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April 20th through May 20th By Rebecca Brents |
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April 20th through May 20th By Rebecca Brents |
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You are the birthday child this month. So settle back in your easy chair. Arrange some comfy pillows all around you. Get your remote control where you can reach it easily when you're done with this. Got something to drink? A snack or two close at hand? How 'bout some background music? You do love your sensory pleasures, after all. And you don't need something as special as a birthday for an excuse to indulge yourself, but it helps.So let's talk about your year ahead. It's a very dynamic one, no matter where you were born in the sign. Your birth placement will determine, in this case, how long you'll be dealing with certain challenges and when (and how) they will make their entrance into your life.
If you are born early in the sign (the late April Taurus birthdays), the effects of the energy influencing your life this year will be longer-lasting and more pronounced than for your star siblings. The Mars / Neptune / Saturn t-square in the sky right now will be in your Solar Return for the year . . . and bearing down hard on your Taurus Sun -- which represents your ego, your inherent sense of drive, purpose and importance, your individual self-expression, the core of your personal identity. You will look back on this year, eventually, as one in which the foundations for a new and more mature personality were built and set into place -- despite some serious circumstances of challenge and tension. This will, therefore, be an eventful year -- but not a particularly easy one.
You will find yourself in situations that are demanding, intense, confusing, sobering, infuriating, and frustrating in many ways. As a result, you will "grow up" a lot -- even if you grew up long ago. This year, however, you will be learning new strategies and tactics for dealing with life's more adventurous moments. And next year, you will find you have become more serious, more mature, more stable . . . even more "solid" somehow than you are presently -- from facing the months that wait ahead.
I know. You're thinking to yourself, What kind of birthday present is this?? None of this sounds like news you especially wanted to hear. But this is a year when your ability to handle stress and keep on building the structures you need and continue moving toward the goals you have in mind . . . will be tested -- and strengthened, in order for you to become the person you need to be next year when this new personality of yours will reap some rich rewards of expansion, benefit, growth and prosperity.
That there are rewards at the end of this ordeal at least sweetens the arrangement for you. You can show enormous patience and powers of endurance when you believe the results are worth the aggravation. Indeed, here they will be. But they will also be a little while in actually arriving. Meanwhile, there are these changes in your personality -- and your outlook on life -- that the short-term future will be creating. The way these metaphors are occurring suggests this new, more organized, more self-contained, more responsible, conservative, authoritative self is a necessary ingredient to make the right use of the expansive opportunities that await you next year. You do, however, have to get through this year first.
So let's talk about what's going on. This is the year Saturn conjuncts your Sun . . . for the first time in nearly 30 years. Obviously, this is an important moment, one which may happen only three times at most in a lifetime. If you know the house which contains your Natal Sun, you will also know the area of life where the changes I am about to describe will be most evident. In the most direct and deliberate way you can imagine, you will be building a new identity for yourself this year, a way to define more profoundly who you are and what you want to accomplish with you life -- in the next thirty years ahead.
When Saturn conjuncts your Sun -- as is happening this year for you -- you find yourself contemplating the hard work it will take to achieve the long-term goals that have grabbed your imagination -- and liking the idea of building something substantial for yourself, something you can be proud of, something you can point to and call valuable when it finally is finished.
Value, wealth, long-term gains . . . all these are indeed concepts dear to the heart of a Taurus. You love to watch things grow, to encourage their development, to believe that you and your efforts made a difference. This brings a powerful sense of satisfaction to your soul, and you will do a lot to experience and enjoy such moments.
The concerns that have your attention now are not petty, or frivolous or easily achieved. They require planning, experience, self-control, discipline, organization, and literal hard work to accomplish. This is the year when you will really "get serious" about yourself, your life, your professional goals, your values, your standards, your desire to "make something of your talents, assets and opportunities." As the most physical of the signs, you do enjoy your comforts and your sensual pleasures. You do enjoy your leisure time, your personal possessions, the opportunities to spend money on things you really want to have and experience. Next year, you will start arranging to do all these things on a much grander scale. This year, you are becoming the person who can accomplish that -- when the vision of your new life, your new ambitions, is complete and the new roads you want to follow open up for you.
Right now, you are responding to the need to solidify yourself and your world. Perhaps you already have some new long-term projects in mind. Perhaps it's just a "feeling" that is pushing you forward. Whatever for it takes for now, pay attention to it. As I said, this is a year of building foundations for the future -- and building foundations on a pretty impressive scale. You may feel the need to start earning more . . . more respect, more recognition, more chances for advancement . . . and, yes, more money. Again, that's part of what's on tap for next year -- thus in a way, the two years are linked with what happens this year eventually supporting the activities and progress yet to come.
You will start looking for more "status, this year, more admiration, a more widely recognized and respected professional and public reputation -- even a more impressive and promising career path. As you can imagine, this likely will mean assuming substantial new responsibilities -- perhaps responsibilities involving other people, but certainly a more complete sense of responsibility for yourself and your directions. You will need the patience, prudence, dependability and steady application of effort your sign is famous for, so in many ways this is a year well suited to the preferences and assets of your natural temperament..
You likely will find yourself in situations where you feel you have to "measure up," achieve results through carefully considered step-by-step processes, maintain "control" of yourself and your environment, establish your own authority, stake out your own territory, become more "mature," emphasize what is "realistic and practical," and impress people who have the ability to help you achieve your goals. You may, therefore, emphasize the formation of "alliances" with people who are older, better established or who have some claim on authority and power in their own right..
Consequently, this may be a year when you feel more "burdened" than at any time in the recent past, when things don't seem to come easily, when you may feel required to carry more than your share of the load -- and when conservative, traditional strategies appeal to you much more than anything involving risk or even much "experimentation." You will also be trying to accomplish all this despite what feels like "problems and challenges" from "other people" -- quite possibly someone involved in a close personal relationship with you.
So far, I've been describing what is going on for you in your life and personal goals this year. But I've also made reference to "difficulties" -- and the Mars / Neptune / Saturn T-square that is in effect right now and thus will influence your entire personal year through its presence in your Solar Return. A T-square is an astrological configuration that forms when two (or more) planets oppose each other across the circle of the chart (or form an angle approximately 180 degrees apart) and are then "squared" by a third (or more, sometimes) planet forming an angle approximately 90 degrees from each of these other two. (The figure obviously looks like a T . . . hence, its name.)
Right now, if you have a late April Taurus birthday, Saturn and your Sun are located together (conjunct) in Taurus. They are opposed by Mars, now retrograding, in Scorpio. Both these positions are then squared by Neptune in Aquarius. T-squares represent intensely felt energy . . . like a balancing act with powerful conflicting requirements. It requires a lot of care, effort and finesse to make this energy function successfully -- and it can be exhausting and infuriating much of the time. T-squares can prompt a lot of notice . . . because they can be very uncomfortable. But it CAN help if you understand what is trying to happen with the energies involved.
As I said, all this building, control, ambition, organization and need for accomplishment is happening on your side of the T-square -- in Taurus. On the other side of the opposition -- where Mars is in Scorpio, literally "across the circle" from your location -- is the location where symbolically "other people," especially the other people in your close personal relationships, impact your life. There you will have the feeling that "someone else" is taking action to build something themselves that for some reason also has to be part of your world. But the action they are taking (which because Mars is Rx may be some form of "rebuilding" for them using "joint assets and talents" as their "raw material"), feels like it interferes often and substantially with what you are trying to do.
Obviously compromises are needed here, because when you look at your life you will see you need both what you are trying to build AND what they are trying to build to be part of the final result. Trouble is, you may each be going about your separate "agendas" in ways that are not sympathetic or compatible, and some real episodes of temper can result.
The combination of Sun / Saturn in Taurus is very proud, possessive, and concerned with ego, recognition and "building personal structures." Mars in Scorpio is aggressive, determined, forceful and interested in "building shared structures through combining assets and resources." Both are extremely stubborn and determined to succeed in their own fashions.. But Sun / Saturn in Taurus hates to be pushed and responds by "digging in its heels" . . . and Mars in Scorpio (never famous for seeking compromises in any circumstances) can be equally fixed, secretive and even ruthless in "getting its own way" . . . because it believes also very strongly in its own tactics and visions.
The fireworks, as I said, can be amazing, and it takes remarkable maturity for each party to recognize and sympathize with the needs of the other. Your partner, for instance, would need to respect your need for independence and autonomy. You, on the other hand, would have to comply sufficiently with the requirements that you contribute to the "joint effort" that is underway. And with Mars in Scorpio, let's just say, the requests that you do so may not always be phrased in the most diplomatic language.
So there we have one troublesome arrangement in place. But then there is Neptune -- whose demands are adding to the mixture's complexity. In a nutshell, Neptune's energy is egoless, spiritual, inspirational, self-sacrificing, creative, mystical and extremely visionary. It is far more concerned with ideals than practical reality. It has a very hard time dealing with conspicuous pride and ego issues. It's agenda is to "be of service to others"and it prefers to work "in the background" so as to not attract a lot of attention. Right now, you are trying to bring these qualities into your professional life, adding a much desired component of spiritual satisfaction to what you want to accomplish with yourself and your energy now.
But when in conflict with the strong ego needs of a Taurus Sun / Saturn combination . . . there's clearly trouble in the making. The result is likely to be a chronic feeling of disappointment that you are falling short of your ideals -- and a kind of low level depression that you can't quite be "as good" as you want to be . . . or a feeling that the public image you project is somehow an illusion rather than something solid enough to claim with confidence.
Thus this feeling of being slightly off balance -- often for reasons that are hard to describe and harder still to understand -- may be a constant undercurrent of your life's experience this year. "Reality" and your desired ideals aren't in good partnership agreement and aren't supporting each other easily. Therefore, the most likely feeling to come from this combination is of hard work necessarily accomplished despite a tremendous temptation to dream, drift and just hibernate until life gets easier.
On the Mars / Neptune side of the equation, "other people" . . . including those in your close personal relationships . . . have their own ideals to consider and their challenges to confront in bringing them into reality as well. They will, however, be going about this work in ways very different from choices you might make -- which can feel very upsetting and confrontational for you. And unless you find a way to work together (which as I said will be a constant balancing act, and not always successful), this energy combination as part of this year's experience denotes action that is secretive, covert, indirect, even irrational and paranoid in the more extreme cases. It may describe action that is kept very private, that somehow needs to "skirt the rules," that is also based on fear and therefore also possibly "hard to explain," maybe even hard to justify. You may try to "work around" each other as a way of avoiding conflict -- but this only adds to the elements of secrecy and even "underhandedness" you may feel -- or find.
Both you and your partners, the "other people" in your life this year, may be acting in the ways I've just described. You may at times even seem to be causing each other to behave in such counterproductive ways . . . often in response to things you don't fully understand. Thus it may often seem like a crazy, confusing year -- and, indeed, afflicted Neptune energy (which this most certainly is in a T-square configuration) metaphorically describes anxiety, phobias, obsessions and other psychological problems. So expect these, too, to play a part in what unfolds this year.
You are going to learn a lot about yourself this year, and about the ways you work in partnerships . . . about your own psychological make-up and about your ability to build, construct, fortify, and organize yourself and your personal world. You will also learn how to handle an ongoing and constant sense of conflict "from others" . . . which you will either successfully compromise into a suitable working arrangement . . . or you could seriously hurt one another in the ensuing conflict. A lot depends on the maturity all parties involved are able to show in working through this potential impasse. As I said earlier, you especially will grow up a lot this year -- and in the bargain, perhaps, learn to work with and distinguish between illusions and ideals. Both will be quite prominent in the events of the year ahead. Regardless, there will be a feeling -- and supporting events -- of "taking your life in your hands" . . . and moving on with the long -term progress you want to make with and for yourself.
For those of you born in the middle of the sign -- the early May Taurus birthdays -- the emphasis of this year and the timing will be a little different. The sense of frustration, however, may be just as aggravating. For you, conditions in your work situation (including relationships with difficult clients and colleagues, your actual physical working condtions, the kind of work you do -- or want to do, or even, quite likely, the stress associated with your work and the physical toll it is taking on you) may feel like it has reached a real impasse this year.
Your ability to achieve what you want to do with your work in the world may feel stymied, blocked, hampered, brought to a standstill . . . often for reasons involving "differing philosophies" . . . or goals that are too vaguely defined . . . somehow. In its fashion, this dilemma is working to create new and better situations for you . . . eventually. But right now, it is having to "work against" some very deep-set ideas you have about the things you need to feel "safe" and how you need to operate your life in order to be "correct," "proper," "conservative" and "accepted" . . . all good words, in their place. But you are operating on some principles that have outlived their usefulness. They need to change. And being the stubborn soul that you are . . . you may need to become frustrated enough to the point that there's "no other choice" but to abandon some of your previous "laws to live by" . . . and begin building the new structures you will need to use and rely on for the next quarter century or so.
That building will actually get underway in earnest after January of next year . . . and be the theme of your 2000 Solar Return. But it may take some crisis and "convincing" to get you moving on this point. There are some disadvantages to being so set and unflappable -- and "uncompromising." You have to get zapped a few more times than some of the more malleable souls . . . to get moving at long last. So the "crisis and convincing" part is what's on tap for your enjoyment this year.
Added into this is a rather volatile need to have more freedom to be yourself in your career directions and professional life. The events of this year, in retrospect, will be moving you more and more vigorously in this direction as time passes. Those of you born between the 4th and the 9th of May may be feeling almost consumed with this need right now. And the move to accomplish this . . . when it arrives . . . could be fairly dramatic.
It's also possible that some confrontation or crisis (or just the awful frustration of your circumstances) in August will inspire you to take the initiative to start building the new structures your life needs and take on the "added responsibility" for yourself and the things you see that you need to accomplish. As I said, this construction actually gets underway in January. Before that, you are still "making plans" and "letting go of liabilities and outmoded notions." In some ways, then, the creation of these new foundations and assets goes a bit more smoothly than I described for your earlier born star siblings. It's the "finally getting to that point" that's a bit harder . . . partly because your sign is notorious for not making changes until given no other choice.
Those of you born toward the end of the sign -- the mid May Taurus birthdays -- have things the easiest of the group actually. This does not mean your year is going to be a cinch, however. It just means it will feel less congested and conflicted than for the earlier borns. August is apt to still be a pretty intense and frustrating month . . . and a confrontation with some close personal partner still looks mighty likely about then -- or shortly thereafter. But the heavy-duty building of new structures and foundations in your life doesn't really get underway until next year . . . when you will have a lot of help in your efforts more immediately than your star siblings have had.
For you this is very much a year of "constructing the vision" . . . of where you want to go next, what you want to do when you get there, and how you plan to make the trip. This makes it less eventful in some ways than next year itself will be, but nevertheless, quite significant. Without a "complete picture" in mind from the beginning . . . your arrival and preparation are likely to be equally flawed and vague.
In the meantime, however, there is a definite theme in your life this next year of "saying one thing, but doing something else" . . . or at least "accomplishing something else." Some of this comes from a reluctance to reveal your plans very publicly . . . because you know a lot of "behind the scenes" work needs to go into the effort that will be forthcoming soon. This is all too important to leave to chance . . . and therefore a certain level of privacy, seclusion and introspection is a much needed ingredient for the success of the final product. You may be studying, thinking, consulting quietly with "authorities" and "experts" who can help you focus your intellectual directions. All this does preface a shift in direction next year . . . but you're "laying low" yet for a while.
Outwardly, you may be doing work where you give all the appearance of being a "team player" . . . and acting so as to imply that you are fully committed to "being of service" in some already defined partnership arrangements. It's these "partners" who may object most vigorously to not being let in on your plans . . . when they finally come to light. You may, in fact, come to see the partnerships themselves as "blocking your progress" in their present configuration and agreements . . . and need some "adjustment," therefore, in what currently exists.
The intellectual work you are doing out of sight and on your own, however, is likely to pay off handsomely in terms of money and the alliances that keep the financial flow moving right along. For your sign, that's especially welcome news. Just keep in mind the need to find the right mix between conservative thought and high-flown ideals. The energies that represent those two things aren't placed presently so as to combine easily, which is unfortunate. In practical terms, the result may be difficulty putting "theory into practice" -- or feeling "limited" by what reality offers while yearning desperately for what the vision itself of "what is possible" seems to hold. The advice, therefore, is to stay firmly grounded but continue to dream. You'll find though . . . it's not as easy as it sounds on paper.
This is not a year for doing anything "permanent." You'll just be turning loose of it next year when other things start turning up and presenting themselves for your attention. This year is a time of accumulating wisdom and experience . . . and divesting yourself of things that are judged "no longer useful." That's why, in many ways, it's a quieter year than for those born earlier in the sign . . . but it is no less important.
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Sandia Park • NM • 87047 |
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