New Moon in Taurus
Algol uprising
Hallo friends,
How are you faring in these wild times? I’m doing ok. Foundations are shifting in my life and probably yours too. I’m not a person who fears change, I welcome it, and am addicted to it honestly. But I know not everyone thrives in a state of destabilization. The good news is: starting with this weekend’s new moon in Taurus, we’re about to experience the best astrology of the year. While January brought hard resets, February shook things loose, and March and April felt relentless, May and June allow some space to breathe and take a big stretch. Things go off the rails again in late June/early July, but the next few weeks are very nice.
The best astrological dates coming up are: May 19 & 20 and June 8. Whatever inklings come out of the ether during this weekend’s new moon may turn into initiative on those dates. Or if you’re planning to put something out into the world, may I suggest those as a cute time?
Some notes before we get down to business:
I’ll be opening my books for late May and June on the 20th, if you’d like to be on the waitlist/be notified about that, please sign up here
Paid subscribers, mark your calendar for May 29 at 1 pm ET - more info to come, but this will be an (online) astro hang, AMA, impromptu chart reading, talk about the astro of the month ahead, etc. If you’re not a paid subscriber and want to join, become one today!
There’s a New Moon in Taurus on Saturday, May 16 at 4 pm ET. The Sun and Moon will meet in the sky at 25º Taurus. This New Moon happens at the degree of the fixed star, Algol.
Algol (from “Ras al Ghul” in Arabic which translates to “Head of the Demon”) is what’s called a binary star. It’s made up of two stars—one bright and one faint—revolving around each other. Every three days the fainter star passes in front of the brighter one and eclipses it. With this pas de deux, Algol gives the universe a wink.
The ancients associated Algol with Medusa, imagining it was an eye on the gorgon’s head. The eclipse was the demon laughing after making her kill. Algol is associated mythically with feminine rage. Not the second wave feminist kind, but one that remains on the outskirts, eschews the mainstream. Algol is the maligned idea of “losing one’s head” during battle or an “important meeting.”
Algol has long been a fascination of mine, partly because I have the planet Mars at the exact degree of the fixed star (26º Taurus) in my birth chart. Charlize Theron, who of course played the titular Monster, Aileen Wuornos, but who also played my favorite monstrous woman in the history of cinema, Mavis Gary in Young Adult, also has Mars on Algol. And so does Gabby Windey, reality television star, and IMO, the world’s last hope for performance art.
Gabby Windey started her public life on The Bachelor, a reality show created by a man, in which a group of women compete to receive attention and validation from one man. Once she was in the public eye, she quickly took her feminine narrative into her own hands. She was cast as The Bachelorette, where she was the one looking for love in a pool of desperate men, and her season was the first to feature two women at the helm rather than one (a binary star perhaps?). In 2023, after her Bachelor/Bachelorette-initiated relationships failed, she came out as a lesbian on The View, and less than two years later, married her partner, the queer comedian, Robby Hoffman.
Less than a decade ago, Gabby might have been written off as a “crazy girl” or “having a phase,” and shunned to the 15 minutes of fame graveyard. But her coming out, rejecting men, and being herself only increased her fame. She hosts a weekly podcast, Long Winded, which sometimes features guests, but often is just Gabby in her sunglasses, sitting on her couch, reciting spells about her mental health, her struggles to be productive as a depressed person during capitalism, and her biting takes on wealthy, famous men. Gabby’s popularity and continued rise signals that we’re at a turning point in how we tell stories of feminine rage. Are mythic figures like Medusa and Lilith really villains? Or is that just the story we’ve been told?
Despite the rising popularity of rageful, “monstrous” women, I wouldn’t say society has fully caught up. The government is still trying to crush reproductive rights, and J.D. Vance has written his wife into The Handmaid’s Tale. But I notice women shrinking into old narratives in sillier, more mundane places as well.
Like when I see alt-influencer Caroline Calloway aggressively posting to her Instagram stories about how her recent situationship fumbled her, a man who, per her telling of it, lived in a penthouse and was paying for her life while she did the household chores.
Or when a family member comments, offhanded yet upset, that my Gen Z nephew’s 21 year old girlfriend was expected to “split the bill” in her last relationship.
Or when I admit that a few years ago, I fell into a limerent obsession with my software engineer ex because I felt my only path to housing security was moving into his one bedroom apartment with bad light.
These little stories remind me that we’re still stuck in the narrative that women deserve to be “taken care of,” which comes from the story that women need to be tamed. Medusa, Lilith and Algol, these demons and gorgons and “man killers,” are characters written by what Riane Eisler calls a domination society, what has become known, ad nauseum, as “the patriarchy.” But humans haven’t always lived like this.
The matriarchal cultures of the past—called partnership societies by Eisler, which existed all over the world, before the Bronze Age and the rise of dominators—were in touch with lunar cycles of death and rebirth. In the patriarchal era, death, like feminine rage, has become something to fear. American culture is especially afraid of death, no better illustrated by Trump, an Emperor with no clothes, wearing nothing but his adult diapers. American gerontocracy reveals how little we care for our elders, as everyone is expected to be permanently performing their so-called crime. But it’s also becoming painfully obvious in 2026 that the dominator society is dying. The power is mutating.
Whether it’s a mutation back to the matriarchal, or toward something else entirely, we’re entering a time that may not cast Algol as a demon. Perhaps the winking star is meant to become blasé, normal. As normal as Gabby Windey starting each of her podcasts with an update on her current cocktail of psychiatric medication.
As this new moon in Taurus approaches, I’ve found that this theme of women who refuse to be tamed has come up over and over again in my reading and media consumption. Watching The Maintenance Artist at IFC last week, I learned about public artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles who made domestic labor into art to rebel against the purity test of being a male genius. Reading Alicia Kennedy’s memoir On Eating, I discovered the beautiful ways in which she used food and the art of feeding others to find herself rather than get lost in a void of thankless service. And then in Lena Dunham’s memoir Famesick—which I propulsively read in three days—I found horror (and recognition) in how Lena’s mantra-like stance to be a “good girl,” led her farther and farther astray.
Lena Dunham, fabulous writer, problematic public figure, and creator of the 2010s monocultural television series GIRLS, turned 40 this week. She was of course born with the Sun near the fixed star Algol. A recent New York Times interview feature with her was titled “Lena Dunham Is Still Trying to Figure Out Why People Hated Her So Much.” That title could only be written about someone with Algol (and Lilith) prominently featured in their birth chart. Though Dunham has done and said quite a few genuinely enraging things in her career, she’s maligned, mostly, for the crime of telling her own story.
I was struck reading Famesick by how her indie film inclinations were shaped for a mass HBO audience by Judd Apatow and Jenni Konner, two writers who know how to wrap a story up with a neat little bow. Two star students of success under capitalism. Which makes me wonder: is the most enraging thing about Lena her relentless self expression? Or is it how that self expression got packaged? Perhaps it’s based in the lie—that we all bought into throughout the 2010s and into the 2020s, and is only now starting to crack—that we all must be for everyone. Lena isn’t for everyone. Neither is Lilith. Nor is anyone.
From 2012 until 2024, Neptune—planet of our shared idealization—was in Pisces, and Pluto—planet of abuse, extremes, and decay—was in Capricorn. Capricorn wants high quality: diamonds and stone castles and guarantees. Pisces is burdened with seeing everything from everyone’s POV (except, often, their own): empathy for all is empathy for none.
But now, Neptune has moved into Aries, and Pluto has moved into Aquarius. Our shared ideals are shifting away from seeking the answer outside ourselves, and toward an idealization of grit and resilience. Our obsessive fixations are focused less on the material (Capricorn), and more on the ideological (Aquarius). Hoarding thoughts replaces hoarding wealth. Neither is good or bad. But it is different. The goal posts have shifted.
The world changes when people, as a collective, are willing to live differently, to worship idols differently (or not at all), and in this moment, that also requires freeing ourselves from left-over 20th century ideals of order and success. It’s about freeing ourselves of being a “good girl,” or being afraid of being “too much,” or sharing only what’s polite. This new moon is blunt and forceful in what it’s trying to say, but it’s not a hard birth.
Is it fear that comes along with that wink of rebellion? Or is it a sigh or relief?
This weekend’s new moon in Taurus is part of a lunar phase family that connects it to these other points in time:
A last quarter moon in Taurus on August 16, 2025.
A full moon in Taurus on November 15, 2024.
A first quarter moon in Taurus on February 16, 2024.
A new moon in Taurus on May 19, 2023.
What stories were consuming your life during these moments? How would you like to rewrite that narrative now?
This is the first new moon in Taurus since 2018 (or even 2017 if you look at it a certain way) without Uranus—planet of disruption—in the sign of the bull too. Over the past eight years, you’ve likely experienced a lot of things that have made you extremely uncomfortable. But you’ve probably also gotten very comfortable with some of those things that once made you uncomfortable. You probably have some new superpowers. What are they? How can you put them to use?
UPDATES
ICYMI, this newsletter is now called DESIRE LINES. Read about it here.
Paid subscribers, save the date for May 29 at 12 pm ET for an (online) astro hang, etc.
If you want to be on the waitlist for May/June readings, sign up here.
I’m reading: as mentioned above, I read Alicia Kennedy’s On Eating this week. Now diving into Art Monsters…
I’m listening to: don’t @ me, but Noah Kahan’s new album. When I found out he also has OCD, I went straight there.
I’m watching: Hacks !!!
I’m eating: Really been on a green cabbage kick these days. Strange for me. I’m usually much more into purple cabbage.
you are on fire again. loved the New Moon insight etc.