Core Meanings of Zodiacal Signs:

TAURUS, THE SETTLER

Copyright © Dan Eddy. All Rights Reserved

Continuing with the theme of my last article, I’m reevaluating the core meanings of the twelve Zodiacal signs through David Cochrane’s particular astrological lens. His view is that our natal charts represent our deeper motivations, rather than compel us to particular action. He is the founder of Gainesville’s own Avalon School of Astrology, and the originator/main programmer of both Kepler and Sirius Astrology programs. Being a Taurus himself, he has found the preponderance of adjectival descriptions to be inaccurate when analyzing his own chart and in describing what truly motivates him. So let’s take another look at Taurus, the bull.

Some of the most common words used to describe Taurus are stable, practical, stubborn, quiet, affectionate and patient. Many of these descriptors relate to Taurus being the fixed earth sign, but in the Twentieth Century we’ve expanded to some other descriptions that focus on Taurus’s Venusian potentials, so we might add elegant tastes in food and valuables, a desire for plush surroundings in the home with maybe a tendency to self-indulgence and laziness. It’s some of these more modern descriptions that don’t sit as well with David’s own view of his stellium in Taurus in the Second House. As a specific example, David is not overweight, not self-indulgent, and not that focused on money or expensive baubles. Yet he has a Taurus stellium in the natural house of Taurus, being the Second, with Taurus on the cusp of the Second House.

Our tendency as astrologers is to then find some other factor in the chart that might negate the overwhelming Taurean potential, but maybe we’re missing the real point. Just because these adjectives fit the majority of people with strong Taurus energy in their chart, do they fit everybody? Is there perhaps a deeper motivation that all Taurus individuals share, even if not all of the descriptions seem to fit them perfectly?

People with strong Taurus would be people with Sun, Moon and Ascendant in Taurus, and since the Moon is exalted in Taurus, the Moon is more classically dignified in this sign. That Taurean potential makes Moon in Taurus more effective than Sun in Taurus, in the external. People with Venus in Taurus would also have a stronger than average Taurus potential since Venus classically rules Taurus.

Classical dignities reveal when a sign’s most archetypal energies flow most purely, hence becoming more effective concerning the actions of that planet. The Taurean Age of human history corresponds to the pre-Babylonian cultures in the fertile crescent of the Middle East, our first agrarian cultures, and includes the height of ancient Egypt, and the building of the pyramids, which could only occur after the coalescing of great agricultural wealth. This is also the time of the bull-dancers of the Minoan culture centered on Crete, when bull mythology permeated the pre-Greco-Roman Mediterranean cultures.

David’s core meaning of Taurus can be summed up in the phrase, “go with the flow.” Or as he states in his booklet, “Discover a Person’s Unique Talents with Harmonic Charts” on page 11:

If the natural flow of Taurean energy is blocked, then we get more stubborn tendencies, or at the most extreme, that raging bull stereotype. If you know anyone with strong Taurus, you know they are not quick to anger but once angered they rage like a mad bull in a bullfight, and it takes time for them to calm back down, to become again Ferdinand the bull smelling flowers in the field.

The prime motivation for Taurus is to be at one with the natural flow of one’s existence, so gardening stands out as a typical Taurean interest. As an earth sign there is a need for material stability that can reveal a symptomatic desire for luxury, but the core need is to have the basics covered, not necessarily to have self-indulgent accessories. Gardeners like pretty flowers, but they are also practical in creating a living environment that lasts, and often garden for food or medicinal sources as well. Growing in a natural, yet inexorable, manner fits all Taureans at a basic level.

If Aries is the pioneer, then Taurus is the settler, which follows Aries, but makes a stable existence in a new space. If Aries is inception, then Taurus is germination, the process of building something stable over time, like the pyramids. If there is a religious tendency that resonates to the energies of Taurus, David feels it would be Taoism, finding that natural flow with our lives and nature and the cosmos. It may seem a little passive for Taurus, until you remember that they arbitrate what that natural flow is for themselves, so their actions are very self-motivated, yet at one with their connection to external nature and the life force.