the new moon in taurus for writers
with writing prompt horoscopes
Hi all,
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Also! A casual reminder for everyone that healer-teacher Jupiter enters Pisces in two days, emerging from disciplinarian Saturn’s shadow and into one of its home signs for the first time in two years. (This is a huge deal.) The newsletter with what to expect, plus horoscopes, will be going out to paid subscribers only, so now is the time to spring for that on-sale subscription!
And now, for today’s New Moon!
Xx,
Jeanna
Taurus season is about growth, a concept practically impossible to divorce from our capitalist framework which insists on production at any cost and views rest or natural decay as a threat. Here on Beyoncé’s internet, it’s easy to get caught up in the idea that “manifestation” is an instant gratification magical production divorced from the hellscape that is the exploitation of labor. In order to begin to heal our own relationship to the concept of growth and what we create, it’s essential to reset our definitions.
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
This season, and this New Moon, are ruled by Venus. Not, as one might expect per a contemporary capitalist mindset, our disciplinarian dyke-daddy Saturn; nor is it ruled by action star cum workhorse Mars, who governs our work ethic. No: It is Venus who is essential to understanding and unlocking Taurus transits — Venus, the goddess of love, beauty, and value. This tells us something about the nature of the growth, manifestation, and creation that we are called to commit to during this season.
Venus is all about connection, relationships, and the fundamental value of people outside of their production. Venus loves art and artists, creation for creation’s sake. Venus luxuriates in naps, comfortable fabrics, nourishing food, and sensual treats, knowing that they are all essential to a full and vibrant life. Which is to say, Venus is not about growth from a post-Enlightenment individualist mindset. This is not the isolated genius in the ivory tower, nor is it the starving artist or the exploited worker, selling all of their time and energy in exchange for the bare minimum of survival.
Venus rejects the notion that survival mode is the highest available setting.
When we talk about Taurus season, we are talking about a Venusian ecosystem of connection. We are talking about the slow manifestation of creativity, of relationship, of understanding. We are talking about how the parts — the individuals and our incumbent efforts — are inextricable from the whole. We are talking about the tangled roots of trees that talk to each other, dispersing nutrients to those around them.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
In our society, rest has become something it is popular to talk about in self-care circles, but largely through the lens of it being essential to the work, to the perpetual optimization of the self. The emphasis of something’s utility is ever on the work, as if pure, joyless production were the point of living. This is, of course, what our education system and social networks have trained us for.
But it’s not how we’re wired.
*
Today’s New Moon in Taurus, exact at 3:00pm ET, isn’t just encouraging us to grow; it’s also digging up the bones. Taurus’ opposite is Scorpio, after all; Taurus knows that growth comes with the inevitable process and promise of decay. This moon sits with rabble-rouser Uranus in a conjunction by sign, a connection which inevitably stirs things to consciousness. Things we’d perhaps prefer remain buried. But that’s not an option, Uranus insists. Change comes for us all.
This moon also connects with transformative Pluto in Capricorn, encouraging us to use this time to examine the systems and methodologies of growth that haven’t worked, asking us to establish new ones. This moon isn’t about growing the same-old, same-old. It is an invitation to uncover new emotional, embodied insights. To go deep. To do the work of integration.
Last but certainly not least, this New Moon also thematically connects with the year-defining Saturn-Uranus square. This potentially highlights the tension this square is bringing up for you on a personal or professional level — and asks what you’re going to do about it. New Moons are for new seeds, after all.
*
Vettius Valens, a Hellenistic astrologer writing in the 2nd century CE, associated the following qualities with people born under Taurus: versed in a handicraft, hard-working, good at preserving things, pleasure-loving, music-loving, husbandmen, planters, builders, industrious, noble.
Note that pleasure-loving lives right alongside the planting.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
— “The Summer Day,” Mary Oliver
Writing Prompt Horoscopes for the New Moon in Taurus
Reminder: The horoscopes for your rising sign most accurately reflect where and how this moon is transiting your chart.
Aries & Aries Rising
What are you growing when it comes to your personal finances and resources? What about your relationship to money or income streams has felt new over the last three years? In what ways are you looking to break new ground when it comes to your understanding of and relationship to value?
Taurus & Taurus Rising
What are you manifesting when it comes to self-worth, self-awareness, and personal growth? How have you been changed and challenged, on an individual level, over the last three years? How are these shifts in how you identify, present yourself, and understand yourself being integrated into the new seeds you’re planting?
Gemini & Gemini Rising
What are you planting when it comes to the unconscious patterns you want to make more conscious? What new spiritual, even creative or ancestral insights have become more clear to you over the last three years? How are these shifts and realizations connecting to or inspiring your behind-the-scenes projects?
Cancer & Cancer Rising
What are you beginning in the realm of community, organizations, and networks? What new friendships have sprung up out of nowhere over the last three years, and who has left your circle? (Have digital relationships played a part?) How is your evolving circle of friends and chosen family informing your definition of group participation?
Leo & Leo Rising
What are you growing in your career and public roles right now that is especially important to you? Have your long-term goals, reputation, and even definition of or interest in legacy changed or been challenged over the last three years? How are you integrating these shifts into what you’re now planting?
Virgo & Virgo Rising
What are you manifesting when it comes to publishing, higher education, COVID-conscious travel, or a wisdom tradition? How have you been changed and challenged, spiritually or intellectually, over the last three years? How are you integrating these shifts in what you’re learning or being called to into the seeds you’re planting?
Libra & Libra Rising
What are you planting when it comes to your shared resources and collaborations? What insights around grief, sorrow, mental health, and family patterns have become more clear to you over the last three years? How are these shifts and realizations connecting to or inspiring your collaborations?
Scorpio & Scorpio Rising
What are you beginning in the realm of committed partnerships? (Are you pitching agents or editors, for example?) What new relationships have sprung up out of nowhere over the last three years, and who has left your inner circle? How are your evolving partnerships and commitments informing your definition of what it means to be in relationship with people, personally or professionally?
Sagittarius & Sagittarius Rising
What are you growing in your daily work (e.g. at the day job) right now that is especially important to you? Has the nature of your work, or your role at work, been especially changed or challenged over the last three years? (Has physical health played a part in this?) How are you integrating these shifts into what you’re now planting?
Capricorn & Capricorn Rising
What are you manifesting when it comes to creative projects and passionate windfalls? How has your relationship to passion, and what you’re passionate about, been changed and challenged over the last three years? (Have children or fertility played a role?) How does your revised creative vision integrate into and inform what you’re seeding in this area of life?
Aquarius & Aquarius Rising
What are you planting when it comes to your home and family? How have insights around cultural heritage, family patterning, and what you want and need in your physical space become more clear to you over the last three years? How are these shifts and realizations connecting to or inspiring the writing?
Pisces & Pisces Rising
What are you beginning and newly committing to when it comes to your communication, writing routine, and daily rituals? How have any sudden shifts or realizations over the last three years impacted your writing process? (Have you moved? Are siblings, close friends, or extended family involved?) How does all of this inform your relationship to the work itself?
venus rejects the notion that scarcity mode is the highest available setting!!! period, jeanna!!