The Enlightening Transformations of May

The Astrology of May features Mercury, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto plus two eclipses. Mercury runs through Taurus during the first part of May, being conjunct to the May 9th Solar Eclipse taking place in the 20th degree of that sign, which also conjuncts the South Node of the Moon and makes a quintile aspect to idealistic Neptune. Mercury then enters Gemini, the sign of its rulership, on the 15th, just in time to host the Sun for the powerful Gemini-Sagittarius Full Moon and Lunar Eclipse of May 24th, the third eclipse in just this one thirty-day period, encouraging us to think as well as feel our way through. Eclipses are more intense lunations — as recent headlines also indicate — making these transformative times that we are currently managing to live through even more poignant and accelerating the drum beat of change.

The big news this month is the converging of Uranus and Pluto for their third encounter of the close kind. This happens on May 20th. There were two previous exact hits last year of their revolutionary and pressure-packed square, out of a total of seven, with reverberations echoing down to the final years of these "Turbulent Teens." We are, all of us, caught up in the vice of change and we might as well acknowledge this simple and straightforward fact. No one will emerge in the same condition as they started. The culture itself will undergo massive and radical transformation before we are finished, or else we are finished in quite another sense of the word. We must hang together now in collective action that is both local and ultimately global, or we will dangle separately.

Not only is Uranus in Aries amped up, bringing unique ideas and out-of-the-box strategies to bear, but also Pluto is emphasized in Capricorn, representing societal structure, which indicates that the very bedrock of our individual as well as our collective lives must transform. What is dysfunctional and outmoded in our approach will have to be pruned away. This is also the sign of Saturn's rulership, and as this two-month period unfolds, Saturn in fading sextile to Pluto begins to make an increasingly close trine aspect to Neptune. We can dream big during this period, and we can also see our dreams come crashing down to a more practical level. When that happens the recommendation is that we do not despair. It is rather — having utmost faith in the universe, whether termed Spirit, or higher Self, or angel guidance — that we choose to rebuild as necessary.

The otherworldly Neptunian archetype is not only aspected by the May 9th New Moon eclipse but also is extremely activated by the May 24th event, when the Sun and Moon in exact opposition make a T-square to Neptune. This is a time when idealism holds sway, and when this can and will be confused with illusion, potentially tinged with self-deception or even outright deception that we might encounter on the part of others. The upside of all this Neptune energy is that we can more fully appreciate that we live in a magical and multi-dimensional world, where everything that we see and hear tells only a small part of the story. As the poet William Blake reminds us, "How do you know but every bird that cuts the airy way, is an immense world of delight, closed by your senses five?" And we ourselves are like those birds, when we can suspend disbelief and open our minds to the parts of ourselves that allow us to dream.