Second: Taurus

If you haven’t already, I urge you to read the article explaining how the zodiac may be seen as a collection of twelve psychological types and thus gain context.

After overtaking the Night Force at the equinox, the Day Force rushes in Aries with the adolescent desire of self-manifestation as an individuality before becoming more concrete and persistent, for Taurus is the reaction to Aries’ action. After the internal insecurities, considered by the Aries individual as a virtue or a challenge, Taurus assigns a higher value to security. The pioneering instinct gives way to the organizing ability of the colonizer. The energy generated in Aries is concentrated into power in Taurus, where it finds the material needed to initiate work, whatever it might be. What in Aries is simple movement in a straight line that could go on forever, becomes circular emotion through objects in Taurus, from which will grow a definite sense of the individuality and its limited destiny.

Aries and Taurus are complementary, but not like Aries and Libra which are true opposites, their activities going in opposite directions. Aries goes toward the Day Force maximum whereas Libra reaches for a higher Night Force intensity. No individuality gesture may be too bold for Aries, just like relationships in Libra acquire an idealistic and romantic tone. Both Aries and Taurus are rungs in the Day Force ladder. However, in Aries it is direct action since what concerns him most is to decisively overcome the Night Force. Once this happens, we need to stabilize, and voluntarily restrict, the flow of Day Force, which is the job of Taurus. Aries and Taurus form an operative coupling: two consecutive signs, thus related in Time, where the first one is called the root symbol, setting the tone for the coupling, and the second one is the confirmation symbol. In traditional astrology, the former were called masculine (Yang) signs and the latter feminine (Yin). Unlike signs separated by 180°, and thus related in Space, confirmation symbols don’t oppose their root symbol but rather modify their energy towards a new objective.

The difference between the Aries and Taurus energies is their purpose. In reality, they are two phases of the same energy. In Aries, the purpose is dynamic, whereas in Taurus it is organic. When an acid corrodes a piece of metal, we speak of disintegration, a dynamic activity; but when the hydrochloride acid in the stomach digests proteins, the activity corresponds to an organic function. The acid in the stomach realizes a function needed by the human body and it is regulated by such need.

Aries acts and the action is its own justification. There is a certain compulsion of destiny behind the actions, due to the Night Force that is still strong, but the Aries individual practically doesn’t notice and his conscience is satisfied by having engaged in the activity. For the Taurus person, an action without a clear objective is meaningless, it must be related to something. The activity in Taurus must be useful to the organism for whom it is performed. As an example, sex to an Aries person is practically a form to liberate tension. To him, the act itself is its justification, an activity projecting the individual force, but to a Taurus person, sex is a required activity to achieve something definite and concrete, typically a child.

A Productive Sign

Taurus’ keyword is production. Every activity must be productive, as long as it is important. Production depends on controlling either nature or basic human energies. Taurus makes Aries energy concretely useful. Productive energy, when it is controlled and shaped, becomes power. Taurus marks one of the four moments in the year when life acts on a definite and creative manner, in terms of power and purpose. The 15° of Taurus, along with Leo 15°, Scorpio 15°, and Aquarius 15°, evenly divide the cross formed by the equinoxes and solstices. They are the points of strongest liberation of power and purpose, called the degrees of the Avatars, and symbolized by the Bull, the Lion, the Eagle and the Angel, respectively.

Taurus is the “good soil”, the generous Mother, which is perhaps why it was always considered a feminine sign. But its astrological symbol is the Bull, which is not a feminine animal. It is therefore important not to place too much emphasis on its passive and receptive characteristics. Taurus is not only the sign where the Day Force becomes concentrated power for a concrete objective, it also symbolizes the great force available in the depths of a substance that may be considered rudimentary. The “good soil” is the black humus, perhaps just a few centimeters thick, without which life wouldn’t exist on Earth. In such layer, the earth vibrations and the sun radiation mix and give rise to fertility.

Power from the Depths

Just as life exists skin deep on Earth, we experience the external world through our skin and its senses. Moreover, the realm of consciousness is the most superficial layer of the vast subconscious, and the rational and analytic faculties of what we call “intellect” are but the surface of the global development of human consciousness. The intellect won’t be fully revealed until Gemini, but such a spring harvest is conditioned by the “soil” of Taurus, which was fecundated by Aries by a divine “Visitation”, the descending of power. However, the substance of all evolutionary growth belongs to Taurus, the symbol of the power that constantly produces new organisms.

Taurus is evolutionary actualization from the depths upwards. In Taurus, all energies are pushed towards the surface by the will and desire of Sun, which is why an individual of the Taurus type finds a source of power in the racial depths of his subconscious. Writes Rudhyar: “Taurus identifies himself with the race that has accompanied him while he tirelessly fights to be able to harmonize his conscious will with that superior destiny that directs him from himself to the next stage of evolution. The external manifestations of that impersonal, instinctive or cosmic will may be delayed but not halted”.

The Dark Side

All of this gives rise to the strong determination, firm will in oneself, and stability of objectives that characterize a Taurus individual. However, those characteristics often yield a feeling of possession, a feeling which is often the result of an inner need that must be satisfied. Everything that satisfies the need acquires such an enormous value that it seems imperative for the individual to secure its possession. For the same reason, the Taurus person will consider the utility of everything, be that a person, a situation or a relationship. This is not necessarily due to selfishness but may be caused from his belief that an experience is senseless unless it strives for a particular objective.

The Night Force operates actively in Taurus, although not as strongly as in Aries. The fixity of objectives of a Taurus person doesn’t leave room in his consciousness for it, although it is still subconsciously present. It may manifest itself as an intoxication based on an irrational or supra-rational sense of identification with a mystical purpose. He has the feeling of being conferred the power of an invisible community which gives rise to images of a prophet, messiah, redeemer or avatar. This will show up in large gestures or in small details, or both. The image may be an illusion or a reality, only the results will determine which eventuality occurs.

On Attachment

In “The Gifts of Spirit”, Rudhyar writes: “Taurus signifies man’s complete subservience to the natural rhythm of human activity. It is the symbol for ‘attachment’. Attachment, here, does not necessarily imply a negative or compulsive bondage to nature; but it means a very deep identification with the energies of human nature, with the evolutionary processes operating within man normally in a subconscious manner, and leading us to goals ordained by Life, or by God”—emphasis mine.

Gautama, the Buddha, was born at the Full Moon of May and, according to tradition, attained illumination and died at this same Full Moon. This may be a just symbol but it places a strong emphasis upon the deep meaning of Taurus, since Buddhism is based on detachment. Of course, detachment existed before Buddha, notably in the old Hindu traditions since the Upanishads. In the astrological Ages, the Age of Taurus (third and fourth millennia B.C.E.) was the period of “vitalistic” religions in which the powers of natural fertility were deified. The great agricultural peoples of that Age believed that humans could only grow through their attachment to the rhythmic powers of nature. That changed gradually in the second millennium B.C.E. (Age of Aries) when an attitude of detachment challenged the one of attachment. But it was the Buddha who formulated a universally valid philosophy and a practical religious attitude based on the new orientation, a philosophy that promised “salvation” from the suffering and the dying inherent in nature.

The old Hindu attitude of detachment was based on the fact that a time comes when one must let go of what we possess and enjoy what is left of our body and life. This was a passive (negative) approach to practice detachment which the Buddha transformed in an active (positive) and deliberate attitude of detachment. He taught a rational and awareness-based method to understand the true nature of ourselves through the control of our desires. This control was not achieved by repression but by focusing our clear intelligence upon the process of formation, growth and unavoidable disappearance of such desires. Our attachment to objects will end in sorrow, our attachment to life will end in death, so why not give up from the start, willingly and resolutely? Once more, Rudhyar: “To kill the seed of pain by withering the weed of desire with the fire of awareness and understanding: this is to be wise. This is to follow the Noble Path, Arya Dharma—the ‘truth that sets all men free’”. I emphasized all men because the Buddha democratized Illumination such that it was no longer the privilege of a particular cast.

The Gift of Detachment

Anyone can wield the sword of detachment that cuts through the veil of nature and the polarities of life and death, love and hatred, joy and sorrow, all of which are found at the root of human nature. Aware of life’s perpetual ebbs and flows, the Sage identifies himself with neither ebb nor flow. Being attached to neither polarity of life, desiring nothing (not even to cease desiring), he enters Nirvana, a word grossly misunderstood in the West that means, symbolically, an “absence of vehicle”, such that the illumined Sage relates as pure consciousness.

All compound things must come to decay. Every entity finding its expression in a particular shape, name, or set of attributes will have to lose eventually this shape, name, or set of attributes. That which escapes the universal decay finds its manifestation in any thing or condition whatsoever, but the Buddha never explained what was “That”, for he was a practical realist who shunned metaphysical questions and taught: Give up attachment to all desires and you will be “That”. Nirvana is thus a condition. It does not refer to a being that should be worshiped or a place where the “saved ones” go. All of us can reach it, if we dare to understand and face the inevitable end of all things, if we dare to uproot from the depths of our beings and our consciousness that source of all bondage and suffering, if we dare to be free and, most importantly, if we not only dare but apply the technique of liberation with perseverance.

Detachment is the Gift of the Spirit for a Taurus personality because the sign symbolically represents the “type of person who lives fundamentally in his attachment to nature and to the ideal of natural growth and fulfillment in substantial, earth-born organisms”, according to Rudhyar. This attachment to, and identification with, the rhythm of the universe can produce great beauty and rich responses to life and love, which are most welcomed in our mechanistic day and age. Taurus is a song to the bondage to “life”. It is the wondrous slave of a master great beyond all measure. Greater still is the spirit within man, taught the Buddha, for it is slave to no master, not even to life, to love, or to any god summoned by our desire for a universal Father. The spirit within man is inherently free, it knows no decay or pain.

Within the core of all human experiences there is a stillness and peace which can be felt when all feeling ceases and that can be known when all knowledge fails. To be that stillness and that peace is freedom. We must strive for it diligently, incessantly, and yet unhurriedly, serenely, without desire for its gifts.

Always Love. 🌹🙏💖