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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 spiritualised 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 that 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 labour, 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 the mighty reservoir for all of 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.

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 energise 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 earthy 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 spiritualised 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 the 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 the 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, spiritualised 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 soul-spiritual 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 compassionate warmth of Christ-love.  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.  Richard Wagner had his Sun, Ascendant, Venus and Mercury in this sign of song Taurus.  

In the galaxy of opera stars and singers, we find a large number of Taureans, for Taurus is the sign of the 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 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 the 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.

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.

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.  As Aries flies outward from a center, 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 center 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 Ego-consciousness and freedom, t 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 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 intellectual person in this fixed sign must learn to listen to and 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.

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 touches off the fuse, firing up the pent-up power with the force 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.  If a Taurean can disengage himself from his fixity, his interested is aroused, giving him an ambition as great for the Spirit of truth.  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 merges 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 defiant and sensual character, the stubborn moods and emotions, the contradictory and often torrential elements in Taurus, can be redirected and transmuted when they yield to the advice of someone they love or greatly admire.

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 forces 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 realise 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 humour 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.  The ability to see and to enjoy the comical side of a situation is British.  Taurus rules the British Isles as a whole.  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 humour may be traced in its psychic connection to optimism, which subconsciously discerns an unseen higher light.

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.  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.  In this sign Taurus 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 emphasise 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 the 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 make concrete the energies of the earth.  Their forte is endurance; their vice is obstinacy.  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 Taurean actually to translate the idea into reality by moulding and giving shape to matter.  Thus, Aries idealises while Taurus realizes.  Aries is the architect, but Taurus the builder.

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.  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.

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 forth house, indicating the latter part of life.

When we think of Taurus, we think of the tremendous, and we realise 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.  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.  

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.  St. Luke presents Christ as a being who embodies 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.