Insight for Taurus past…
April 19, 2012
Sun enters Taurus 12:12 PM
A fixed earth sign, Taurus is where we find the essence of embodiment. It holds us to the senses, to the world of matter. In the northern hemisphere the season is spring and the natural world smells good. Hope is high if you have even a little bit of something you can use to bring pleasure and/or value into your life. People who feel they have nothing, especially if they feel that someone took from them what belonged to them, those people show us the difficult side of this sign; a fierce, blind rage, terrifying to behold. All it takes to prevent this is the basic things: some nourishing food that tastes good, a little time to enjoy a bit of beauty, the smell of a healthy life, a reasonable place to live. That’s all it takes. Taurus represents the birthright which belongs to every incarnated being.
April 19, 2013
Sun enters Taurus 06:04 PM EDT
There is doing and then there is being. Spring is a busy season in much of the world. Everybody is happy to spend more time outside. The stark tree branches of early spring are greening and canopies of various greens delight us. Even so, with all this activity we are meant, in Taurus, to take a moment every once in a while and take in the world through the doors of perception, our senses. Bird song, vibrant color, the taste of newly sprouted things, the sensation of the sun on more skin than the face. And most powerful of all, the smell of it. This is common sense: The Body Electric! If you can’t read it, sing it!
April 19, 2014
Sun enters Taurus 11:56 PM EDT
There is doing and there is being. Many have observed this. Taurus is about Being. It’s not that we should all sit quietly, smelling flowers like Ferdinand the Bull, although there is merit in that to be sure. It’s more about sitting inside the mighty tree of yourself and being there. Whatever it takes. There are so many puzzles and mysteries to this life. Sometimes the only thing you can do in the face of all that is to be present. Simple being is one of Taurus’ great gifts. And when this inclination is thwarted, look out! That’s when the bull sees red.
April 20, 2015
Sun enters Taurus 6:45 PM EDT
Think about soil. The dark, rich fertile ground out of which grows our food. A relentless miracle that has sustained us since before time began. Hiding in plain sight. Think about how, when something is soiled or dirty it is considered unclean. And yet, and yet, this is the literal ground of our being. Taurus is the place where this paradox of soil and soiled, dirt and dirty lives. Just add water and sunlight and you get better than gold – you get food and beauty. Like the Sacred Hippies say: the earth is our mother.
April 19, 2016
Sun enters Taurus: 11:03 AM EDT
Venus square Pluto
Pluto is in Capricorn, Jupiter in Virgo and today the Sun enters Taurus, joining Mercury who is soon to be retrograde which means spending more time than usual in this sign. These are all the earth signs. Earth is just what you think it is: the stuff of life: the matter. There are many astrological indications of stress in the world at this moment but if we focus on the earth we can see something else happening too. People are really engaged in building the world from the bottom up. Finding solutions that really work, not just the kind that look good. We take things like reuse, and recycle as a matter of common sense. Trines, which are gifts, aren’t as obvious as squares and oppositions. We take our gifts for granted. It’s human nature. Maybe it’s all of nature. Things just are what they are when we are comfortable. With all three earth signs inhabited by planets we will have an astrological Grand Trine. As the Sun, Mercury and soon Venus spend time in Taurus over the month of Taurus we are all encouraged to use our common senses. Our common senses to appreciate the colors, sensations, sounds and tastes of the world. It’s an excellent time to ‘see a World in a Grain of Sand’. Simple pleasures are the cornerstone to sane values.
If you’re having a hard time today, blame it on Venus, not yet in Taurus. Some days you can’t get what you want, so you might as well be grateful for what you have.
April 19, 2017
Sun enters Taurus: 05:27 PM EDT
We are concerned about our Mother, the Earth. Taurus especially loves its mother because our senses are the doors of perception. Things have gotten out of hand. We are worried that she is so hurt and abused that she will not be able to sustain us. Worried that it is our fault. You would tell a human child, if you could, that your mother’s pain is not the child’s fault. It cannot be. But the earth is not human. She is our mother, no doubt about that, but we are her children along with the birds and insects, the lizards and great sea creatures. All creatures in fact are her children, including the trees and grasses, even the stones and the dirt. Guilt is a crippling emotion; better to opt for responsibility. It is our job, as mature humans to recognize our brothers and sisters: To take responsibility: To stop with the plastic and the fossil fuels, to ease up on the relentless entitlement which our capacity to consume seems to confer upon us. As one of our wisest planetary elders has said:
In primal societies, adolescents go through rites of passage, where confronting their own mortality is a gateway to maturity. In analogous ways, climate change calls us to recognize our own mortality as a species. With the gift of uncertainty, we can grow up and accept the rights and responsibility of planetary (elder) adulthood. Then we know fully that we belong, inextricably, to the web of life, and we can serve it, and let its strength flow through us.
April 19, 2018
Sun enters Taurus: 11:13 PM EDT
Taurus is generally considered to be the most stable and resolute sign of the zodiac, as predictable as the ground we stand upon. It’s the fixed earth sign: Fixed = power, earth = matter. We can play with those key words; power matters, or maybe what matters most. Things are not terribly stable at the moment, not in the world as we experience it nor in the astrological picture of that world. Our world.
As the Sun enters Taurus today it will do so in an out-of-sign conjunction with Uranus, the planet of unexpected change and disruption. Uranus will enter Taurus on May 15th, while the Sun is still in that sign. It hasn’t been there since May 16, 1942: Exactly 76 years.
Specific to this ‘ingress’ or entry to a new sign, is that the Sun today and Uranus from May 15th, will engage the energies of Neptune (in a semi-square). Neptune most definitely represents the ‘tricky fish’ aspect of reality: Things that we see for a moment which slip back into the deep, leaving some of us dazed and confused and others mystified and longing to drink from the waters.
It is never my intention to predict the future. I don’t believe we can or even should get specific about things that might happen. Probability is as real for astrologers as it is for everyone else. What happens, happens. Astrology’s great contribution is to provide insights regarding how we might navigate events. At this time it is hard to find a person who is not anxious about the overabundance of chaos in the wider world. Many seem to be waiting, wondering and often waking in the middle of the night with anxiety as if they are expecting the other shoe to drop, the shoe that will hit their personal reality.
What I like to do with the images of astrology is to remind myself that ‘everything to be imagined is an image of truth”. The fact that this pithy truth comes from a work entitled ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’ tells us that what we imagine can go either way.
And so I practice: calming my mind and connecting as best I can with the natural world. One thing about Taurus, it lives here on Earth. Gaea is its home and native land. In support of this seemingly great change that is upon us is Saturn in Capricorn (along with Vesta). Capricorn is an earth sign and supports Taurus in making the right effort. All efforts are needed, outcomes are not always obvious.
Uranus in Taurus (Meets Mars in Aquarius)
May 15, 2018
In his song, ‘Peace Like a River” Paul Simon says, he’s gonna be up for a while. At this moment in history I daresay a lot of us feel like we’re gonna be up for a while.
Uranus, planet of revolution, revolution, chaos and change enters Taurus and will be there this year from May 15th – November 6th. It will return and spend about 7 years there in March of 2019. This is big astrological news because Uranus has an 84 year return cycle. The last time it entered Taurus was in the late 1930s. It remained there until the early years of the 40s. You might think, ‘end of Great Depression, beginning of WW II’ and you would be right to make that association.
Much is written about this on the internet. I will add my two cents here. You are also welcome to attend my Mars Retrograde workshop or search it out after the fact. Mars is an integral part of Uranus’ entrance into Taurus and so I will look at the combination for the workshop.
Which is to say that within 24 hours of Uranus entering Taurus, Mars will enter Aquarius, a sign that blocks Taurus. This would not be such big ‘news’ in the astrological sense except for the fact that Mars will be retrograde this year (June 26 – August 27) and will square Uranus three times: Once going in (May 16), once while retrograde (August 1st) and once after it goes direct (September 18th.) When things happen three times they are significant.
So Uranus isn’t just entering Taurus, it is entering with an edge.
It seems that somewhere between May 15 and September 19 will be a time of challenge, chaos and change. If only we could take our pick.
Uranus in Aries (June 2010 till now), was about people taking to the streets and a lot of protesting starting with the Arab Spring, Occupy, and Idle No More and, oddly ending up with the alt-right. Aries is often about protest.
Taurus is about money, resources, the economy, values and at a basic level, the body of earth itself. In an individual’s chart I could say, it’s what you value, but in the world it’s about banks and the resources they control. It’s about the land and the fundamental connection we have to it; how it feeds us and how we care for it.
Aquarius is also a money sign in that it has to do with the systems we put in place that store and contain our resources. Maybe you could say it is our concept of money. The investment we make which we think will increase in value.
Mars is the god of war but that is only one of its faces. The scariest. It symbolizes all things relating to assertiveness, breakthrough and vitality. It will enter Aquarius and bring force to the concept or plan that our society uses to direct and develop resources and it will offer challenge to Uranus right off the bat which, in Taurus, has serious plans about what is really happening on the ground and what needs to change.
Mars wants us to stay with the ‘plan’ which is quite likely the status quo no matter what is happening on the ground. In Aquarius there is at least the veneer of civilized behavior. Given it’s propensity for aggression and bullying one might think that the actual terrorists are the ones holding the blueprint. Not the ones experiencing the reality.
It could be many different things including earth changes, computer hacks, and governments trying to manipulate these events on account of where the resources are. It could also be increased activism. Most likely it involves money and power. Think US dollar vs. Chinese yuan.
My personal thoughts about Mars and Uranus lean toward things such as earth changes (fire, flood, eruptions, those kinds of things) and the cost which will be more than can governments can afford. The effects of climate change are real and present, that they are forcing change of other kinds upon us. The ‘keepers of the system’ (governments and giant corporations) are fighting to keep it the way it has always been, according to plan. Although this sounds awful it will give rise to the ideas which are plentiful for how to manage our resources in a shape-shifting landscape.
There are many voices of reason and hope.
In the lives of individuals the Mars Uranus adventure might be about the fact that we must think more about our choices and how they affect the wider world. We already do this when we choose clothes not made in sweat shops or buy organic food. Whatever we are doing to embrace a changing world on May 15th, we may be doing a lot more by the end of 2018.
April 20, 2019
Sun enters Taurus: 4:55 AM EDT
Venus enters Aries
Taurus, like a lot of other things, isn’t exactly what it once was. Back in the lush green, when you could smell colors on the air and feel the texture of spring, Taurus came of age: When the senses were the root of value and ‘common’ meant shared by all, not lowly. But here we are, and now. The revolution is brewing, the earth turns and we wonder and fret over the virtual world and how it steals our time along with the embodiment of our children. Uranus’ recent entrance in Taurus suggests there is big change afoot – exciting, unpredictable, chaotic, game-changing. It matters (Taurus rules the issue of ‘matter’, the stuff of life) how and where we align ourselves as the earth beneath our feet may be ‘torn asunder’ at any moment. Look for empowerment when The Sun in Taurus aspects Saturn and Pluto. Honor the soul in all things when it meets up with Neptune. The earth is our mother, we must take care of her. So she can continue to take care of us.
Venus is the astrological ruler of Taurus, but she is not at home in Aries. She’s a teenager, thinking she can buck the system: Ignorant but full of energy. Maybe she can. Watch out for her when she fights back. Support her but don’t feed her ignorance. Take the good risk when the time is right. Truth to power not arrogance to the Void.
April 19, 2020
Sun enters Taurus: 10:45 AM EDT:
I tend to think that the issue for Taurus is the struggle between being and doing. And so…
It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.
-Wendell Berry from Standing By Words
Taurus is about real things, their smell and taste, color and shape, texture and sound. The doors of perception, the senses, are found here. Although it’s long been forgotten in our world of hyper consumption, these sense doors are ground zero for our values. We like the way some things look and feel but not others. These preferences underlie the innate integrity of our senses which has little to do with greed or grasping. It just is what it is.
In the current unreality of our enforced confinement one positive side effect might be more being, less doing, a reawakening of simple pleasure and some awareness of core values. Our collective values create our economy. Uranus in the sign of Taurus, is the planet of deep change, revolutionary change, inevitable change. It has been hard at work crashing the system. There never was a better time to ‘be the change’, the one you want to see.