Medusa Themed New Moon in Taurus

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/].

Today we're going to take a look at the upcoming New Moon in Taurus that's forming over the weekend in a conjunction with the notorious fixed star Algol, the eye of Medusa star. I recently did a video on my YouTube channel. You could search it back just a couple of weeks ago, looking at a Venus conjunction to this fixed star, and doing my best to talk about what is legitimately scary about this fixed star, because it can be a little dark. It's like Pluto, but also what might be misunderstood, or what the silver lining might be.

And I speak from personal experience as someone who was born with Algol on my ascendant. So you could also pair today's talk with that one, because the two together will approach things from some different angles. Anyway, we're going to talk about what it might mean that we're seeing a seeding point in a new moon conjoined with this very, very famous fixed star from ancient astrology. So that's our agenda for today.

Before we get into it, as always, remember to like and subscribe, share your comments and reflections. If you've got stories about Algol, I'd love to hear from you. You can find transcripts of any of these daily talks on my website. That's Nightlight astrology.com, couple of promotions today. First of all, tonight, if you go to the events page, click on monthly webinars. My talk this evening is called karma and common sense remedies for difficult chart placements.

If you'd like to attend that talk, you can register there. You get the link to attend the live webinar. It's from 6:30 to 8:30 roughly Eastern time. I will also send you the recording if you can't attend live, so hopefully that will make this feasible for some of you. If you can't make it tonight, you still get a really good talk on how do you deal with difficult chart placements.

Is there anything you can do to change them? We're going to talk about what ancient Indian astrologers said about this. The other thing is, obviously, we have daily meditation. Click on community quiet, you'll see that we have meditation seven days a week. It's free. You can find the schedule in the link to join us there. Hope to see you there.

And then, last but not least, I am super, super excited to share that my book is out. Oh my god. You guys have been hearing me talk about my book for several years, and it has been a labor of love. Hundreds of hours have gone into the writing of this book. Just a little background. I am someone who went to graduate school, both in a master's degree and a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative nonfiction writing.

Creative nonfiction writing means telling true stories, but telling them in ways that are as creative as possible. If you like this channel, there's a good chance you like it because of the way that I share a lot of personal stories. I use a lot of anecdotes from real life, and I am very open with sharing elements of my own life and my own learning process and observations from astrology.

This book is not a traditional astrology book, in the sense that it's like a textbook about astrology. This is a creatively told collection of stories from my life about the strange way that the cosmos starts speaking to you even prior to formally learning astrology, but eventually led me specifically to astrology. We live in an enchanted cosmos, and my guess is that if you're like me, astrology wove its way into your life in a really creative, interesting, sort of mysterious way.

This is a book that really celebrates the stories of our lives and the way that the cosmos comes to call us home. Like, hey, you live in an enchanted cosmos. The universe wants to talk to you. It wants to have a relationship with you. How did that happen for me, and specifically, how did that lead me to this thing we all love in astrology?

But I tried to pick stories from my life, tell them creatively in a way that anyone could relate to and celebrate and laugh and maybe cry along with. I poured my whole heart into this. There's nothing I've made in my life, aside from the courses that I've created, that I have poured more of myself into creatively than this book. I hope you will really like it and enjoy it.

Pick it up from our website, because we do a lot better when you get it here, as opposed to Barnes and Noble or Amazon. And also one request: if you get it, take a picture of yourself someplace fun with the book, and tag us on Instagram at Nightlight astrology. That would be really fun. It would mean a lot to us. Anyway, thank you so much.

So on that note, let's put up nechep So, and let's take a look at this. All right, we're putting up nechep So on the screen. If you like this software, I'm an affiliate and get a discount. That's in the comment section or the description of the video. Here you can see the conjunction between the Sun and Moon at 26 degrees of Taurus. It's actually very late 25. Algol sits around 26 degrees. So this is a straight up conjunction to Algol at the start of a new moon cycle.

Now, how long will this cycle last? Because the seeding point of a cycle tones the whole thing. So even though it's only a couple of hours in terms of the exact conjunction, what we're looking at carries forward in time. So we get a first quarter moon about May 23. We get that full moon effect going on about May 30. We get the last quarter moon around June 7, and then we get to the next new moon about June 14.

So it's about a full month where the themes and symbols of the start of a cycle will have an impact. They're the starting point of a story that's going to be told. And I want to give you today five things to watch for, given the interesting symbolism of Algol. All right, so the first thing on my list is naming what we fear over the course of this next moon cycle. I think that we have a really unique opportunity to face things that have been repressed or feared.

Let me explain why. So we know that Algol has long been associated with the severed head of Medusa. That's the myth, anyway. But psychologically, myths are meant to be played with. Even though some of the myths seem like these overt stories like, well, that was jerky to turn Medusa into a monster, and it kind of was, we're meant to think about that. We're meant to think about what these interactions mean.

And we don't live in a time where we're super familiar with these gods and goddesses any longer. And people back then worshiped them. So knowing these stories and playing with their depths is really important. So yes, Medusa is this monster, the Gorgon, but the severed head of Medusa, in a subtle way, is really about something that has been exiled, that has been demonized, that has been feared, that we can't bear to look at, because if you do, you get turned to stone.

That story is as much about transgressions that we refuse to acknowledge or look at as it is about just scary demons or monsters. And so a New Moon here can initiate a cycle in which things that we have previously avoided are demanding acknowledgement. That could be naming something that you fear, or talking about or looking at a trauma, being honest with ourselves around complicated feelings: rage, grief, shame, humiliation, vulnerability, pride, even.

I remember one of the Algol experiences that I had with Algol on my ascendant that I've told you guys about was, you know, in my early 20s. This is threaded through certain portions of my book. You know, I was dealing with addiction, and a lot of addicts will tell you they know they're addicted. I did, you know, but it was about a refusal to acknowledge it beyond a certain volume level.

Like, yes, I'm addicted, but let's keep the volume low on that. You know what I mean? My Algol experiences at the time of addiction were about confronting something that I didn't want to name because it was too hard to look at. And the reason it was too hard to look at is because the addict in me was wrapped up in a lot of pain and a lot of suffering and a lot of humiliation and grief and vulnerability.

So rather than just thinking about this fixed star as a dangerous star, something to be feared, I think it's also legitimately a star that wants us to look at what we fear. Why does fear exist at all? You know, I know people don't like when you whitewash a difficult thing. I don't like people whitewashing Pluto. Oh, Pluto, it's all rainbows. Pluto is not about rainbows. There's a reason that literal shit tends to come up with Pluto.

And I'm not saying that Algol doesn't have a real dark side, but a lot of that darkness is about things that have been exiled. Demons are, in a sense, if you think about the stories of demons, many of them are exiled or neglected elements of the human psyche. Many of them are things that someone has turned their back on. I'm not trying to make excuses for anyone or anything, but this is just a fact.

If we think about what Buddhism has taught us about looking at suffering, looking at the existence of fear, it is real and it is here. So like it or not, confronting fear, shame, grief, vulnerability, suffering, impermanence, death, decay, you can't live an authentic spiritual life without looking at these things. And yet, there's a reason that looking at this turns you to stone. It petrifies. We don't want to get petrified, but denial is a form of petrification.

Second one on my list is the reclamation of the feminine slash instinctual nature. Now Medusa is also a violated sacred feminine figure, and there is a real violation that happens and then a doubly bad betrayal in the story. One of the things that can happen when there's a myth, one of the things that draws our attention to an exiled feminine figure that turns into this monster. Well, yeah, if we think about it like this, we demonize the body, then the body becomes a problem, right?

Like think about ascetic traditions that denounce the body because it's worldly. Well, congratulations. You're now going to exist in a long, probably lifelong battle with the impulses, desires and natural conditions of being an animal, partly animal, right? If we turn things into monsters, especially earthly things, the feminine being associated in metaphysics with the earth, then what we end up doing is the hero becomes someone who's just constantly trying to slay the demons of lower natural impulses.

But lower natural impulses are not just bad. I mean, sure, if you drink too much, if you become an addict because you can't control your material impulses, then in some ways, your addiction and your problems with material energy are a monster, and you have to overcome that monster. So that can be very real with alcohol, as someone who went through it myself. At the same time, one of the things when I went through Ayahuasca ceremonies, what were those ceremonies like when facing the addiction? Screaming, pooping, crying, vomiting, and really, really coming back into the body.

Well, how did that grief feel that led to the addiction that was wrapped up in the choice, the compulsion, the behavior? Well, it felt terrible. Well, what did you do to express that? Nothing. I shoved it down because I thought it was unruly. It was not okay to look at the feel of grief or suffering or anxiety or depression or rage or confusion. It was not okay. I had to go to work, I had to go to school, I had to get a job. I had to keep doing these things. There was no time or space for those things.

They need to be gotten over in a little time, okay, but not much, you know. So Medusa says there has to be enough time, because you'll keep coming back until there is enough time, you know, and I'm playing. I have no idea what the cosmic bureaucracy is like. I have no idea what we're coming back for or whatnot. We don't want to silence ourselves in order to remain acceptable or non threatening. We don't want to dissociate. We need to reclaim instinct and embodiment.

And by embodiment, I don't mean a nice bubble bath. I mean, you could take a bubble bath, and it could be a very embodied thing, but I am talking about the more I think, for example, about if you have animals in your life, you know what I'm talking about. We're talking about a basic instinctual level of our existence that we like to think, oh, we're so exceptional because we're above it, but it exists in us too, and just not constantly repressing it, but allowing it to be there without also becoming a monster is important.

I mean, you don't have to lick anyone's butt. That's what my dogs do. Oh, okay, I've lost it. Let's go on. Encounters with shadow, shadow material and projection. Oh, you know, Algol creates a lot of projection. I mean, you don't have to go far to the betrayal from another woman. After Algol has been violated, then it's a woman who turns her into a monster. That's projection. What we condemn, what we fear, that we project onto someone or something else, complex realities that defy my need for simple, peaceful existence. Pluto likes this too, right?

Well, you ever met a complicated person, a person that disturbs you? They disturbed you because there's a power, there's a Shakti, there's a creative charge, but they're not the most stable energy. So one way of dealing with that might be to say that person's messed up. Just get them away from me. They're possessed, they're dark energy, they're bad energy. I remember I was a social worker in New York City, and part of my book captures some of these stories.

I worked every day as an art and activities therapist with adults who were diagnosed with schizophrenia, and these were non violent people who had no history of violence in their diagnosis, I guess, and they were people who I would say there was a lot of this that I felt. I felt this like, oh, it would be easy for me to just say that's ill, that's sick. And I'm not dismissing the experience of suffering that some of these people had, because they openly talked about their experience and their diagnosis as suffering.

But many of them were also very comfortable with who they were and with their diagnosis, not just as dysfunction, but as complexity, as just something different. Two things can be true. A person can feel afflicted by an element of their selfhood, while also at home in it. The two things don't cancel each other out. We can take complex realities and just call them monsters because they threaten something, a complex person, a complex reality that we just don't want to look at. Anything like that, the projection, the shadow material, stuff we don't want to look at, that's very Algol.

I call this one creative ferocity and untamed expression. There's something that's very similar about Algol and Pluto. They both have that very fertile, very feminine, fertile quality to them, while also being destructive at times. Pluto is very volcanic and primal and uncompromising in its displays of raw force and libido and energy. Algol is very similar. But getting in touch, I mean, I think most of us end up feeling unhappy or unsatisfied with our lives to the extent that we don't have some semi regular contact with energies that are both destructive and creative in ourselves and in the world.

There's just an edge that if we don't come ever so close to, we end up not feeling very alive. For some people, that's as simple as dance, or being vulnerable dancing with others or something. It doesn't have to be destructive in a super literalized, violent way, but it's destructive in that it shatters the mode that you're in. Ever had a day where you just kind of flip the script, you flip the table of your psyche, and you go, yeah, I just got to do something different. That's it. It's that simple. That's disruptive, powerful creative energy.

Algol is like that, and we turn to stone if we fear the gaze of that creative energy looking into us and saying, yeah, fuck with your own shit. Do something ridiculous. Okay, oh my god. All right, how about the initiatory dimension, last but not least? Now mythically, encounters with Medusa, you could say, are very initiatory. And the reason for that is that something, let's say you're in a pattern with your health, and you know that your lifestyle and some of the nagging issues with your body are connected, but you can manage it, you can live with it.

And so you just go, okay, one day at a time, over a long period of time, it just gets gradually worse and gradually worse. And you're like, yeah, but it's manageable. Then there will come a time where that thing that has been calcifying slowly, that thing that has been slowly becoming the death of you, that thing will suddenly, boom, just turn into hard stone, and you will hit it, and you'll go, oh, now I see. I see what neglect over a long period of time has done, or what a pattern over a long period of time has done, and now there's something that can be released.

Because when you look into the eyes of Medusa and she looks back at you, either what happens is something turns into stone in terms of, you didn't see that, I didn't see that, we didn't see anything, right? So just total denial. That's one response to Algol. The other one is to see, to say, there is no way I can unsee what I just saw through your eyes, Madam Medusa. Through your eyes, I have seen something that has crystallized. It is something I cannot unsee. I have to look at it.

And that initiates us. That becomes an ego death kind of experience, end of denial, end of an illusion, end of some kind of false innocence or performative identity. No, have fun. So you guys, I'm just so happy that my book is out. I don't even care. I'm just kidding. Here's my book. I don't even have a bound copy of it yet, you guys. I just have the unbound copy that was for review from the press. But anyway, here's the book, The Oracle Speaks.

I would so love it if you guys would check it out. If you like this channel, I think there's a really high probability that you'll enjoy reading this. So anyway, I'll leave it there for today. Next I'm going to tell you about the year one program. Come study with us. It's going to be an awesome experience. We'll see you again soon. Bye, everyone.

Hey, everyone, thanks for sticking around. I'm excited to tell you about our upcoming program, Ancient Astrology for the Modern Mystic. This is our first year class in ancient Hellenistic astrology, and it begins again in June. I'm going to tell you about this program, all that it includes, so you know exactly what to expect if you decide to come and study with us.

I want to start by talking a little bit about how you know if it's the right time to study astrology or not, which is a question I get asked all the time. First of all, I would say that the way that you know you're ready to study astrology at a deeper level and take a more serious class is that it doesn't just feel like curiosity any longer. It feels like something that you can't stop thinking about, or a way of seeing the world and viewing your experiences that you constantly think about, or almost like a filter that you experience life through.

If you are often thinking about fate and free will, purpose, meaning, if you tend to see and understand and experience symbolism in everyday events all of the time, these are some of the key things that I've noticed generally start happening for people when they might be ready to study astrology more seriously. Some people don't just like astrology. There's a call to study it. There's a call for it to be a primary spiritual form of practice, or maybe even professional practice.

I want to talk about who this is right for: people who want to go deeper, not just memes, not just horoscopes, not just taking in content passively, but for people who love symbolism, who love myth, who love divination, who want a structured path with a stable lineage. Lots of students have come through our programs. Our programs have helped build many professional careers at this point in the larger field of astrology.

And if you feel a little bit overwhelmed with trying to weed or sort through all of the information that's out there on your own, beginners are absolutely welcome in this program with no prior experience, because we start from the ground up. At the same time, people who already have a background and are more intermediate or advanced but have not yet gone through a structured study of ancient Hellenistic astrology, ancient philosophy and the ancient practices and techniques of this craft, you're going to be starting in the same place.

A beginner's background in astrology will help you tremendously. But this is a program that is ideally for total beginners, or people who are new to Hellenistic astrology and have never gotten that traditional background. I want to talk about what you're going to learn in the program. You're going to learn the foundations of ancient traditional astrology, starting with some history, some basic astronomy and philosophy to help you really understand. What is karma? What is fate? What is destiny? What is divination?

What is the epistemological mode of understanding that ancient people were living in? They were living, for example, in an animistic sense of the cosmos that they thought spoke through the Oracle of the planets and stars. What does that mean for us today? Where does the study of fate, destiny, karma, the evolution of the soul, play into all of this, transmigration, reincarnation? We really try to set a strong philosophical foundation.

And from there, we move through the primary components of the language: planets, signs, houses, and then the different ways in which those features interact with each other through things like aspects, dignity, accidental and essential dignity. And then we start tying things together through interpretive methodology. All of this is something that if you have a background in modern astrology, that'll help you, but this is also a whole other level of seriousness and specific craft based ideas that are unique to Hellenistic astrology.

Everything we do at Nightlight incorporates a modern psychological and archetypal perspective. And my background is also in modern evolutionary astrology, and I have a background in Indian philosophy and yoga. So you're going to find that there's a little bit of a cauldron of different spiritual and philosophical backgrounds that are present, even though our main focus is Hellenistic. You're going to learn about ancient techniques, but you're also going to learn how to apply them in the modern world we live in today.

How does the course work logistically? Let's talk about that for a second. It's a year. It's a year long container. There are live classes. There are also recordings. So if you can't make it live, you can follow along with anything at your own pace. In fact, you have a couple of years in which to work before you would have to submit an exam, and the exam itself is optional only for people who are seeking certification because you're interested in practicing professionally.

We have discussion forums, discussion in and outside of class year round. We have tutors on staff who also lead breakout sessions for review in between our major units of study. So there's 30 classes in the year, and then there's about six breakout study sessions, give or take. And those study sessions are there to help complement the work we do in class. You can go at your own pace. Toward the end of the program, we have a lot of practice sessions that are meant to work through charts together and that also feature live readings with real clients.

So you can see what a day in the life of practice looks like for me as a practitioner, and see all the things we're studying applied with real people in a real, live setting. The thing that to me is most important is, why study here, right? Why study with me and our staff? It has to do with fit. If you love this channel, if you love the way I teach and talk about astrology, then you're probably going to really love studying with us.

The people that I've selected to be a part of my staff are people whose spiritual lifestyle and values are similar to my own, who were standout students in understanding the way that I taught and worked with the material myself in practice, and who are competent astrologers working with other people. I've been practicing for 16 years full time. I've seen over 13,000 clients, and I have led four to five thousand students now, at this point, through our programs.

My approach is rooted in ancient, Hellenistic traditional techniques, but it has a real spiritual, ecumenical vibe at Nightlight that's really open to a lot of different traditions, and that also allows you to make your own practice and build your own meaning out of the content that we provide you with. The practical application is that you're going to have a tool that helps you navigate your life spiritually, philosophically, a practical tool that you can use for yourself, family, people you care about for the rest of your life.

At the same time, you may find, whether it's your intention or not, that you're also ready to practice for other people. Many people come through our programs and are able to practice part time to full time astrology. To me, the big takeaway from this is not just the learning, not just the prep for potential professional practice, but that you are going to feel confident reading charts, you're going to have a deeper understanding of the cycles of your own life and working with astrology in your own life.

But most profoundly, people tend to come out of this program feeling spiritually transformed, feeling healed, feeling like they have a spiritual path in life that will last them for the rest of their lives. When astrology becomes a daily living spiritual practice, then you know that you've really, really learned something that way, the way that astrology is always intended to be learned, which is to accompany you as a spiritual path in life.

This is absolutely huge. And this is, to me, the biggest payoff of studying at Nightlight, is that you're being grounded in a tradition and a lineage that I see as strong as a technical, predictive tool, but also as a counseling tool and as a way of living a spiritual path. So if you want to enroll, start date is June 28, 2026. Enrollment is now open on the website. I'm going to take you over there in a second and show you where to go.

Early bird discount is available, so you're going to save majorly off the course cost. If you register early, do that and check it out, you'll save big on the cost of the course. However, there's also need based tuition, and there's a payment plan you can use as well. So we have payment flexibility that's built into the way the program works. You can do it month by month. You can pay for it upfront, get that early bird discount, or you can use need based tuition if you're hurting financially and need a lower price point.

We don't want people overspending, overextending themselves, going outside of their budget. And you shouldn't have to live outside your means to study a sacred topic. That's a big belief of ours. So head over to Nightlight astrology.com. Go to the Courses page, click on the first year course. Scroll down. You'll see everything you need to know about the program. And at the bottom you'll find the early bird payment plans. You're going to save a couple hundred dollars off the course of the program when you use the early bird rate or the early bird installment plan that does it all at once or over the course of 12 months.

But if you're like, I want to take this, but I don't have the means to do it, check out the tuition assistance, because that is going to greatly help you when it comes to making the course affordable. That allows you to pick your tuition costs per month within a range of different options that you have. So there's a price range, and we just say, pick your price within there and tell us your situation. It's that simple.

Please do take advantage of it. We trust that people won't use that when they could afford it. We trust that people are using it for the right reasons. So take advantage of that. It's there for you. If you are feeling this call to study astrology, Nightlight is a safe, sweet community space that has a lot of support built into it: relational support, community support, spiritual support. So check it out. I hope to see you guys in June. If you have any questions at all about the program, email us at info at nightlightastrology.com. See you soon.