New Moon of Ancient Rooting in Taurus with Huitlacoche and Wood Ear

Welcome to the New Moon of Ancient Rooting in 14° 11' Taurus on May 4, 2019 (15:46 PST), Earth's 10th New Moon in this Lunar Year. The Sun and the Moon are aligned midway through Taurus (both in 14 degrees) -- the fullest blossoming of the sign. With slow sturdiness we enter into the thriving of springtime. Filled with gratitude for our roots, take a message or two from home. Taurus is the wisdom of simpleness. It is old earth, old ancestors, reminding us of the fullness, simpleness, and slowness of life itself. Listen to your feelings and be patient enough to allow yourself embody how you feel. Oxygenate your blood, your body, mind, and spirit. Taurus brings spirit into form and loves to love. This Moon's fungi, Huitlacoche (Corn Smut or Ustilago maydis) and Wood Ear Fungus (Auricularia auricula), inspire us to tend our gardens and graze our grain by not just listening to the body but also to live in, through, and with our body. 

Transit Chart for New Moon of Ancient Rooting in 14° 11' Taurus on May 4, 2019 (15:46 PST) (Astrotheme.com).

The Sun and Moon are at 14° 11' in carnal, fixed earth Taurus. Taurus brings lots of goodies into the next Moon cycle as well as into the next 7 years as Uranus transits Taurus. We start this New Moon cycle with the Sun, Moon, and Uranus in Taurus. By the illuminating Full Moon on May 18th, in Taurus' axial friend Scorpio, both Mercury and Venus will have also arrived in Taurus. We are seeping with rich Taurean energy inviting us to set intentions of sensual attention toward slowing down and listening to what we want to grow.

On May 6th Mercury, planet of the mind and communication, enters Taurus until May 21st. Simple Taurus feels strong and sturdy with attention to one thing at a time. There is a lot of Taurus energy in the next month, especially as Uranus recently entered Taurus in March to begin its 7 year transit. This is a potent New Moon to set intentions of what you'd like to build and add material to for the next 7 years. Uranus is shaking things up in Taurus' realm, and especially whichever house Taurus lies in in your chart. How can you embody what you are feeding? 

May 15th marks Venus (planet of loving and connectivity) exiting Aries and beginning transit through Taurus (until June 8, 2019) and Mars (planet of doing things and the will) exiting Gemini and beginning transit through Cancer (until July 1, 2019). The ways we love and attract love are exiting a spirited force and coming into a slow suppleness. The ways we act and initiate movement are entering the zodiac sign of the home and how we became the person that we are. Further connecting us to our belongingness, roots, safety, and security. Transparency and honesty are very powerful in this domain.

Taurus New Moon May 4, 2019 MycoAstrological Associations:

1) Huitlacoche (Ustilago maydis): nourishment, ancient wisdom, tradition, habitat, embodiment, embracing change, attention, life generation
MycoAstrological Correspondences: Planet: Saturn; Secondary Planet: Venus; Day: Saturday; Main Organ: Spleen; 2nd Organ: Bone/Joint; System: Skeletal/Structural; Tissue: Bones; Action: Cold/Dry

2) Wood Ear (Auricularia auricula): auditory hallucinations, silence, inner voice, doors of perception, listening, tinnitus, stillness, autism spectrum disorder, verbal communication

MycoAstrological Correspondences: Planet: Moon; Secondary Planet: Mars; Day: Monday; Main Organ: Brain; 2nd Organ: Stomach; System: Nervous; Tissue: Marrow; Action: Cold/Moist

This is a potent time to be reminded of and to visualize our roots, or the micorrhizosphere, the area in the soil in which the mycelium and roots connect, thereby extending the reach of the roots and allowing for greater nutrition intake, resiliency, and strength. 

Taurus is old earth. Listen to the wisdom of your elders and your roots. Are fungi our oldest relatives? Our fungi our oldest earth-bound relatives? Did they travel to us from another galaxy? Did we travel to us from another galaxy? We are home, here in sensual embodiment as well as all of the other planes of existence. Taurus reminds us of the forms we take on our physical coexistence with earth. 

Taurus ingests, slowly grazing the fields and building up sustenance for the next day. What are you ingesting, in all facets? What are you digesting and letting weave through your body? Taurus is earth-centered healing and thriving, flourishing at its best. Taurus is impassioned and intoxicated by love, life, and pleasure. Taurus is inspired by sensuality, in other words it gives breath to form. How does the medicine make a story out of you? Out of your imprint on earth? How are you in relation to your medicines? And, what are you decomposing? 

Taurus is simply one side of the axis it sits on -- of the Taurus/Scorpio polarity and also understood as houses 2 and 8. The zodiac signs of life and death, of simpleness and complexity. Taurus invites us to embody our senses and to live fully and pleasurably, to slow things down enough so we are able to listen and tune into our embodiment, because often it isn't easy and might not seem so simple. While we meditate on our New Moon intentions of how we want to sustain our forms and how we want to enjoy life, we are also receiving an infinite invitation to ponder the abyss of death. The release. The complexity of decomposition and transformation. Feel things get warm and also feel the sun move behind the clouds of a springtime rainstorm moving through the atmosphere -- feel things get cold.

Taurus reminds us we are all magicians of Life. Brewers of the stew.  


1) Huitlacoche (Ustilago maydis): nourishment, ancient wisdom, tradition, habitat, embodiment, embracing change, attention, life generation
MycoAstrological Correspondences: Planet: Saturn; Secondary Planet: Venus; Day: Saturday; Main Organ: Spleen; 2nd Organ: Bone/Joint; System: Skeletal/Structural; Tissue: Bones; Action: Cold/Dry

Huitlacoche (Ustilago maydis) or Corn Smut (logatfer.wordpress.com).

Huitlacoche, or Corn Smut, is a smut that ripens in savory masses on corn and teosinte species after a rainy season in Mexico and communities in Central America. Smuts (+1,000 species) are in the phylum Basidiomycota and are named for the masses of black dusty spores they produce which resemble the archaic root for smut -- soot. This fungus has been a delicacy among Southern and Meso-American societies including Aztec, Maya, and Hopi for thousands of years. The Aztecs who referred to this smut as "Huitlacoche" or  "Raven's Excrement" are known to have scratched their corn stalks to encourage the fungus' growth. It is also known in various languages and cultures by many names and is associated with the generation of life.

Corn Smut alters the nutrient content of corn by increasing protein levels from as low as 3% to as high as 19%. The fungus can dramatically boost levels of lysine and introduces 16 other amino acids. There is new research suggesting that beginning around 400 BCE the ancestral Pueblo people, who lived in what is now known as the Four Corners region of the U.S., relied on the critical nutrients from the Corn Smut as an intentional part of their diet for 800 years.  

While Ustilago maydis is a sacred delicacy in Meso-American communities, U.S. and European farmers see the fungus as a blight, which is a general umbrella term that refers to a disease that infects plant tissue by exhibiting a variety of symptoms of death, often like wilting, withering, or browning. Ustilago maydis causes about 4% of crop loss in the U.S. each year, compared to an estimated 80% of loss from farm blights in the 19th and 20th centuries. U.S. farmers don't take a liking to this fungus as it causes loss of vitality and weight as well as cosmetic disfigurement. The enormous decline of farm blights can be attributed to widespread pesticide and fungicide use.

Mainstream U.S. farming practices are considerably in the monocrop style, where a single crop is planted for acres if not miles, and a loss of diversity in the habitat creates imbalances in the ecosystem which allows crops to be much more susceptible in being overthrown by competitive fungal diseases like blights and corn smut. The huge loss of crops in the 19th and 20th centuries (80% losses) were huge indicators that the practices of U.S. agriculture was unsustainable. The subsequent rampant use of toxic pesticides, fungicides, and fertilizers reveal that the abrasive and stressful standards of current agriculture practices have been pushed underneath the carpet for far too long.

Ustilago maydis is a sacred fungus to Meso-American communities as well as a Vocal Fungus. Vocal Fungi are the fungi who are instigators of change and cleansers of disease, and the fungi that consume the living tissue of other organisms. Ustilago maydis is a biotrophic fungus, meaning it feeds on the living tissue of organisms but does not kill their host. Other biotrophic Vocal Fungi include rusts and mildews. Also within the biotrophic definition are Necrotrophs, who invade and ultimately kill their organisms, like Vascular Wilts, Entomopathogenic fungi, or Seed Cullers ("Damping Off"), or Ripe Fruit Lovers like the common Botrytis cinera. 

In the body, Taurus is connected to the throat and cerebellum. Taurus is related to every way the throat functions, from vibrations of the vocal chords when singing, uttering our first sounds and cries, or asking for what you need, to the thyroid gland and the throat's consumption of nourishment. Huitlacoche is both a Vocal Fungus, inviting us to listen into our physical existence in our given habitats, as well as a rich delicacy that goes back thousands of years.

Huitlacoche soup ingredients (TyrantFarms.com).

Fungi and their spores are ubiquitously found in our ecosystems in the air we breath, soil beneath our feet, and consistently traveling by the wind or hitching a ride off someone or something. Vocal Fungi only tend to arise and forcefully alter their environment when suitable conditions present themselves -- perhaps when the fungus enters moist, humid conditions, or more commonly when an imbalance presents itself in an organism or in an ecosystem. While most fungi subtly guide succession in a habitat through nutrient cycling and the formation of symbiotic relationships, the Vocal Fungi are much more visible in their effects, brazenly drawing attention to change in a physical body.

An example of Vocal Fungi is blight, which is usually caused by the importation of plants that have not adapted to the fungal forces in their new environment or by the monocropping of a singular plant species making the habitat susceptible to being overtaken by disease. Where natural diversity lacks, vocal fungi prevail. 

In a way the Vocal Fungi provide "checks and balances" in an ecosystem, helping manage the diversity and population of organisms in complex ways that humans are beginning to understand. Whereas other fungi support the immediate life of individuals, the Vocal Fungi tend to the positive growth in a given habitat over a long term. 

Modern humans largely misinterpret the role of the Vocal Fungi. Many land managers uphold unsustainable practices like the use of toxic pesticides, which are often excused by the scapegoat of these forceful fungi. People working with the land often ignore the ecological importance that these Vocal species hold. Vocal Fungi invite humans back to the wild earth, to interact with, remember, and learn from acts of clearing and cleansing. 


2) Wood Ear (Auricularia auricula): auditory hallucinations, silence, inner voice, doors of perception, listening, tinnitus, stillness, autism spectrum disorder, verbal communication

MycoAstrological Correspondences: Planet: Moon; Secondary Planet: Mars; Day: Monday; Main Organ: Brain; 2nd Organ: Stomach; System: Nervous; Tissue: Marrow; Action: Cold/Moist

Wood Ear (Auricularia auricula) (MDC Discover Nature).

Wood Ear fungus is a jelly fungus whose eerie ear-shape is a reminder that the fungi are listening to us listen to our bodies. The earth is hungry for our love and receptivity, just as each day our bodies ask the same of us. This species has many common names over the earth like Wood Ear, Cloud Ear, Rat's Ear, Black Jelly Fungus, or my personal favorite, Hairy Forest Jellyfish (arage kikurage in Japanese). The hymenium, the spore-producing surface of the fungus, also suggests a resemblance to the throat or other organs of the body. 

Traditional Chinese medicine has long used the Cloud Ear mushroom for providing a lightness and strength to the body and the will. It has been used in Chinese medicine for thousands of years for hemorrhoids and as a stomach tonic. It is consumed for mental and physical energy, nourishes the lungs, replenishes after childbirth, and improves blood circulation. This mushroom has anti-hepatitis, anti-mutagenic, anti-aging, anti-ulcer, and anti-coagulant properties. Ingestion of this fungus has been reported to reduce the chance of heart attack. 

Hairy Forest Jellyfish (Auricularia auricula) (Flickr).

In Chinese tradition, the ear represents yin and embodies the moon (whereas the eye represents yang and sun). The ear is receiving of the Taurean sounds made from the voice. 

Wood Ear helps us discern if our inner voice is coming from a place of balance or fear. In a place of imbalance, words may be spoken, or decisions made, that cannot be taken back. Listen to your body. Listen to what is around you. Wood Ear with Taurus teach us to not push off what is in your immediate surroundings for something in the distance or in the future. In slowness and presence we find love, cohesion, patience, and endurance.  

Citations

1. Arora, David (1996). All That the Rain Promises and More...:A Hip Pocket Guide to Western Mushrooms. Berkeley, California: Ten Speed Press
2. Battillo, J (2018). The role of corn fungus in Basketmaker II diet: A paleonutrition perspective on early corn farming adaptations (Vol. 21). Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
3. Coltrain, J.B., & Jantski, J.C. (2013). The stable and radio-isotope chemistry of southeastern Utah Basketmaker II burials: Dietary analysis using the linear mixing model SISUS, age and sex patterning, geolocation and temporal patterning (12th ed. Vol. 40). Journal of Archaeological Sciences.
4. McCoy, Peter (2016). Radical Mycology: A treatise on seeing and working with fungi. MycoAstrological Correspondences by Jason Scott. Portland, Oregon: Chtheaus Press.
5. Rogers, Robert (2016). Mushroom Essences: Vibrational Healing From the Kingdom Fungi. Berkley, California: North Atlantic Books