This Scorpio Full Moon will shine on the festival of Beltane, which ushers in the summer season of life, fertility and creativity. The Scorpio Full Moon can show us the old emotional patterns which keep us from using our talents and help us purge them. While Taurus wants us to pay attention to our senses and the beauty around us, the Scorpio full Moon will reflect back what we're feeling inside.

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Whatever deserves to exist, deserves to be known.

Francis Bacon

In a society that pays more attention to things and machines then to the natural world, we might need to define what it means to 'exist'. Exist: to continue to be, to stand forth, to arise, to BE. Perhaps a better way to define it is to say whatever is alive deserves to be known. Understanding technology is all well and good, but it is the Earth and Life that deserve our attention now.

When the Sun is in Taurus, our attention turns to what is alive in the world. Taurus is a fixed earth sign, meaning it concentrates Aries fire to bring it into form. At the Aries New Moon on April 18^th, we planted a new seed story about our lives, a new story about our individual purpose and our contribution to healing the world and creating a better future.

The seed is still a mystery, the new story just beginning, but once the seed is planted, our work becomes the Taurus experience of knowing our own being--our senses, our thoughts, our feelings and our intuitions. Begin at the beginning. Know Thyself! And then look around this beautiful Earth and feel your connection to it. Through that connection, learn to listen and see the world with new eyes.

That's a good Taurus lesson. First to discover and know our self-worth and our values, then to look around and see what life has to offer. The Taurus part of each of us loves the beauty and goodness of the Earth, wants peace and security, and specializes in gardens of delight that feed the senses and sooth our reptilian brain. Taurus says this is what life is really all about--joy and beauty, love and delight, growth and union.

The Wheel of the Year turns during this Scorpio Full Moon on May 3-4, when we celebrate the festival of Beltane. This power-gate celebrates the beauty of Mother Earth and her fertility, her call to life and love and the creative imagination. At this time in the yearly cycle, the light is growing, nature is coming alive again and we are coming out of our winter's gestation. It's time to blossom, open up to our desires and see what dreams may come!

Scorpio Full Moon

This is a special Full Moon for me, because it occurs on my birthday. The Taurus/Scorpio Full Moon is also when the Buddhist Wesak Festival is celebrated. This is one of the most important festivals in the Buddhist calendar, commemorating three significant events in Gautama Buddha's life--his birthday, his enlightenment and his passing away.

This week's Full Moon occurs within 1* of the power gates of Taurus and Scorpio, the point in these signs where there can be a power breakthrough. Since this powerful time usually brings great spiritual blessings into the world, this year look for a strong flow of spiritual energies wanting to be integrated into consciousness. This spiritual insight can energize our aspirations to serve the Good, the Beautiful and the True (all Taurus values). Our intuition will be stimulated by these spiritual blessings, so dedicate some time to meditation and see what your inner wisdom wants you to know. The world is on the cusp of great changes and we are the ones who can provide a channel for the spiritual forces to pour through the body of humanity.

This is a powerful Full Moon! But of course, Scorpio can handle it. Scorpio, like Taurus, is called a fixed sign, meaning they concentrate energy--physical in Taurus' case and emotional in Scorpio's. The energies of Taurus and Scorpio promote growth, both within and without. Taurus wants to use her talents to build something strong and secure in the world. Scorpio wants to grow strong emotionally while learning to be vulnerable in relationships.

The Scorpio Full Moon makes us aware of our true feelings about our self-worth, our values, our resources and what we really want to create and achieve. Scorpio demands we transform those aspects of ourselves that sabotage those desires. Complacency or laziness--Taurus can do both. Scorpio can be caught up in distrust or resentment.

Jupiter in Leo forms a tight T-square with this Full Moon, meaning that it's at a 90* angle to both the Sun and Moon. Jupiter acts like the string on a bow being pulled back, creating tension but also power. With this dynamic aspect, Jupiter challenges us to look at this Full Moon from different creative perspectives. Jupiter challenges both Taurus and Scorpio to be curious! To look into things, instead of having expectations of what we think they are. These things deserve to be known.

The tension of the opposition between the Sun and Moon (at Full Moon) is stretched even tighter by Jupiter's involvement. What do we really value and are we living it? Are we acknowledging our needs and desires or repressing them? How can we creatively change our lives to reflect who we really are?

Instead of controlling our emotions, perhaps we can look at them honestly and find ways to face our fears about speaking the truth about ourselves to others. Learning to be more objective in our relationships and questioning our emotional responses to situations can help us change beliefs and behaviors that arose from childhood experiences that now need to be purged. These old habits no longer fit into our new story.

This purging will be aided by Pluto's positive relationships to both the Sun and Moon. Pluto can help bring up whichever emotional patterns need to be released and then help transform them into positive elements of our new story.

Uranus in Aries--the call to awaken to our destiny--is also in a helpful relationship to Jupiter in Leo. Fire to Fire. Our awakened archetypal energies (Uranus) fuel Jupiter's creativity and curiosity, bringing sudden insights and synchronistic experiences to aid in the process.

This Scorpio Full Moon is a call to learn tolerance for ourselves and others, to be more curious about life, and to look for meaning in everything we experience. The tension of these three planets wants resolution. When the bow is released, where does the arrow end up? With Jupiter in Leo pulling the sting, it ends up in Aquarius, where the asteroid Ceres, the Great Mother Goddess, resolves these tensions by encouraging us to share our insights and light with the world.

This Taurus/Scorpio Full Moon occurs on Sunday May 3^rd at 8:42pm PDT/11:42pm EDT/ and at 3:42 am GMT on May 4^th.

The Sabian symbol for the Sun at 14* Taurus is: On the beach, children play while shellfish grope at the edge of the water. This image suggests that we have to become like little children and play in the imagination so that new contents from the Collective Unconscious (shellfish) can emerge. We need these new ideas, perceptions and feelings to become conscious, and they first appear through our imaginations.

The Sabian symbol for the Moon at 14* Scorpio is: Telephone linemen at work, installing new connections. This image suggests that we need new forms of communication, especially in our intimate relationships--but also within ourselves. We need to open up to our right-brain imagination and then connect to our left-brain rationality to name what we sense and bring it to consciousness.

The Sabian symbol for Jupiter at 14* Leo is: A human soul, seeking opportunities for outward manifestation. This is an image of the soul that wants and needs self-actualization. It's time for the Soul to steer our course. It's time to show that we 'exist'.

So, let your soul open up new lines of communication with your 'child' self and take the time to play, daydream and entrain with Mother Nature. That's what I'm going to do!

Three other planets form another T-Square in this Full Moon chart. The planets are Mercury in Gemini, Neptune in Pisces and Saturn retrograde in Sagittarius, with Neptune pulling the string between Mercury and Saturn.

Neptune rules Pisces, and so you can expect lots of dreams, images, delusions and illusions to be cast up into the more logical mind of Mercury opposite Saturn's disciplined beliefs. Saturn in Sagittarius can hold rigid beliefs and likes a disciplined mind (Mercury in Gemini) but can be swamped by Neptune's enchantments if those beliefs no longer serve us. Maybe things are not as they seem. Once again -- it's a repeating theme -- let the imagination lead the way. Great wisdom can come of this aspect if we let go of limiting beliefs and look compassionately and creatively at our world. It's time to integrate the head and the heart, which means letting the heart, the imagination, the right-brain lead the way and making sure the head, our left-brain rationality, is the servant who finds ways to 'make it so!'

Sending you blessings on my birthday,

Cathy

Camas Lilies~ Lynn Ungar ~

Consider the lilies of the field,

the blue banks of camas

opening into acres of sky along the road.

Would the longing to lie down

and be washed by that beauty

abate if you knew their usefulness,

how the natives ground their bulbs

for flour, how the settlers' hogs

uprooted them, grunting in gleeful

oblivion as the flowers fell?

And you - what of your rushed

and useful life? Imagine setting it all down -

papers, plans, appointments, everything -

leaving only a note: "Gone

to the fields to be lovely. Be back

when I'm through with blooming."

Even now, unneeded and uneaten,

the camas lilies gaze out above the grass

from their tender blue eyes.

Even in sleep your life will shine.

Make no mistake. Of course

your work will always matter.

Yet Solomon in all his glory

was not arrayed like one of these.

(Blessing the Bread)

Authors Website: http://www.cathypagano.com

Authors Bio:

Cathy Pagano is a spiritual advisor and Jungian psychotherapist, storyteller, author and teacher.

She is the author of a book on the return of the Goddess, "Wisdom's Daughters: How Women Can Change the World".

Cathy trained at the C. G. Jung Institut-Zurich in dream interpretation, has an M.A. in Counseling Psychology in Feminine Spirituality, and is a certified Life Coach.

As an astrologer and storyteller, she weaves the Cosmic Stories written in the stars. From The Bard's Grove, she writes about emerging archetypal themes in movies and books.

Cathy works with the tools of the imagination - dreams, alchemy, myths, astrology, symbolic language, storytelling, ritual - to awaken the Soul's wisdom.



I believe that Americans are called to a higher consciousness at this point in our history. We are called on to live up to our ideals and create the country our forefathers imagined. Inner consciousness needs to be acted upon for social justice.



Cathy believes that our writers and artists must take up our responsibility to create art that inspires, teaches and heals our humanity.



Cathy writes about political, psychological/spiritual, and cultural issues.