Happy Birthday Taurus
Taurus – The Bull
Taurus, the Bull, the only earth sign that is also a fixed sign, tells of the energies of the earth and man’s use of, and often bondage to, earthly things and forces. A fruitful energy, which may express itself for good or ill, manifests in this second sign of the Zodiac. Its vice is inertia – peace at any price. Its virtue is a successful, practical achievement bringing concrete results. The Taurean feels much at home on the earth. The evolved Taurean inwardly realizes that as the earth fructifies seeds and brings plants to maturity, so the earthly body must become enclothed by the higher, spiritual, heavenly man. He realizes that the earthly body has office and existence as a temple of God.
The Bull is indicative not only of great strength, but also of extraordinary digestive powers. Metabolism is the mode of Taurus. A marvelous expression of metabolism is found in the bovine species which chews the cud, digesting, redigesting, assimilating, and transmuting food into other forces. Similarly, must facts, ideas, and experiences long be chewed upon, as cud, by Taurean souls, before they are assimilated and resolved into new truth.
Taurus represents the primordial desire-force that must be transformed into the priceless possession of the perfected man doing the will of the Father. In Taurus, man’s desires must be transmuted into spiritualized will. The physical must be used as the vehicle in refining and raising the soul’s quality. Indicating this verity, there is, in addition to the symbol of the Bull, the picture of a coiled serpent. Its folded coils reveal the latent, concentrated energy and stored-up occult powers, held in silent, ready reserve, as in a granary of peculiar power, gained in the harvests of many earthly lives. The source of these powers is the soul, and their force of manifestation is contingent upon love and purity.
Taurus is seen then as a soul-source of power. Here is a magazine of mighty moods, a reservoir as it were, of concealed, confined, emotional force held in the bond of one great, intense feeling, which is often released in the peculiar occult quality of prayer and praise, which is true song. This sign rules the vocal cords and gives expression to the voice, for the life of the larynx manifests in Taurus, as well as the power of productive, physical labor, the means of making money and gaining by means of material concerns and the products of the earth.
Occult forces are held here in storage, kept latent against the time, or the life, when they will be needed and become active for other earthly expressions of the Christed Ego. Just as the constellation of Taurus is the greatest in the Zodiac, so too is the sign mighty reservoir for all the faculties man has gained throughout his various lives on earth. In this sign is the secret source of storage. But, only those moving on the higher level of Christ-life can tap this vast storehouse of occult supply. The service of this intense sign is to sound out the senses and to build higher octaves of soul quality. With deliberation Taurus takes hold of the physical forces in man and, through earthly work, concretely manifests and creates in such wise as to generate, from the Spirit within, a heightened power of soul as a distillate.
Here, in this sign of latent power, we see and understand the great strength inherent in the British people, the forces of the British Empire. For, even though Aries rules England, Taurus rules the British Isles, and we see John Bull as a typical Taurean. Such Taurean Bull-spirit power came to expression in Queen Victoria. This tiny woman, with the cusp of Taurus-Gemini rising, carried and symbolized the strength that was Great Britain, standing in the vanguard of civilization and committed to the ideal of spiritual freedom. In the strength of Taurus, the mighty sign holding the Pleiades, Queen Victoria possessed the forces to bond and build the vast congeries of nations, foreshadowing a new age of friendship of all nations and peoples. Such was the focal point, the mighty well-spring of archetypal spiritual power inherent in this little, but colossal woman.
Insofar as physical forces are concerned, no sign exhibits greater stolidity and solidity than Taurus. It rules finances and foundations handling funds and it gives the ability to earn and to disburse money. More than any other sign, Taurus not only gives a forte, but also much finesse in the transaction of financial affairs and their management. Highly evolved Taureans, in their largess, may be called doers of the bountiful. The practical power to earn money and to energize activity through money and the concerns of physical property is part of the expression and experience of Taurus. Its natives invariably encounter intensely significant happenings connected with money and property, which arrest attention and provide spiritual lessons on the earth and after death.
The purpose of planetary life and of repeated births of both man and planet is to incorporate in man-in-the-making a new member the Ego, for which it was necessary to make the involutionary descent into earthly density; now, there follows the evolutionary ascent into spiritual realms, by way of the wisdom of love, both man and planet being raised to the magnitude of the Sun-power itself. In this process of densification, purification, and sublimation, perhaps the most telling test and turning point occurs in the first earthly sign, Taurus, which is also the first fixed sign of the Zodiac. For, true to the ancient symbol of the coiled serpent, there lie concealed in Taurus the profound depths of desire, which must be transmuted into spiritualized will. Although the mood of matter becomes the manifest mode of Taurus, these intensely physical experiences are being proffered to the soul solely to lead man to mastery, never to master the man or subvert that in him which is spiritual.
The desires and rude strength, secretly concentrated in the Taurean. Must be touched by the magic of transmutation through the indwelling Christ-Spirit, and thinking must be lighted by Spirit-truth. Otherwise, the principle of will will be at war with the desires of these Taurean souls, and it will often run amuck in the world, until such time as fleshly desires are transformed through true vision and purity. The keynote and destiny of Taurus centers in the obedience of the lower man to the higher, spiritual self, the ‘Lord from heaven’.
The sum and substance of Taurus is not only the solid and the stolid, and the power of patient persistence working into a soul-spirited distillate or essence – this alchemy it does work – but also the secret of sound and the utterance of speech; for Taurus manifests the power to vocalize and to form and pronounce the word. True song sounds forth from Taurus and often it gives the genius to set down the harmonies of heaven, as we see in Beethoven, with the middle of Taurus rising, and Uranus therein, making his power still more dynamic, forceful, and spiritually charged with the compassionate warmth of Christ-love. By studying a picture of Ludwig van Beethoven and listening to his music, one comes to understand far more deeply the mighty purpose and power in this sign of the Bull than by reading the most skilled description of it. The powerful composer of heavenly harmonies, song, and symphonies, Johannes Brahms, had his Sun in Taurus. In Franz Schubert, we also see Taurean power on the Ascendant, although the forces are toned down and rendered angelic by his Moon joined to Jupiter in Pisces, and his Sun in Aquarius.
To those who can see and know, Richard Wagner appears in a Taurean garment inwardly and outwardly, although the Eagle sign, Scorpio, may be evident, because of his Uranus in Scorpio opposing the Taurus-Gemini Ascendant. He had Venus and Mercury in Taurus; and his Sun as well as his Ascendant shared the cusp of this sign of song. Taurean traits appeared throughout his life. It may seem irrelevant, but it is still of psychological interest to show the close, though often subconscious, relationship and kinship of souls woven by the soul-spiritual forces of the signs of the Zodiac, as people meet and move in their earthly life.
There is a fine example in Richard Wagner, who served the London Philharmonic Orchestra for six painful months. The bright spot of his life there was his summons to the royal box where Queen Victoria highly praised his marvelous music. Queen Victoria’s Ascendant, Sun, and Moon were in the early degrees of Gemini on Wagner’s Ascendant and Sun. Both shared the Taurus-Gemini cusp and were attuned to each other in their physical-soul-spiritual forces.
In the galaxy of opera stars and singers, we find a large number of Taureans, for Taurus is the sign of song and sound. We may say again that true song is real prayer and praise to God, just as is the song of the birds. And, as the song of the birds open the buds on the trees, so does the peculiar soul-spiritual energy in and behind vocalized sound, when true, build the forces for the Spirit and open soul to the love of wisdom and truth, which is God. Sound, then, as a source of soul forces, manifests in the sign Taurus as it becomes audible in earthly, human tones. The quality and power of human speech, as a creative, healing power, is perceived by the seer as arising in the forces of fixed signs, but especially in this sign of song and voice, Taurus, that brings it to a focus, as it were, and gives it direction, its quality being sensed, if not heard, by the timbre of the tone.
The voice expresses the soul through sound, in audible speech and tone. In the voice can be heard, and felt, and known the mind and the emotion of the individual, as well as the quality of his soul. The speech uttered by the human voice tells the spiritual knower the whole truth about the man. Although there is a measure of truth in Tallyrand’s statement that ‘Speech was given us to conceal thoughts,’ and it is quite apropos as regards diplomatic relations among nations, the dramatist and poet Ben Jonson spoke the truth when he said, ‘Language (voice) most shows a man: Speak, that I may see thee! It springs out of the retired and inmost parts of us, and is the Image of the parent of it, the mind. No glass renders a man’s form and likeness so true as his speech’. He who hears the harmonies of heaven or senses the sound of the zodiacal tones has come into union with God, with the voice of God, and with his vision. Through intense meditation upon the Zodiac and spiritual study of the stellar script, one is raised from the dead. One rises out of the corpse of present-day convention, brain-bound abstraction, and the lack of love to which they lead, as well as the degenerating love of ease and self-indulgence that are the bane of Taurus.
Since Taurus manifests the physical forces of song and sound, the throat becomes either the strength or the weakness of those souls born in or under this sign, in accord with the quality of the Ego and the destiny-debt dues for liquidation. But, on the whole, Taureans suffer more from an over supply of strength than from its paucity. They often give way to fear, and then laziness and self-indulgence often beset them, which may lead to stagnation because of their selfish love of ease. Such a regimen all too soon breaks down the stamina of the body for lack of a natural, healthy, physical activity and the absence of a mental-spiritual life. We see now all over the world the spreading of this kind of disease as man refuses to exert himself in the sense of spiritual life.
As Aries flies outward from a centre, in irradiating, flinging forces, in purely centrifugal fashion wild with waste, so Taurus behaves in exactly the opposite manner. It throws its forces into a centre in centripetal action. Aries is exhibitive and expressive; Taurus, inhibitive and compressive. So persistent are the moods of emotion, so compressed the feelings, that Taureans are faced with a collision of their thought and their feelings. Thus, contradictory states are the result, which often make the Taurean impossible to deal with. The emotional forces become so conflicting and entangled with the thought that the moods declare themselves in a sullen silence which is more eloquent than speech. Undeveloped Taureans are to themselves and often to others quite impossible, because of their torrential, destructively dangerous emotion. Of the twelve senses, Taureans need to develop the sense of thinking. This sense of thinking, when rightly developed, can save them from their damaging emotional forces.
Materialistic thinking, the mere intellect, tends to dominate the Taureans, however, and they want nothing that cannot be set into earthly concepts. The heaven of the Taureans would have to be a glorified physical existence. To attain to Ego-consciousness and freedom, it was temporarily necessary for man to have his sight limited to the earth and to earthly conditions. Now the time has come when the human being must discover that he has within himself the whole cosmos. The power of the cosmos, the Christ, is condensed into a central focus in the man. This spiritual power must become usable and released in the earthly man, if he is to be raised to a divine status. To do this safely, one must become wise with love and add to his intellect the light of Spirit-truth, which is the voice of the archetypal Christ-Ego within. It is the voice that transcends the vocalization of sound in speech, the Taurean instrument, which the intellect person in this fixed earthly sign must learn to listen to hear well if he would find the Christ in himself, as well as the cosmic Christ in the Earth, for to hear the Spirit sounding in one’s self is to hear the greater voice and see the higher, vividly vital vision of the Lord of the Sun. Veritably the voice and vision act as the word and the wand to wield the world and all humanity into a single unit of divine power made of God’s substance, the light.
No soul becomes articulate or animated with Christ-life until the merely intellectual thinking of Taurus is transcended. A large part of humanity today, but especially the earth-minded Taureans, arrested by the boundary and bondage of the brain, believe the pinnacle of man is reached in the mind, that the brain is the end and essence of man. But, there is much more to man than the corpse-like thoughts he carries, the thoughts that have built this exterior physical fabric of civilization and that are now the cause of degeneration, hatred, and misunderstanding. The unevolved Taurean would be content to live on bread alone and not on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. There is far more to man than the earthbound thought power. In man there is that which transcends the physical, for beyond the body there is the soul, fed by the light of the Spirit. Yet the Taurean often sets limits to himself where light is concerned, by making his life a continuous residence in the earthly brain-bound concepts of the intellect unlighted by the Christ-truth light.
It is as though one were to look at a picture not with the object of contemplating the essential idea which is expresses, but merely of examining and determining the various component colors of the paint – the physical substance of the paint employed, rather than the spiritual idea as it was conceived and expressed.
I knew one such Taurean who recoiled from the spiritual with real dread, because this idea left him bereft of his body and brain, his earthly physical garment. He felt that the idea of Spirit denied and deprived him of his sense of egohood; he was afraid he would lose his identity and be utterly swallowed up in the solar system, for he had no center of Christ-force to call his own. In such intellectual thought, we often find the Taureans to be the most naïve, if not naked, in the sense of soul and Spirit. This is the mode of science, however, a mode of thought without any sense for spiritual reality, which sees only the bare exterior part and never the spiritual whole. Only those who sense and see the whole can ever properly know the part, the physical body of man and of the Earth; the rest ruminate or merely speculate where they do not deliberately fabricate. In any event, the element of error gets in its deadly work, as witness the world today. It is the test of Taurus not only to become accurate in thinking, but also to become obedient to the higher nature.
The lessons of the Taurean souls get them invariably involved in very intensive experiences in connection with physical things, property, and money. They are usually adept at earning money and providing finance and income for others, for they usually have to furnish funds for others as part of their destiny-duty; it is in the scheme of their life’s lessons. Acquisitiveness seems to be the mainspring and goal of their activities; they give their time and energy to gaining physical rewards, and through this they learn very important lessons, sometimes through misdirecting accumulated funds. But, even here, the seeming evil works for eventual good as the personality is stripped of the hindering, spiritually blinding brain and body. I remember the case of one who learned and then lifted her life into the light, after death, when she saw in true perspective the results of her maladministration of the estate left behind.
Taurus souls seldom touch the Spirit and realize the real except as they pass through a period of extreme materialistic thought activity, and it is their intensely earthly, earthy endeavor that leads ultimately to a regenerated life, even after death. At last the soul then obeys the Spirit, and the fruit of the earthly experience, in the spiritual worlds after death, reverses the view, to permit the soul right vision. If the lessons have been learned, the next life may be one become Christ-solarized. No sign more than this one, which inhibits and compresses the feelings, more often explodes at last in ruinous desires. In no other domain of the Zodiac is the element of misjudgment more evident, be it in thought, feeling, or desire, for the contradictory moods tend to make the man unreasonable. In this connection, I remember a man I used to look at with my soul before saying ‘Good morning’ to him, for had I not done so, many a morning I would have received scowls, silence, or worse, in response, depending on the amount of alcohol he still carried. And it must be observed that the sensual appetites are large in Taurus. They are avid for food and have a tremendous capacity for it; it seems almost they have, like the bull, many stomachs.
The forces of will and of desire are held in latent potency in Taurus, and they lie concealed and coiled within the soul, suppressed and dammed back until some incident or provocation of an explosion. It takes much to goad a Taurean into excited action, but once the boiling point is reached, he becomes furious and is actually beside himself with rage, like a mad bull, usually to the great surprise of the attacker. If a Taurean can disengage himself from his fixity and phlegm – and this may occur when he receives the inner light – and if other things are equal in his nativity, his interest is aroused, giving him an ambition as great for the Spirit of truth and for ‘preaching the gospel and healing the sick’, as that which earlier he had entertained toward his selfish, mercenary, and materialistic activities. Yet, for the most part, there persists in the Taureans a delaying if not a damaging materialism, an intellectualism that delights in a life conceived too wholly, if not solely, in the physical. Too often, their worship of the Golden Calf casts them far from the feet of the Master, the Christ. They remain old-fashioned and very conservative; they take themselves often for the cosmos itself, rather than for a part of it. To be of true service to the cosmos, one needs a baptism of divine love in Pentecostal downpouring, thus to become lighted cosmically. When that occurs, man knows himself to be an instrument of the gods, serving the heavenly Hierarchies with a definite and well ordered purpose.
In the youthful years, before his astral body is fully born at puberty, the Taurean shows a beautiful meditative, contemplative mood of calm and quite kindness; but, with the astral body matured and the blind brain merged with the desires, the Bull’s fixed forces are so aroused as to cast the maturing youth into a state of defiance that is likely to remain implacable. At this age, the force of opposing emotional moods becomes evident and often devitalizing. The placidity changes into passion, manifesting in stubborn, recalcitrancy that renders reasoning or argument impossible. Intrinsically, the character of Taurus is genuinely honest, but there is often a lack of accuracy and sometimes an element of self-deception, which makes Taureans live in delusion. In fact, they will feed on fallacies and harm their true progress. In this connection, it is well to note that no correction or help will induce Taureans to rectify or transmute their faults or give up their fallacies, except when they yield to the advice of someone they love or greatly admire. Their errors in thought or in action can only be pointed out to them by those they esteem; but, once they realize they are at fault, they will remove the blemish, provided their will is ripe enough to do so.
As man emancipates himself from his spiritual ignorance, children will be reared and taught not only as though they were mere bodies of flesh or beings endowed solely with a brain; rather, their education will address itself also to the soul and spirit indwelling in the child. The nature of man in his true sevenfold content will be known and honored, and childhood will no longer be violated, as it is today, when the child is taught to read and write before the change of teeth, at about the seventh year of life. The defiant and sensual character, however, the stubborn moods and emotions, the contradictory and often torrential elements in Taurus, can be redirected and transmuted before they develop, provided the start is made in infancy and the child is rightly reared through stellar insight and spiritual wisdom. I have known mothers who were at their wits’ end over their Taurean children. Yet, it is true that this explosive force of the Bull spirit can be transmuted properly into the secret Serpent Spirit Fire if the proper means are used from the beginning, for this is the sign of the coiled serpent as well as that of the heavy-necked Bull.
Taureans must transform their egocentric attitude if they are to move ahead in a positive way; otherwise, they remain obstinate and immovably stubborn because of their self-will, and such rigid resistance allows no proper expression. The best thing a Taurean can learn in life is that it is to his greatest advantage to recognize his phlegm and fixity. Let him face his large quota of prejudices and hates, and overcome his strong inner reserve and diffidence. His tempo is quite unhurried; so slow, in fact, that the destiny forces unfold belatedly, with all the phlegm that goes with this sign, the effects of his self-delusion being carried on and on, frequently to dog him after death. Early environment and parental influences are very critical factors in the case of Taureans. Their destiny will be largely determined by the type of parents the self-created destiny will allow the Ego to take. It should be realized by these souls that chastity is an important secret of their success, and that the conservation of their life forces and a life led in positive constructive Christ manner lead to illumination, whereas the waste of such forces results in a depletion or destruction of the soul.
The paradox of passion and peace finds its expression in Taurus, for with the quality of obedience and a nature that is trustful, conservative, gentle, and kindhearted, there is combined at the same time the fury of a vicious self-will, a stubborn recalcitrant spirit, whose force invariably matches the power of the opponent. But the best avenue for Taureans is to find a release in song, music, and art; and in this Venus sign, this forte is usually present. It is true enough that most people have to learn that there is no goal but God, but Taureans especially have to realize this fact on earth, rather than in the realm of the dead, for far more can be done, and faster progress be made, if this truth is recognized while the Ego retains tenure of its physical body.
A delightful sense of humor is of great help and happiness to Taureans. One is carried more buoyantly through life with such a quality of soul, for it enables one to maintain courage, and it helps others to keep poised in trying days, when darkness and difficulties loom ahead. The ability to see and to enjoy the comical side of a situation is British, despite the American notion that the British lack humor. Taurus rules the British Isles as a whole, and John Bull portrays exactly this second sign of the Zodiac, the Bull sign, whose force ever outmatches the power of his opponent. There is no sense of the comical that compares with this happy possession of the British, and when peril of war oppresses, it seems to reach its highest expression. Such a sense of humor may be traced in its psychic connection to optimism, which subconsciously discerns an unseen higher light.
Things not fully understood by a Taurean are sometimes simply ignored or even detested; and, if such ideas or proposals are pressed upon him, his fury is likely to be aroused in opposition, in virtue of the stubborn, unreasoning fixed-sign force. However, once get him to see and comprehend the idea or plan, he will be as steadfast in its persistent promulgation as previously he was opposed to it, whether for lack of interest or ignorance. Will power and persistence are present in Taurus, but they do not manifest until either ambition or interest are aroused, even though these incentives usually act with slowness, because of the fixed force of this most unhurried sign. But once an idea is grasped, or some task recognized as necessary, and a definite plan is reached, no pains, nor time or energy will be spared to gain the goal.
Taurus is actually the very ‘soil’ of the soul. It is a soil that is rough, raw, and often rude, and it must be redeemed. This regeneration invariably takes place through physical forces inherent in earthly wealth, money, property, and all things included in the economic life. Especially, the way the metabolism of the body operates, creating a state of well-being as a result of the food taken in, contributing to health and generating the forces required to resist disease, is Taurean in its nature. Of all the fixed signs, Taurus is the most retentive, the life-force being held by matter more securely here than in other signs.
Just as the archetypal idea for the human Ego, the Christ-individual, is contained in the primal pioneering sign of male force, Aries, so the substance for the manifestation of man derives from the fixed earthly female sign, Taurus. In Aries is shaped the unique personal destiny, the principle that founds the earthly form, self-aware of its Egohood in its will-to-be-manifest. Aries is the ‘sower’ of the intellectual Gemini ‘seed’ in the earthy substance of Taurus, the ‘soil’ that in a literal sense also provides the elements needed for the growth of the higher kingdoms: plants, animals, and man. Whereas Aries stands for the primal archetypal pattern of man, Taurus signifies the primordial substance of the manifested self, which was spoken into being ‘in the beginning’ by the Word. Taurus holds the synthesis of past lives as psychic inheritance and basic possession. Here we see the strong conserving and retaining force, which can either retard or bring true ballast to the man, as he evolves in will, in thought, and in feeling; for, Taurus is the most retentive of the twelve signs, and this power, the most concentrated, may be wisely used or wildly misused. In no other sign of the Zodiac are the life forces more suppressed or the impulses more inhibited than in this sign of the ‘soil’, save in one respect, that of voice and speech.
In Taurus, the energies of the earth become either a boon or a bondage, depending on whether the soil of the soul is redeemed or not, for in this sign is the reservoir of forces, the storehouse of past harvests, held as concentrated power; the quality of compression and conservation is held over from past lives, to be retained inherently. The truth about reincarnation – repeated lives on Earth – becomes evident by observing men and women in their humanity, but it is especially evident in Taureans who are able to release matured forces long held in storage from the past. In Taurus, the forces of past lives are either manifested on a higher octave of power, or the Taurean is submerged by his own sense of suppression. In this respect, we may point again to the ancient symbol of Taurus, the coiled serpent, realizing that in Taurus lie concealed abysmal depths of often searing but ever searching desire that ultimately must be transmuted into will. It is the concealed quality, which we would emphasize as the cause of conservation and concentration in this sign.
What the world calls ‘practicality’ is often said to be the trait peculiar to Taureans, for they are usually people with a capacity to collect the coin of the realm. It is their forte to deal with the physical and financial, to make money, with some success, for their lesson in evolution binds them to the energies of the earth. The truly practical, however, is at the same time spiritual. Today, humanity suffers and civilization breaks down wherever this true, spiritually real practicality is disregarded. The evolutionary task of the Taureans is to acquire this power of the truly practical. They are the souls that need to be ‘born again’, theirs is the great work to raise themselves to far higher octaves of consciousness, to be regenerated and re-educated. And, according to their power of will, their vision will vitalize their activities, refine their souls, and elevate their minds, while their consciousness will be heightened and vastly expanded. In Taurus one discovers in the end that the only worthwhile possession is spiritual self-possession.
It must be kept in mind that Taurus is a sign of great reserve and retention, deep-rooted in the past. Taureans are fixed in purpose and plodding, possessing for the most part more endurance and a stronger body than individuals in other signs of the Zodiac. Being practical, and embodying the drive of silent determination and great perserverance, Taureans make concrete the energies of the earth. Their forte is endurance; their vice is obstinacy. As a certain amount of salt is good, but too much ruins the food, so the commendable Taurean quality of determination, carried to excess, easily turns into stubbornness. Great reservoirs of energy can be tapped on need, and then the strength, and often the obstinacy of the Bull, become apparent. Extremely strong-willed, they can be led by persuasion, but never driven. These are the men who mould and make things; manufacturers and builders. Although it is in the province of the Aries souls to create the abstract idea, which they pioneer and promote in their idealism and inspiration, it remains for the Taureans actually to translate the idea into reality by moulding and giving shape to matter. Thus, Aries idealizes while Taurus realizes. Aries is the architect, but Taurus the builder.
Through the forces of conservation and compression in this fixed earthy sign, Taureans are non-adaptable and averse to change or innovations. Whatever knowledge and skill they have, they bought at the price of experience, for their fixed mental attitude binds them to the effete and outmoded, following tradition rather than truth. Taureans, like Pisceans, love peace at any price, yet once aroused, they take on the force and fury of the bull and run amuck, losing control of themselves.
Taurus is ruled by Venus, and so this sign is often a furnace of affection, with strong healing forces, which make Taureans good masseurs, doctors, nurses, etc. However, if we keep in mind the negative Venusian quality of this sign, we may gain some insight into what makes these natives sensuous if not sensual, given to worldly pleasures and to venting their animal desires, very fond of food, and usually inordinate meat eaters, somewhat slovenly in dress and appearance. Of course, these habits obtain only in those living principally in their desires, which then have full and sweeping rule over the true man, the higher self. When, on the other hand, these souls turn to the Spirit and walk on the way of will, they show vast powers of concentration and a matchless perseverance.
There is no sign that may compare with Taurus for the storage of life forces; thus, its vitality is great. This over-supply of life can be an asset or an evil, depending on the mode of life, whether it is lived in the spiritual will or in the fleshly desire. No one can move farther ahead on the path of return to God than a highly developed Taurean using his will, and none can be flung down farther than a Taurean serving his fleshly lusts in an abandoned manner. In any event, this negative Venus sign, more than all others, gives to its natives intensely pronounced experiences; happenings that tend to turn and attune the Ego to far higher octaves of true living and thinking, in the future. If one studies Taurus, its place in the nativity, and the planets it holds, and its ruler Venus, one sees behind the scenes of one’s own life its stored-up forces and qualities; these are the abilities, faculties, and powers held in abeyance and not active in this life, at least not in the larger part of it, but sometimes expressed at the end of life, as in the case of Swedenborg, whose Moon and Uranus were conjunct in Taurus in his fourth house, indicating the latter part of life.
In a world-historical sense, Taurus tells of the past when the Bull was properly worshipped, when the Sun, by precession of the equinox, stood in Taurus during the Egyptian civilization. In this symbol of strength, man increasingly sought to master the outer, material world and his own inner world of animal instincts. Its forces have worked on and moulded the material, so that its potent occult content will now be used to raise the man to spiritual height and power, to lead man to his true strength by way of the spiritualized will, working to sublimate the flesh, through a proper transmutation, in virtue of the interior alchemy of the Christ in man and in the planet.
When we think of Taurus, we think of the tremendous, and we realize that this might constellation is the largest in the Zodiac, and at the end of it are the Pleiades, a group of stars said to lead to bad sight or blindness, intense ambition, and often violent death. Yet, whoever has Taurus dominate and has the will to become wise, can generate the ‘oil’ to light the lamp of his soul, enabling him to see, for in this sign of latent occult power lie concentrated the forces that bring illumination. It is a question, however, of the spiritual will getting the mastery over the animal desires, for if Taurus lives in its lower phase, it gives expression to the lust of life, fondness for ease and luxury, as well as a tendency to spend itself in drinking and fasting. Taureans stagnate and may tend to die while living because of their stubbornness in avoid true thinking. They are often so lazy as to have no desire for concentrating their thoughts. Their cynicism too often shows an utter disregard for the eternal verities, the reality of the truth of the Spirit.
Taureans are often impervious to true religion or to spiritual science, yet even though they shy away from esoteric teaching, they are usually fatalists, their professed indifference or skepticism to truth being comfortably set aside in this thought, because of their psychic or inner feeling. If at all religious, they incline to ceremony and ritual, the Venus influence moving them with music and song.
Taurus feelings being very intense, a terrific concentration of fixed force, these souls are either one’s faithful friends, kind and affable, or relentless enemies and unappeasable foes, unless one can appeal to their feelings. They must be most choice and careful in selecting a marriage partner, for in this negative Venus sign there is a likelihood of mistakes, and the more so if the marriage is contracted in younger years. Very pronounced, soul-shaking, and mind-arresting experience are likely to occur in Taurus and in a second house configuration-experiences that work actively to turn and transform the man by their magnitude, experiences that jolt him out of his contented gravitation toward the purely earthly.
One can learn much about Taurus if one understands the animal representative of this sign, the cow, a ruminant that is primarily digestion and that eats daily about one-eighth of its weight. It seems weighed down by the gravity of the earth. This is especially evident if one observes a herd of contented cows, lying in the pasture, slowly chewing the cud, reluctant to raise their heavy heads. How different they are from a flock of birds flying through their rightful element, the air, and how remarkable the agility with which the birds move their heads!
Our wonderful scientific civilization is the result of our working with the earthly, with the things that can be numbered, measured, and weighed; but this lifeless technology will become a deadly thing with an evil effect, unless man discovers the spiritual forces of nature that lie hidden within the physical substance itself, for that truly is real which is spiritual, and this is the light that shines in the darkness. An idea of the deeply intense materialism of our age may be gathered from the answer given to the question, ‘What is real?’ by a celebrated physicist, who said, ‘That is real which can be measured; that is not real which cannot be measured’. This is the danger today, the Taurean number, measure, and weight as the only reality, with no allowance for the spiritual imponderables.
Man remains in bondage to his body and brain, a slave to the energies of the earth, unable to transcend the merely intellectual, thinking in terms of sense-perceptible only, and looking to nothing more than a physical heredity, until the Spirit illumines the darkness. Not till then does man become a true builder in and with the fixed forces of this earth sign. This power of Taurus becomes fertile and fruitful in the measure in which the Man, Aquarius, is able to synthesize this sign with the two other fixed signs, Leo and Scorpio, the Lion and the Eagle. Here is the mystery of the Sphinx declared and the true measure and power of the balanced or synthesized man brought to realization.
We can learn from Taurus the tremendous role which conservation plays in our evolution as Egos, for the power to preserve the forces of the past lies concealed in the secret reservoir sign once depicted in ancient zodiacal symbology as a coiled serpent. Secrets of the soul in this sign are portrayed to those who can read the stellar script; and to note the facts and forces in one’s nativity is to see what actual Christ-gold account we have in the spiritual bank, and how best to put our talents to use. For Taurus demands that we make the earthly forces amenable for the spiritual, and that we use all things of the earth for the sake of the Spirit and be obedient to the higher man. This balance of the earthly and spiritual insures progress.
Meditation on the Bull calls forth the picture of the Mithras Bull, which was sacrificed so that the rider’s development might be furthered. As such, the Bull has become the token of complete surrender and the zodiacal symbol for the Gospel of St. Luke, the Gospel that, more than the others, speaks of love and compassion – the love that makes the supreme sacrifice. St. Luke presents Christ as a being who embodies self-giving love, who conveys to the Earth the warmth of love that streams through the universe from the exceedingly exalted beings, the Seraphim. It is in St. Luke’s Gospel 23:34,46, that we find the words from the cross revealing the greatest depth of compassion and love, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,’ and ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my Spirit,’ expressing humility, devotion, and utmost surrender.
Love’s Lyre
O common sense of Christ so rare,
O heaven’s love on earth so fair,
Assign our souls that we may love
With all thy art as thou art love!
Employ us with thy works so well
That men shall rise from out of hell
Into thy heaven by new truth told,
Then shall their souls at last unfold;
Then shall thy seed take root and rise,
Sprouting its stem up toward the skies,
Shoot forth its leaves of joyous hope
Till Christ declare its blossomed scope.
Thy bud doth burgeon, then, the Rose,
That one sweet love all heaven knows.
O take we the time to till on earth
That soil, our souls, to bring thy birth,
To give ourselves to man entire
So we at last become love’s lyre.