May opens with a Full Moon featuring two juicy fixed signs. Both Taurus and Scorpio relate, among other things, to how we humans handle having bodies.
Taurus has to do with what we ingest, and Scorpio with what we excrete. We may prefer talking about the former than the latter — to the point of dispatching defecation to the realm of taboo — but Nature herself doesn’t play favorites.
Taurus and Scorpio also encompass the sexual polarity. The Full Moon that announces this month is buzzing with the tension between these two aspects of sex.
Scorpio
People who seem to think that saying “sexy” is naughty often resort to “sensual” as a euphemism. We’ll get a more precise sense of these terms from the symbolism of astrology.
Scorpio governs the orgasm and the mysteries of procreation. But it’s not the physical act that matters
to Scorpio. The body is just a vehicle. For Scorpio the action is in the psychological and energetic drama, which involves — in theory, at least — a profound merger.
Sex is not the only means of exploring Scorpio’s teachings. Inquiries into death explore the same territory (hence that nickname for the orgasm, la petite mort: “the little death”), as do consciousness breakdowns and breakthroughs. All these experiences get their power from leaving the body behind.
But sex has come to be the sign’s primary association, because, for many people, it’s the only part of their life that opens the door to Scorpio’s intangible teachings.
Dis-embodied
The tangible side of sex, by contrast, is governed by Taurus, the earthiest of the earth signs. This is where the word sensual applies. The beauty and pleasure (Venus, Taurus’ ruling planet) of having a physical body in a physical world is what motivates sex for Taurus.
Taurus in the Northern hemisphere is associated with the rich fecundity of plant and animal kingdoms. These include the human animal, lest we forget. And we do tend to forget it, here in the digital age, where so many of us have lost touch with the body.
Computer dependency has estranged us from the physical aspects of our beings. Goddess help us, studies show that some young men go outside less often than prison inmates.
But the split between head and heart began long before the internet. The great intellects of the Enlightenment elevated the thinking function above all other human functions.
By condemning sensate experience as a drag on human achievement, these daring scientists were agreeing, ironically, with the church whose monopoly over human thought they were trying to break away from. For centuries, the Church of Rome, too, had been warning us against sensual pleasure, pronouncing sex scary and bad.
Is it any wonder we’re so neurotic about our bodies?
Beltane
But high-level Taurus sees the sacred in all physical life. If roses and tigers
and oak trees are holy, how could the genitalia not be holy, too (to paraphrase Allen Ginsburg , who had Venus in Taurus)?
During most of humanity’s tenure on the planet, the giddy delights of the flesh, far from being shrouded in shame, were sacralized. They were celebrated in the Northern Hemisphere with springtime festivals like Beltane, or May Day.
This month, sweeten your relationship to the physical world. May opens with the Sun in Taurus, with Mercury entering Taurus on the 2nd, and squaring Pluto at its station on the sixth. The Taurus New Moon is on the 16th, and Mars enters Taurus on the 18th.
Get outside as much as you can. Nature, our ultimate Mother, is in Her glory.
