Taurus New Moon and Partial Solar Eclipse

What are you cultivating? 

If you look at where you’ve been directing your efforts lately, how you feel about them, and perhaps even the short-term fruits of those labors, do they align with what you say you want in your life?

If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, you know this is the season of cultivating. If you don’t garden, it goes something like this: 

1. Loosen the soil and make sure it has the nutrients it needs to support growth.

2. Sow seeds for the veggies, fruits, herbs, and flowers that you want to enjoy in the coming months. 

3. Water the seeds enough (but not too much). 

4. Keep the ground warm and protect the growth of new shoots if the surrounding climate is harsh.

While this theme is timely for spring every year, tomorrow’s Taurus New Moon and partial solar eclipse offers an opportunity to consider carefully your current non-gardening efforts — and then re-set or re-orient if necessary. 

New Moons are generally low-energy, inward-looking phases. Eclipses, however, put a twist on that. Eclipses come in pairs, and the corresponding second eclipse for this one is a Scorpio Full Moon and total lunar eclipse on May 16. 

Between then and now is a unique window to shift some facet of your life. Whether that opportunity is subtle or dramatic depends a lot on your personal situation, how you tend to approach life, and where these eclipses fall relative to your own birth chart. 

Either way, the next few days are a key time to focus your attention on some of your patterns — and perhaps disrupting them: 

How do you usually move toward what you want? 

How do you usually release what no longer serves you? How do you know when it’s time to do so?

What’s really going on when you feel “stuck” or in a holding pattern?

How do you usually respond to “inconvenient” opportunities?

Taking this a bit further, what are your actions telling you about how you may really feel, if they don’t align with what you say you desire? 

Or do most of your actions feel supportive of your creativity, your health (physical, emotional, sexual, spiritual), your relationships, etc.?

What are your emotions and physical sensations telling you about what you’ve been doing, or about what you have in your life currently? Are you receiving feedback that says you’re on the right track, or do the signals suggest you’ve wandered away from your True North?

One of the things jumping out at me about tomorrow’s eclipse is that it’s in a conjunction (merging) with Uranus in Taurus, and it’s in a close sextile (a supportive contact) with Mars in Pisces. 

Translation: your impulses and moods may surprise you these next few days, especially if you have not been cultivating what you say you want to grow in your life. If you feel like someone or something is holding you back from acting on your creative impulses, and you find yourself angry or resentful, that’s an important signal.

(Similarly, if you’ve been feeling newly depressed, is there anything you’ve been avoiding expressing?)

That said, if your actions **are** aligned with your inner self, you might be the one surprising others! Intentionally acting contrary to your usual habits could sow some exciting seeds for exploring new territory in the rest of the year. 

Doing something unexpected of unusual that brings you joy over the next few days — especially if it’s a way to dip your toe into a bigger change, or is a new way of approaching part of your life — has the potential to set beneficial new patterns into motion for the next 6-12 months. 

And if you’re on the receiving end of somebody else’s seemingly “erratic,” surprising, or disruptive choices, remember that flexibility is a mindset, and cultivating it can take practice. The more anxious you are about “things not going as planned,” the more beneficial it may be to take the lead in shaking things up for yourself. 

Between tomorrow’s New Moon eclipse and the May 16 Full Moon eclipse, Mercury will station retrograde. So cultivating flexibility, creative approaches to problems, and a Taurus-style grounded-ness will likely help in the short term, as well as set you up for longer-term developments. 

For now, pay attention to the signals that you are or are not aligned with your values, desires, and goals, and make the adjustments needed to get your metaphorical canoe pointed with the current — or to get your seeds into soil. Look where you want to go, and stay loose. Know that small steps still count.

With love,

Amanda

<3

P.S. I forgot to weave these Barbara Sher quotes in, but they feel incredibly relevant:

“When you play it too safe, you’re taking the biggest risk of your life. Time is the only wealth we’re given.”

“Imaginary obstacles are insurmountable. Real ones aren’t.”

“Every single one of us can do things that no one else can do — can love things that no one else can love. We are like violins. We can be used for doorstops, or we can make music.”

“The amount of good luck coming your way depends on your willingness to act.”

“You must go after your wish. As soon as you start to pursue a dream, your life wakes up and everything has meaning.”