Happy Taurus Season, my loves.
I was marveling recently that growing up, well before I studied astrology, I always loved the month of May. Though now I know it as Taurus’s month, when I was younger I cherished May for its warm yet mild weather and all the flowers that bloomed after April showers. In the last few days of the cruelest month we are still straddling spring here in Portland. Straddling spring and what else? I don’t know— some chthonic winter force, perhaps, the remaining vestiges of Winter. The difficult of April slowly blending into the ease that May promises, despite the Venusian sign of Taurus already taking over since the 20th.
This crunchiness of the first ten days of Taurus season makes sense if you consider the nature of the first decan of Taurus. Associated with the Five of Pentacles in the tarot, called “The Lord of Worry,” I see it as the beginning stages to growing something— a garden, a business, a creative project. Before the plants can grow or the work begun, one must have the proper supplies and plans to successfully manifest one’s vision. Agrippa tells us that this face of Taurus is “to sow, plough, build, people and divide the earth, according to the rules of geometry”.1 One must plot out one’s patch of land to make sure all the vegetables and flowers you want to grow have enough space and proper sunlight to set up the ease that comes later.
The Five of Pentacles shows the state we feel when we’re not prepared or we don’t have the resources to enact our plans or fulfill our needs. T. Susan Chang sees this scene as more our mind’s worst-case scenario rather than the promise of actual destitution. Planning here can assuage our worries if we know when to cut off thinkin past its usefulness.
Just this Thursday, I honored the first decan of Taurus by making a flower essence with two giant wisteria plants. As a flower that has been courting my friend and I separately for ages, I felt an immediate kinship with this specific plant as soon I laid my eyes on it. We took a few blooms each from both the big, purple, half-budded one and three from a white flowered bush that was fully fragrant and open.
But, as often happens, other beings clamored to be included. As we were walking the essence bowl back, we encountered two salamanders with wet skin and orange undersides, so had to include their magic in the final product. My friend said it would be cool if we saw a third as he had put three blooms from each plant into the essence bowl. Sure enough, just as we were leaving the garden, he points out a flower that he likes and when I turn to look, lo and behold is a third salamander.
What makes this rule of threes especially poignant with Taurus I is that the deities associated with this decan are the *Three* Graces. These three sisters are the daughters of Zeus and Eurynome, goddess of water-meadows and pastures. The Graces are goddesses of beauty and adornment, often depicted as attendants of Aphrodite. According to Hesiod, their names are “Aglaia (Aglaea, Glory), and Euphrosyne (Merriment), and lovely Thaleia (Thalia, Festivity), from whose eyes as they glanced flowed love that unnerves the limbs: and beautiful is their glance beneath their brows”.2 They are often associated with flowers, fertility, singing, dancing, poetry and merriment.
It has always struck me that this very practical, planning-oriented decan should have such pleasure-seeking, lush deities associated with it. But one detail about the Graces caught my eye: Aglaia, the youngest, is married to Hephaestus, the smith of the gods. He is usually depicted with a broken foot, under-appreciated by his fellow gods yet tirelessly working away with fire and hot metal. I think the secret to this decan is this: if the process of planning and working doesn’t have room for enjoyment and basking in one’s achievements, then it is unsustainable, not worth the effort.
Change does not come about from being extra hard on ourselves but through believing we deserve better, and being kind to ourselves when your plans don’t go according to our inner desires and visions.
Clothing and Glamour Magic
This decan and the Grace connection also has me thinking about adornment more generally, especially in relationship to my astrology fashion work. One of my goals with Styling with the Stars, my guidebooks on astrology and fashion, is to demonstrate how even our mundane actions are magic, connect us to the heavens. Even something like dressing ourselves each day, can be a powerful magical act.
Lately, there has been talk of glamour magic in the community through a decidedly negative lens. Glamour magic here is often depicted as a form of deception to convince people of your allure from an untrustworthy place. But glamour magic just speaks to the power of beauty to attract, persuade, soften, connect.
There are many ways our clothing can help with glamour magic.
One way channel glamour magic through clothes is to dress like the planet whose qualities you wish to embody. If you want to be seen as wise and authoritative, try dressing like Saturn. If you want to be seen as mysterious yet nurturing, dress like the Moon.
You can also use clothing to more fully embody who you are from the inside out— I wrote my second volume of Styling with the Stars to help people use their charts to unlock the style that best transmits their essence. Potent magic arises from the clarified sense of self. If you’ve ever met someone who fully understands and embodies both their strengths and limitations, then you know the kind of power of which I speak. Magic can flow more easily when the outside matches the inside.
Glamour magic is also a powerful form of cloaking. Beings like the fae often use glamour magic to hide their mischief. There are many stories about beautiful spies being used to distract the enemy from the secret plot using their charm and allure. We can also dress to highlight certain parts of ourselves or protect the parts that are just for us. Maybe you are extremely open-hearted but find yourself overextending for the sake of others, so you may want to enhance your Mars to establish more boundaries just with your personae. Glamour magic in this case can be used to redirect attention away from what we don’t want others to see.
If you want to use your clothes as tools for glamour magic, I suggest starting with an intention. Do you want to enhance your natural power? Make friends? Gain power? Start each day before choosing your clothes with this intention in mind. If there’s a certain planet you wish to embody try adding in a ritual or prayer to them as well for guidance and aid.
But don’t doubt the potency of these mundane acts.
If you want help understanding the style of the planets and how they uniquely shape your iconic aesthetics, check out Styling with the Stars Vol. I and II.
Your sense of style isn’t frivolous: it’s divine. There’s something vital to feeling an alignment between your aesthetics and your purpose, to putting thought and intention into your wardrobe, to treating each outfit as a prayer or a potential well of inspiration.
My “Styling with the Stars” guidebooks aim to help you understand planetary style, as well as add a creative layer to your devotion and manifest your unique look. In Volume I, walk through the fashion of each of the planet— specifically The Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn— providing style icons, trends, silhouettes, specific clothing items and vibes for each planet. Additionally, I list the colors, gems and people of each planet as well as a color palette to really drive home the aesthetics of the stars. To really cement your understanding, I have also linked Pinterest boards I have made compiling visual aids for each of the planets to really stoke your inspiration.
Not only do I outline how to use this guide to make every day a sartorial devotion to a specific planet, I also provide ideas on where to look in your own chart to begin mapping your own signature style. What makes an icon is their ability to be one of one, to follow their own muse, to create a trend all their own. My research has proven that astrology is invaluable in informing your own iconic looks.
In my follow-up to “Styling with the Stars,” this second volume helps you use your chart to uncover all the different facets of your style, knowing your look cannot be reduced to one planet. Though one may predominate, this guide will help you figure out what role the different planets have in your style and which ones to lean on when you feel torn or unsure what makes you feel most like yourself.
There are certain places in the chart we can look that speak directly to our fashion sense and this guidebook aims at highlighting and elucidating how to consider these various placements and integrate them into your signature style.
In this guide, I walk you through the meanings of the different parts of your chart that inform your style including:
The Ascendant/Rising Sign
Venus
The 5th House
The 2nd House
The Lot of Eros
Combining all of these points together, you will begin to get a sense of your iconic style. I walk you through how to delineate each of these points and understand the distinct role each part plays in shaping your aesthetics.
For now, I leave you with this Taurus Season message:
Until next time,
Love,
Chloe
Benjamin Dykes, “The Decans in Astrology”
Hesiod, Theogony 907 ff (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C8th or 7th B.C.)