and personal property, Pluto continues his slow retrograde toward Capricorn, where the canny money changer will linger from early September through the middle of November. I’ve noted before how Pluto signals favorable changes for workers and for their unions in Aquarius but provides substantive benefits for owners and managers during passages through Capricorn — it’s a long-term signal, but be on the lookout for wage-theft by your employers in coming months, and be alert to the ways that your resources can be airily frittered away. For now, Pluto remains in Aquarius I The Mark of Exile, where critique of private property and wealth is easy, but no solution is yet visible — for now, rules and procedures must be given proper due.

In the Third House of neighbors and extended families, Saturn and Neptune vie for power. Many years ago, Austin Coppock characterized Saturn as representing walls, and Neptune as representing waves. These two forces — the uncompromising ocean and the rock-solid land — are now coming into range of one another, promising complex interference patterns. It would be a good idea to revisit quantum mechanics’ most startling visible representation, the so-called “Double slit experiment” — and consider that waves and walls do not interact with one another in perfectly predictable ways. Both will meet in Pisces II and III — The Net, and The Cup of Blood — implying a potent mix of political propaganda and religious zealotry in your community and around the family dinner table on Mother’s Day.

In the Fourth House of actual residence and immediate family, Mars and Mercury enclose the North Node, bringing intense focus to matters of house and home. Mars stands n the first decan, The Double-Bladed Axe, associated in ancient times with Hades, while Mercury tiptoes through the shadow-degrees they retrograded through earlier this year in The Burning Rose. Between them, the Head of the Dragon breathes extra sparks into the hearth of household management in The Crown, where family decisions must be made and honored, even when it puts career and reputation at risk. This mix puts divisions in your household in sharp relief, with a dark undertow of concerns about wealth and status on the one hand, and a longing to communicate complicated and unconventional desires. It’s a peculiar mix, both wanting to argue and fight and wanting to talk (and fuck) it out like adults: you’re likely to do both this week.

The Fifth House of sex, drugs, rock-n-roll — all the happy fun bad decisions, and their obvious consequence, children — plays host to the Imum Coeli, Venus, the Sun, Uranus, and Jupiter. It’s hard not to see this as a secret meeting in the Situation Room at midnight, with hostess Melanie Rose of Netflix’s hit show, How to Build a Sex Room asking “Ok, but how are we going to make the Nuclear Option sexy? What do you guys think of this pink Kama Sutra-themed wallpaper?” The Sun may be playing his big, goofy, Golden Retriever self — but his two big beary lover and cheerleader squad are here to make sure he gets what he wants. They plan to see him on his knees, and not just in prayer… and Venus is going to enjoy every minute of watching her big boy get everything he deserves. There’s a raw immediacy here of both black-and-white minimalism combined with very expensive silk satin sheets and an aesthetic of traditional shibari. The combination has the potential to be an explosive, creative foursome.

Especially since the Moon is away and in aversion in the Sixth House, intent on other activities that might resemble finishing out the last pages of an old bullet journal and diving deeply into her new yoga practice. Selene is showing her first new crescent in Gemini’s middle decan, The Hermaphrodite, and the Sixth Mansion of the Moon — a charming, cozy tea-house with cats called Little Star / Big Light — a combination that invites her to toward daily routines over the next two weeks for inculcating new compassion for herself and an enriching new emotional life with friends and allies. Her next aspect is a square to Saturn, suggesting a dive into shallow connections to work-mates, employees, and subordinates in order to avoid close intimacy with a partner, or a deep dive into personal introspection. For my polyamorous readers — pay special attention to the partners that aren’t currently in the throes of new relationship energies, and don’t give all your attention to the orgy or play-party that’s planned.

Horoscopes by Rising Sign

Decan I of any sign (usually covering the 21st of the month to the first of the following month) is free to all visitors; Decan II is only available to Patreon and Ko-Fi.com subscribers; and Decan III is available to Patreon, Ko-Fi, and MailChimp subscribers.

Capricorn:

Aquarius:

Pisces:

Aries:

Taurus:

Gemini:

Cancer:

Leo:

Virgo:

Libra:

Scorpio:

Sagittarius:

Colophon

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If you want to read some of my astrologically-oriented poetry, the largest collection is called A Full Volume of Splendor and Starlight, available through my Etsy shop, and containing poems and hymns to the planets, constellations, decan deities, and Moon Mansion angels. 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.

I use iPhemeris for my charting software, and screenshot it to make charts. I want to thank the team that develops iPhemeris for the addition of Terms and Decans to their charts. I also use Hugh Tran‘s Physis typeface to craft logos for this blog, as well.

I use Christopher Warnock‘s The Mansions of the Moon as the basis of my Moon placement delineations, and Austin Coppock‘s 36 Faces for much of my planetary delineations. Neither gentleman endorses me.