2013 Taurus New Moon Solar Eclipse
May 9-10, 2013
5:29 AM PDT / 8:29 PM EDT / 12:29 AM GMT
19 Taurus 31
Desires, resources and our comfort level with having them occupy our attention under this month’s Taurus New Moon. It’s a volatile, highly charged passage — we are protective of our toys and turf, after all — birthing monumental arrivals and departures, breakdowns, door-openings, manna from heaven (and from long, hard work), personal lines in the sand, and the occasional tantrum toddler-style.
Part of the intensity and mind-boggling nature of some recent developments is due to the fact that this New Moon is not a free-standing event. It’s in a cluster of terrain-altering activity, the second in the trio of the spring’s eclipses, which are inescapably escalating, intensifying and complicating life no matter which way you turn. This New Moon is a solar eclipse, which means it slams and locks doors while catapulting us long and far in a refocused direction.
Think of it as rebooting a computer. The darkened light momentarily blots out our usual experience and resets the focal issues (desires, resources, our level of contentment with the same) and aspects of our lives related to them. Because this one takes place in Taurus, physical and tangible factors are extremely important — and triggering extremely emotional reactions. (Raise your hand if you’ve screamed at a piece of technology in the last week. Be honest.) How solid, reliable and present are our relationships, belongings, money in the bank, creature comforts, and the like. How much do we really possess them? How much do they really possess us? (All you people texting during meals with a flesh-and-blood companion — yeah, I’m talking to you.)
We come into this solar eclipse armed with real-world knowledge. The Sun and the Moon have just passed over Mercury and Mars, attuning our minds and will (and maybe temper) to the current state of our physicality. Venus, the ruler of Taurus, has left her comfy home and moved into the communication zone of Gemini, a shift that stimulates thinking, conversing and exploring options. We know what we have, what we want and don’t want, what more we need (or think we do), and what is necessary to address all this.
Some of this knowledge has come through trial by ordeal. This eclipse has unleashed an epidemic of tools malfunctioning that require repair, updating, tweaking or replacing to get the intended job done. (This eclipse is near the Moon’s South Node, which represents what we are moving away from — hence the releasing and ending overtones of the times.)Glitches and breakdowns are happening that we can’t ignore or postpone. You’re in the middle of a task, required technology fails to perform, and you have to deal with it on the spot to finish the job. Makeshift fixes may work for the moment, but this crop of breakdowns is making it clear that you can not just make do; you must find a lasting solution.
No more making do applies to more than objects. This eclipse is stressing all the little shortfalls and irritations and not-quite fitting situations of your life — anything and everything you put up with because that’s easier than confronting it, because you don’t have the time or money, because it seems so minor, because you didn’t previously consciously notice how much it bothered you. Isn’t your bother meter active now? What’s registering on it? Every time you encounter these annoyances, petty or small, even in your peripheral vision, they catch your attention. Especially if you consciously react to and resist them, they nibble at your time, your focus and your energy, all of which are resources. Reframe them as: an energy drain.
Let this eclipse usher a new phase of healthy intolerance for anything that wastes your resources. Start cataloging things you tolerate (the cabinet door that’s slightly off its hinges, worn-out letters on your keyboard, boxes that haven’t been unpacked for years, the “friend” who makes plans and rarely comes through) and do something about them. Fix or replace broken stuff. Hit the ejector button on users, drainers and unreliable or costly situations. (The genesis for this idea comes from business coach Barbara Nelson, who has, in unintentional but astrologically appropriate timing, been preaching it online in the last week.)
The idea of zero-tolerance leads to another evolutionary potential of the Taurus solar eclipse: You have the right to not merely desire, but to have desire fulfilled. You have the right to have what you already have. (Think about that: are you ambivalent or perhaps embarrassed by any of your gifts? Your belongings?) You are entitled to have what you want and to have what you have — to receive it, to possess and to enjoy it.
This is not to say you should help yourself to anyone else’s stuff, to use Taurean George Carlin’s wonderful term for it. Or that you should let greed take over your life. What is timely, however, is coming to grips with parts of you that are at cross-currents with being here and having stuff. We’re on the earth plane. The material world is where spirit finds form, at least in our perception. The material world is where life happens. It’s where you are.
So put at the top of your no-tolerance list any remnant of religious, cultural, race or ethnic guilt or discomfort over (a) being in a physical body, (b) using that physical body and most of all (c) enjoying being in that physical body. Replace it with an entitlement gene. You know that is humanly possible; you’ve certainly known people with one. Implant one in yourself.
It will serve you as you proceed through this spring’s wondrous gauntlet of upheaval and change. Know what you value. Know what you have as resources (money, talents, creativity, tools, relationships). Allow yourself to use, to consume and to enjoy them. Know what you need to function effectively. Upgrade your tools and your attitude about your worth and being paid. You are working hard lately — the Moon and the Sun are both coming off a contact to taskmaster Saturn, and schedules and responsibilities are backbreaking as a result — and you need to be paid properly for your efforts. Desire. Resources. Entitlement. Looking at the dramas with those concepts as framework will simplify much in the coming weeks.
It may also help to think back to late 1993- early 1994, when we last made a gear shift from Sagittarius/Gemini eclipses to the Scorpio/Taurus axis. This week’s eclipse occurs at the same place as a solar eclipse on May 10, 1994. think about how all these earthly themes played out then. Some may be coming back around again for rebooting.
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For a longer discussion of the spring’s eclipses, please read the section headed “The Next Four Weeks” in my 2013 Scorpio Full Moon Lunar Eclipse forecast.
