Full Moon Eclipse in Taurus
FULL MOON LUNAR ECLIPSE IN TAURUS | 9 NOVEMBER 12.01 AM NZT
Here is the second eclipse of the season, with the Moon in a tight conjunction with Uranus and the North Node in Taurus. It is a mirror image of the Lunar Eclipse on 16 May earlier this year, when the Sun was in Taurus and Moon was conjunct the South Node in Scorpio. Was there anything significant going on then? There could be further developments or echos from it popping up now. It could potentially offer a way forward out of a stuck situation or the resolution to problem you haven’t figured out yet.
All the main planets form some kind of connection to the Moon, except Mars. Mars is in aversion to the Moon in Taurus, but is linked indirectly through its square to Neptune and Jupiter, and trine to Saturn, as well as being the domicile Lord of the South Node, Sun, Mercury and Venus stellium in Scorpio.
To simplify and summarise, these are the main configurations:
- Mercury, Sun, Venus and south node conjunct in Scorpio
- Moon and Uranus perfecting and conjunct north node in Taurus
- Venus trine Neptune and Jupiter in Water, (Venus domicile ruler of the Moon, in its adversity and under the beams).
- Mars trine Saturn in Air, and square to Neptune in Water
- Saturn forms a fixed-sign T square with the Moon and Uranus in Taurus, and Mercury, Sun and Venus in Scorpio.
Note also that Mars is retrograde until mid January and in Gemini until end of March, influencing the way we travel, communicate and get things done. Retrogrades usually require us to slow down or find a detour to get to our destination.
Toward the middle of November and into December Mars will take more of a central role as it forms oppositions to planets entering Sagittarius. This could be a challenging episode following on from the eclipses later this month.
If the Taurus-Scorpio axis, the nodal axis, were on the meridian, then all the planets except Mars are on right side. It looks as if all the planets are casting their rays to the Moon, exalted and strong in the sign of the bull.
Because it is a lunar eclipse and the Moon is exalted this is the perfect opportunity to talk about the meaning and symbolism of Taurus, rather than attempt to explain such a complex set of alignments.
Have a look where Taurus lies in your chart. If it rising, or on one of the angles, or the domicile of one or more planets, especially the Sun or Moon, then some of this might resonate for you.
Europa
Europa had five brothers and was the only daughter of Agenor and Telephassa. She was a natural beauty and so Zeus, king of the gods, fell in love with her. He watched and waited, and eventually devised a plan where a god could seduce a mortal woman without scaring her away.
He asked Hermes to herd Agenor’s cows to the sea shore, where he knew Europa and her friends liked to roam.
Zeus then changed into a handsome white bull. He stealthily joined the herd of cows by the beach, then positioned himself to catch the eye of beautiful Europa. She marvelled at his shapely form, and becoming more confident she began to stroke and caress his warm, sleek body.
He seemed friendly and placid, so she became even more daring and climbed on his back. He ambled along the beach and frolicked in the waves for a while. Then suddenly he leaped into the waves and Europa realised too late, that he was swimming out to sea. She could do nothing but cling tightly to the bull’s horns as he swam faster and further away from shore.
Eventually they came ashore on the Island of Crete. Zeus changed shape again, into a giant eagle whereupon he took Europa as his lover.
Europa and Zeus had three sons; Minos, Radamanthus and Sarpedon. Europa married Asterius, the king of Crete. And the half-immortal sons of Zeus were adopted and made heirs to the kingdom.
The story of Europa is about the origin of the Minoan culture and the bull cult of ancient Crete. In Greek myth, where everything is metaphor and allegory, a union between god and mortal is often the story of the lineage of a town, a country or dynasty.
In this way lines of ancestral origin could be established from the progenitor god or goddess. Rulers could claim divinity, or immortality, while also legitimising their rulership and authority.
The bull represents fertility and regenerative power, and in ancient Greek cultures bulls were thought of as a god in the shape of a bull. An embodied deity.
The Minoan culture was known for its enormous palace at Knossos, decorated equisitly in beautiful, elaborate frescos, considered the pinnacle of early Greek culture.
Bull’s blood had magic properties. When drunk or poured over someone, its rejuvenating and strengthening power was said to confer immortality, miraculous healing and regeneration. The sacrifice of a bull would bring bountiful crops, fertile lands, and peace, prosperity and contentment to the people.
According archaeological evidence excavated from Knossos, bull worship was related to the mother goddess in her various forms, along with her associates the snake, the dove and the white bull.
The mother goddess was represented in Minoan art as a woman with breasts bare, holding a pair of snakes and with a dove on her head. The bull represented her consort or her son, who was sacrificed each year as gratitude and to ensure plenty and abundance for the coming harvest.
The mother goddess was a symbol of the power and potency of nature, the importance of agriculture and as the guardian of the earth and its creatures. The sacrifice of the bull and the bull leaping festivals enacted the ancient mother goddess traditions relating to the annual cycles of growth, harvest, fertility and abundance.
The beautiful bull-leaping frescoes discovered in the palace of Knossos show bronzed young men and pale young women performing daring and impossible acrobatic acts, watched over by the goddess herself. These spectacles may have represented the taming of the awesome ferocity of nature, with the thunder and roar of charging bulls emulating earthquakes and thunder.
The ancient city of Thebes was founded by a cow, according to the following myth.
After Europa disappeared, her distraught father King Cadmus, commanded each of her five brothers to go and search for her. They were told not to bother coming back without her.
King Cadmus went to seek advice from the Delphic Oracle. When he asked where Europa could be found he was told by the pythoness to stop looking, and instead to follow a cow until it sank to the ground, too tired to move any further. This he did and when the cow sat down unable to go any further, he founded a city on that spot and called it Thebes.
King Cadmus then served seven years in bondage, as a slave for the killing of a snake. How and why he killed the snake is another story, but he had five armed men to serve him after that. These were the sown men, who grew out of the serpents teeth that Cadmus had planted in the fields of Thebes.
Pasiphae
Meanwhile Europa’s son Minos became King of Crete. To celebrate he built a large temple dedicated to Poseidon, Earth Shaker, god of the Ocean and Horses. Also known as Neptune.
He prepared the altar for a sacrifice and prayed to the god Poseidon to send him a bull to sacrifice. A dazzling white bull suddenly emerged from the ocean, swam ashore and offered itself to King Minos. He was so impressed with the creature he cunningly replaced it with another ordinary bull from his herd, and hid the white bull in his orchard.
The god Poseidon was enraged by King Minos’s bull swapping trick, so he decided to cast a love spell on Queen Pasiphae, the beautiful wife of King Minos. The Queen noticed the white bull while out gathering apples and insantly fell in love with him.
Queen Pasiphae, consumed with longing and desire, wished to consummate her love, so she had crafted a special wooden cow. The wooden cow was wheeled into the orchard, Queen Pasiphae climbed inside and so the two lovers were joined.
Queen Pasiphae then gave birth to a child that was half human-half beast, a boy with the head of a bull. The Minotaur.
King Minos devised an enormous labyrinth, at the very heart of which he hid Queen Pasiphae, her shame and her terrible child.
The white bull went wild, roaming over the countryside destroying crops and terrorising the people. The hero Heracles was hired to deal with the problem. He wrestled it to the ground, while it spewed forth flumes of scorching fire like a dragon.
After a long struggle the bull was brought to Greece and dedicated to the goddess Hera, who set it free. It may have been the same wild white bull that was captured years later and dedicated to the goddess Athena, the founder of the city of Athens.
The Minotaur in Greek myth represents the destructive potential of the bull. Themes of desire gone wrong, destructive rages, greed, revenge, dark, primal violence, and heroic tests seem to occur quite often in stories of the Minotaur.
Throughout the ancient world the era of Taurus the bull is told in the mythology of the people who loved and feared this powerful animal. Like the dreaded Minotaur we are also part bull. We are part wild animal and part divinity.
The Age of Taurus
About 7500 years ago in neolithic Anatolia drawings of giant aurochs and bull rites cover the walls of the caves they worshipped them in.
In ancient Mesopotamia the bull was worshiped as the son of the mother-goddess, and its horns supported the world, symbolising the pillars of the universe. This may have been the origin of horns as a mark of divinity.
The Bull of Heaven was a magical beast that was slain by the hero Gilgamesh. Bulls were venerated in ancient Egypt. Ka, in Egyptian etymology, is a word that means life force, virility and is the world for bull.
Bull worship features in the Vedic tales of Nandi the bull who was devoted to the god Shiva.
In Zoroastrian myth there was a bull so large it straddled the mountains and seas that divided the seven kingdoms of the world. Maybe this is a metaphor for the cult of the bull that united these seven kingdoms? A religion that crossed geo-political boundaries.
In Ancient Rome, where bull figurines are now common finds in the archaeological sites, the gruesome rites of the Taurobolium were said to confer status and wealth on the emperor and the empire. A priest would stand in a pit below the bull so that he would be drenched in its blood upon its ritual slaying.
The Celts practiced ancient, sacred ceremonies involving the sacrifice of two white bulls by white-robed druids in secret oak groves on a full Moon.
The practice of bull fighting in Southern France and Spain is of course linked to ancient worship and rites of sacrifice.
The god Baal in Christian iconography also has its origins in the ancient bull cults of the Levant. The white ox is a symbol of Luke the Evangelist, an animal that is sometimes present in images of the nativity along with the donkey.
These are a just a few of the many examples surviving from antiquity of the reign of the bull. It was a universal symbol of potency, fertility and strength, a deity that was both feared and venerated as well as signifying the cycles of nature; life, death, destruction and regeneration.
Taurus, Latin for bull, is one of the largest and most visible constellations in the night sky. It is located on the plane of the ecliptic and includes the Pleiades. In the early Bronze Age it marked the position of the sun at the spring equinox, so it was immensely important in the agricultural calendar for the timing of planting and harvest.
The astrological age of Taurus is thought by astrologers to be about 4300 BCE to 2150 BCE, although the so called precession of the equinoxes remains a controversial concept.
Whatever the significance of the bull, this eclipse season will in some way invoke this primal, ancient and potent, regenerative power as a force for change. It may also show us something we can learn from, as we grow and evolve into the next age.
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~~Anna Marie x
