April 21-May 21
- Fixed earth, symbolized by salt flats, form, money, security and attachment.
- Suggested Music: Tom Waits • Supreme Beings of Leisure • Nick Drake • Van Morrison • DonovanGrant Lee Phillips • Keith Jarrett • Devendra Banhart •
- Suggested Movies: Like Water for Chocolate • Gone with the Wind • Chocolat • Tortilla Soup • Eat Drink Man Woman • Babette’s Feast • The Good Earth • The Grapes of Wrath
Taurus brings the bursting wildfire of Aries back down to earth, gives shape to all that whirling energy. When the newborn child has come through the fire – transformed from idea and imagination into body and form, from passionate clashing of energies into tangible, touchable, physical presence – that’s when Taurus energy has arrived. It’s not birth but the moment after birth: The lovely Aah! The baby is here! moment when you can finally feel, touch and hold her.
Then, over time, that form is crystallized into the patient attachment between parent and child. Most astrologers see the mother in the Moon, in the sign of Cancer – and that is not exactly wrong – but the initial mother-child bonding takes place within the Taurus archetype, in the act of giving containment to the cries of the child after its pioneering journey through the birth canal. Taurus knows that containment, safety, trust and security – the realization of firm ground beneath one’s feet – are essential prerequisites to the relationship that will soon flower.
Homeless service agencies know that when a parent and child enter their doors, it is critical to move quickly to establish physical security – to get them into a real home, a safe space, to ensure psychic security in the long run. It’s why physical needs are the first rung of Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: Before any further action, refinement, amplification or expansion of the idea (Aries) can take place, it first needs security (Taurus). Physical form. In the literal sense, food, clothes and housing.
It’s also why early developmental psychologist Erik Erikson identified trust in the world as the first emotional requirement of the child. Without certainty that the world will support the self, without knowing that there is firmament supporting him or her, the child simply cannot flourish.
This is also why we say that Taurus is “fixed.” Fixed signs allow us to stop and breathe, after the hard pushing of each preceding sign, to look around and know there is something constant in our midst. If the whole world were always moving, acting, shifting beneath us, we’d never get a rest, never have containment, never feel the instinctive trust that comes from stability, from predictability. Since Taurus is the second sign of the zodiac, and the only fixed earth sign, we can understand physical security as a basic psychological need from which proceeds the rest of our unfolding.
Taurus is the master of form, the sign most comfortable with and attached to the physical world. Later earth signs – Virgo and Capricorn – want to do something with earth: sort it, fix it, heal it, conquer it – but Taurus as fixed earth is satisfied just to sit with it. Not that Taurus won’t work to create it, but for Taurus the work is the means to an end, the end being satisfaction, security and enjoyment. Taurus wouldn’t work if he didn’t have to.
Of course, fixity can quickly translate to immovable, stubborn, intransigent. Taurus doesn’t intend to dig its heels in; it’s just that people with a lot of Taurus energy feel most secure when they’re certain of what is. When they feel held by the world as it is, it can be frightening to change it: Who knows what might come to replace the strong arms, the predictable routine, the salary and benefits, the certainty of routine? If Taurus accedes to change, it risks uncertainty. Unlike, say, Sagittarius, Taurus does not consider uncertainty exciting.
It’s not that Taurus is a big stick-in-the-mud. There’s another aspect to Taurus’s attachment to form that lightens him up considerably: sensuality, pleasure, even decadence. Taurus loves to touch, taste, loll and laze. In a culture replete with Type A personalities, Taurus reminds us to slow down, smell the roses, taste the wine, romp in the bed, indulge in an afternoon on the couch. Why are we alive, anyway, he thinks, if not to experience the delights of the physical world? You can’t take it with you, so you might as well enjoy it while you’re here!
It’s not that you can’t change a Taurus. But be ready to move slowly, to condition her to the change you seek. A new sense of security must be in place before she’ll allow the old structure to move aside or fade away. As in plate tectonics, incremental shifts are much preferable to one sudden fracture. If she’s dissatisfied with her life but afraid to change, don’t push but rather point out what supports her and what doesn’t. Patiently help her build new structures beneath her feet before slowly dismantling the old. Security is non-negotiable for a Taurus. What form is takes may change – slowly, for certain, but it may.
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Taurus energy is best balanced by its opposite sign, Scorpio. Read the description of that sign to understand what “shadow” traits you might need to integrate. Contact us at (310) 592-0435 or kathy@depthastrology.net for a detailed chart reading that reveals the entire scope of your personality, gifts and challenges.
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