The New Moon of May 19 at 8:53 a.m. on the West Coast comes with the Sun and Moon at the late degree of 28°25’ Taurus. The Moon will quickly move on into Gemini within a few hours, as the Sun will do a couple of days later.
In traditional astrology, the Moon is said to be “exalted,” like an honored guest, when it passes through the sign of Taurus, as it does for 2.5 days each month. The Taurus New Moon is an auspicious time to set one’s intentions about money and possessions, as well as to luxuriate in Taurean pleasures of the body. At this May 19 lunation, the Sun and Moon will be accompanied by Uranus, Mercury, the Moon’s North Node and Jupiter all in Taurus. This is fixed earth, solid like a mountain, unwavering.
The Taurus Moon’s guiding planet is Venus, which is currently in the middle degrees of the water sign Cancer, ruled by the Moon. This is a mutual reception, strengthening the attributes of each. By sign, Taurus and Cancer are two of the most harmonious pairings, as they are two signs apart in the encouraging sign-based aspect called a sextile.
Venus in Cancer, from May 7 to June 5, 2023 is a heartening transit. Venus represents everything we love and want to connect with, and Cancer is symbolic of the Great Mother archetype, which is found somewhere—even if it’s not that obvious—in everyone’s psyche. Put Venus and Cancer together, and this is a time for sweet nurturing between loved ones, human and otherwise.
Whereas some lunation times are fraught with tense aspects between the luminaries and the planets, this New Moon time is soothing. And it is to be savored.
The sky aspects at this Moon are amicable. Venus is in a wide trine (120-degree aspect between planets in the same element) with Saturn in watery Pisces. Venus is also making a 60-plus-degree sextile aspect with quirky Uranus in Taurus. The Moon is in a close sextile with both Neptune in Pisces and Mars in Cancer. Trines make things happen with ease. Sextiles are like an engraved invitation.
These aspects bring an abundance of the water and earth elements. Water and earth are the two soft, or yin, elements, calling on the collective to just “go with the flow.”
As well, the stellium of Sun, Moon, Uranus, Mercury, Jupiter, and the Moon’s North Node, all in Taurus, casts Venus, the ruler of Taurus, as the star of this show.
In great art and myth, Venus is the Roman version of the Greek goddess Aphrodite. They are seen as the embodiment of love and the epitome of beauty.
And what is beauty? The esoteric traditions teach about divine beauty as a quality of being that includes and yet transcends physical appearances and senses.
Tiferet is the Hebrew word for ethereal beauty. On the Kabbalistic teaching diagram called the Tree of Life, Tiferet is one of the ten attributes or “emanations” through which the Holy One reveals themselves in our physical and inner worlds. It is the quality that Sufis refer to when reciting the divine names Ya Jamal and Ya Jamil, God is beauty and loves beauty. It is what the late Sufi teacher Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan may have meant when he’d speak about “that which transpires behind that which appears.”
Beauty can neither be bought, nor defined. It can only be glimpsed. It pervades all.
The time around the May 19 Taurus New Moon invites contemplation of the quality of beauty that resides in all beings and all forms—and in the formless. The Navajo prayer for Walking in Beauty is a guide for an embodied practice, and here’s a version of it:
I walk with beauty before me.
I walk with beauty behind me.
I walk with beauty below me.
I walk with beauty above me.
I walk with beauty all around me.“
Blessings for the Taurus New Moon!
Sara
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