May 2014
Sex and Chocolate
This month starts out with two love slaps from Saturn, the planet of earned rewards. It will be opposed first by Mercury and then by the Sun between May 2nd and 10th.
Saturn in Scorpio
For a couple of years already, the transit of Saturn (karma) in Scorpio (sexuality) has been asking us to take responsibility for the way we handle
the mysterious demands of intimacy.
Saturn has been making sure we realize when and where we’re off-base.
Mars Station
Then there’s the Mars station on May 19th in Libra, the sign of partnership. Mars has been in Libra for five months, and will continue there until late July.
The most self-oriented planet in the most other-oriented sign, Mars in Libra has been 
forcing us to confront the eternal paradox of relationship: How can I be with you and still stay true to me ?
May is the perfect time to look at sex and relationship. But let’s not confine ourselves to conventional perspectives. The well-worn truisms of marriage and intimacy won’t help us much here.
Forget the tropes of pop psychology and the clichés in romantic 
comedies. This is about pursuing relationship in ways that match our own unique potential. To this end, society’s pictures are of little use.
But a serious look at the relevant astrological archetypes will prove wonderfully useful.
Sensuality
Have you ever noticed how some people say “sensual” when they really mean “sexy”? The word has turned into a euphemism. “Sensual” seems to get pressed into service when an overt reference to sex strikes the speaker as indelicate.
Astrological terminology is much more precise than vernacular speech, and if we want to understand its symbols, we need to be precise, too. The word “sensual” refers to the domain of the earth signs; specifically to Taurus, the earthiest of them all.
Sex-Positive
To understand Taurus’ attitude towards sex, we first consider the fact that its
ruling planet is Venus, governess of beauty, sweetness and pleasure. This tells us that what motivates sex for Taurus is the enjoyment and appreciation of living in a physical body in a physical world.1
High-level embodiments of this sign are inherently sex-positive. They revere the sacred in 
all physical experiences, and the closer to Mother Nature they can get, the better. If roses and tigers and oak trees are holy, how could the genitalia not be holy too?
The Divine Bovine
In the pagan Wheel of the Year, the festival (sabbat) associated with Taurus occurs when the Sun is right smack dab in the middle of the sign. The big outdoor party known to the Celts as Beltane (later, May Day) shows us Taurus in full blossom. For countless millennia — until the sky-god religions came along and declared sex scary and bad — it 
was celebrated by apple-cheeked lovers cavorting in fresh green meadows.
The Sun at fifteen Taurus marks that golden moment of the year when we humans are most likely to remember that we’re animals. Like our hoofed brethren, we were gifted with the ability to see the 
emerald-green of new plant life, to smell the honeysuckle, to hear the full streams rushing, to feel the sap rising and to taste the sweetness of earthly fruit.
Venus in the Cross
Moreover, on this particular Beltane, Venus is part of the grand cross.2 In mid-May, she begins a riff of aspects to the other corners of the cardinal square. On May 11th, she exactly opposes Mars; on the 14th and 15th she conjoins Uranus and squares Pluto; and on the 18th she exactly squares Jupiter.
This Beltane, Venus is no demure, blushing maiden. She’s in Aries. 
Fired up and restless, she has jumped into the game with both guns blazing, continuing the work of Mars (self-gratification), Uranus (rebellion), Jupiter (social mores) and Pluto (taboo-busting) that made April so intense.
Sex-Negative
Modern Western culture is notoriously neurotic about sex, obsessing over it and despising it at the same time. Awash in pornography yet riddled with a puerile squeamishness, our society seems arrested at the developmental level of a sniggering schoolboy where sex is concerned.
Steeped as we are in the misogyny of the Abrahamic religions and brainwashed by unrealistic expectations of lifelong marriage, it’s a 
wonder any of us have achieved any degree of psychosexual health at all.
But this health is our birthright, and the asteroid Vesta can help us reclaim it (I go over the meanings of the four major asteroids here). Along with Ceres and Eros, Vesta is also a participant in the cardinal cross, neck-and-neck 
with Mars and Venus. Vesta is the archetype of sex as a sacrament: a conscious channeling of the Divine Feminine.
Sex as Devotion
The extraordinary teaching of this little-known asteroid cannot be found anywhere in contemporary pop culture. Vesta represents sex that is not used to catch a mate, nor to have children, nor simply to achieve personal pleasure. Vesta is sex as religious devotion.
The very idea of thinking of sex this way shocks, appalls and confuses most contemporary people. Vesta’s point of view makes no sense to them, and 
is reflected in no role models that they can readily see. In order to find healthy versions of the Vesta principle, we have to go back in time.
Sacred Harlots
We have to go back to a time before the early church fathers declared themselves the arbiters of moral law. We have to go back even before the Romans and Greeks, those esteemed gynephobes credited with having invented “civilization.” We have to go back to the pre-classical sacred harlots, 
priestesses of the Great Mother in Her sexual aspect.
It was through the Vestals’ rites that pilgrims to the temple were initiated into the Mysteries. These wild, selfless maidens3 give us an image for a use of sex that is both reverential and ecstatic at once.
It was temporary, too. Relationship separations were part and parcel of the priestess’ 
sexual unions. No marital guarantees or romantic promises forced them to stay with their consorts for years on end. This sex was about The Now.
Shadow Vesta
Most of us have at least had glimpses of what Vestal sexuality feels like, but by and large it exists as an anachronism. Unless our spirituality runs towards the Wiccan, we probably have no ideological framework to put it in; no theory with which to understand these urges.
If we don’t find a personal framework for them, either, Vesta’s promptings will manifest in their shadow guise. Alas, this is what happens to parts of the self that we deny.
Withdrawing from sex altogether is a symptom of denied Vesta. So is superficial promiscuity. This may seem a paradox, but it is really a strict application of the archetype’s logic. A fully conscious Vesta may seek multiple partners, but 
never in a casual way. For Vesta, sex that is merely ordinary is a blasphemy.4
Vesta Work
This month, take advantage of Vesta’s proximity to Mars and Venus to get in touch with this often suppressed part of our humanness. Do you know where in the sky Vesta was when you were born? Have your chart done, and locate Vesta’s natal sign, house and aspects. This can help identify any shames that might be lurking in the 
sexual closet.
Vesta can reunite us with a part of ourselves we didn’t even know we had — let alone had rejected. In our meditations this month, let us call up the cellular memory of those primordial days before the priests expelled us from the Garden.
Notes
1 Several signs tend to get associated with sex, for different reasons. Scorpio, which claims rulership over procreation and other mysteries of merger, is not really about the physical act. It’s a water sign; water isn’t into corporeality. For Scorpio, sex is a vehicle for psychological/ emotional/ psychic interaction.
Leo enjoys romantic performance, but, being fire, it isn’t about bodies, either. It likes dating and courting because they’re fun.
Then there’s Libra, the most purely romantic sign, which has the least to do with sex. Libra is air, which means it’s interested in ideas – in this case, the ideal of union. If sex comes with the partnership, that’s as may 
be, but what Libra is really after is the idea of love.
It is Taurus that specializes in the pleasures of the flesh, appreciating sensate experience for its own sake. There’s nothing very mysterious about the motivations of this what-you-see-is-what-you-get sign. Taurus is into sex for the same reasons it’s into chocolate and fine wine.
2 She is playing the role played last month by Mars. See March’s and April’s Skywatches.
3 Throughout the patriarchal era (i.e. recorded history), the terms “maidens” and “virgins” have been used to refer to women who have never been sexually aware. Contrast the preclassical Vestals, who were virginal not in the sense of being presexual, but in the sense of belonging to no man.
4 Because of the extreme suspicion — not to mention legal prosecution — that Vestal urges elicit in most of the world, it isn’t surprising that of all the planets and asteroids, Vesta is especially prone to shadow expression. Once distorted beyond recognition, these energies are often condemned as, ironically, “unnatural.” It is because of the internalization of our culture’s sexual blindspot that Vesta plays out as unbalanced promiscuity, sexual repressiveness and phobia. See Demetra George’s Asteroid Goddesses.