On May 4th there was a New Moon in The Sign of the Solar Bull. This is the portal to the Summer/Winter axis. The full moon will be in Taurus around the time of Samhain, (or Halloween), later in the year, when the sun is in the constellation Scorpio and the portal between the worlds of the waking and those who are dreaming in the ethers are thin (all though who is to say who is the dreamer?)

On this New Moon of Beltaine we set an intention of material manifestation under the sign of the bull. Bulls have always represented value, the material, strength, solidity, virility and virtue. In astrology Taurus represents commitment, the body, the sensual and tactile, the earth and the organic, gold and the financial. At Bealtaine we get our values in order. We beat the bounds, walk the perimeter of our lands, setting our limitations, thanking our guardians, surveying our sustenance with gratitude for both it’s reach and it’s accessibility. We stretch toward the light, aware of the potential to be scorched. We drive the cattle between the fires, to clear them of damp and lice.

In brief; we reassess what matters to us, check it for nicks and grazes and if there is a love for it we call it in closer. What we call in for value at this moon will be intimate by November 12th full moon. If you want to really get to know the worth of something, be it a relationship, a practice, a goal, a project, bring a focus on it in to your life consciously now. Now is the time to set the foundations for the structures that will nourish us through the darker months. These are the months in which we grow from seed what it is we will eat come harvest season.

My own experiences of this energy has been that of the oncoming healing processes that are to actualise within me and the world I am dancing through.
Themes I perceive for the next six months are;

The Pain of Reconciliation.
The Desire/Performativity dynamic
The Imposter/Manipulation line
The Predator/Prey magnetic
The Karma of Dominance; War, Escalation and Collapse

The dialogue of Bealtaine is the marriage of the masculine and feminine, their forging through the firey passion of Aries into the comfort and domesticity of Taurus. This is the intimacy creating season before the reality of Winter next November. Notice these themes are dynamic, they involve two actors, they are beyond the singular healing experience. The core wounds of abandonment, grief, rejection etc may be beneath them but this year the load of self healing separates actively into to the poles of energy. This is no longer a solo process. Now we heal in conjunction and opposition with another. Now it is time to dance!

Although I will not discuss all of these topics here, if you feel drawn to reflecting on them within yourself and wish to share with me your observations on these dynamics, please, you are so welcome to get in touch!

For now, notice that the overarching all of these themes is the desire to possess.
Possess how others perceive us. Possess objects, spaces, land, money, lovers, friends, family, experiences, roles, rights, recognition. To possess in it’s benign form is to embody, in its malefic form to possess is to dominate.

How often have we entered a life or soul contract with the desire to immerse and encompass?
How often have we then found ourselves anxiously controlling and protecting?
How often when we are then threatened do we move from protecting to projecting, from anxiety to anger?
This is the residue of the trauma of war that resides in the DNA of us all. The relentless and senseless need to possess more than one needs of the narrative, of the space, of the situation, to dominate because we’ve forgotten how to tolerate difference without fearing forever for some safety.
The threat of punishment and retribution is what is requiring the dominant to escalate so they can control and do not have to face the shame and suffering their fear has inflicted. To keep this kind of metal, as Macbeth (and a recent client put it) ‘To be stepped so far in blood it would be as tedious going back as it were going over’.
Once the dominant/submissive roles are embodied through cruelty that becomes a hard role to break.

This I sense will be surfacing through our closest insecurities, that which we’d rather hide, the ways in which we steer the conversation away from painful and uncharted subjects, into safer territories, ones where there is less of oneself to look at. Or the ways in which we insist we are right and that we know more or better or what the other person is really thinking.

I know this to be a great cathartic time for collective healing. Especially between the masculine and the feminine, both within ourselves and in our relationships. The fears which can be transmuted to deeper trust these months remind me of the creation of gemstones.

Playing your Avatar

We are at the threshold of a dawn from a dream in decline. Many of the mechanisms of our world serve to undermine our personal dreamings with the pressure of collective suffering and the impermanence of time eg;
‘How can I justify my dream of becoming a circus performer when there is global warming?’
In recent conversation with my teacher Demian around my own values and priorities I was reminded that my priorities are my dreams and desires, as I have committed to my life of service wherein those who I encounter can thrive through my embodiment of those dreams and desire.
Still though to embody our dreaming self we must allow ourselves to be possessed by them, we must dance our dream, we must perform our desires.
Otherwise, it is often observed, our unconscious desires perform us.
Suppressed dreams hijack. Underground desires sabotage.

Yet how do we become our dreams if we are not yet those dreams?
We perform them. We script a play within a play.
Through this do we become actors or self-actualizers? Imposters or personifiers? Manipulators or magicians?
Where are the bounds that we beat in becoming ourselves?
And at what point is this possession theft?
When can it be said that an identity, a role, ought to be earned?
Or need we even worry about this?
There is too much nuance in each experience to discuss this broadly, for again we speak of souls, not egos.

I speak often about ‘playing your avatar’.
By this I mean embody.
Embody your blend. Your origin, your history, your curiosities, your pain and emancipation, your sexuality, your physical presence. Embody and inhabit your environment. If you are Irish do not disassociate from that, if you have ailments do not disassociate from that, if you are dyslexic, if you are sensuous, if your voice is loud, if you have dark skin, if you have a strange history, if you’ve been violent and cruel, if you’ve been mistreated, if you have family you do not know, if you have disordered eating, if you have stolen or lied or whatever, do not disassociate from it . Do not disassociate from your ‘self’ or your ‘context’.

We do not need to expose ourselves to the world, but we are certainly better off exposing our ‘self’ in reflection with self with as much honesty, commitment, acceptance and love as we can muster.
That is embodiment, and that is the expression of our desires, as the truest desire of the soul is to be embodied.

For now the spirit sends me to Central America, to the Mayan regions of the Yucatan and Chiapas, to my teacher Demian on Lago Atitlan and to Oaxaca and Baja California to work and share medicines and teachings. I return to Ireland in July. I am so excited to share in the universality of consciousness through different lenses and traditions. I am so grateful to embody my desires and to offer my footsteps to that curvature of the Earth.

I continue to be available on Whatsapp, feel free to connect. If you are curious to explore the other healing themes I mentioned I am available for distance work.

Beannachtai,

Katie