Welcome to the May 2026 Cosmic Weather Forecast by Curtis Lang with Jane Sherry.
On Friday, May 1st, at 1:23 PM Eastern Time, we celebrate the global festival of Wesak, Buddha's birthday, along with a soul-searching Scorpio Full Moon and the Taurus Solar Festival.
Powerful long repressed feelings can dominate our lives when the Full Moon inhabits the Zodiacal sign of Scorpio.
This month's Full Scorpio Moon is the focal point of a powerful funnel formation. As you can see in the chart above, the combined energies of the other planets are focused through the Scorpio Moon.
Pluto in Aquarius is considered to be the leading planet in the formation funneling energy to the Scorpio Moon, and Pluto is in a broad square to the Full Moon in this chart, indicating the potential for transformative encounters with the unconscious Plutonian realms of human experience.
This turbocharged funnel formation of planets featuring the broad Pluto/Scorpio square is an astrological recipe for existential crisis.
Conditions are favorable for the manifestation of opportunities to confront our deepest fears related to the fragility of human life and the transitory, contingent nature of our egocentric personality.
If you encounter such opportunities, be aware that they are spiritual gifts in disguise, and respond accordingly.
Constellations of Scorpio and Libra
Johann Elert Bode, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
All these fears center on our existential dread of the Scorpionic dissolution of the egocentric personality in physical death or through experiences that overwhelm our egoistic personality as it confronts the vast, overwhelming transpersonal realms of the collective consciousness that transcend the arc of everyday experience.
As you bring these Plutonian and Scorpionic fears into conscious awareness you will review the wounds and vulnerabilities you carry as a result of childhood trauma and ancient karmic dramas as well as the existential dread that we carry as part of our burden in a life cycle inhabiting a human body.
Bringing these fears into conscious awareness is the first step on a healing journey and also the necessary prerequisite for consciousness expansion that reveals our felt connection to the entire web of life on Earth, as well as the evanescent realms of being that include the Angels, Devas, Nature Spirits, Deities and Ascended Guides and Teachers.
Human Chakra System, Peter Weltevrede, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons
This month we are beset with many potentially triggering scenarios that could precipitate a fast, strange trip through the Plutonian, Scorpionic realms of ego dissolution and transcendence.
On a personal level, we may be experiencing financial distress, health problems, relationship conflicts, family friction, professional setbacks, or simply emotional overload, and any of these could trigger a Scorpionic cycle of hyperemotional releasing, ego death and rebirth.
We are all in this together, inhabiting the Century of PolyCrisis, and the collective consciousness is saturated with foreboding, dread, guilt, shame, anger, fear and melancholy. This too creates powerful emotional triggers that could be activated with the stars aligned as they are for Friday's Scorpio Full Moon.
Global stressors are multiplying this year, impacting the collective consciousness, and creating the feeling we are being plunged into a Plutonic underworld, ruled by beings of darkness, plutocrats who are raping the Earth.
America's democracy has been transformed into an oligarchy, run by the wealthy for the wealthy. In 2025, Donald Trump appointed an unprecedented 13 billionaires to his Cabinet, clarifying the true nature of governance in the United States.
Donald Trump's Second Cabinet, The White House,
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
In addition to America's political upheaval, epic global droughts and floods are expected during this Super El Nino year that meteorologists warn could deliver us into unprecedented extreme weather events.
Wars around the world are disrupting global supply chains, ending what had been universal freedom of the seas through construction of a nose bleed expensive series of militarized toll booths squatting on hotly contested maritime routes and slowly destroying the infrastructure in the Middle East and Russia that underpins fossil fuel production that powers the world's hydrocarbon based civilization.
Wall Street firms and prominent economists warn that the global impact of the largest oil supply side shock in world history, combined with downside risks in private credit markets, the potential bursting of the energy guzzling AI bubble, and the possible destruction of global financial nodes in Dubai and elsewhere in the Middle East, have created unprecedented risks of economic stagflation or even a global depression.
A disintegrating global order is being replaced by the war of all against all for dwindling resources during a period of accelerating climate catastrophe.
In the US, consumer confidence is at its lowest point in the 74-year history of consumer confidence surveys. Consumers are more pessimistic than they were during the 2008 financial crisis and the 1980s oil shock.
The decline in consumer confidence encompasses all age groups, income levels, and political parties.
A dry cornfield, Photo by janilson furtado on Unsplash
In the US, 70% of farmers told the US Farm Bureau that they cannot afford fertilizer for their crops.
Fertilizer prices have doubled on commodities markets, maritime freight costs have multiplied as ships take longer routes to avoid militarized toll booths on contested strategic choke points, and insurance on those ships and shipments has skyrocketed in price, while the cost of domestic diesel fuel required for farm machinery rises week after week.
Drought and freeze damage throughout major agricultural regions of the United States has decimated the winter wheat crop, with 68% of winter wheat severely damaged.
Drought and unexpected freezing weather this winter in Florida cost farmers in that state $3.17 billion in losses. Oranges, strawberries, sugar cane, sweet corn, and even greenhouse crops were decimated. The drought continues in Florida, unabated, as an unprecedented number of wildfires rage throughout the drought stricken state.
The spring planting season across the US looks nightmarish so far.
Here in the Piedmont of North Carolina we have a deficit of 18" of rain since last September. That is the stuff that Dust Bowls are made of.
In Oregon, the MidWest and here in North Carolina, farmers can't plant unless they have access to cheap water and irrigate their land before laying down seed.
Baby boomer farmers we know have not seen these conditions in their entire working lives.
Global surface temperature records in ERA5 over the January-March 2026 period over the 1940-2026 period. Areas in red are currently experiencing the top five warmest years on record.
Meteorologists warn that this year's projected Super El Nino will reduce tropical rainfall in the Southeast and likely increase the chances of a long, preternaturally hot summer across the country.
Bad as that could be here in America, meteorologists predict that India, Southeast Asia, parts of Africa, and Indonesia could experience extreme weather events this summer that create catastrophic shortages of food and water for tens of millions of people.
Commodities traders warn that global prices of oil, natural gas, food, medicine and fertilizer could skyrocket as fossil fuel supply shocks interact with ongoing droughts and floods throughout the year.
No wonder consumers are scared, angry and expecting the worst.
But as we shall see the stars do offer support for our collective efforts to channel our fear, anxiety, rage and frustration about the ongoing Global PolyCrisis into consciousness expanding heartfelt spiritual practices this Wesak Full Moon in Scorpio week.
A traveller peers through an opening in the firmament, from Camille Flammarion's L'atmosphère : météorologie populaire, Houston Physicist, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
In Esoteric Astrology, Scorpio is the sign in which the individual's ability to transcend the egoistic personality and elevate the focus of consciousness to the Soul level of existence is tested and retested.
With the Moon in Scorpio, we are challenged to invite into our consciousness the power of the Fourth Ray of Harmony through Conflict, and to establish the focal point of our awareness in the undying realms of Unity that underlie the apparent duality, chaos, and struggle characteristic of Earthly existence.
Mars is the ruler of Scorpio, and creates both the fundamental desire for physical incarnation and the many types of desires -- for sexual gratification, conquest, fame, and riches -- that characterize and dominate our personalities prior to Soul awakening.
The desire generated by the Mars impulse results in the Sacrifice of the Soul, the immersion of the Soul into physical reality, which is accompanied by the occluding, or spiritual death of the Higher Self, which manifests as physical incarnation and the dominance of the egoistic personality and the calculating monkey mind.
Mars Viking Orbiter Image, NASA/JPL/USGS, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Mars is also the source of the burning desire for release from the painful karmic wheel of incarnation, and thus the motivating force behind the individual's efforts to transcend the limitations of the personality and the monkey mind, which can result in the awakening to Higher Mind, the opening to the reality of the Higher Self, and the individual's alignment with Higher Purpose.
With Mars in the Mars ruled sign of Aries during a Mars ruled Scorpio Moon, there is tremendous energy available to fuel the desires of the monkey mind and likewise to enhance the yearning for release from the bondage of the egoistic personality stuck on the wheel of karma.
Let us resolve to summon our inner spiritual warrior this Scorpio Full Moon Festival and literally reach for the stars!
This way lies empowerment!
Mars in Aries forms a fairly tight, powerful square with Jupiter in Cancer at the time of the Wesak Festival this Friday, so the Mars energies we have been describing will be enhanced for both good and ill.
Jupiter Image, Webb Telescope NirCam Image, courtesy NASA
Jupiter is the primary planetary focus for the Second Ray energies of Love and Wisdom
Jupiter rules over Sagittarius as Lord of Wisdom, and over Pisces as Lord of Love.
Jupiter is the planet of expansion, yes, the Guru Planet of Loving Wisdom, and also the planet of fusion and synthesis.
Jupiterian energies stabilize the egoistic mind struggling with the myriad of dualistic conflicts encountered in Earthly life.
Jupiter's energies of Loving Wisdom prepare the individual to resonate with the elevated consciousness we know as the Soul -- with Higher Self, Higher Mind and Higher Purpose.
In Esoteric Astrology, it is Jupiter in Cancer that quintessentially governs the smooth fusion of the Soul with the individual's physical manifestation, emotional inclinations, and mental temperament.
Blue Buddha, Photo by amit kumar on Unsplash
With the support of powerful Jupiter in Cancer this Scorpio Full Moon week, we can invoke our inner spiritual warrior, connect with our inner Guru, and joyfully participate in this month's global spiritual festival of Loving Wisdom, Wesak.
On Wesak, we celebrate the birth of Lord Buddha in communion with countless others on the path of Spirit worldwide, affirming that all humanity continues to receive guidance, grace, love, wisdom teachings, and abundant life force energies from Sources transcending all that we can perceive with our very limited five senses.
We need Spirit's support now more than ever.
Over the last one hundred years, the Celebration of Wesak has become a World Festival of Spirituality, transcending the Buddhist community, and is now a major celebration for Lightworkers everywhere.
Photo of Alice Bailey, Public Domain
The 20th century Theosophist, clairvoyant, spiritual teacher and esoteric astrologer Alice Bailey discussed the new global tradition of the Wesak Full Moon Festival in her booklet, “The Wesak Festival: A Technique of Spiritual Contact”.
“As one studies the world situation today, it becomes apparent that the secret of synthesis has been lost. Humanity is divided – one section against another section; the East versus the West; one race against another race; one nation against another nation,” Alice Bailey explains. “Men need to get back to the ancient knowledge that our planet is intended to demonstrate the essential unity of humanity, and that the energy which should manifest is that of integration and coherence. When this is truly realized our present world problems will adjust themselves, and the basic world rhythm will be re-established and stabilized.”
“Unfortunately, as yet, the race as a whole is not group conscious, and therefore average humanity cannot be trusted to work, think and plan for the group,” Bailey continues. “Men are as yet too selfish. In this fact, there is, however, no cause for discouragement, because to those who have a wide world vision it is also become definitely apparent that group consciousness and group responsibility are already something more than simply a lovely vision.
Ascended Guides and Teachers, Виктория5551, Kingtooth, Abhishek.thakur19, Kitakitzcom, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
"Brotherhood and the recognition of its obligations are beginning to permeate the consciousness of men everywhere. This is due to the increasing activity of the Hierarchy of Light, to the services rendered down the ages by the Guides of the race, and today by Christ and his Church," Bailey explains. "They are beginning to demonstrate to man the true meaning of brotherhood, and men are beginning to grasp and realize their responsibilities. There is innate in mankind a responsiveness to that supreme ideal, and men are now reacting to a deep-seated need for synthesis.”
That synthesis is a recognition of the Unity behind the apparent dualities of reality.
The Sanskrit word for that mysterious Unity is 'Satya' or 'Truth'.
Recently, our spiritual teachers, Shri Anandi Ma and Dileepji Patak, were asked whether the Hindu mystery school teachings of our lineage, which is a kundalini maha yoga lineage extending back in time thousands of years to Lord Ram, were appropriate for Buddhists or Christians to follow.
Shri Anandi Ma and Dileepji Patak
Truth is One, our Teachers explained, but the paths to Truth are many and varied. “There is One Energy that manifests as different Deities,” Dileepji explained. “We humans create differentiated religions, but at the subtle level the energy is One and the same and there is no conflict.”
Individuals on the spiritual path have mental and emotional expectations and images concerning the nature and form of spiritual experience and the Deities and other Beings of Light they will encounter in the spiritual world.
These expectations condition spiritual experience.
Thus, a Christian who attains enlightenment has an experience of walking with Jesus Christ.
A Hindu who attains enlightenment has an experience of light exploding from the crown chakra, and a vision of the Union of Shiva and Shakti, and the Buddhist who attains liberation enters the Void.
Although these energies are somewhat different, the fundamental Truth of spiritual experience as Unity consciousness transcends the culturally conditioned forms and categories of that experience.
In every case, the individual who attains the spiritual goal will find they share common ground with other enlightened beings and spiritual seekers of all denominations and lineages.
The Festival of Wesak is a global celebration of that common ground, and of all Wisdom teachings found around the world.
The Festival of Wesak is a Global Celebration of the work being done by the Ascended Master Teachers in Spiritual Worlds and by the New Group of World Servers in the physical realm on planet Earth.
As we recall today, the Buddha taught that the individual Self, experienced as the egoistic personality, is an illusion, and that each of us is indissolubly united with the vast web of life that interpenetrates the physical and spiritual realms, extending throughout the space-time continuum, encompassing past, present and future.
Much of the work that the New Group of World Servers must accomplish in this New Age is to bring the activities of human beings into harmony with the myriad beings of the mineral, plant and animal realms on planet Earth, restoring a balance to the environment and preserving the lives of countless species during this period of global climate change and transition.
Spiral Jetty, Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash
Over the last hundred years, countless meditators, lightworkers, spiritual seekers and aspirants have told stories of dreams and meditative visions they have experienced on the Full Moon of May.
Over time, their stories have coalesced into a larger collective Story of Wesak, which has its foundation in the initial writings of Alice Bailey.
We offer a summary of that Story in our blogpost entitled Wesak: Buddha's Birthday & the Shamballa Gathering.
In that same blogpost you'll find detailed instructions enabling you to participate in the global group meditation that occurs this Friday on the day of the Global Festival of Wesak, and for the entire three day Wesak interval marking this Scorpio Full Moon and Taurus Solar Festival.
Jane and I hope you will join us for that yearly mid-spring festival. See you in the aethers!
Curtis and Jane at Trout Lake, Moses Cone State Park, North Carolina
We send Love and Reiki Blessings to each and every one of you in gratitude for joining us on our journey in this lifetime!
Our lives are Blessed by your presence in our hearts!
Meditation Moment: I Speak with the Future, by Jane Hirshfield
We sit on our skeletons’ bones.
We hear with our skeletons’ bones.
We speak of beauty by moving our jaws and our teeth.
The original meaning of Paradise: a place,
a walled garden.
Our lives, our stories, this hour inside one.
A staircase from Piranesi. A hummingbird drinking.
Outside it, vanishing species and rivers.
Outside it, Nanjing, Ninevah, Dresden.
Outside it, Gaza, Sudan, Myanmar, Kyiv. Here.
The world starts and ends, starts, ends, ends again,
restarts.
A kalpa is brief, and wall-less.
Unborn ones, take nothing for granted.
Not nectar, not thirst.
May your lives be uneclipsed, your failures be passing.
May you have your portions of beauty, of grief,
in a garden whose plants and birds I cannot imagine.