Between the Moon - Ep 28: Roots to Blooms: Alchemizing the fertile Taurus/Scorpio Axis

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

On today’s episode we explore the Taurus-Scorpio axis in astrology and ground it into the context of seasonal cycles, creativity, the houses in the birth chart, and personal lived experiences. I am delighted to have Bronwyn Simons Astrology back for our ongoing conversation of the Lunar Currents series! Learn about the interplay between "roots" (Taurus) and "blooms" (Scorpio), and how these are not separate entities but parts of a continuous process of fertility and growth related to creative practices, personal journeys, and the cyclical nature of life. We both give examples of the alchemical experience of integrating these seemingly opposing forces and how this also relates to the houses in the birth chart.Bronwyn and I also discuss the challenges of harmonizing seemingly opposing forces, particularly in relation to health, spirituality, daily life, family, and creative pursuits — and why every full moon plays a big role in the alchemical process.This episode explores themes that we will personalize and go deeper with in our upcoming workshop: Stars and Roses: Astrology and Creativity for MaytideWORKSHOP LINKFriday, May 2, 1 -2:30 Pacific Time and by replay.You can join us by registering here: https://astrologygoddess.mykajabi.com/offers/gLqLsZoL/checkoutOr, the workshop is FREE for all our beloved paid subscribers on Substack. Become a paid subscriber today and you’ll automatically be registered for the workshop!We would love you to join us for this hands-on exploration to celebrate the Taurus cross-quarter holiday (known to some as Beltane or May Day), one of the most fertile and creative points in the Wheel of the Year.Bring a journal, your birthchart, and something to write and draw with.If you love this episode, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or refer a friend - thanks so much for listening!Links and Mentions* Upcoming workshop: Stars and Roses: Astrology and Creativity for Maytidehttps://astrologygoddess.mykajabi.com/offers/gLqLsZoL/checkout* Book of Houses by Robert Cole and Paul Williams* Bronwyn Simons and the Esoteric Zodiac on substack * Previous episode about the Harvest Cycle and the Lunar Cyclehttps://themoonismycalendar.substack.com/p/10-decoding-the-lunar-and-harvest-78cThanks for reading Between the Moon! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themoonismycalendar.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome, dear listener, to Lunar Currents, a special feature on the Between the Moon podcast with myself, April McMurtry and predictive astrologer Bronwyn-Simon-Simonds. Lunar currents is a moonly conversation about embodying the living sky, exploring how astrology helps us enter into the mythic nature of our life story, and musing on our relationship with time, creativity, intuition, and many other magical connections. Okay, before we dive in, I wanted to orient you to today's episode and share a couple things I'm celebrating. I'll start with a celebration. This is the three-year anniversary of the Between the Moon podcast. So three years ago, I published the first intro episode after probably

more than five years of playing with the idea of recording things here and in there of obsessing about the podcast artwork, which I've since totally changed. All worth it, I'm sure. But anyway, this is the three-year anniversary. And it is also the one-year anniversary of starting the substack and moving between the moon as the podcast over to Substack, where I share a lot more articles. There's a private podcast for paid subscribers. Thank you, everyone who's here and has been a part of this work, maybe, for

more than a decade along with me on this journey, or maybe you're just coming across this for the first time. So those are some of the celebrations. And what I'll say that relates to this episode is those have all happened around the month of April and Taurus season. And yes, I know my name is April. I was not born in April. However, I have deduced that I was conceived in April on the Venus star point before my birth. So I was born in December. Okay, that was a detour. All that to say that this season, this time of year, is where there are things like this that bloom that actually have been beneath, rumblings beneath the surface, like this podcast, that then come into form at this time of year. And so with the practice of lunar tracking and just following along

phase by phase over many cycles to kind of see where there might be some. repetitions. And another one of those cycles that we mention in today's episode is the harvest cycle. And this was written about in a book called The Book of Houses. And I'll put the link in the show notes. Next week is my harvest day according to this harvest cycle that goes with the houses of the birth chart. And for those of you who know your birth chart, the harvest day is the cusp of the 10th house, which is also known as the midheaven. So that That's the top of the chart corresponding to the time of the year each year that you experience your harvest day. So to me, that that has been the revealing of the lived experience in relationship and connection with these other cycles and these other timings of the seasonal year and how each of us has a special relationship to different times of year.

And Bronman and I, you know, both we share things, you know, our own work, but at times, We get to come together, record an episode together, and we have a workshop that we're actually make sure to go in the show notes and come over and join us for that creativity and astrology exploration of some of the themes that we share here today. What are those themes? The axis of fertility and how these two signs in the zodiac, Taurus and Scorpio, these are two signs that are polarities or so-called opposites. If there's 360 degrees and there's 12 signs around the zodiac, the ones that are 180 degrees apart, the ones that are sort of facing each other, opposite each other, the opposition. We go a lot into exploring that from many different angles and really talk about the

alchemy of polarities. Bronwyn shares about how every full moon comes into play, into experiencing and feeling into the alchemy of cycles with being a part of the rhythm of the earth, our relationship to the stars, to the cosmos, to the roots and the blooms. That is something that nobody can take away from us. And in fact, that feeling of that sense of being embedded in nature, a part of nature with no separation that I'm most, if not all of our ancestors, going back farther, farther to a time when there wasn't a separation there. And that relationship not being transactional with the earth and with all the gifts and the generosity.

So we do talk about the ecosystem and the environment that we're part of and plants in this episode. So hopefully it inspires your own reflection and connection. Okay. Thank you so much for being here. And let's dive in. Bronwyn, will you introduce yourself to our listeners? Sure. I'm a quadruple tourist. I'm Bronwyn. I live on beautiful Vancouver Island, where it's really, we're in the midst of really juicy spring. I'm a consulting astrologer and with a special interest in the deep mystical roots of Western astrology.

And I do lots of teaching and tutoring as well. Really loving writing on Substack lately where I can totally indulge my full out there geeky, mystical astrologer persona or true self through the esoteric zodiac, which is my Substack publication. Yay. It actually feels like this fertile ground for exploration and conversation and working out ideas and getting to share those. Yeah. And fertile ground is the phrase of the moment, right? Yeah. of what it is that are creative ideas, relationships,

things that we are wanting to come into bloom or have been working on and kind of feeding in different ways, that this season in the Northern Hemisphere and this moment, this cross-quarter between equinox and solstice, this turning point where we wanted to gather and be here and open up, both have this conversation and also invite people into a creative workshop, which will share a little bit more.

about at the end of the episode. I love Torres season. Yeah, the Torres Scorpio axis and where it shows up, both as that inner experience of where are the roots and where is the bloom and what's the communication between them? Like, what's that dynamic? What I appreciate is you sharing from that place, like sharing the practice of astrology and the lived experience of that connection be another way of integrating these opposites.

polarities, these themes that seem cut off from each other to actually bring them together. And it was lunar practice that allowed me to do that. It was actual years of following the full moon and starting to understand the full moon as that time of the synthesis of the two poles. And that led me to really viscerally experiencing those two poles at particular times of year and the place where they meet in the middle and how that makes magic. That's, it's not Taurus and then we understand Taurus and then Scorpio and we understand Scorpio. On a Taurus or Scorpio full moon, the magic of the, the two coming together, that's where

the fertility is, right? It's in the seed meeting the soil, like the magic is the third thing. And we get that on the full moon because the full axis is illuminated. But I didn't, I mean, I kind of got that as an abstract concept. I remember hearing it on an astrology podcast years ago, this guy talking about, I wish I could remember who, just talking about the sign axes being oppositions, being an opportunity for synthesis. And intellectually, it can immediately get.

that okay, yeah, it's an opportunity. But then it's like, well, what does that mean in your actual life when you're synthesizing two opposites? What does that look like? And then living it for years with the full moon and feeling it emotionally and seeing what it meant for creative practice or business even made that synthesis real. Otherwise, it's kind of this abstract psychological concept, the intensity of Scorpio with the pleasure of all the things that people try to minimize those two signs into. But no, if we start thinking it's the axis of fertility and we experience that when we have an opposition there, which we do every May and November. Right.

Seasonally weaving that in. Yeah. Most of my life, I didn't have that awareness of like, oh, the signs are seasons and the full moons and those signs are going to be the opposite six month apart season and what you're describing, right? That is the alchemy. It is, yeah. And that is, and maybe there's some of those axes that each of us might have more fluidity with bringing in alchemy too, right? Like just even starting with Aries and Libra, the personal and the interpersonal and self and other, being in relationship with the earth. Like being in relationship with the earth, the soil that gives that all of life depends on and being in relationship to the growing process.

And I don't know, I live under oak trees and have very hard compacted clay. And so the soil ends up being cement by the summer. Yeah. Right? And I think in this tourist season, there's still, at least where I am, there's still like a little moisture. You can sense the moisture's there. There's little patches of green still sort of showing through in the hills because we've

had a wet-ish year enough to it's not fully dried yet. So there's like this in between the moisture's there. But the soil, like if I'm not feeding and feeding the soil, then how many plants have I planted? They're just like, nope, nope, nope. I've had to find plants that actually do thrive in poor soil, which there are. Yeah. And are happy, you know, with the soil that's available. But others need a lot more nutrients.

And I think that's the part of assessing our own. creative life and seeing, right, what actually needs to be fertilized. And when I talk about fertilizer, I'm thinking of my worm bin, the Scorpio piece of like maybe that's identifying that the wormbin as, okay, that's the Scorpio process. Yeah, absolutely. That contributes to the process of fertility. Yeah. Of the earth. And then, yeah, because we're talking in that terms of creative practice and what is feeding that and is there that moisture or is there that dryness or how is that access and that process communicating? It's a daily, it's a momentary process. It's not like, oh, it's May so we're doing Taurus and then in November we'll do the Scorpio part. It's always compost blooms, compost blooms,

and you get to understand your own process with that during this season. It's, And what you just said really highlights how important our place in the world is for understanding which part of that wisdom of fertility we develop. Because just as you were expressing what tourist time is for you in your climate, it made so much more sense to me that the piece that really resonates for you is the roots piece. Because that's what you're focusing on is feeding those roots. It's really essential to continue to feel. those roots at this time of year. Whereas I'm up here in the rainforest and the ground is just

starting to dry out enough for certain things to thrive, right? At this time of year, we're just going from soaking wet sponge ground to, okay, it's a little more workable. And things just go nuts. Like the green goes nuts at this time of year. Like the times that I've traveled in May, leaving at the end of April and coming back at the end of May, it's unbelievable how green and huge everything gets just in the course of tourist season. So that's a really different piece of the puzzle that I am experiencing from where I am climate-wise than what you're experiencing. And they're both equally important pieces of that cycle of fertility. We're just experiencing them in different ways. And maybe that's another way to be more inclusive and make more sense of how the

Southern Hemisphere experiences the Zodiac, which was built in the Northern Hemisphere, if we think about those sign axes. And especially Taurus Scorpio, like, I'd be curious. I would love to have somebody from Australia or New Zealand here right now to reflect what's, how are they experiencing the Taurus Scorpio axis now during this season. Yeah. It's that connection between those seemingly abstract ideas of the signs and then our own chart and our own psychology, but then also how that roots into seasonality, which isn't the same everywhere, but the same themes are reflected. It doesn't just move in one direction. The signs are always talking to each other and that fertility is hard to pinpoint. The source of the fertility is impossible to pinpoint,

even though the culture values, the blooms. It's that constant communication that happens, and there's your spiral of time. But for people looking at their own charts, they're looking at maybe where they draw sustenance from and where they feel that pleasure of blooming. Well, more and more, I'm seeing the signs as axes and not as 12 separate. The houses, too, for that matter,

the ones that are below the horizon. I mean, you've been deep in this work with the harvest cycle, but how the houses beneath the horizon and feed the houses above the horizon. And the same thing happens with the signs. Not in, it's not, it's not a direct correlate, but the same thing happens. They can't, they don't function in isolation.

They function in relationship to the one on the other side of the axis. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah. Well, I'm thinking, like I'm visualizing my own chart as you're talking. And because mine's flips like Torres is my mid-heaven. And so what I think of that not being flipped because the roots are at the root and the bloom is at the bloom. Mm-hmm. But it's not like there's a right way.

What's the resonance between the sign axis and the house axis? Right. So then there's the two layers of meaning that could be the place and the placement and the domain of our life. Yeah. Where that's happening. Yeah. The domain of our life. That's literally what the house is.

houses are. And in the harvest cycle, so in the book of houses, the moment of Taurus or that correspondence is talked about as the roots. And so that's just another layer adding in of the meaning around where resources are drawn from, where whatever the thing is is planted, the creative project or the relationship talking about Taurus in that way of the field and the soil and the roots that seek that nourishment. Yeah. That feels like then that is drawn from Scorpio, but in the harvest cycle, Scorpio is the reproduction, the actual like merging and joining to create new life.

Yeah. I mean, this is what I mean about having to work. the whole axis is it's really, it's a shorthand to say Scorpio compost feeds Taurus blooms, but it's not saying that, I mean, the whole project of growing, especially physically, the things that we grow physically, the things that need to be fertile exist on that axis. And I think it's, it's not helpful to try to divide it up, like, oh, the blooms only belong to to Taurus. Sure, we associate roses with Venus, and there's lots of reasons to say, Taurus is the bloom, but it's not it's not it. It's not like trying to separate it out and make it

only that. And this brings it back to the fecundity versus fertility, because Taurus is the fertility of the soil. Taurus time is the time when we plow the fields and then go have sex in them. So again, it's like, but then you can argue, well, the Scorpio is the, no, it's all, It's all the process and the way the process spreads out over the year. You can't really neatly separate it. I think you can as a teaching tool. But it's the whole process of fertility and the beauty of dealing with it symbolically

as you can bring it all together. So it's not as simple as Taurus blooms, Scorpio Compost. But I don't argue with Taurus as roots. I don't know. Taurus is the plowed field. So it's the fertility that springs from the earth and our groundedness in it. It's where we root ourselves in a way in ourselves. And Scorpio is what feeds the roots.

So maybe that's, maybe that's what it's saying. I find there's a lot of places where sometimes it oversimplifies in that way that modern astrology can, which is not to say that it's not a really beautiful and useful. I just, I think you take it to a much deeper level. than what's presented in the book, like a much deeper, more symbolically resonant and meaningful level, but I can see the tool is super useful for people who are just coming into cyclical living and just connecting it to their charts. This is what I'm talking about with, I think, and I have to remember that these tools

are so important for people still at that cusp, still living in linear world. not quite stepping into cyclical living. Like creating a kind of a bridge. A bridge. Because to have everything coexist and that spiral time is a lot to just locate yourself in day to day life and also have that consciousness and that awareness going on simultaneously. And so, yeah, it feels like the neural pathways and the kind of living it and experimenting with it to see.

That's the way it's useful. Right. Yeah. Is living it in real time and having a model or format for doing that that's really powerful for people and that people can use as that bridge from linear time to cyclical time, super powerful. And I think Torres's roots and blooms or the thing that grounds us and feeds us and makes healthy roots and healthy blooms available. Right.

And that connection of you'll see the bloom is almost in some ways, not like, the proof is in the pudding, but like when there's nourishment to offer to the blooms, then that's apparent. Basically, the last couple of years, this forest of borage, so I call it the borage forest. That can happen. Oh, my God, that happened at my old house too. Yeah. You just plant a couple of borage seeds and then they're like, yay, we're going to replant ourselves everywhere. Right. Then the next year. They're like prickly. Oh, there's such amazing plants. I love borage. So amazing. and they were so tall.

And they were, you know, in that way, they were sort of crowded in this one area that then the cats got into. And so I just had to like dig out kind of like just like, okay, start fresh because the cats got into it. So this year there's no borage growing in that sort of planting area. But some of the seeds escaped into our driveway. Right. They're like, where can I grow? And they're coming up in the cracks in the driveway? There's gravel.

like right where we drive the gravel. And so and now they are the same seeds from these same plants that were probably close to four feet at least tall. Wow. Yeah. Are now these tiny, tiny little guys. And that's what I was trying to say with like the roots and the soil and that lack of compost is now revealing itself the same seed for the same parent. that's the environment and the conditions. And so I think in like the harvest cycle,

it's such a short book. And so there isn't a lot of the nuance that's in there. But it does talk about do you need to transplant? Do you have the tools available? Are you like able to gather up all of what's needed to usher this, like you said, that process of fertility that comes into our creativity? Are the things available there? And like bringing it back to your practical life, what can you do?

And I think I'm not quibbling with the book itself. I'm quibbling with a culture that will insist on separating roots from blooms. It's just like buying food at the grocery store and having no idea if do radishes grow on trees or bring home roses and you have no idea. Because the bloom is just this freestanding thing. So I think it's that. Yeah, it's cut off. So we think roots and blooms. think roots is kind of this vague.

If people aren't into gardening, it's a vague thing. And blooms are like this separate thing. That's the idea that I'm quibbling with. But just that separating out that our culture is so good at, losing side of the organic hole. Right. And that part that we were both sharing about the lotus aspect of it of really in our own personal life, like the composting and the digestive.

of things that have been challenging to have those feed something that comes back to life. And again, like the Persephone process, that's the beauty of spring is this, the potential for rebirth, the potential for life after devastation. Yeah. And the earth shows up in that way over and over. And it's like, wow. Yeah. In that connection to some of the themes around Taurus of a kind of a determination of like,

I'm coming back to life. Even if I'm that borage seed and the only soil that I found is like in the gravel of the driveway, that kind of personality of plants in perseverance, you know, there's such a range. But to look to those that do have those qualities, especially if we're in a place of wanting to or needing to kind of lean into that. Yeah, they're persevering and generous. That always blows me away, the generosity of plants. And, yeah, the perseverance that we can model our own world on.

I wanted to say about that, the return of Persephone piece. Just feeling that personally really a lot more poignantly this year, having been really ill throughout the whole winter from basically since Scorpio season. It's been a really interesting return this year and just a reminder that we're connected to the seasons in all. of these ways that we would like to deny. Because I really am, I really did start to feel better as as Aries season arrived and that plant-like response to the return of the sun is real. And my health is better coming into the springtime. And it's just really powerful. And it makes sense for me

because my Taurus Scorpio Axis is sixth house, 12th house. So there's always this interplay between daily life and isolation, health issues and spiritual issues, and I lived it very dramatically this year. And it's hard to say, like the roots, if we're going to be literal about how it lands in my chart. I have sixth house Scorpio, 12th house tourists. So we would think, we could think on a really superficial level, or on a simple level, it's not superficial, that the roots of my daily life and self-care and health feed what blooms in my spiritual life and in my creative life and in my spiritual service. And I think that's true thematically throughout my life. And then when you dial in a little tighter and look at just one year and the experience of one year,

you can really start to see that interplay, how I've had experiences of ill health that have led to isolation, sixth house, 12th house. And then the resurgence of life and the ability to be more active in daily life leading to re-blooming in that realm too. But it starts to, it starts to, when you dial it in in detail, then you start to see the interplay more vividly between the two signs and how they're not really acting in isolation. And you can look at it as an overall life experience psychologically based on how your chart is set up, but you can also look at it is an expression of how you experience the seasons and what your own particular nuance of that seasonal experience will be.

And I get to do spring and fall in the sixth house, 12th house, which is intense. Yeah. I mean, I think it's intense wherever we experience it. But the particular intensity is about very much about my spiritual and physical well-being that lives on that axis. And your fourth house, 10th house. right?

Yeah. Scorpio 4th Tourist 10th. Yeah. And I would describe it as that feeling of connection with family, which I'm very rooted in four generations within a mile of each other. I mean, there's four generations in my house last night. So I'm like living that experience and very rooted in that and that kind of blooming into the 10th house.

I mean, it could be flipped. but again, that kind of then what is shared with the world beyond the home, you know, through my work outside of that, but so much is just anchored, that that's kind of this whole of that fertility of wanting to kind of channel that in work. Yeah. Like that energy of creativity. I would substitute, you know, fertility creativity for me is that channeling that into projects and work and things and then being like rooted and pulled back into the home space.

Yeah. Working on the alchemy of integrating those. And that's it, right? That the huge lesson of how we become more fertile and creative on that axis by learning to balance those two things. But I think it's really interesting what you're saying about flipping it because, and I see that so much, especially on the fourth house, 10th house axis, how it's not just about home feeding, how we show up in our words.

It's very much the other way as well, how we bloom into the world. You can flip it so the roots are there in Taurus, and you're pulling in experiences. I don't know, thinking of all the things that the Tenth House gives us, experiences of the greater world, the stability of self that we gain from being respected in the world and having a reputation, and how that stability feeds into how we can show up in our home life and for our families. And it continues to feed. Especially, it's so beautiful with the intergenerational life, how each of us pulling from our outer life,

each of us pulling from our 10th house can feed back into the fourth house. I think that's that axis when it's off balance. It's like the first house, seventh house, the fourth house, house, 10th house, it's the stable cross of the chart. And those are the places where balance is important on all these axes and it's dynamic. But if it's first house, seventh house where we stabilize our horizon or where we stabilize our roots our self in the world, if that's off, we feel it first. So there's a lot happening for you. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right in that sense of purpose and purpose and meaning in life and where that is drawn from. And when there's these two things that could and have early on felt at odds of competing for my energy and time. And when they're competing, then every, I mean, that has been, my story is like then there is the complete breakdown. And then that is the soil then to begin again from.

like, okay, well, if one is outweighing the other, something else has to counterbalance that. So that something to, yeah, the last 10 years of my life of like making all those kinds of counterbalances within myself when I've gone too far in one direction home career. Do you feel like earlier we were talking about that, the opposition being an opportunity to alchemize? So I feel like theoretically there's a point we can get to where it stops being a teeter-totter and starts being like some kind of dynamo, right? It's a dynamic feedback loop where they're actually helping each other. Like ideally, that's what I would want for everybody is for those axes to be these dynamic

feedback loops instead of these push-pull situations. I don't think it's possible for us to live the ideal of our charter, nor are we meant to. It's aspirational, but I'm curious if you have felt that, that working that access so profoundly as you have, especially maybe since you've had kids, I don't know, but you say the last 10 years, I'm curious if it feels, if you feel that experience of going from teeter-totter to dynamic feedback loop. Yeah, more so now, and especially the spring, actually for one of, not the first time, but a time that I can really feel a big shift. And that was, you know, my youngest, who's going to be 13 this summer. In the last 10 years, really that I've tuned into astrology

in a way for how to live in more harmony within myself. So this spring, my youngest had their spring break. And I was going to go off for a retreat to get some work done because I was like, I've got to get away from the home. I cannot like focus enough. I need just like uninterrupted time because of all of my things around the house, home tending, I was just going to go off by myself to get a project done. And then my youngest had spring break. And I was like, you know what? I think this is a time where actually they could come with me and work on a project with me. And we could do this together and then actually go on excursions to go visit wildflowers. The immersion in the natural world, but we were bringing that back to this project of working on some illustrations and drawings

and doing that actually together where I didn't have to then leave to go do something work-related. Like I was incorporating that into my role as mother and that feeling of alchemy where usually like if my kids around, especially when they're younger, I'm like, I can't think straight. I can't even work on a project. Like I can't even do anything. I have to turn that switch off and turn this other switch on, right? That's what you're describing this like teeter, daughter can only be in one mode or the other mode.

So this spring actually was, it's been a lot of work getting here, but man, does it pay off? Yeah. And that's maybe the lotus axis of what pays off in the bloom that does come from the roots and that work of integration and alchemy. Yeah. Yeah. So anybody listening can think about the meaning of those two houses where

ever they have Taurus Scorpio. And again, to get out of linear thinking, I don't think it's just like we evolve from it being a teeter-totter into it being a positive feedback loop. We're always in and out of that and adjusting and refining. But it's a really interesting exploration that we can do with any of the signs and houses that oppose each other. But I think particularly for the creative process and for the artists among us or just the creatives or even the parents, like anything that has to do with the fertility of life, the gardeners, you might find extra resonance in that Torres Scorpio place or if you have loaded Torres Scorpio houses.

it's a really interesting exploration. As you were talking, I was bouncing your experiences off my own experiences of the sixth house, 12th house and finding balance there and how I've come into different kinds of synthesis with that at different times in my life, but how there's this new level happening right now where dealing with a chronic illness, and you'll hear this once you get into like the chronic illness community, the baseline is everything. That's what we say, like keeping that baseline of balance in life gets very, very refined. So if you're taking care of your body in the right way to manage your illness or in the way that works for you in the moment to manage your illness,

you're able to maintain a baseline of activity without dropping below it, which is the crash that we all dread. And that thinking in terms of that baseline and how that has kind of rule that. my life for the last six months, that idea of baseline. And in the process of learning about that and learning about these real nuances of my body and my metabolic energy, I'm not saying I'm grateful, but I'm saying I have certainly learned a lot about true self-care by being forced to attend in such subtle detail to where my body thrives and where it starts to lose energy. And that's very sixth house, twelfth house. And it's like a new level of understanding sixth house, twelfth house that balance on the one hand between illness and isolation, or on the other hand,

between, you know, productive daily activity and how that feeds into having a rich spiritual life, how to balance the two of those. And just now through the lens of chronic illness gives it, I think when I recover, I'm going to have so many more tools for maintaining that balance and continuing to have that be an alchemy rather than a battle between. I think some people experience that, not some people, but at some stages of life, we experience that sixth house, 12th house as a battle between our daily life and our spiritual life. But it can also, like when the feedback loop kicks in, it can be, how one feeds the other. But there's so many different ways we experience that lesson.

Wow. Yeah. This conversation is so rich, really feeling into the areas of our life where the pressure cooker has been there for us to create within the conditions of our life to find the ways to bring together parts that may would otherwise be pulling us apart. Yeah. And I'm curious for other people to what that experience. if it lies along that particular axis, what the experience has been with the Taurus and the Scorpio.

Yeah. With those placements and understanding that and having this great appreciation of like it's maybe for some people it has come easy. But I think it's the life experience that brings in whatever pressure cookers needed to find a way where there is, like I said earlier, just a kind of a harmonizing. Yeah. Because the battle is like so exhausting. It is exhausting. And I think there's a particular, the particular experience of the Torres Scorpio axis is it's where,

where we're living our biology. Like there's no escape from the physical on the Torres Scorpio axis. It's where we experience our bodies in so many different ways. our nervous systems, our fertility, our lack of fertility, our illness, our wellness, our pleasures, our appetites. Those are the places where we enjoy those and where we grapple with those in the Torres Scorpio places. Whereas, I don't know, somewhere else like the Leo Aquarius maybe that's more airfire and it's more about the intellectual

and the heartfelt, the emotional, intellectual. It's a different struggle. It's not less of a struggle, but it's not the bodily struggle. The Earth and Water Science, but particularly Torres and Scorpio offer us and even just thinking about what you and I have been grappling with

and how that relates to, like the demands of motherhood are physical. They start out, as one the most, I mean, for some of us, they start out in the body. I think for all of us, we, however, our children come into our life, that physical connection makes itself known. And it's part of the exhaustion and part of what we grapple with. And certainly on the other end of the spectrum with illness, that's what you got. You got to deal with your body. And that's a very Torres-Skorpio reality. Like, it's your body.

You just, it's there. You have to deal with it. It's a biological reality. So it's a particular kind of exhaustion that's peculiar to Taurus Scorpio, as well as being a particular kind of exhilarating triumph and intense pleasure that we also experience on that axis. Yeah, right. And I have, too, like the whole sensory, like the whole sensory experience of life.

Yeah. And how that's able to be taken. in and experienced. Yes. Yeah. Thank you for that, the whole sensory experience of life. Because I often see people talking about Taurus and even Scorpio in other ways as being about pleasure or intensity. And to me, that minimizes that experience because it's, yeah, pleasure is part of, yeah, absolutely.

If you have lots of tourist placements, you have a capacity of. an appetite for pleasure. It's true. But it's because you live so intensely in the sensory experience of the world. Virgo too, right? In a different way, but Virgo's there for that sensory experience. So that's huge. That's everything. It's our perception. It's how we navigate the world from this black box inside our skull. It's everything. And I was just thinking of how tourist season in the Northern Hemisphere brings the sensory experience to life with this like rainbow explosion of wildflowers and life that's just beyond magically imaginable. And I'm saying this because I got to visit some places, places that are known for their wildflowers.

I've never seen so much loop in in my entire life. It's one thing you see like, oh, some flowers here and there. this was just an entire volcanic plateau basalts like these rock formations with color fields and fields and fields of color. And so that sense or experience that feels like it just feeds. Yeah. Feeds the soul. Feeds the soul in such a deep way and feeds whatever fertility might mean to you. You know, to me it really is the like the juice of creativity.

the juice to want to express and the juice of wanting to create in whatever form that might be. So this cross-quarter time, so bringing it back to the calendar and bringing it back to locating ourself in time and how astrology and tropical astrology specifically marks time seasonally. And so we're at this moment of a cross-quarter between the equinox and solstice. And what I love, like through our work together, it really sank in that that is a place in the chart as well. Yes. Moment in time is a place in your birth chart. Yes.

We return to every single year. So the more we can have this awareness and be a part of this conversation and creative exploration to see what has that been like in previous years. What am I in real time right now is a lived experience? zoom out a little bit, you know, to get a perspective, to make sense of some of the themes that just may be recurring, that we can revisit in this very in a spiral kind of way. Yeah. Yeah. And we're, we'd love to help, both like help and support people do that to locate where that is.

Yes. And play, you know, and do some journaling, creative expression to really embody, right? to have that embodied experience of what we're calling the roses and stars. Yes. Yeah. I'm excited for this one. It's my favorite cross quarter. I have four planets and tourists.

So I live here all year long. And I'm really excited. I think we're going to make it absolutely fun and creative. And also insightful. We'll talk about where that falls in your chart, where you might be experiencing either that feedback loop or that teeter-totter. And I think in closing, I can share a beautiful tourist experience that is nothing like your experience of the acres of Lupin, but is very tourist nonetheless and came to my mind when you

said the rainbows because my husband, who's always the one to call me out to look at the sky, We've had some warm days where we can finally lie down in the grass. It isn't too wet. He said, put on a baseball cap and come out here and lie down. He's in the front yard. It came out and lay down. The baseball cap was because there was a rainbow around the sun and the cap allowed us to lie down,

look at the rainbow around the sun without the sun blinding us. And in the meantime, there's the sun-warmed grass. dry enough to lie down on. There's the smell of all of these blossoming trees. Like everything's going off the crab apples, the apples, the magnolia. Our little dog running around making little dog noises, which is very torus, like with her muddy paws jumping on us. And that is my most recent tourist pleasure.

And all the more poignant because one of the things that has happened with my illness this winter I've lost my sense of smell and most of my sense of taste. And my sense of smell is starting to wake up again. And what a magnificent time for that to happen in time for the apple blossoms. So no doubt there's something waking up in you too. If you're listening, there's always something that's waking up in Taurus season. Some pleasure, even if it's as simple as lying down on your front yard. That's what we get to attend to it this time of year.

And so the focus of roses and stars is, or stars and roses, however you want, is to dive into that pleasure a little bit with our astrology practice plus learn as we do it. Beautiful. Yay. Well, we hope to see you on Friday and we'll put a link with this episode for how to join us for this workshop. And it's free for our paid subscribers. So whether you're subscribed to Bronwyn's substack,

or my substack between the moon or yours is esoteric astrology. Either one, you'll be put on the list to join us for free, otherwise you can register or the workshop. And it's totally not cheating if you want to just try one or both of the memberships for a month and just pay your $8 to try it for a month and get the workshop for that price. No judgment at all. In fact, we invite you to do that to give it a try. So don't feel bad if you want to do it that way.

It's encouraged, actually. Yeah. And that way you get a feel for each of our own styles and just a feel for getting to participate in community, as a community exploration that will hopefully enliven the senses and bring and reawaken that spark. Yeah. Until next time. Thank you, Bronwyn. Thank you. Thanks, April.

Thanks again for listening to today's episode. Between the Moon is a listener-supported podcast. If you haven't already, please consider subscribing or writing a review. These are ways that help this work reach more people. And if you'd like to access all the episodes as well as bonus articles, head on over to substack. That is substack.com backslash at Between the Moon to see ways that you can support this work. This is April and I'll be with you next time on Between the Moon.