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The Sign of the Bull or Cow

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The Taurus constellation is depicted as a great Bull of heaven, with many names from many cultures. Sometimes a Bull (male), other times not, like Audumbla, the Norse cow mother goddess who, like Gaia, was an Earth Mother. In many of these myths, she provided milk and nurtured her children, who went on the populate the Earth. Other times, a Bull is depicted plowing the fields, landscaping the world into its current form, like Pangu, Ymir, or Paul Bunyan. 

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Thus, Taurus represents the Earth’s loving abundance. Taurus signs are likewise committed, generous, modest, and indulgent in the gifts of life. They are content to live a simple life tending to the Earth and nurturing others.

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The 19 days of Taurus range from May Day through most of May and Mother’s Day. From start to finish, Taurus is a time of gaiety (remember Gaia?) and happiness, celebrating the benevolence and generosity of Summer weather. Even in the Southern Hemisphere, it is the time of harvest, a time to celebrate abundance. It is a perfect time for Mother’s Day, from the celebration of our Earth Mother on May Day to the celebration of our human mothers later in the month. 

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Earth Sign

The Grounded Earth Sign

Taurus, the first Earth sign in the Zodiac, embodies the stability and grounding qualities associated with the Earth itself. Like the very ground we walk upon, Taurus symbolizes a solid foundation of reliability and practicality. Firmly rooted in their convictions, they provide stability and security to those who rely upon them. 

They value the tangible aspects of life, with all of its sensory pleasures, relishing in the abundance and comforts that the Earth has to offer. 

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Like the unyielding ground, Taurus can also display stubbornness and resistance to change. Once they have set their course, it can be hard to sway them elsewhere. Their steadfast nature can be both a strength and a limitation, as they may be resistant to new ideas or alternative perspectives.

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Love Sign

The Sign of Home

Taurus is the 1st Love or Fixed sign in the Zodiac. As a Fixed sign among already fairly sedated Earth signs, Taurus is the most sedentary, settled, and homey. Their tendency is to reinforce and maintain a homeostatic environment, and this corresponds to the physical law of Equilibrium, which is when all components in a system are equal. Think of it like an airlock, which slowly equalizes the pressure for someone moving between spaces to prevent a traumatic influx all at once. They like to take things slow, and though they are not opposed to trying new things, they prefer to introduce them gradually. Love signs are particularly concerned with spaces, especially social gathering places, and use that canvas as a backdrop to try and create optimal conditions for harmonious connection.

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This focus on hospitality can lead Taurus to be a bit self-sacrificing, and concerned with externals, so care must be taken to set aside time for introspection and inner work. Love motivation is highly attuned to service, and pro-social behavior, upholding decorum and mores which can sometimes lead them to appear conservative or stubborn. They don’t oppose change, but they do resist it, asking thoughtful questions about the value it will bring to the social balance to ensure a generative result. Taurus takes the time to ask not just if it CAN be done, but if it SHOULD be done.

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The slow moving Earth energy coupled with the motive of Love values stability and comfort. To spur them into action, proof must be presented that the juice really is worth the squeeze, and this makes them difficult to fool or take advantage of. But once they are committed to something, it can be very difficult to get them to budge from their well trodden path. This endurance is ideal for pursuit of long term goals, and lasting results which are cherished and maintained as labors of Love.

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Ruled by Earth

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Personality

Personal Life / Personality

Those born under the Taurus constellation or with a Taurus influence in their Star Chart tend to have a down-to-earth aura. 

  • Sturdy, upbeat, positive, calm, perceptive, observant, sensual, indulgent, 

  • Obsessive, grounded, stubborn, sensitive, anxious, hedonistic, 

Interpersonal Life / Relationships

  • Charitable, supportive, generous, consistent, reliable, committed, warm, affectionate, vigilant, faithful, fun, funny

  • Self-conscious, insecure, repetitive, boring, obstinate, sacrificial, passive, needy, jealous, smothering, tough, unforgiving, shallow

Social Life / Society

  • Detail-oriented, responsible, witty, realistic, fair

  • Meticulous, predictable, cautious, conservative, traditional, workaholic, demanding, sarcastic, distant, superficial, simplistic

Archetypal Story of Taurus

Carl Fredricksen is a cranky old man when we meet him. He is caught between a rock and a hard place, as the world around him is building up and he is doggedly staying in place. Before he became a crotchety ‘menace to society’, bound for an old folks home, he was a young man craving adventure. He admired explorer Charles Muntz, who was blazing trails in South America and riling up excitement over new discoveries, until one of his finds was accused of being fake. 

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His idol’s fall from grace didn’t dissuade Carl, however, as he had found a great new adventure in Ellie, a fellow travel enthusiast. They build a life together, always planning to travel to Paradise Falls but getting side-tracked by the mundane demands of everyday life. Every bit of savings they manage to stack up is met with an emergency or complication. One such roadbump is Ellie’s inability to have children, which they move past in order to refocus on the trip, but the years keep flying by. By the time Carl is ready to spring the adventure on her as a surprise, she falls ill and passes away, leaving Carl the sole caretaker of their mutual dream. 

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Loss of his love marks the end of Carl’s warm nature and Generosity, and he becomes withdrawn. When a well-meaning boy scout, Russell, comes knocking at the door, attempting to do him a favor and earn his ‘Helping the Elderly’ badge, Carl is downright hostile. He doesn’t want help from anyone, and as modernity encroaches and threatens to force him out of his home, he summons his job expertise as a balloon salesman to anchor an absurd number of helium-filled balloon-sacks to his house, hoisting them aloft. His plan is to fly all the way to South America and set down on Paradise Falls, as Ellie had always dreamed they could do… in his interpretation, anyway. 

Unfortunately, his quest is burdened by a stowaway, as Russell is still on his porch, clinging for dear life as the makeshift dirigible hurtles toward its destination. Unable to offload the persistent cargo, Carl begrudgingly accepts the company. 

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They eventually overshoot the falls and try to use the last of the balloon’s lift to walk the house along the plateau. Russell tries to make use of his handy outdoorsy scout skills to assist their situation in the wilderness. 

This is made stranger by the appearance of a large bird he calls Kevin, and a dog wearing a collar that allows him to speak, called Dug. Other talking dogs appear, and the gang discovers that the childhood adventure hero Muntz had returned there years ago to hunt down proof of Kevin and clear his name. His obsessive search, however, has driven him mad, and he is fiercely competitive against anyone coming to take the bird first. He proves he is willing to resort to violence and forces Carl into an ultimatum to save either his house, or Kevin, and the cranky old man chooses to cling to the former. He spends some time evaluating his life choices, and finds a photo album left by his late wife, with a note she wrote in the hospital, wishing for him to move on and have his own adventures. This reawakens his Generous spirit, and he manages to save the day and defeat Muntz. 

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He sacrifices his house to do this, letting go of the possessions and memories which tied him to Ellie and held him back from going forward into the future with new dreams. In marriage, he traded her his Commitment for her sense of Adventure, and he now realizes it was a gift meant to be lived rather than just idolized. Through Russell, as the child he never got to have, he vicariously experiences the sense of wonder from his youth. He gives the boy Fecundity, through his wealth of life experience, and in return, Russell gives him Mobility where the old man had previously been rooted into place. Practicality alone, with all the skills he had gathered in his merit badges, was not enough to get Russ through his rite of passage. He needed the guidance of an elder to show him the way. 

Forest Path

♉︎ Taurus

Organic Agriculture, Ethical Animal Husbandry, Restorative Land Usage

Taurus is charged with food security, agricultural systems, and nutrition. This includes things like safeguarding biodiversity, conducting research on changing soil and weather conditions, developing crops better suited to grow in those difficult conditions, using plants to stabilize and improve landscapes, retain and filter water, prevent erosion, etc. Anything falling under farming, landscaping, terraforming, foraging, husbanding, forestry, things of that nature (hehe see what I did there).The first thing we must do is dissolve the notion of unlimited growth. Soil can be very quickly destroyed and depleted with improper practices, and we are now facing a crisis with GMOs and the fertilizers and pesticides that accompany them. We are making what was once fertile land unusable by literally salting our own fields. Ironically, there may be great need in the future to engineer crops that will be more tolerant to salt in order to try and reverse what has been done, and try to retake some of the desert that is being created when land is used up within a couple growth cycles and then abandoned in favor of new fields made available by burning what were once habitats. But this must be done organically to prevent further contamination, and whether we genetically modify or selectively breed, the traits we promote must be ones that leave the organism fit to participate in an ecosystem and not just serve our preferences.

 

Abundance is trust in the process, not an unrealistic expectation that everything is going to be automatically resupplying for our convenience. In order for natural processes to be perpetual, there have to be seasons or cycles which restore the conditions necessary for their fertility. For most plants and crops we see this in seasons of the year and disparage the ones that are not productive or desirable to us. But it is these periods of rest which makes explosive growth possible, and as omnivores we should be able to source our dietary needs from a variety of places year round but instead have opted to interrupt this by importing food from farther and farther away.  This destroys the nutritional value as transit takes a toll on the quality, fruits must be picked before their prime ripeness in the hopes that they are at a desirable stage by the time they meet their market, and it puts undue pressure on the environments and economies of the places of their origin. We rely on preservation and processing to make things available in seasons when they shouldn’t be, simply put it’s not good for us or the planet. Our food is  making us sick with overuse of pesticides, harmful fillers, and chemicals oriented toward quantity over quantity.  

 

A primordial duty was placed on Taurus for the sourcing of food. Each iteration of the evolution of the bovine, from auroch to buffalo to our present day guernsey has played a crucial role in feeding humanity.  So it is fitting that this right and responsibility now falls to the Bull to redefine what that relationship will be and what will come to make up the bulk of our diet. I myself have been doing extensive research on plant based diet principles, and the conclusion that I have come to is we need to get our proportions under control and dismantle the agro industrial complex; but as omnivores I think there will always be a need for symbiotic relationships with other animals such as the ethical farming of dairy. To me the classification of honey as non vegan is beyond absurd, in all of nature you see agreements and trades of protection for food offerings, and the pressure is on us to be creative and use this codependence for the benefit of animals and the environment they live in. Bees are at the very top of this priority list for obvious reasons, making beekeeping more profitable is the single best thing we can do in the interest of pollinating plants everywhere. During the transition, as long as things are profitable and education is made available on how to go about monetizing good things, people will be able to step up on a local level. That was the attitude I really held to when I began this over a decade ago and spent a lot of resources and energy on local business mentorship, I now know that it’s too little too late and more needs to be done on a wide scale to address the severity of the problem. But without building in this local resilience we could lose many more talented people to poverty. So it’s still very much worth doing. Even if it doesn’t seem to make a wide impact at a glance, like bees, we are socially cooperative and make our way in this by accumulating tiny acts of kindness over months, years, and generations.

 

Habitats are largely endangered by our farming habits and wild animals have been marginalized to make room for our domesticated ones. We shoot coyotes to protect our chickens and throw the proportions of hunter and prey completely out of balance for the sake of our own convenience and consumption. The cardinal rule of hunters in nature is that they do not wage war on or eliminate their competition entirely. They will defend the boundaries of their own territory as appropriate, and fight over resources when direct contact is made, but they will not organize hunting parties to go and wipe out another predator just so they won’t be in competition over the same quarry any more. But we do that. So until we can figure out how to be in right-relation with nature, an important part of land restoration involves reintroduction of keystone species, and recognizing the role they play in terraforming their environments. Efforts to reestablish populations of bison in both America and Eurasia are having a profound effect on the ecosystem. Learning their techniques to create productive prairie and steppe biomes could help us implement effective permaculture.

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