The path of the Sun through the zodiacal belt is reflected in the agricultural cycle on Earth. Each astrological sign is divided up into three decanates and together they each tell a story of the development of light into matter. These decanates of Taurus include Beltane.

Nature has a determination to acquire land. Plants and animals need land or space to produce food, children or seeds for their future survival. The hare demonstrates lots of energy but is held back by being too timid to put ideas into action. They are the opposite to the pioneering spirit that struggles to gain a foothold in the material world.

The Struggle for space, the material pleasures and the physical limitations of this material world, can be seen as competition for finite resources along with our own animalistic  desires to be territorial, tribal and use the earth’s resources for our own comfort, at the expense of others. Orion the hunter seeks

to defeat the animal desires within ourselves.

The month of May is like a stream of flowing life, pulsating through all forms even as blood pulsates through the body. It is a mass of light and colour in constant movement, weaving a coat of many colours that will attract the forms that the coming year will bring to us.

Maya (Sanskrit), is illusion, or how we observe the existence of matter and learn how to use it. The wife of the Greek god Zeus (father of the Gods) is called Maia just as the Christian divine father gave birth to Jesus through Maria. In the world of illusion we think we see the Sun moving across the sky, the reality is that the Earth turns counter clockwise towards the Sun. The illusion leads us to the reality.

When we see beauty with our physical eyes we become at the effect of this illusion by creating our world as a material expression of desire for what we want and fear of what we do not want. We then use these things that we have possessed to gain leverage or advantage over others. We want to possess land and rent to others to gain personal wealth for our own comfort. This lower expression of desire is the animal within us that Orion the hunter struggles with.

The upside of desire is that it is essential

for the growth of our consciousness. A seed needs the drive that the desire to propagate provides. A thought needs desire to provide

it with the enthusiasm to move ideas through to form or the result. The whole of nature is driven by the desire to get somewhere. The world needs to be beautiful to get us out of bed in the morning to go into action. Nature made sex and eating food pleasurable, if it were not we may not bother to do either. The purpose of living however is more than a set of material goals just to survive.

All material forms have thoughts and feelings attached to them. The danger with desire is that we become subject to seeing only the material part and so create a world that only exists as a material reflection in a mirror.

We have a timid hare and Orion the hunter within us, we run away from or confront life.

The past and future become opposed to being here now.

For the majority May represents the hopes for the future held back by the fears of what may happen based on our past experience. It may happen or maybe our wishes may come true or maybe we will grow a backbone (a fruit bearing stalk) and bring forth the will to refine or control our animistic thoughts and feelings. We could then cultivate our humanity by encouraging our internal hare and hunter to look towards a more fair world that includes a diversity of life forms without for or against divisions, a different form of government with social structures that are not based on the desire for personal comfort, but possession based on a usefulness that supports the whole of everything.

Beltane is also connected to labour day, when we can ask what do we labour for, what is labour ? What are the proceeds of that labour and how do we share them? What kind of flower do we want the stalk to support?

The final decanate of Taurus embodies the solution to the first and second decanates.

Use the Earth to rise !

The constellation Lepus   

First decanate of Taurus.

A hare running timidly away.

Too preoccupied with the acquisition of wealth yet afflicted by timidity, their greatest bar to advancement. Mediumistic, natural healing power, great imagination, some fixity of purpose. Determination.

The constellation Orion.

Second Decanate of Taurus.

A hunter armed with a huge club, fighting with an infuriated bull

Fixity of purpose given analytical trend. Combat for supremacy over a Bull. Material pleasures and physical limitations slain by Orion. Possible to rise over them supreme. Physical magnetism. Mental force. Struggle.

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