#364-"You Will Come at a Turning of the Trail"--Week of May 11, 2026

Rooting What Is Genuinely New

This is a week of gathering and crossing.

After the weight of recent weeks, there is a breath here. A moment of coherence before the next movement begins. And what is gathering is significant. At the end of this week, three of the five personal planets will change signs within two days. The relational field, the communicating mind, and the instinctual body are all crossing thresholds nearly simultaneously.

It is worth paying attention to what you are carrying into this crossing, and what you might be ready to leave on this side of it.

Key Cycles This Week:

Tues, May 12: Mercury in Taurus sextiles Jupiter in Cancer. 

The mind finds some ease. Something clicks into place. A piece of understanding arrives that feels both true and spacious. Let it ground you before the acceleration that follows.

Thurs May 14: Sun conjunct Mercury in Taurus. 

What has been circling internally may find language now. This conjunction also marks the midpoint of a four-month Mercury cycle, the moment when something you have been developing moves from testing into building. If a project or evolving body of work is ready to take more visible shape, this is that threshold.

Sat, May 16: New Moon at 26 degrees of Taurus conjunct Uranus in early Gemini and Mars conjunct Chiron in Aries. 

The New Moon invites planting, but not simply what is comfortable or familiar. With Uranus nearby, what wants to take root is genuinely new. Something that may ask you to leave a known identity behind and root yourself in authentic emergence rather than safe repetition. What do you actually value that is genuinely new? Not what survival required you to prioritize, not what has served you in a chapter that may now be completing. 

At the same time, Mars meets Chiron, the Wounded Healer and Shamanic One. In the ancient understanding, the wounded healer does not heal despite their wound. They heal through it. The medicine they carry to the people is precisely what was forged in their own descent. Where you have been most broken open may be exactly where your most authentic medicine lives.

Sun, May 17: Mercury enters Gemini and conjuncts Uranus. plus Venus in Gemini sextiles Chiron in Aries. 

The mind quickens and the acceleration arrives. Stay anchored in the body and direct experience even as the mental field speeds up. Venus sextiling Chiron offers a relational thread, healing available in honest conversation and the simple act of being witnessed in something tender.

Reflection Questions

1. What is genuinely wanting to take root in me right now, not what should, but what my body and deeper knowing recognize as authentically new?
2. Where in my own story has a wound or difficult passage begun to reveal itself as a form of medicine or gift?
3. As the mental field begins to accelerate, what helps me stay anchored in my own direct experience?

This is a real crossing. Let what is true become speakable. Let what wants to grow, even if it surprises you, have the quiet attention it deserves.

Podcast poem: Questo Muro by Anita Barrows

Transcript

0:07

Hello, welcome to Astrology Alchemy. I'm Shelia Bélanger, your host for this podcast. Alchemy is defined as a seemingly magical process of transformation. Spiritual alchemy is the process of pursuing the gold of your true nature by transmuting the unrefined, limiting parts of yourself. In this podcast, I'll offer you inspiring insights from current astrology cycles that support your path of turning your personal lead into gold. More resources are available at the website ontheedgesofchange.com. Hello, and welcome to episode number 364 of the Astrology Alchemy podcast. Your host and guide, Sheila Bélanger, is here, and this is for the week of May 11th, 2026. Here's a phrase from this week's poem. "You will come at a turning of the trail." Something is shifting in register this week. After the wait and reckoning of recent weeks, the pressure of Pluto turning inward, the friction of hard squares and difficult truths, this week carries a different quality. Not that the larger transformation has paused. It hasn't. But there is a breath here, a moment of gathering before the next movement begins, and what is gathering is significant. By the end of this week, three of the five personal planets will change signs within two days. The relational field, Venus, the communicating mind, Mercury, and the instinctive body, Mars, are all crossing thresholds nearly simultaneously. That's not ordinary. It is worth paying attention to what you are carrying into this crossing, and what you might be ready to leave on this side of it. Here are the key cycles for this week. On Tuesday, May 12th, Mercury in Taurus sextiles Jupiter in Cancer. Here, the mind finds some ease. Thank you. After last week's hard square between Mercury and Pluto, where thought met the transformer and nothing could stay on the surface, this is a welcome opening. Mercury in Taurus thinks slowly, carefully through the body and the senses. Jupiter in Cancer expands through feeling, through belonging, through what nourishes. Together, they offer a quality of meaningful insight. Something might click into place. A conversation opens. A piece of understanding arrives that feels both true and spacious. You might notice a moment of clarity this week that carries genuine warmth. Trust it Let it ground you before the acceleration that follows. On Thursday, May fourteenth, the sun is conjunct Mercury and Taurus. The conscious self and the communicator align. This is a moment of coherence. When what you know and who you are feel less fragmented, more integrated. What has been circling internally may find language now. What you've been sensing beneath the surface may become speakable. This conjunction also marks the midpoint of a four-month Mercury cycle. The time when a communication project, creative initiative, or evolving body of understanding that began around mid-March moves from testing into building. If something you've been developing is ready to take more visible shape, this is the threshold where that becomes possible. Taurus, remember, asks that the truth be grounded, real, not performed or rushed, just honest and present. On Saturday, May sixteenth, we have a new moon at twenty-six degrees of Taurus, which is conjunct Uranus in early Gemini, and also Mars conjunct Chiron in Aries. Two significant movements on the same day. The new moon in Taurus is an invitation to plant something. But this is not an ordinary Taurus new moon. With Uranus, the maverick in early Gemini, casting its influence over this lunation, what wants to take root is not simply comfortable or familiar. It is something new. Something that may ask you to leave a known identity behind. To root yourself in a direction that feeds genuine innovation, authentic expression, or a way of being that your old comfort zone could not have held. Taurus still ask that this rooting be real, sensory, embodied, chosen from the body's knowing rather than the mind's ambition. But Uranus asks that what takes root be alive with authentic emergence rather than safe repetition What wants to grow in you that is genuinely new? At the same time, Mars meets Chiron in Aries. The action taker meets the wounded healer, shamanic one. In the ancient understanding, the wounded healer does not heal despite their wound, they heal through it. The medicine they carry to the people is precisely what was forged in their own descent, the place where they broke open, where they lost what they thought would sustain them, where they were forced to find a deeper source of strength. Chiron in myth was the center who could not heal his own wound, and yet that unhealing wound becomes the source of his wisdom. What he could not fix in himself, he could transmit to others as medicine. Mars conjunct Chiron asks, where have you metabolized your wound into gift? Where has what once immobilized you become a form of precision, of knowing, of capacity to be present with others in their own pain? This is not a call to bypass the wound or perform wellness around it. It is an invitation to recognize that the places where you have been most broken open may be exactly where your most authentic medicine lives. You might notice this as a moment where something that has long felt complicated around will, desire, or the right to act becomes just slightly more workable. Not because the wound is gone, but because it has been recognized as belonging to something larger than personal failure. On Sunday, May seventeenth, Mercury enters Gemini. Venus in Gemini sextiles Chiron in Aries. Mercury conjuncts Uranus in early Gemini. And here, my friends, is where the acceleration arrives. Mercury moves into Gemini, one of its home signs. And immediately meets Uranus, the disruptor and awakener. The mind quickens, connections form rapidly. Ideas arrive faster than they can be integrated. There is brilliance available here, and also volatility. The risk of moving so quickly through insight that none of it has time to land. This is Uranus and Gemini making itself known through the personal field. The invitation is not to slow the mind down, that won't work. But to stay anchored in the body, in direct experience, in what the senses confirm as real, even as the mental field accelerates. Venus in Gemini sextiling Chiron in Aries adds a relational thread. There is healing available in how we speak to each other right now. In conversations that acknowledge vulnerability without requiring it to disappear. In the simple act of being witnessed in something that has been quietly tender. And that can include self-witnessing. I also want to give you a note on what is just around the corner and coming next week. On Monday, May eighteenth, Mars enters Taurus and Venus enters Cancer. Three of the five personal planets shifting signs within two days. The instinctive body Mars slows and grounds. The relational field Venus moves towards nurturing, belonging, and deeper care. What has been moving fast is about to find a different rhythm. This week is the threshold between those two registers. Use it to orient, to name what is true, to plant what-- with what wants to grow. To plant what wants to grow. Here's a larger frame to consider with this week. New moons are always invitations to begin. But a new moon in Taurus conjunct Uranus asks something particular. What do you actually value that is genuinely new? Not what you have been told to value- Not what survival required you to prioritize. Not even what has served you well in a chapter that may now be completing. What in your body, in your bones, in the quiet of your own knowing is genuinely worth growing now in this new terrain? That question is not separate from the larger collective reckoning. The dominator culture that is breaking down was built on a distorted relationship to value, extractive, quantifying, treating the living world as resource. Part of what is being born in this time is a different relationship to what matters. And the wounded healers among us, those who have metabolized their own descent into medicine, a part of how... are part of how that new way finds its form. This new moon is a small but real opportunity to align with that, to let your own values embodied, chosen, forged in genuine experience take root. Here are three reflection questions to support you during the week. First, what is genuinely wanting to take root in me right now? Not what should, but what my body and deeper knowing recognize as authentically new. Second, where in my own story has a wound, a breaking open, or a difficult passage begun to reveal itself as a form of medicine or gift, something I now carry for others? And thirdly, as the mental field begins to accelerate What helps me stay anchored in my own direct experience and embodied knowing? The poem for this week's podcast that came really supports us to make some choices about moving beyond comfort zone, old ways of being, old relationship patterns. It's called Questo Muro by Anita Barroz. Questo Muro means this wall. You will come at a turning of the trail to a wall of flame. After the hard climb and the exhausted dreaming, you will come to a place where he with whom you have walked this far will stop and stand beside you on the treacherous steep path and stare as you shiver at the moving wall, the flame that blocks your vision of what comes after. And that one who you thought would accompany you always, who held your face tenderly a little while in his hands, who pressed the palms of his hands into drenched grass and washed from your cheeks the tear tracks. He is telling you now that all that stands between you and everything you have known since the beginning is this, this wall between yourself and the beloved, between yourself and your joy. The riverbank swaying with wildflowers, the shaft of sunlight on the rock, the song. Will you pass through it now? Will you let it consume whatever solidness this is you call your life and send you out a tremor of heat, a radiance, a changed flickering thing? Questo Muro by Anita Barroz. Some of you may meet your wall of flame this week. Some of you may feel that trembling That you've come as far as you can with the old patterns, the old ways, the old relationships. And some of you may decide, "I don't want this wall between myself and my beloveds, between myself and my joy." Perhaps you will feel ready to pass through it now and become some kind of changed flickering thing, perhaps bringing the medicine of what you've metabolized in your descent. Perhaps our world might make some choices this week to go through the wall of flame and become a changed flickering thing to benefit all of us. Thank you. So dear ones, this is a week of gathering and crossing. The ground of Taurus, slow, embodied, real, is offering you a moment to plant something before the pace quickens again. Let yourself be in that ground. Let what is true become speakable. Let what wants to grow, even if it surprises you, even if it requires leaving something familiar behind, have the quiet attention it deserves. The larger transformation continues, and within it, there are moments like this, where the earth itself is inviting a different kind of presence, and where your own wounds, metabolized and honored, become part of what heals the world. Trust that. Continue to be full of gratitude for my community. Thank you for all the ways you support this podcast. Some of you do it by donation financially. Thank you so much. Some of you do it by coming and listening every week. Thank you. And some of you pass on the word to friends and connections to say, "Check out this podcast." Some of you even leave a review. Whatever you're doing, feel my gratitude. And I wanna remind you If you're feeling the movement of these cycles and would value grounded support in understanding your own patterns, there are just a few astrology sessions available in the spring to help you orient within your unique chart. If you'd like to do that with me, you can learn more and schedule at my website, ontheedgesofchange.com/astrology. Thank you. You have been listening to the Astrology Alchemy podcast with your host, Shelia Bélanger. Resources are available at the website ontheedgesofchange.com. Thank you for listening. Bless your alchemical journey to embrace the gold of your true nature.