On May Day, Pluto makes its first station since arriving in its new home, Aquarius.
Whenever a planet seems (from Earth’s point of view) to stop in the sky, it temporarily takes over the solar system. For days on end, it pumps energy into that one degree of the zodiac: in this case, zero Aquarius.
The dark god is leaning down close, whispering in our ear what his upcoming lessons will be. They will set the stage for the next twenty years (outlined in Pluto in Aquarius: The Crisis of Being Human).
As May begins, the god of the underworld clearly wants his presence known. He’s beginning the month with an announcement of his power.
Taurus
The station hits while Spring is in full flower. In the northern hemisphere, the first few days of May correspond with the celebration of Beltane, when the Earth is awash with the glories of the natural world.
Alas, in our denatured era, it is rare to find nubile youths gamboling around a maypole. But somewhere
within each of us, collective memory resonates in early May with the sights, sounds and aromas of the ancient ways.
Our cells remember the Beltane rites in all their erotic abandon, and if we let them, our corporeal selves will clue us back in. The physical body is Taurus’s temple, and the sap still rises at this time of year.
In materialistic societies, it isn’t easy to get at the deeper truth of this much-misunderstood sign. Modern society conditions us to over-identify with tangible things, 
and Taurus has been reduced to its associations with money and ownership. The trouble is, unless we honor our Taurean urges as transcendent forces, they tend to run aground. We try to quench them by going shopping.
There’s nothing wrong with indulging in the sensate, but if it’s done without a spiritual context it will not sate this hunger. During this time of year, something in us yearns for a more meaningful commitment to the world of three dimensions than a brief interlude with cashmere, ice cream or perfume.
When the Sun runs into Uranus on May 9th, do something bold and independent with these urges. Express yourself as a soul enjoying temporary corporeality, a perk of this sojourn on Terra.
Making our way through the fog
Saturn, like Pluto, has a fresh tale to tell. Since early March, it has been presenting us with the great Piscean challenge: to make our way through the mists of life with a strong flashlight.
The eternal questions raised by Pisces are not supposed to be easy to answer. They’re
rhetorical, and spiritual: Are we our brothers’ keeper? What is an individual’s responsibility for the folly of the collective? How do we navigate suffering, our own and that of other sentient beings?
But this is Saturn, the planet that pressures us to come up with answers. Or at least, some kind of operational response.
This is the paradox at hand, designed to test our spiritual mettle: The planet of concreteness and definition is moving through the sign of undifferentiated consciousness.
[With Saturn] in Pisces, form and formlessness collide. — Frederick Woodruff
This month, these conundrums will be especially obvious to those with natal planets at five and six of the mutable signs, which will be hit by Saturn either by conjunction, square or opposition.
But all of us, for the next 2 and a half years, will be tasked with the great Saturn-in-Pisces challenge: remaining as open as we can to everything in life — good, bad, pleasant or detestable — without dissolving into chaos.
Whatever happens when the Sun squares Saturn late this month (5/27-8) will ask this of us.
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