April 2020 New Moon

April 2020 New Moon

Here we all are, in the fourth month of this 4 year, greeting our fourth lunar cycle of the year. This is the time of year in the Northern Hemisphere that our lives are on the table; everything right in front of us, staring us down, daring us to make a move, make a decision, make a choice, say it out loud.This New Moon sits in an earth sign, shifting our awareness towards the material, into tangibility, into things that matter that we can touch—a loved one’s soft cheek, a smooth pebble we found on a walk. We ache for the moments we experience emotions so real they feel like lively streams flowing through us. As we connect to that which truly matters, our thoughts make electric volts that buzz out of us, our inspiration halts the clock, and we forget our burdens.

In the Tarot, the archetypes that correspond to the astrological sign of Taurus are the Empress and the Hierophant. The Empress vibrates love, sex, worthiness, sensuality, and organic growth—she knows she deserves everything in return. The Empress repays us with bursting blossoms, lush rainforests, and orgasms. The Hierophant devotes herself to teaching, to living out her values. She has committed herself to being an intermediary between Spirit and the material world. She takes that role seriously. We are repaid with ideas, suggestions on how to live, ways to be.

Both of these archetypes are about the worthiness of the commitment of being ourselves with no doubt, with no apologies. About embodying our values and our abundance as a gift to the collective. We can work with one or both of these archetypes to help us accept our inherent worthiness, and to make our goals both lofty and filled with delight. We must reframe our values and beliefs as true portals into abundance. Ways to experience more, not less. Ways to live in a more engaged manner, past screens and false insecurities and other tiny dramas that act as derailments to our greater purpose and true fulfillment. How do we define the fruits of our efforts? And how can we make more meaning out of the present moment?

This New Moon is an ideal time to claim our worth as we think about abundance—about what we really need, and why; about what we are willing to give ourselves. If you have been depriving others of yourself, now is the time to rethink that. Showing and being less of you—beautiful, hilarious, captivating, original you—helps no one and nothing.

We must redefine abundance so that its meaning is personal and potent to us. So that we are abundant so long as we are embodied: enough for ourselves, worth standing up for, and worthy of a lifetime of commitment. This work also helps us show up for the collective. We can’t eat money, fancy cars, and fossil fuels, and greed won't help our children breathe or help the rainforests grow. This is also what redefining abundance looks like. Where real abundance lies is having a planet to live on, with diverse animals and flowers and herbs and clean water. We all need to be asking ourselves what we can do, separately and together, and what changes we need to make. If we meditate on them, the archetypes of the Empress and the Hierophant can give us more input there as well.

More and more, we must find ways to live out our values: to bring them into our daily lives, to walk our walk. Where we spend our money, where we spend our time, what we say and what we do. It is time for us to embody new paradigms of abundance. Getting serious about our pleasure is a non-negotiable. Living a life committed to abundance, in all the ways you possibly can, will absolutely create a life full of meaning, a life full of devotion, a life full of love. Through all of this, continue to take care of yourself. That is abundance too.

—Excerpt from the Many Moons 2020 Lunar Planner