Theme: Magicians Reporting for Duty

Week 20: we pause under the dark moon of Taurus, look up, see the Bull, and realize we've been lied to

Beautiful Magicians,

Yesterday, Saturday May 16, was the day of an intense new moon in Taurus. That energy continues through today and through the entire lunar cycle, so I think it’s wise to ponder its meaning.

Taurus is the bull.

The bull has beautiful meaning to those awakening to the memory of life in the time of the Goddess. Life before patriarchy told us the bull was an animal to drive into frenzy and fight to the death.

The Minotaur is the ultimate symbol of this terrifying version of the bull, so evil that he had to be hidden away from society in an underground labyrinth where he thrashes and rages and eats young children.

With that terrifying image, a story that has been perpetrated for ages, they lied to us.

They told us to be afraid of the bull.

But the bull, if you’ve seen any images of the Paleolithic caves, is a core symbol of life, of love, of joy, of fertility, and of protection. And, if you’ve ever observed a bull in a field, you noticed that bulls are gentle creatures, and totally vegan munching contentedly on grass and flowers.

Cathy painted this Bull for The Story of the Morning of the World timeline painting. The timeline is still under construction, but I think you can get a lovely feel for it from this gentle bull standing in a field of flowers.

Not exactly scary now, is he!

You would also recognize this Bull, the gentle one, if you’d investigated the Neolithic time of the Goddess even a little. The Bull is always a central beloved creature symbolizing the Goddess. Once you know where to look, you find paintings and carvings and statues of bulls throughout the pre-patriarchal period. None are scary.

So, when we gathered for New Moon Tarot with Cathy Stevens Pratt, and learned the moon was opening a new lunar cycle in the sign of the Bull, I knew we would learn something important. A Goddess story rather than a patriarchal story.

Cathy began by reading the Chandra from Inside Degrees for Taurus 26. It sounded a tad ominous.

Grotesque rocks in a sand garden

The inward image and the outward reflection are worlds apart. Building up inside to a state of being that carries immense challenges. You see your own personal nature as an objective universal force to be reckoned with, and persist in seeing egocentrically. Preferring massively your own company, contained within yourself, imaginatively self-enchanted.

Yet also capable of radical turnabouts and rebirths. Awakenings false and true, great and small. Knowing yourself to be somebody special. Self-consciousness enshrined. A dead-end or a path, oblivious or realizing the way of things, getting out of the way or being squarely in the way. Self-importance and its overcoming.

Boy, that sounds like our moment, doesn’t it? Like a mirror held up to the insanity we are experiencing.

• Inward and the outward worlds far apart
• Capacity for radical turnaround and rebirth
• Awakenings false and true, big and small
• A dead-end or a new path

So much to ponder here.

If you want to wrestle with this, read the Chandra a few times, ponder the symbolism, and ask some big questions in deep soul writing.

To help us begin to integrate the profound wisdom of this bull moon, Cathy read a few quotes from Martin Shaw’s Liturgies of the Wild.

Now, I’m not usually a fan. Shaw is too christian for me, but what Cathy read to us really spoke to me, so I’d like to share two quotes with you.

Notice what they awaken in you:

“The world turned upside down. It will be disorientating, visionary, illuminating, and hopefully rewarding. You may bump into a realm called the Underworld, or someplace else called the Otherworld… There may be a journey—by sea or land—involving monsters, temptations, all sorts. Hair-raising.

You are going to get stretched, deepened, walloped by the ghastly, redeemed by the holy. There will be moments when it appears all hope is lost, and you have to experience what it feels like to continue to exist within that hopelessness.

This is the time of the Threshold.”

Well, the world does absolutely feel upside down. And hope does feel lost. And the monsters—the fascists, rapists, warmongers, and greedy ones—sure seem to be running the show. And it absolutely is the time of the threshold. That's what The Song of the Morning of the World timeline is all about.

But can we, can I, exist within hopelessness?
My Goddess, what a question!

But then Shaw writes:

“Ultimately, after the wrestling with an angel, or Baba Yaga, or some great bear god deep in a mountain, you are to return. Something you found through your knowledge-of-peril is to distil into something called wisdom. And that wisdom provides a key, a picture, a boon, a balm for whatever suffering sent you out in the first place.”

From peril to wisdom. This is our moment.

We are living in a time of peril. And those of us willing to do the deep work are finding bits of wisdom that we are meant to share with the world.

So I choose to find this Taurus moment, the moment of the original holy Goddess Bull to be a moment we step onto a path that cherishes life with reverence for possibility, for new beginnings, for a return to love.

May it be so.

Life is fragile, handle with reverence

Janet

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