Dear Readers,
We are deep in Taurus season now. As I contemplated the New Moon that arrives this evening, the last stanza of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem Inversnaid1 came to mind.
Inversnaid
This darksome burn, horseback brown, His rollrock highroad roaring down, In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam Flutes and low to the lake falls home.
A windpuff-bonnet of fáawn-fróth Turns and twindles over the broth Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning, It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.
Degged with dew, dappled with dew, Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through, Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern, And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.
What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
Perhaps it was yesterday’s blustery spring day in Seattle that called my attention to this poem, but Hopkins evocation of the natural world is deeply Taurean, and his admonition to leave it as is aligns with the pace of Taurus as closely as the story I trot out every year during Taurus season of Ferdinand the bull, who just wanted to sit under his cork tree smelling flowers. All the other young bulls romp around practicing fighting each other to impress the men who come to find the biggest toughest bulls for the bullfights in Madrid, but Ferdinand just sits there smelling the flowers until the day he sits on a bee. The story takes off from there. If you aren’t already familiar with it, please find a copy and enjoy. Taurus is the sign of the bull; slow, steady, sturdy, powerful in its physicality and profoundly connected to the earth. Ferdinand takes it up a notch, adding in the sensual, peaceful, harmonious, and beautiful values espoused by Venus. In one of the final scenes in the book, Ferdinand sits down in bull ring instead of fighting. All the beautiful ladies in the arena have flowers in their hair, and all he wants to do is sit, breathe and take in the sweetness of life.
As I write, the Moon is newly in Taurus—the sign of her exaltation2, along with Venus, the Sun, Uranus and Jupiter, in that order. Last night, when I began writing, and until this evening when the New Moon becomes exact, we’re in the balsamic phase. The sky is dark. We’re in the mystery, yet can feel newness in the wings as the last of the previous lunar cycle comes to a close. It’s here that we sense the proximity of wherever we came from and wherever we’re going after we leave these earthly forms.
This awareness is oxymoronic. Taurus and the Moon are intimately tied to the experience of being in a body. Taurus as fixed earth is the earthiest of the earth signs, and the Moon speaks to our subjective sense of self and our physical form. Before meeting up with the Sun tonight, the Moon met up with Venus to receive her marching orders. As the ruler of this New Moon, Venus is calling the shots in this lunar cycle. Jupiter and Uranus haven’t strayed too far from their meeting place on April 20 so both are also conjunct the New Moon.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F94960b64-4eba-499e-951e-9053bc6c130f_3136x4704.jpeg)
Both the April 8 eclipse and Jupiter-Uranus conjunction are still in play, with Jupiter-Uranus specifically being highlighted again at this New Moon, bringing all the themes I wrote about in No Time for Sleepwalking back into the foreground. The quantum leap that Jupiter-Uranus is signaling doesn’t mesh easily with the slow deliberate nature of Taurus, but in fact, it may be this underlying grounded stable energy that allows us to make the leap and land on our feet.
It's almost as if this New Moon was designed to further the agenda of Venus as ruler of the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction. Rewinding back to April 20, we recall that Jupiter signals opportunity and expansion and Uranus rebellion and liberation. We are certainly seeing the expansion of both rebellious and liberatory action in the outer world, but internally and in our personal lives this same energy is alive and pressing for change as well.
The first planet the Moon encounters after the New Moon is Uranus, which tells us that once again we should expect the unexpected—likely throughout this next lunar cycle. After the Moon leaves Uranus, she meets Jupiter—all of this by breakfast time tomorrow. As the Moon continues her journey through the zodiac over the next 4 weeks, she’ll be carrying the message of an expansive and liberating revolutionary change aligned with the values of Taurus. What this might look like will be different for each of us depending on where we find the sign of Taurus in our charts, but we can be sure that it’s inviting us, if not demanding that we slow down, connect deeply with the stability and safety of ground, tap into the sweetness of life, become clear about our values, and invest in them—literally or figuratively. We are offered the fertile earth in which to plant the seeds of our intentions at this New Moon. Much like Ferdinand at the end of the story, we want to be sure that the garden we’re planting now is one we want to cultivate, nurture, and protect.
We’re on the other side of our first eclipse season of the year and the much anticipated Jupiter-Uranus conjunction. We’re all in the throes of big change. If you’d like to know how the current and future astrology of this year is likely to land in relation to you personally, I’d be delighted to serve as your guide to the star map known as your birth chart. Email me for details: camelliablossoms@gmail.com or…
I wish you all a fertile planting season,
Cami
This poem is set in the wilderness of the Scottish highlands. Hopkins use of dialect is distinctive and intentionally obscure as he plays with the sounds of words as they evoke the wildness of place. A burn is a brook. A brae is a hillside. “He” is the anthropomorphized brook. Some of the words are combinations of other words or made up words so don’t fret if you don’t know what fáawn-fróth is. The foam on the brook is the color of a fawn’s fur which Hopkins seems to invite the reader into—a sensual Taurean experience.
Here she finds fertile, safe and stable ground to anchor, nurture and grow, stabilizing the ever-changing emotions associated with the day-to-day experience of being human