Ye gods and goddesses! May 14th Wesak Full Moon features Venus and occults Saturn!

My my! I’m on overwhelm and it’s not even Full Moon yet . . . Still more than 24 hours to go before the Wesak Full Moon of May, this year at 3:16 pm EDT, and always a crucial annual moment for humanity —

Wesak is the celebration of Buddha’s birth & enlightenment, & in some traditions also his death. As the most important figure in Buddhism his life is celebrated and revered. Gathering to chant and pray are an important part of a traditional Wesak celebration.

It is said that Wesak is that time at the Full Moon of May in which the Christ gathers the entire Spiritual Hierarchy together in meditation to invoke the forces of Shambhalla. The Buddha, representing those forces, appears and blesses humanity.

The ceremony of Wesak is held in the actual Wesak Valley in the Himalayas at the time of the full moon of May (which is actually the full moon of Scorpio). A vast crowd assembles in the valley, in front of the great rock table at the end of the valley. Alice A. Bailey describes this event in The Unfinished Autobiography. It is said that the Christ and the Buddha conduct the ceremony of Wesak from a rock table at the end of the valley described by Bailey as “…an immense rock, rising out of the floor of the valley like a great table.”

I show the chart for Bloomington where I live. Not because I’m a narcissist, though I probably am (first house Sun in natal chart), but because this particular May Full Moon in Taurus/Scorpio happens to fall EXACTLY on my own natal Moon at 23° of stubborn, deeply resourceful, earthy Taurus. Ye gods and goddesses!

Okay. So what? I tell myself. I’m past all that. No longer instinctively pulled to and fro by hormonal lunar tides, no longer “food for the Moon,” the sloshing waters of my menses drained out 20 years ago and left me standing in a clear, far-seeing field.

But geez! The Wesak Full Moon falls exactly on my natal Moon this year? When did it do that in the past?

I’d look it up, but I don’t really know how to google that question adroitly to get an answer, and my reference book for such things is buried in a closet where it went to allow the floor of that room to have its awful carpet ripped out and hard wood floors sanded and protected. Zowee! I’ve been in such a flurry of volatile, tearing-up Mars/Uranus/Pluto/Jupiter in Cancer (THE HOME) projects, that to slow down and look something up in an actual book with exceedingly small type, especially when I can’t find it, is, yes, daunting.

And this May Full Moon, zowee! It occurs with Venus now occupying that famous 13° point of the rare, recent Cardinal Grand Cross, opposite its archetypally opposite alter ego Mars.

BTW: Mars, the planet that “triggered” the Grand Cross during the third week of April, is now at 9°, still moving retrograde (darn! say the warmongers). We didn’t blow up the world during that week (though in the past week first Russia and now the U.S. have been performing “nuclear drills” for each other’s pleasure). We didn’t go to war, and instead, I contend, we ignited an intellectual and cultural revolution (see this and this and this and this) to the point where the single word “oligarchy” is now furiously clanging everybody’s inner bells. Whew!

And BTW again: pay close attention when Mars turns to go direct (May 20th), and especially, when it crosses over 13° again: MID-JUNE — a time when we will find out more about what we did or didn’t do during the Grand Cross of April. A time when whatever we ignited then, will receive a further booster rocket, hopefully into a revolutionized mind-set for all of humanity in which even the oligarchs recognize that not just them, but all of humanity deserves a fair shake.

Just as impulsive Mars was and still is in a diplomatic Libra, the sign opposite it rules and in which it feels distinctly uncomfortable, so is peaceful Venus (ruler of Libra), occupying the sign opposite it rules and it doesn’t like (warlike Aries, ruled by Mars). (In short, they are in each other’s opposite ruling signs.) So, it appears to me that during this Wesak Full Moon we’re each tasked to learn how to exercise our independence (Aries) in a kind and caring manner!

Hmmm. Synchronous event: my neighbor Rebecca, just exactly as I wrote the above sentence, stopped by, to tell me that she’s been thinking about the concept of “rules,” and that what rules do, or are meant to do, is to “signify respect.” We codify rules to teach and structure respect for one another. Beautiful. So, with that in mind, remember, during this entire period (2008-2024) Pluto is in Capricorn, sign of rules, structure, and tradition, and that’s what’s being pummeled and ultimately r/evolutionized during this crazy, volatile, Uranus/Pluto/Jupiter mix.

Which reminds me. Guess what planet is “occulted” by this Full Moon in Scorpio? Saturn itself, significator of rules, ruler of Capricorn. Both Moon and Saturn together, momentarily fused, in Scorpio, that deepest of emotional signs, that sign where we dive to the bottom of our watery unconscious (Scorpio) selves and pull up old roots (Taurus) that keep structuring (Capricorn, Saturn) our behavior into war-mongering, polarized (Mars vs. Venus), predatory (Saturn, Pluto) patterns (Saturn)! Ye gods and goddesses! What nasty, small-minded, self-serving patterns are left in me to excavate? What small (lunar, 29 day) or large (Saturnine, 29 year) repeating cycles do I not yet recognize in myself?

Perhaps tomorrow afternoon’s Full Moon Ceremony (in the GANG garden), by the pond —

will help me let them go.

That lotus in the pond, that symbol of regeneration, that beautiful, delicate, mud-loving critter that rises up from the deeps to the sun. . . That’s me! That’s you! Yes, let’s go! Let’s use that swirling Uranus/Pluto/Jupiter/Venus energetic during this rare Wesak Full Moon with its occultation to Saturn to do what the Buddha asked: RELEASE ATTACHMENT TO LET GO OF SUFFERING! Attachment to old, outworn systems of ideas and behavior that, frankly, are boring the hell out of all of us. Nobody, but nobody, except weapons manufacturers and other war profiteers, wants to go to war anymore. We’ve got better things to do than kill, maim, destroy, pollute and obliterate.

We’ve got a new world to build. One of cooperation, unity, love, from the bottom up, from the bottom of our muddy, fertile, hearts and souls where we know, we’ve always known, that we squirrly beautiful “individual” beings are also, paradoxically and at root, all-one.

Like hidden, communicating mycellium, may we proliferate and invigorate the soil of this beautiful “earthy” Taurus planet that we are so utterly privileged to live upon.