We Are Not One Zodiac Sign. We Are ALL Signs.
Welcome to Part 2 in an ongoing series about the 12 intelligences we all need to gather from the zodiac to advance your soul back to our divine source. As I mentioned in the first post in this series on Aries, my interest in this subject was inspired and informed by two books:
• The Pagan Christ by Tom Harpur
• The Gospel and the Zodiac by Bill Darlison
It was this commentary in The Pagan Christ that sent me on a hunt for the 12 intelligences:
“In the ancient gnosis, as the soul advances through the scale of evolution, he or she passes through twelve grades of being, adding to his or her estate the quality gained at each level, until his or her absorption of the essence of all nature is complete. These twelve qualities of perfected spiritual understanding are what are represented by the twelve astrological signs of the zodiac. In the ancient wisdom, the sun’s journey through each sign, acquiring the special powers of each, symbolized the soul’s round of the elements and the acquisition of the 12 intelligences … these twelve aspects create the potential for Christ consciousness.”
The Gospel and the Zodiac provided me with some answers — including the intelligence we need to obtain from Taurus the bull. I’ll provide a few excerpts from Darlison’s book in this post that I think are most relevant to understanding the Taurus intelligence we need to obtain. I’ll let you try to determine what you think it is, before providing my thoughts.
Your Divine Spirit in Taurus (April 20 to May 21)
“Aries symbolizes the sprouting seed’s struggling for life amidst the forces of decay. Taurus represents the next stage of the process: Establishing roots that supply nourishment to the growing plant … Symbolically, the raw energies of Aries are collected, shaped, and given direction in Taurus. The momentum is slowed and practical issues have to be faced. This is a natural process of development for any activity: the force of the initial impulse is often tremendous, but it lacks effectiveness until it has encountered the real world of experience.”
“In astrology, Taurus represents the ‘real world.’ In addition to being a fixed sign, it is also an Earth sign concerned with life’s tangible paraphernalia, such as houses and chattels, and also its sensual pleasures. It is the sign of the builder, and it is surely not without significance that some of the human race’s grandest structures — including Stonehenge and the pyramids of Egypt — were erected during the astrological age of Taurus (4,000 to 2,000 BCE). Taurus is the bull, archetypal symbol of the earth and sacrificial victim of the devotees of Mithras, and of the nature worshipers with whom the Hebrew prophets strove tirelessly, albeit vainly, for control of the popular mind. Its hieroglyph is the bull’s head and horns. The Jews called Taurus ‘Bayt,’ a word meaning ‘house,’ and the building of Solomon’s Temple (‘The House of the Lord’) was begun when the sun was in Taurus (1 Kings 6:1).”
“The ‘ruler’ of Taurus is Venus, the beautiful morning and evening star. Venus complements the positive, ‘masculine’ qualities of Mars. Its glyph, which has become the universal symbol of the feminine, shows the circle of spirit above the cross of matter, symbolizing the predominance of receptivity and nurture over aggression and enterprise.”
Referring to a classic parable from the Bible, Mark 4:3-9 “begins with the Taurean figure of the sower going out to sow his seed:
‘Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times.’ Then Jesus said, ‘Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.’
“The explanation of this parable which Jesus is said to have delivered privately to his apostles, spells out what the Taurus phase of the spiritual life demands of us: we need to have the Taurean virtues of endurance and stability in addition to the Arlen ones of enthusiasm and vigor. The seed that falls by the side of the road never even begins to put down roots. This is a warning that the spiritual impulse alone is not enough.”
“The desire may be sown in the heart, but without adequate nurture it will easily be destroyed. Similarly with the seed that falls on the rocky ground: this flourishes for a while but, lacking any real foundation, it soon withers in the face of difficult circumstances. The spiritual life requires perseverance and tenacity, the two most striking Taurean qualities. Isabelle Pagan writes of the Taurus type:
‘The chief characteristic of the highly developed Taurean type is his stability of character and of purpose. He is the steadfast mind, unshaken in adversity, and his is the power of quiet persistence in the face of difficulties … in hard circumstances his patience and perseverance are marvelous.’”
“In the Jewish scriptures, we observe that the ‘flesh-pots’ of Egypt (Exodus 16:3) are a perpetual source of temptation to the newly freed Israelites. Their spiritual resolve is weakened by the ‘sweet delights’ of Taurus for which Egypt is the biblical symbol. (According; to Philo of Alexandria, Egypt symbolizes ‘the passions which excite the body.’) But for all that their bellies were full when they lived there, they were in bondage, the peculiarly seductive bondage of materialism, which this passage in Mark warns us to break away from. As Fred Gettings (author on esoterica) reminds us, Taurus ‘is always productive,’ but if this productivity is seen entirely in terms of dividends, shares, bank accounts, and bull markets, then the spiritual journey will be cut short before it has really begun.”
“Dane Rudhyar (author and pioneer of modern transpersonal astrology) considers that the spiritual lesson of the Taurus phase is non-possessiveness because ‘Where there is possessiveness … there can be no spiritual living.’ He goes on:
‘The zodiacal sign Taurus is traditionally thought to be a possessive sign, but its possessiveness arises from its concentration upon productivity. In order to produce a rich harvest, limits have to be set to the field in which natural processes have to operate efficiently. There must be a concentration of efforts, a focusing will to keep away all interfering activity … Possession, however, need not mean binding attachment. There is a level at which the Taurean capacity to produce fruits can operate, not in an ‘indefinite’ but rather in a multi-defined or universally operative manner. Thus one can transcend the ‘This is mine’ mentality.’”
Identifying the Taurean Intelligence
So what intelligence do you think you need to gain from the zodiacal sign of the bull? There were several great clues including: establishing roots, enthusiasm and vigor, perseverance and stability, quiet persistence, and steadfast mind.
Here’s what I think. I think the intelligence we need from Taurus is steadfastness. Defined as “resolutely or dutifully firm and unwavering,” I think it sums up the attributes of Taurean intelligence perfectly. Some synonyms of this word including loyal, faithful, committed, devoted, dependable, reliable, steady, and true.
Become like this and you will give you spiritual search the solid, unwavering support it needs to sustain you to the end of your journey — back to your divine self.
Watch for the next post on the intelligence we all need to acquire in the zodiac sign of Gemini.
