Solar Zodiac · The Sun's Path
Taurus
“Slow to start, and then genuinely immovable.”
Polarity: negative · Modality: fixed · Element: earth · Ruler: Venus
Taurus is fixed earth ruled by Venus, which is a strange and useful pairing: the planet of pleasure attached to the sign least willing to be hurried. Taurus builds things meant to last, values comfort without apology, and takes a long time to change its mind precisely because it took a long time to make it up. Once settled, it does not move for argument, fashion or pressure. This is one of the oldest constellations we have. The V of the Hyades makes the bull's face and the red giant Aldebaran is its eye, with the Pleiades riding on its shoulder, and people were tracking that group before writing existed. A panel in the caves at Lascaux, painted around seventeen thousand years ago, shows a bull with a cluster of dots above it that lines up uncomfortably well with the Pleiades. Whether or not it was meant as a star map, humans have been looking at this animal in this sky for longer than almost anything else in the zodiac. A Taurus is the person who still has the good knives, the long friendship, the job they have quietly been excellent at for a decade. They are sensual, patient and reassuring, and their anger arrives late and lasts. The cost is inertia: comfort maintained past the point where it has become a rut, and a stubbornness that will defend a position long after the reason for it has gone.
Taurus Dates
The Sun is in Taurus from April 21 to May 21.
The boundary moves by a day or so from year to year, because the solar year is not a whole number of days. If you were born within a day of either end, check your birthday against the finder rather than the table.
Taurus Ancient Zodiacs
Every sign a Taurus can be, one for each year of the Chinese zodiac.
- Badger: Taurus Rat, “Inherited the house, extended it, and will defend it.”
- Bison: Taurus Ox, “Turns into the storm and walks straight through it.”
- Minotaur: Taurus Tiger, “Enormous strength, and a maze built to hold it.”
- Walrus: Taurus Rabbit, “Enormous, sociable, and finds dinner by touch alone.”
- Elephant: Taurus Dragon, “Remembers the way to water from forty years ago.”
- Silkworm: Taurus Snake, “Turns patience into something everybody wants to touch.”
- Donkey: Taurus Horse, “Not stubborn. Thinking, and unwilling to be hurried about it.”
- Ibex: Taurus Goat, “Stands where nothing should stand, and is calm about it.”
- Orca: Taurus Monkey, “Keeps the family, the knowledge, and the accent.”
- Beetle: Taurus Rooster, “Armoured, exact, and navigating by the Milky Way.”
- Groundhog: Taurus Dog, “Reliable enough that a whole country checks on it.”
- Sloth: Taurus Pig, “So committed to comfort that a small world grows on it.”