Beltane Blessings! Today’s Taurus New Moon is located just shy of 15 degrees of Taurus, which is the official midpoint between Solstice and Equinox. Many celebrate May Day as Beltane, but if you’re energy-sensitive as I am, you may not “feel” the heat of the fires until tomorrow. The up-side of this: we have been given nearly a week to celebrate this most potent fertility festival, from “Beltane Eve” last Tuesday through late Monday in the US.

Beltane is of course one of the 4 Cross-Quarter Holy Days in the Wheel of the Year, and is the final one before the Sun’s energies are at their height—and shift toward waning—at the Summer Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. Opposite it lies Samhain (all hallows). The other 2 are Imbolc (traditionally celebrated the first or 2nd of February) and Lughnasadh (the early harvest festival on 1 August).

In the past few days I realized, as I’ve been diving into my Gene Keys and Human Design, that my Incarnation Cross (of the Sphinx) that represents my 4 prime gifts, sits right on these 4 cross-quarter holy days. And I mean exactly! This was a huge ah-ha moment for me. I already knew that my birthday was on the astrologically exact Imbolc and and that my Ascendant and Descendant were the Winter and Summer Solstice points, but I didn’t know about the others. No wonder the Wheel of the Year is so potent for me, personally, in addition to it being potent for every living thing on the planet thanks to the cosmic energies it brings.

Beltane is a—THE—fertility festival. The Rites of Spring. Really all the points between Winter and Summer Solstice are fertility rites, but this one is the culmination of them all, where men and women would lie in the fields to make love, thereby ritually fertilizing the soil and also the wombs of their animals. Part of the festival involved the crowing of the May Queen, and dancing around the May pole (representing the masculine).

Any child born from the Sacred Union of God and Goddess (for the men and women participating in Beltane rituals were representing these Divine figures on the Earth plane) was considered a child of the Gods, and therefore extra-special. Of course, at the Christianization of Europe, this practice was eliminated in nothing flat. More on this below.

It is very potent to have Beltane coincide with the Taurus New Moon.

Every New Moon is a seed-planting, and Beltane was conceived as a literal seed-planting: planting the seeds of new life in the womb and the soil. Taurus is ruled by the Goddess Venus, so her values of Beauty, Love, Pleasure, Abundance, Art, Comforts, Delight, Sensuality and the 5 senses, and Riches of all kinds are at play today. Set your intentions after 6:47 Eastern Saturday until 11 am, and then again shortly before midnight Sunday through Monday all day and night. If you know your birth chart, look for 14 degrees of Taurus, and add the qualities of that house to your intentions as well as the Taurean qualities. They are bound to be super-catalyzed by all the energies available these days!

In honor of Beltane and this most-powerful New Moon in the first Earth (manifestation) sign of Taurus, I’ll be holding a crystal love-stream on Monday night at 9 pm Eastern to help catalyze your intentions over on Facebook. With apologies to my European followers, this time serves me and most everyone on my list as a good time to be up and active.

(What’s going on in Capricorn with the Saturn-Pluto-South Node conjunction deserves a separate post, but suffice it to say that there’s a very harmonious angle from this New Moon to those challenging energies, which frankly feels like a relief after last week’s intensity when first Pluto then Saturn stood still in the sky before turning retrograde. Whew! You can also check out what’s going on in your birth chart around 20 degrees of Capricorn if you know it to see where you are being forged anew. For me it’s my first house of self. I am definitely in the cauldron of dissolution…)

Oh, and if we needed more intensity around this New Moon, I’ll just drop this in: this is the first Taurus New Moon in over 75 years (!) where Revolutionary Uranus has also been in the sign of the Bull.

(Also, it has taken me approximately 3 hours to get that paragraph to post… I kept getting kicked out when I did, and I mean DOZENS of times!) If you’ve been feeling some Mercury-retrograde energies yourself, know that we should MOSTLY be past them by now…

One way to celebrate Beltane is to make a crown of flowers and greenery. This is in addition to having sex (not necessarily in a field), feeling deep gratitude, and really paying attention to your 5 senses, preferably while outside in nature.

Why crowns? It’s traditional to honor the Goddess Gaia/Mother Earth by crowning the Queen of the May as her proxy. Patriarchal forces—especially the Church of Rome—did all they could to denigrate women and take away our power except when it came to Mother Mary (note that it’s still a life-giving mother).

Reclaim your Sovereignty, Power, Beauty, Life-force and Abundance while honoring the Earth and all her bounty by making a crown and wearing it proudly at Beltane.

I have been gathering materials, mostly from my own yard, but I also bought some flowers on the first.

What I foraged from my own yard: lots of ivy, boxwood, holly with buds (not terribly springy, but the red berries called to me!), some clematis vine and even some wild strawberries!!

I also have 3 gauges of wire here with the thickest being for the crown itself, and the other 2 for wrapping. Florist’s wire is also perfect for wrapping the stems and vines in if you have it.

NB: when I take a clipping from a vine or a bush, I ALWAYS ask if I can. One of the pieces of ivy is shorter than I wanted, but the plant told me to back up when I asked if I could. I also always express gratitude for the natural gifts I receive.

The message from the Guides at this New Moon is to let yourself be raked or brushed, even pruned if necessary.

They’re showing me that this pivotal moment in humanity’s history is demanding that we allow all the parts of ourselves which are no longer aligned with our Ancient-Future selves—and especially patterns of victimhood—to be raked, brushed, or pruned away.

The rake they’re showing in not one of the gentle bamboo ones that will pick up leaves only, but a metal rake that digs into the soil and pulls out weeds, even the ones we cannot see. Let your auric field and even your mental and emotional bodies be groomed so that anything that’s still there after this year’s series of transformations can be sloughed like dead skin. Think of it as a super-deep-tissue massage, releasing long-held stresses as well as toxins that are not serving you.

Just as raking and pruning in a garden will activate the roots of the groundcover and the branches of bushes and trees, doing this for yourself, or inviting your Higher Self and Guides to do it for you if you prefer (you’ll need to hold the pen if journaling is part of the process, but you can mostly hand things over to the divine aspects of you) will really allow you and your creations and big dreams to flourish!

Of course, the root of the word “flourish” is to flower, blossom, and bloom. It’s all about living the garden and gratefully co-creating the fruits of the Earth.

Will you feel a little raw afterwards? Maybe, but that rawness will turn to gratitude and delight when you see how easy it is to achieve your goals in the areas of finances, art, pleasure, and Love. In the grand scheme of things, a few moments of discomfort are well worth the rewards that can come from surrendering to this process.

Be aware that others around you are likely also feeling raw, so have as much compassion as you can, and take as much time for deep grounding breaths as possible before reacting to their rawness.

Plant your seeds of intention at this sexy, life-force driven New Moon. You’ll begin to see the fruits show up for harvesting in early August, and a boat-load of manifestations in January.

Light your fires, and Own Your Magick!

P.S.: At this Uranian Taurus New Moon, I invite you to check out my Uranus Channeled Wisdom Call, addressing the energies of the next 7 years (8 years at the time). People are raving, and tell me that it really changed their lives, helping to birth new aspects of themselves. Maybe you’re interested in doing that at well? Click the link above to find out more. Also, we will have another 7 years in these energies. Why not be prepared?