Taurus

TAURUS (April 20 - May 20)

Taurus is important astronomically as it represented, as did Aries, the Spring equinox in the early Bronze age. The reason that different signs can be found in the sky at the equinox and solstices is due to a shift in the star positions over time. As the ages progress different signs will fill the same slot.

The constellations were remembered by different cultures in stories and myths. It was a way of memorising and explaining the patterns of the sky. The Greeks had a myth that related to Taurus being the abduction of Europa by Zeus disguised as a bull. This is a thinly disguised fertility myth as can be seen in another similar version where every spring when Persephone, a fertility goddess, returns to the land, Cerus the bull returns to the land to join her. She sits upon his back and he runs her through the fields, allowing her to set all of the plants in bloom as they ride by. In the Autumn when Persephone returns to Hades, Cerus returns to the sky as the Taurus constellation.

In Babylonia this constellation was known as ‘the bull of heaven’ and associated with myths of Gilgamesh. So it is as old the zodiac itself.

The qualities of a Taurus personality are the essence of the bull, being strength, stubbornness, persistence and dependability.