There is generally a lack of drama in the air this month. There are no Pluto clashes at least, and only in the last week when Mercury in Gemini tangles uncomfortably with Uranus is there any hint of significant eruptive events or accidents somewhere on the globe. It could also be a time when we get some further shocks in terms of information about the speed of the melting of the glaciers and ice sheets. Left field information shocks are part of the Mercury Uranus combination. This is also a month of distorted and unclear perceptions. There is a smoke and mirror circumstance in the ether, notably between the 13th and 21st when Neptune from Aquarius confuses and muddies the picture when he squares up to the Sun and then Venus, both in Taurus.

Confusion and some surprises in the last week could also point to the U.S. presidential race remaining unclear cut.

Sincere apologies to all eagle-eyed astrologically sussed readers and indeed to all for my musings in last month’s overview about transiting Mars going over Barrack Obama’s Sun, midheaven and Uranus in April. I unwittingly lied (misspoke?). I actually erroneously and fleetingly bizarrely was studying the June picture, when obviously I should have been looking at the April one, when writing that particular section. This mistake did not register till the end of last month.

One thing that is correct and certain this month is that Uranus starts to oppose Obama’s Mars and will continuously do so for about four months. This phenomenon happens once only in the life (every 84 years) and brings volatility, unpredictability, maverick tendencies and the possibility of some real danger and sabotage from others. However, he does have Jupiter protecting and strengthening him to some extent this month. In June, when Mars, is strong in his chart too (really, this time) there is a sense of a powerful and potentially life-changing period for him, but with the element of the unexpected implicit somehow.

Looking at Clinton’s chart and its empowering activation from Jupiter and Uranus to her Mercury this month, it seems like it will indeed not be till next month that the final battle is played out.

To return to the signature sign of the month: Taurus.

Countries traditionally linked to this sign’s rulership are Turkey, Iran and Ireland. Iraq has been linked by some astrologers with Taurus, too. With Neptune negatively activating the sign this month, there is a feeling of possible subterfuge and confusion surrounding these places especially between the 13th and 21st.

Taurus is a fixed earth sign, grounded, practical, stubborn and money and security orientated. Its natural zodiac house is the 2nd (sense of security and values). It is resistant to change, very loyal, solid, patient and reliable and likes routine and is gentle. It is also a beauty and nature-loving sign, very sensual, with a penchant for good living, especially the appreciation of good food and wine and they are often fine cooks. They are tactile and sensual and learn more from experience than most. They are also long-suffering but if pushed too far, like the bull they will see red. No one forgets a Taurus when they are angry, but it happens rarely and is lethal and often irrational. Taurus, like the bull again, can be coaxed but never pushed. They are also brilliant at deferred gratification, i.e. planning long and hard and working slowly, solidly and patiently towards a desired goal, and no one should try and deflect them from that task. What is theirs is theirs and what they do to maintain security and possessions, whether people or property is resolute. They have a great appreciation of the arts and beauty in general, but it is more an instinctive and sensual response than an intellectual one.

With planets in Gemini (there are usually planets in the sign either side of the Sun sign) then there is more wit, pliability, communication and intellectual drive. Tauruses work well with natural structures and materials and they are often very good gardeners, farmers, builders, engineers and are often found working with clay, wood, stone or metal in a creative context. They have affection for animals as they relate to their natural simplicity and to the honesty and loyalty of their pets. Tauruses need exercise to keep healthy and to keep at bay their tendency to put weight on.

Taurus is a good, solid sign but a little static and inert at times. They are often very attractive, being Venus ruled, and the women put much store by their looks and often have very beautiful necks and throat areas, the part of the body ruled by Taurus, which can also be vulnerable. They often sing well and have at the least a love of music.

The month opens with Venus from Taurus trining Pluto. This is a good time for the creation of beauty, and with Mercury also sextiling Mars this is also a time of proactive, intelligent and powerful communication.

Venus in Taurus this month till the 24th certainly encourages the use of tools and working esthetically with the natural substances of the world and also encourages three-dimensional works. After the 24th when Venus moves into Gemini the power of the intellect, the quirky, the humorous and the ideological will become more to the fore creatively.

Until the 9th, with Mars still in Cancer and opposing Pluto in the USA’s chart, there is a feeling of finality in the air vis-à-vis the presidential campaign and there is also important news about the economy and the looming large global food shortages that might be a particularly tough call. Global positioning in relation to securing some safety as to economics and food supplies may bring international tension. Global food and water shortages are a nightmare scenario now looming large and already a reality in some developing countries, where lethal food riots have been experienced.

The rising price of food staples such as bread is currently something the entire developing and developed world has to cope with, but that will soon be the least of it, as the era of not only cheap but also of abundant food and groaning multichoice supermarket shelves looks to be fading into the past. This is probably a fact we all need to prepare for. All such luxury (for luxury it is) is finite.

Taurus the bull is a sign very reminiscent of the hunger for red meat, a hunger that the western world and beyond has increasingly over the last few decades demanded to be sated. Economically and environmentally it is starting to be more universally recognized that it is not viable or sustainable to continue the mass-produced rate of meat rearing, as the cost of feeding livestock for food is much more expensive than the growing of crops for direct human consumption. It seems if we can reduce our (mainly western) demand for meat and therefore largely cut down on the huge amount of hungry and expensive middlemen (livestock) we may all be better off, not to mention the resulting reduction in methane gasses. Indeed, meat eating was till relatively recent times a luxury that was reserved for special occasions. Maybe that is the natural state. The argument about whether physiologically we are naturally meant to be meat eaters or not seems never to have been totally resolved.

What is important is that we have moral and intellectual choices, which is what makes us unique as a species.

The increasing preciousness of water is implicit and explored in the planned installation by Olafur Eliasson of four huge freestanding waterfalls at strategic sites round New York harbor between July and October this year. The artist considers the work, New York City Waterfalls, One, to be integrating a part of "nature" into the cityscape. The project is sponsored by the Public Art Fund, which also did the honors for British artist Sarah Lucas’s sculpture Percival, the large horse and cart sculpture recently on view at one corner of Manhattan’s Central Park.

Eliasson’s fascination with waterfalls was fostered by his Icelandic upbringing. He says of the waterfall that it is "not just an iconic phenomenon, it is also free-falling water, in the literal sense, but also in the sense that it is freely accessible. . . . in today’s world, water is very rarely completely free."

Eliasson’s first major U.S. retrospective, "Take Your Time," is currently on view at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and has no doubt whetted the New York appetite for his coming liquid projects.

His MoMA retrospective is highly commensurate with current dominating Taurean and indeed Neptune energy. His work focuses so much on natural elemental phenomena and his projections of light, use of mirrors and color washes combined with the use of such simple materials as stone, moss and water helps shift our view of self and our relationship with the natural world.

If Eliasson, an Aquarian with a host of planets in the creatively inspired Pisces, was born after 08.20 am, his Moon (emotional empathy and needs) would be in Taurus, which seems very likely in view of his particular love and reverence for exploring and experimenting with natural elemental forces.

In keeping with the appreciation of nature, so typical of Taurean temperament, the fascinating work of the 16th-century Milan-born artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo is currently being exhibited at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. This proto-Surrealist, who was included in the 1937 exhibition "Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism" at MoMA, certainly had a bizarre and innovative view of nature, one that was quirkily way ahead of his time.

Arcimboldo was born in either 1526 or 1527. He must have had an input of Taurus as his work is so replete with the organic natural world and animals. He developed a bizarre penchant for creating heads from a collection of natural objects: fruit, flowers and animal life. He also must have had had somewhere in his chart a clear Uranian/Aquarian streak in style and conceptualization. He first made his talents known in the court of Maximillian II. He there displayed a surreal and possibly cruel wit, which was designed for court entertainment. He constructed portraits of people made entirely from books, and sometimes utensils, which may have been a cynical nod to the singular obsession with dry "learnedness" of the times and of that court.

Later, he spent much of his developing career at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II in Prague, who was a devotee of the occult arts, and it is from that period that Arcimboldo artwork has special interest for astrologers, as he became obviously, and maybe more comfortably, deeply enmeshed in the European 16th-century search to understand nature in metaphysical terms. His set of paintings of "The Elements" (earth, air, fire and water) are powerful reminders of the domination of astrological correspondences, so universally recognized in the Renaissance, when science and metaphysics and nature were understood to be as one. This is a concept so questionably alien to our modern "rational" scientific society. Rudolph II’s fascination with the meaning of the universe and special interest in astrology caused him to surround himself at court by the eminent hermetic philosophers, cabalists, metaphysicians, mathematicians and astronomers of the time. Astronomers then were totally synonymous with astrologers. These luminaries included Johannes Kepler, Tyche Brahe and Francis Bacon. Arcimboldo was clearly immersed in this milieu and its influence, and took delight in morphing men with natural forms from nature with an abundant sense of rich symbolism.

The Arcimboldo exhibition in Vienna runs till June 29, 2008, and should be seen not only for the brilliant and surreal craftsmanship and concepts on display but also for this work’s rich reminders of the value, respect for and of the hidden attributed powers afforded then to the natural world.

Sadly in our current age of so called rationalism, we have often rather thrown out the baby with the proverbial bathwater, in this respect.

From the 9th, Jupiter in Capricorn will move into retrograde motion for about four months. Jupiter going into reverse gear (retrograde) encourages attention to internal growth and spiritual value systems, as opposed to the external and the material manifestations of growth.

Pluto is retreating now in Capricorn in the first degree as he heads back to Sagittarius in the next month. Since January he has given us all a taster of what will start in earnest next year when he is back to really get stuck into Capricorn, where he will stay for 16 years. Note well that India is a Capricorn country and Pluto equals tests in terms of power. Although focus has been on China as an expanding powerhouse over the last 10 years or so, do not underestimate India as a focus in its development and its global influence in a powerful and intense way over the coming years.

India’s rising power and clout in the world economy is set to continue. In terms of takeovers, last year alone, Indians bought western companies worth nearly $18 billion, which is reported to be more than five times the value of western takeovers in India. The boot, in terms of globalization, seems to be rather transferring to the other foot. Many U.S. banks are now propped up by governments in China and the Middle East, and adding to the tilt to the east, Asia, especially India, is also booming, and over the next few decades, with Pluto in Capricorn-ruled India, that country will increasingly flex its considerable economic muscle, especially when times are hard in the west. However, a price will be paid in India, too, if greed becomes the prime motivator.

Inevitably, Britain, also a Capricorn country, will also be heavily revolutionized particularly economically during this period too. It will not be a velvet revolution.

Note also that Afghanistan and the Balkans are thought to be Capricorn countries and they will be focused on as increasingly crisis-prone in some way, too.

The 13th to the 21st are indeed very productive times esthetically and are especially good for film, photography and music work. Neptune in creative terms is very much linked to the visual, imagery, symbolism and is very much the ruler of music, photography and film. It also rules the spiritual, the other worldly and the mysterious and has much connection with the undermining of the personal ego and the relinquishment of the worldly.

Interestingly, "Life before Death," an exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London that closes on May 18, 2008, is a sort of death fest, but in a gentle and moving way. It is a series of portraits taken by German photographer Walter Schels of the terminally ill (including an infant), before and just after they die. His partner Beate Lakotta also recorded interviews with many of these subjects as they experienced their final days. Schels has a terror of death, as a result of his first-hand witnessing, when young, of the human carnage after the bombing in war-torn Germany.

This may well have proved a courageous but cathartic exercise for him. At 72, he also is aware of the approach of his own demise.

The interviews reveal the gamut of human response to imminent death, from peaceful embrace to a sense of isolated bitterness and even raging anger. Believers and non-believers alike showed the same fear of the awaiting unknown. What strikes Schels is the inevitable loss of ego that death brings and the great leveler that death is. There is no room for pretence or affectations anymore.

The implication is strong too in the images and interviews, that how a person lives affects how they die.

Although the brutal truth of death falls under the domain of Pluto, the Greek God of the dead, Neptune represents the mystery surrounding death and the metaphysical implications of this last great metamorphosis.

Taurus is Venus-ruled and is therefore beauty loving, and keen on appearance and looking good. Since it is also a very practical hand on sign and interested in building and use of materials, it is no surprise that many architects and builders have much Taurus influence in their charts. A new exhibition, "Skin and Bones, Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture," is currently running at Somerset house in London, till August 10, 2008. It reveals the link between fashion and architecture and explores the visual and conceptual ideas that unite the two, not least the body, space and movement.

It focuses mainly on the 1980s to date and includes 200 works by over 50 international architects and fashion designers revealing the recent patterns and parallels of evolving trends in fashion and in architecture. Neptune has much influence on the rapidly spreading morphic resonance that is fashion (and music) and architecture, which also moves in cycles, whether it be from minimalist to decorative or to postmodern. The trouble is that buildings last and fashion doesn’t, and unlike architecture, fashion also tends to repeat itself every few decades, where as architectural change has obviously a much slower turnover and revisitation rate, not least for economic reasons. The other crucial major difference, of course, is that fashion is largely youth-orientated and driven, whereas architecture is a very grown up and by definition expensive affair.

The Sun sextiles Uranus on the 12th and with Venus sextiling Uranus on the 18th and 19th, there will be innovative, futuristic stuff in the ether, especially architecturally.

Times for caution are around the 3rd, 22nd and 26th, when Saturn is challenged by Mercury, the Sun and Venus, respectively. Only patience, hard grind, sense of reality and hard discipline will work on those days.

Mercury is in Gemini all month from the 2nd. From Gemini, the power of the written and spoken word is underlined and it is a good time for writers, journalists and critics.

Between the 17th and 25th there is a coming together of Venus and Jupiter in a trine configuration, with Uranus respectively sextiling both of them. This is in fact an outstanding period for positive breakthrough and liberation both creatively and somehow globally in a very promising way for the future.

The new Moon falls in Taurus on the 5th at 15° of that sign, and the full Moon falls in Scorpio on the 20th at 29° of that sign. The new Moon should be earmarked for starting and initiating, while the full Moon usually implies the end of a chapter as something has run its course. One plants (sows) on the new and harvests (reaps) on the full.

Finally and importantly, Mercury in Gemini moves famously retrograde on the 26th. As ever, when Mercury goes walkabout, it brings delays and hiccups in communications and travels. Mercury, powerful in his own sign in Gemini, will certainly emphasize communication problems. It is therefore essential to achieve important travel or messaging of any sort prior to the 26th, otherwise you will have the proverbial head banging against the brick wall and a protracted hanging around at airports etc. as a very possible occupation.

Mercury remains retrograde until June 20th and will particularly affect directly the chart of the United States in relation to foreign policy. Frustrations will abound.

N.B. If you know your ascendant (rising sign), you should read the general trends for that sign, in conjunction with your Sun sign, for a more accurate forecast. In astrology, the nature of the planet symbolizes the type of energy that is happening, the sign it is in how it is happening and the house it is in where it is happening.

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