Taurus

Taurus is fixed earth, the second sign of the tropical zodiac. The Sun enters it in the northern spring, when growth has already started and the work turns to keeping what has sprouted. The image is the bull: weight, appetite, a slow turn, and a great reluctance to be pushed off its ground. Fixed signs hold. Earth signs hold something you can touch.

The weather of Taurus is endurance with a sense of worth. It wants a pace it can repeat, a pleasure it can trust, and a resource that is actually in the room. Classical temperament calls earth cold and dry: cold gathers, dryness gives a boundary. In Taurus that gathering is not abstract. It shows up as food, craft, money as a store of value, land, and the loyalty of staying. The sign is allowed to be sensuous. Sensuous here means accurate about the body, not decorative.

Venus rules Taurus, and she also rules Libra. In Taurus, Venus is in her earth domicile: affection and worth expressed as something kept, made, or shared at a table. The Moon is exalted in Taurus, classically at 3 degrees. The Moon is an honored guest in this sign. Feeling looks for safety in the tangible, and the body is treated as a source of knowledge. Mars is in detriment in Taurus, opposite his domicile in Scorpio. A martial style of cutting and rushing fits this weather poorly. The chart can still use Mars here. It uses him by staying, building, and refusing a fight that would scatter the store.

The natural house is the second: movable goods, livelihood, and what a person has on hand to spend or to keep. That is a traditional topic list, not a financial plan. A planet in the sign of Taurus describes the style of a resource or a pleasure. The house it occupies says where that style lands. Taurus on the second house is one arrangement. Taurus on the tenth is another, and it needs a birth time to judge.

Sun in Taurus steadies the conscious will around continuity and taste. Moon in Taurus steadies the feelings around routine, food, and familiar ground. Venus in Taurus is the ruler at home, often plain about what she finds beautiful and what she refuses to call enough. The Ascendant in Taurus makes the first impression solid, sometimes slow to declare itself, and that reading depends on the clock of birth.

Taurus squares Leo and Aquarius, and it opposes Scorpio. The opposition is the pair of having and sharing, of what is mine and what is bound up with someone else. Fixed squares are stubborn on both sides. Trines run to Virgo and Capricorn, the other earth signs, where patience recognizes patience. The easy path among earth signs can also become a rut. A trine describes flow. It does not describe wisdom by itself.

In a reading, give Taurus one concrete sentence. What is being kept, fed, or built, and is it still worth the holding? The sign's gift is continuity. Its risk is staying after the reason to stay has left. For the ruler, read Venus. For the exaltation, read the Moon. For the place of goods and livelihood, read the second house.