Dear Fellow Canadian Poets, Reviewers and Photographers:
Pass this on to your Canadian creative people.
Spring is still in the air but the Summer issue of Devour: Art and Lit Canada is just around the corner.
Poetry – Don’t forget to send Bruce Kauffman – bruce.kauffman@hotmail.com your poems for the poetry section.
All submissions must be by Canadians – see attached. (contact Tai for more info)
All the best
tai
May 7, 11:22 pm EDT
An essay by Mike Zizis
The calm — after the storm
Attention astrologers; please relocate this new moon as per your coordinates.
We can carry in our hearts and minds and spirit the new opportunities presented by every new Moon cycle. As the Buddhists say, the world changes 10,000 times every time we blink.
A very long time ago my younger brother asked me if I remembered what I said seven years previously; I told him plainly that I didn’t even remember what I had for breakfast. A friend confronted me recently about what I had said in politics two years previously. I don’t know, and I didn’t know. The world as it presents itself to us exists in the eternal here and now. We never step twice in the same river.
Thus every new Moon gives us the opportunity to begin again. This new Moon in Taurus presents to us the charms of beauty and sociability of Venus. To enjoy living especially in the five senses. For the next 14 to 28 days meditate on what the five senses present. I prefer to imagine that these sensual emanations are the gift, the gift of taking us away from the insanity of the mind.
Mars was the premier planet of April’s eclipse in 2024. The North node was in Aries ruled by Mars, conjoined by the sun and the moon in Aries. As the sky above symbolized weapons of war, chaos, and bloodshed, our earth below we saw an amplification of Violence in Gaza, setbacks for Ukraine in it’s war with Russia as well as Russia’s escalation of the conflict, record-breaking floods throughout the Middle East from Qatar, the UAE, to Saudi Arabia, and other mind-bending events leading up to the eclipse from the Baltimore bridge collapse to earthquakes near Northern East Coast cities.
This new Moon in Taurus exchanges Mars in April for Venus in May. Venus also rules Taurus, as well as the sign of Libra. While she can be tempestuous, Venus is well known symbolically for decorum, beauty, sensuality, and being social. Mars in mythology was well known for murdering even his friends, while Venus stresses connection to others. In earthy fixed Taurus she expresses — at least in the Northern hemisphere — the release from winters icy barren grip to the revolution of nature bursting back into life.
One of the many values of being a student of astrology is the complete knowledge that pain is temporary, and that things change. It can be said that change is all there is.
Please note this is the opposite of that mental state called depression. Depression casts a dark gray fog of sameness over the inner life. It’s been said that depression is a sharp focus on a very narrow aspect of living. The sign of Taurus for approximately 22 April until 21 May, represents indestructible Life returning in its myriad forms. Trees, Grass, flowers, insects, lizards, salamanders, birds, and mammals, bursting back to life, a flurry of scurry in a hurry.
Taurus is a middle sign sandwiched between a Cardinal sign and a mutable sign. It represents the fixed nature all middle signs, the others are; Leo — middle of summer, Scorpio, middle of Autumn, and Aquarius, the middle of winter.
Fixed signs are one of the three modalities of the zodiac, along with cardinal and mutable signs. They are the signs that occur in the middle of each season, and tend to sustain energy. The fixed signs are Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius, corresponding to the four elements of earth, fire, water, and air. Fixed signs are very determined, stable, and set in their ways.
This past cycle of the sun passing thru the sign of Aries was externally tumultuous. With the new moon in Taurus, we will in the main, experience difference; calmer waters, less world wide aggression, and a kind of everyday and global stability; perhaps not total peace but less new waves of violence; a lessening. Cardinal signs, in this case Aries, initiate — while fixed signs ie, Taurus sustain.
In your new Moon meditations just now, you might include the miracle of your being and the miracle within you and beyond you. You can begin by listening to this — your next breath.
I landed in Canada at the age of 24, very disassociated after living in a hippie commune and travelling around Europe for over three years*. The most played singer on the radio was Joni Mitchell. Both Sides Now, You’re a Radio, Carrie, Big Yellow Taxi and Woodstock. Psychedelia and hippiedom were coming to an end, and Joni’s songs were all bittersweet swan songs to that part of my youth and life.
