ON THE LUNATIONS IN SCORPIO AND TAURUS

On May 5th, 2023 there was a Full Moon and Partial Lunar Eclipse at 11:34 AM, and on May 19th we had a New Moon in Taurus at 9:53 am. The Lunar Eclipse was the culmination of the series of eclipses in which the lunar nodes were in Scorpio and Taurus, wrapping up an 18 month period where the majority of eclipses took place in these signs. The New Moon in Taurus marks a beginning at the end of Taurus season, which one can sort of see as an epilogue to the Scorpio and Taurus Eclipse period, the recently wrapped up Mercury Retrograde through the sign, and Taurus Season as a whole.

I always feel a little awkward setting intentions when the New Moon is at the end of the Suns journey through a sign, as I know the successive Full Moon will be opposite a different sign. But fittingly enough, today (May 19th) was a culmination of a lot of themes you could say are related to my 2nd and 8th houses in Taurus and Scorpio, to some extent.

This will be my most personal post to date, and it will discuss or briefly touch on some topics that might be sensitive for some people, like death, verbal abuse, and insecure attachment. I will discuss home ownership, money, and inheritance, so this is to say, that I recognize I have a certain amount of white settler colonialist privilege.

Today, I funded the closing on my first house. The money for my closing costs came from my paternal grandmothers estate. She died last September, and was until that point, my last living grandparent. Last January I started tracking my daily tarot cards, and that month, I got the Death card 5 times, including as my card of the month. At that time, I had an intuitive feeling that that might herald my grandmother’s death.

My grandma and I had a love of art and painting in common. I had just completed an associates degree in Graphic Design in 2021, so my grandmother and I had recently reconnected on this topic. She sent me a bunch of painting and art supplies. Due to the pandemic, I hadn’t seen her in person in years, even though we’d talk on the phone for holidays and birthdays. Her passing was sudden, probably a heart attack. I finally fell victim to COVID-19 a couple week before her passing, but luckily I was recovered enough to be able to travel and attend her remembrance service. The longest lasting effect of my COVID infection has been on the learning difficulties (dyslexia, dyscalculia) I have probably had my whole life, and that I would’ve inherited from my grandma, via my dad.

Most tragically, my mother and I got into a massive screaming match on the way to my grandma’s burial over my supposed inability to give my mom directions to the cemetery. This argument that started over my struggle to tell left from right (a common issue among dyslexics), escalated to a point she threatened to kill me and throw me out of her car in a random, suburban Chicago corn field. This was after a three year detente in the 33 year cold war between my mother and my self, that started with my dad discovering he had stage four chronic kidney disease and spending two weeks in the hospital, and ended with my grandma’s burial.

For me, the Scorpio - Taurus axis’ corresponding tarot cards of Death and The Hierophant are two cards I struggle to relate to… Death is inherently opaque to living people, we can only relate to the experience of death through those around us dying. I’ve lost grandparents, teachers, professors, classmates, but I’m obviously still alive myself. Furthermore I am fortunate to have never had a near death experience, outside of maybe briefly thinking my mom might have actually thrown me out into that corn field. Obviously, in the last 3 years, a lot of us have gotten more familiar with all the feelings we as living people have around death, like grief, guilt, denial, etc.

The Hierophant is even more remote than Death. All of us will experience the death of loved ones and eventually die ourselves. To quote Succession’s Roman Roy, “Death just feels very ‘one size fits all.” However, not everyone is religious or spiritual, so the figure of The Hierophant, also called the Pope, feels even more distant. I was raised Catholic, so that does give me some sort of relationship to the literal Pope, but that doesn’t really help me access the archetype of the Hierophant. Waite changed the name of this card from the then common name of The Pope to the “Hierophant” to be purposely opaque, but also as a reference to the hierophants of the Greek mystery religions.

The Hierophant was the person to initiate you into the mystery cult in the era of Orphic Rites. He was responsible for teaching you the rituals and the secrets of the religion. Though what these rites actually entailed is still a mystery (hence mystery religions) we do have some contextual idea of what happened to initiates into these cults. Their rites or rituals likely involved imbibing some sort of hallucinogenic substance or going into some state of altered consciousness that made initiates feel like they were actually dying, so that they could learn what happened to departed souls according to the traditions of Hellenic polytheistic religion. (I hesitate to say ‘mythology’ here, as these initiates would have believed in Orpheus, Persephone, and Hades the way Christians believe in the miracles and resurrection of Christ).

Still, the Hierophant card depicts a Pope, the leader of the Catholic faith that Waite himself belonged to. (One could argue, Catholicism’s roots draw much from those mystery religions, but that’s for another day). The Pope follows the Emperor. If the Emperor as Father Figure teaches obedience to societal norms to his subjects, The Pope plays right hand man in enforcing these norms—we call Priests “father” after all. The Pope represents a spiritual or religious tradition that his parishioners are expected to follow. For me, the Emperor and The Pope represent attachment, as in Gabor Maté’s scheme of attachment vs authenticity.

In Maté’s view of attachment, children who form insecure attachment styles are subconsciously signaled by their caregivers that their full range of emotions, usually negative ones, are not acceptable, Therefore, to relate to their attachment figure whom they rely on for their physical survival, they suppress the emotions that displease their caregiver.

When I speak of the “cold war” between my mother and I, it goes all the way back to my babyhood because we have such a toxic attachment style. I obviously cannot remember specific words, actions, or facial expressions my mom made when I was a pre-verbal child, but I do know that I grew up feeling like my feelings were a burden to her… All of my feelings, but especially negative ones, or ones that didn’t match whatever her particular mood was at the time.

My mom has a freight train full of her own trauma and baggage that she hasn’t bothered to deal with in an sort of way. My mom is far, far down the self absorption spectrum, so I doubt she’s got enough self awareness for therapy to even be effective. When I would describe her behavior to my former therapists, they would work under the assumption that she has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. From my point of view, she’s solidly somewhere in the Cluster B of the personality disorder section of the DSM. Specific diagnoses aside, my mom is a toxic and abusive person, especially to me.

As I grew up, and attempted to authentically express my emotions—my Self—as a pre-teen or teenager, it would result in arguments, shouting matches, and culminate in my mother verbally abusing me. The disorganized attachment issues and emotional abuse were always there, but the outright verbal abuse didn’t start until I was about 11 or 12 and old enough to speak up for myself. As an adult, people have said a lot of horrible things to and about me, called me things like a “bitch,” and at some level those things hurt, but they never hurt as bad as when my mom first said them to me. I have made a choice to be childfree, partially because my mother thought she wanted that, but caved under my father’s pressure to have a kid anyways. The zenith of my mom’s version of verbal abuse has always been, “I wish you were never born.” I never want to be tempted to say that.

I understand now, as an adult, whether or not to have children isn’t an easy choice, and for a lot of reasons people have that choice taken away from them frequently, even after 48 years of abortion being legal at a federal level in the US. Feeling ambiguous or resentful about being a parent is more common than we’d like to admit as a society. I think we should absolutely work remove the stigma and shame around the folks that feel this way. Parenthood isn’t for everyone but I don’t think everyone knows that before they have children. However, based on my own personal experiences, I am absolutely against those folks using that resentment against their children, especially as a form of manipulation or abuse. If you feel that way, please share it in a support group or with a therapist.

In Maté’s scheme of attachment vs authenticity, in order to heal as adults we must choose our authenticity in order to heal. Authenticity is obviously integral to becoming a self-sufficient and fully actualized adult. Denying our authenticity or having it denied by our parents, families, society… has dire consequences, including increased likelihood for substance abuse, alcoholism, chronic pain, chronic illness and auto-immune disorders.

To embrace authenticity we must face death—the death we couldn’t chose as babies. In my experience, to choose to express and embrace my authentic self, I’ve experienced things I thought I’d never survive. Experiences I think are similar to what the mystery religion initiates felt and what they call “ego death” in psychological circles. But when you’re entire ego is based in relationship to your mother’s approval, death is a good thing.

In contemporary times, in popular astrology and popular tarot circles, there is a tendency to suppress the idea of “malefics.” Scorpio is traditionally ruled by Mars, and its contemporary ruler Pluto—the planet given the Roman name for Hades—which mostly functions like a malefic in my experience. Mars [the God] ruled the horror of war—whereas Athena ruled the strategic parts of warfare. Mars, maybe only second to Hephaestus, was the whipping boy of the Olympians. Being the most famous son of Hera and Zeus, in my mind he also embodies the marital warfare between the Queen and King of Olympus… And what parent would want a reminder of how much they fight with their spouse? Mars is also associated with the most malefic card in Tarot - The Tower.

In the stardust sparkles and unicorns version of popular astrology / tarot, there are no malefic planets, and the Death card is abstracted from literal death. It is transformation, ego death more so than literal death, and associated with the new-age Plutonian significations. Just because Death isn’t the most malefic card of the Tarot, doesn’t mean it can’t also mean literal death. So much of our psychological hang ups come from our society treating death like a taboo. Something we often don’t talk about until its too late, until someones gone and we don’t know how to handle their corpse let alone their estate.

The plans for my grandma left for her funeral were confusing, and funerals are so ridiculously expensive. I am grateful that my dad was very open about how the cost of everything involved with my grandma’s funeral. (A lot of the ideas I have for how I want my body to be treated after my death are in opposition to watching my grandmothers being embalmed and entombed in caskets and crypts and buried in random fields around Chicago. As an amateur gemologist, I want to be cremated and my ashes turned into a diamond, and I want my future protégé to wear my cremation diamond as a ring. A lot of my ideas around death are indebted to Caitlin Doughty from Ask a Mortician. If you have a lot of anxiety around death, especially your own death and what will happen to your corpse, I recommend checking out her youtube channel.) Talking about money is also a taboo in our society, and I think that goes back to the exploitation of our labor that is inherent in living under Capitalism.

In spite of the verbal and emotional abuse I experienced growing up, I am materially privileged. My mom was afraid I would be come the stereotype of a “spoiled only child” and taught me the importance of hard work, but still I never worried if dinner would be on the table after I got done playing with my friends after school. I am the only grandchild on my dad’s side, and my grandparents had no reservations about spoiling me.

Are they my favorite grandparents because they showered me with gifts? No, they were my favorite grandparents because I never felt that their love was conditional when I was a child. My grandpa was also a left handed only child. He was also interested in stationary, cartoons, music and computer games —one of my core memories is playing some game on a full sized floppy disk in his Apple IIe computer as a kid. My grandma was a working woman who tapped into her creative side after she retired and started painting. They shared their interests with me, and actually cared about and listened to me. It’s only now that I understand attachment styles, that insecure attachments arise when caregivers show little interest in their child’s emotions and inner world. Even if I grew up 300 miles away from my paternal grandparents, I am still grateful I got to know them and that they actually cared about knowing me. They showed an interest in me and what I thought, felt and imagined. I almost never got from my mom and that was something even my dad couldn’t consistently show me.

So, I bought a house after renting for 10 years. Thanks to the rampant inflation, I realized that my mortgage payment could be more or less what I’d pay in rent for that townhouse… and the apartments around Albuquerque are not at all worth the prices they are charging for rent. I made the decision to start looking at houses rather impulsively. Until a couple months ago, I thought I’d rent a townhome closer to my work at a complex some friends and coworkers live in. One day, I randomly opened the Trulia app, and saw a house that I fell in love with… it was the size I wanted, in a good neighborhood, etc. I didn’t get it, because it was on market for ONE DAY, but it got the ball rolling.

So I ended up buying a 10 year old house (newer than most of the apartments around here) and even though I bought a house in a sellers market, I still managed to get a pretty damn good deal. My house appraised at more than what I paid for it, I locked in a great interest rate, and I qualified for assistance with closing costs. Even still, I am broke, and still had to ask my parents to help with the portion of closing costs I had to pay. The other day on my way to sign my closing documents, I wondered how buying / building houses worked for my ancestors, back in Poland. I wondered when banks, title companies and mortgage lenders started getting involved and realized that real estate had to literally be the first “cottage industry.”

I feel a deep sense of nostalgia for my first apartment, and not just because it was only $650 / mo. Moving out of my parents house for good, just over 10 years ago, was an integral part of my healing process. I had a place to go to be alone, and process, decompress and self-regulate—a place to be 23 and have my 12th house year. I am so grateful that I gave myself a space to heal and figure out who my “authentic” self even was. I had a lot of firsts, a lot of good times and my fair share of god fucking awful times in that apartment. I will always remember it as the first place that ever really felt like it was mine, a place where I could just be myself.

In the past couple weeks we’ve had a lot of ingresses, Venus moved into Cancer, Jupiter moved into Taurus. Tomorrow, Mars moves into Leo. The day after that, the Sun moves into Gemini and by the end of the month, we emerge from Mercury’s retrograde shadow. The energy is shifting and things feel fresh. Set a grounded Taurean intention for the new moon before the firery and airy energy of the next few days blows in.