Tag: taurus

On Uranus in Taurus

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A lot of folks seem to be worrying the Uranus Taurus ingress to death. With these outer planet transits and ingresses, we expect big things to occur on the world stage. Uranus’ trips through Taurus have a way of coinciding with major shake-ups to the foundations of society; his last transit of Taurus lined up with that weird and worrisome period between the Great Depression and the outbreak of World War II. But bear in mind that Uranus in Taurus was not the only thing happening at that time.

What I want to make clear here is that Uranus’ property is not to create geopolitical crises. His property is to disrupt such that it forces adaptation. Uranus qua Uranus is the crisis waiting to happen, the precipitating factor, the change agent.

There’s a reason that a number of astrologers are starting to refer to this planet as Prometheus. In his myth, Prometheus steals fire from the gods as a boon for humanity, but then humanity still has to adjust to the new reality that having access to fire engenders for everyone. All Prometheus did was say, “here you go, now deal with it.”

Uranus queers–that is, Uranus makes things weird. Honestly, I need more astrologers to be talking about Uranus power to queer. Whichever house cusp Taurus lies on in your chart will be queered with this ingress.

Consider what it is that the Fab Five do on any episode of Queer Eye: they come in unexpectedly, rumble around a man’s entire wardrobe, living space, grooming, pantry, and confidence, leaving no matter untouched. And the men whose lives they impact, though they are completely unsettled and jostled around by this process, come out on the other side for the better.

Uranus will draw the elements and qualities of all that which is on the outside, the margins, the unexpected—”All things counter, original, spare, strange; / Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) / With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;” to quote Hopkins—right to the center, where it will demand adaptation. The power of the Fab Five is not that they come in and teach a man how to wear pants that fit; they teach a man how to make manifest his divine dignity by uprooting his comfort, his ugly-ass dad sneakers, and addressing the emotional baggage that caused that man to become stuck and fixed in the first place. In other words, Uranus will be the sand in the particular oyster that Taurus represents in your chart, as he always is and always does. She ain’t give a damn, hennie.

That’s the gift of queerness. We exist on the margins and when we draw the margins to the center through our presence, we create an adaptive crisis for the status quo. For me, Uranus was transiting my third whole sign house (second Placidus) and so much of the last seven years was about queering my relationship with traditional religion, which is now my day job—as well as learning how to talk about my own queerness and communicate it. There were any number of crisis points on the way that played into the whole theme (which I won’t list here), but looking back, I have a clear view of what it was that Uranus was doing in my life over the last seven years.

This goes to show that even though the precipitating crises Uranus instigates might be tied to specific events, those are amplified points of the overall theme of the transit. Is Uranus hitting favorable aspects to planets in your chart? Be ready for boons you aren’t expecting that still require you to adjust. Squares or oppositions? The same, but those will be tougher.

Regardless of the quality of the transits themselves, whether we experience them as positive of negative, we still have to be flexible, and each of the specific contacts between Uranus and other planets play into the overall story of this transit.

And we can sit around and speculate, but all the while, Uranus transits are by their very nature unpredictable. We can refine the possible manifestations of a Uranus transit by looking at our charts, but ultimately, the odds are that we won’t be able to nail down exactly what it’ll be until after the fact.

Worrying possible transits to death will make you rigid, and rigid can’t deal with Uranus. Better to bend than to break. So, friends, meet Uranus’ transits to your Taurus-placed house with Taurus’ cool head and patience. Think more Ferdinand under his cork tree, less rage-blinded animal charging at a toreador.

So I ask: what are the things that hold you to the ground? What is it that gives you a sense of stability and fixity? What are the material things with which you surround yourself in order to feel a sense of pleasure and peace? Uranus’ transit through Taurus is going to ask you to reevaluate anything that you would root yourself in, and that question is not going to come in the form of a gentle “have you considered this,” but rather, “oh by the way, your house is on fire and your investments are all over the place and your paycheck is screaming and your food is killing you and eat a vegetable and prom’s tomorrow!!”

So, as always, be prepared.

If you’re ready for a given area to be jostled in your life, if you can roll with the punches, if you can abide—and participate in—Uranus messing with all of your stuff, you’ll come out on the other side a reformed person. For our society, so rooted as it is in our relationship with money, this might necessarily mean some unprecedented shifts. And for each of us on our own, Uranus will come wheeling into whichever house Taurus is on and—as Prometheus did in the myths of ages past—hand us something fiery like “universal healthcare” or “cryptocurrency” or “food justice” and say, “well, here you go. Let’s zhuzh it a little.”

On Taurus

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The Sun is now well into Taurus! So put on your sweatpants, grab a pint and a pizza, and settle in as we explore the meaning behind one of everyone’s favorite signs.

The three keys to understanding any sign are its element, its modality, and the planets that have dignity or debility there. Taurus is an earth sign, a fixed sign, and is the domicile of Venus, the exalted seat of the Moon, and the detriment of Mars. The fertile environment of Taurus is made so by its fixity and earthiness, as well as by the planets that have the most dignity here: Venus and the Moon. Venus rules Taurus; it is her nocturnal house, where she retires to re-energize for her work.

Comfort, luxury, pleasure, indulgence are the name of the game for planets expressing their energies through Taurus; their agenda is set by Venus and all of her natural rulerships. If a planet is able to go along with LUSH writ large, they do better here.

People born with their Sun in Taurus are people who understand their purpose in life to be associated with Venus’ pursuits: peace, beauty, luxury, harmony, enjoyment, and pleasure. The same is true of people with their Sun in Libra; however, since Taurus is an earth sign and a fixed sign, the Solar purpose expressed through Taurus can be described as maintaining the status quo in terms of relating to the material world. Because of that, and due to Venus’ rulership, who naturally rules material wealth, Taurus has close associations with finance and the material “stuff” of our life, to include commodities.

NB: Don’t confuse Taurus and the second house (which also deals with resources, money, and material things)! They are similar, but not ultimately related.

The stereotype of people with Taurus suns as “lazy” is somewhat rooted in reality, given Taurus’ affinity for relaxation and enjoyment, as well as its fixity and stubbornness. Yet Taurus suns can be incredibly hard workers—fixity and stubbornness, after all. But Taurus’ ability to work hard is best applied to Venerian and Lunar endeavors. The cultivation of peace, beauty, and emotional intimacy is something that Taurus suns find as part of their understanding of their purpose in the world.

That “peace” is not the same kind of empathic peace that Libra strives for (Venus’ diurnal sign); peace in Libra is about unity of minds, a morally and ethically just peace (Saturn’s exaltation). The peace for which Venus strives in Taurus is, instead, the idea of “shalom,” the idea of material wholeness: “Everyone under their own olive tree.” No one lacks for anything material. (Remember this when Uranus enters Taurus this year.) Likewise, the Moon is exalted in Taurus and so the peace for which well-adjusted Taurus suns strive finds its strength in emotional intimacy and connection. The Moon here leans on Venus’ power to unite.

Remember too that lunar placements indicate the direction we go when we encounter stress, as well as the way forward in responding to stress in a healthy way. Taurus Moons will attempt to numb themselves with too much pleasure when they are stressed; that is, the Moon will take too much out of Venus’ refrigerator when she encounters stress in Taurus and drink herself into a luxurious, lazy stupor instead of doing the hard Mars work of confronting stress.

Meanwhile, Taurus’ lushness demands fixity and stability because Mars is in detriment here. It demands slowness, and if a planet cannot relate with slowness or with luxury, it will not do as well here (cf. Mars).

Fleet-footed Mercury is peregrine for the second half of the sign; he has a little bit of dignity by either term or face for the first half of the sign, but Taurus’ fixity is not something that comports with Mercury’s shifting nature.

So what about a Mars in Taurus placement? Mars in Taurus is an anger that falls asleep to itself, that does not find expression until something triggers it and it explodes in bullish force, leveling everything in its path and shocking everyone who witnesses it. “How could someone so easygoing have such a bad temper out of nowhere?” Taurus Mars stuns everyone when he awakes; he must have an outlet. Taurus’ physicality gives a ready way forward—anything that routes energy and emotion through the body in a controlled and appropriate expression is a great way for Taurus Mars individuals to work off their anger.

Interestingly, Jupiter has dignity only by term for a small portion of Taurus and otherwise has no dignity throughout the sign, despite Jupiter’s friendliness toward Venus. While Jupiter enjoys pleasure and luxury too, Jupiter’s restless search for truth and expansion of its boundaries does not necessarily comport with Taurus’ comfort with the status quo. Folks with Jupiter in Taurus placements likely have a propensity to overindulge in Taurean pursuits and often attach spiritual or philosophical principles to material possessions. “The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.” Defining one’s spiritual worth based on their material possessions is a risk for any Jupiter in an earth sign placement, Taurus included. “One cannot serve both God and Mammon.”

Of the earth signs, however, Taurus is the best place for Jupiter to be, as he is in his detriment in Virgo and his fall in Capricorn. This is because Jupiter, at the very least, can connect with Venus’ idea of “shalom” and turn that into an ethical principle for living. Interestingly too, Saturn has a similar “cordial acquaintance” with Taurus as well, being peregrine for two thirds of the sign. The collection of people born with Taurus in Saturn will find themselves encountering limits and obstacles as they relate with the matters that Venus rules from here: money, economic power, resources, commodities. Saturn always demands rightness of relationship and that we carry only that which is ours to carry—finance inclusive.

Cover photo by Nicolai Durbaum