By my reckoning Beltane was Sunday at 4:18 am EDT, meaning that’s when the Sun reaches the midpoint of Taurus. That in turn is the midpoint between the equinox and the solstice (known as the cross-quarter). It’s a tipping point of the year and for us in the Northern Hemisphere, a moment when we know spring has actually arrived.
That is, unless you live in that swath of Iowa, Kansas or Minnesota — hardy people out there, who are currently buried under enough snow to require front-end loaders to move it out of the way.
Beltane is a time for the ritual of Hieros Gamos — playing out the sexual communion between God and Goddess, symbolic of the harmonization of opposites. We spend a lot of time frustrated with our opposite, and this is a time to release that and reach a natural state of harmony.
For this event, the Moon was in Pisces (it’s in Aries now), and Mercury, Venus, Mars and Pallas Athene are all in Taurus. It’s quite a chart. Mercury is making an opposition to Saturn in Scorpio (exact yesterday, but still in effect). Since we’re on the topic of sex (apropos of Beltane) this aspect is worth a moment of reflection along the theme of sexual communication.
There is potentially an imbalance to be aware of here. You’re not hallucinating if you’ve noticed that many people put a lot of energy into stuffing or otherwise denying their desire. There are many reasons for this: fear, the notion of losing control, the need to feel like a moral person, not having a model for how to express the energy, some form of old pain or grief, guilt, shame, etc. — and it’s very difficult to negotiate with these emotions.