What Taurus means: the sign that holds its ground

Thirty to sixty degrees of the zodiac

A sign is one twelfth of the Sun's yearly circle, counted from the equinox point, not a group of stars; the Aries page explains why the two drifted apart. Taurus is the second twelfth. The Sun reaches it about April 20, give or take a day with the calendar, and spends a month there while the northern spring settles. Taurus is the first earth sign and the first fixed sign: each of the four fixed signs sits in the middle of its season, when the weather has arrived and holds.

How a planet behaves in Taurus

The sign sets the pace and the grip. A planet in Taurus does its work slowly, by touch, and keeps what it gets. It starts late and does not stop. Mercury in Taurus says less and means it, and changes its mind about once a decade. Mars in Taurus leans its whole weight on a thing until it moves. Jupiter in Taurus expects more of the tangible kind: a bigger table, a second helping, land.

Three Taurus placements people ask about

A Taurus Sun in a garden in May stops checking the time. It takes the same walk every Sunday and sees no reason to take a different one, and the account it keeps balances to the cent because it was checked twice.

Fed, warm and in its own bed, a Taurus Moon is fine; an unsettled evening is fixed with a bath and the familiar meal, not a conversation. The feeling comes through the body and leaves the same way, and a change of any kind is taken as a loss until proved otherwise.

Taurus rising comes into a room at its own speed and sits down heavily, in the good sense. The pace reads as calm until the plan changes at the last minute, and then nothing about the person moves at all.

Scorpio across the wheel, Venus and the 2nd

Scorpio lies opposite, so the axis runs from what is owned to what is pooled and owed, and a Taurus planet keeps up a long conversation with anything standing in Scorpio. Venus rules Taurus: the pleasure in what can be touched, tasted and kept is Venus at home in this sign. The house that answers Taurus is the 2nd, money and possessions, what a person owns and what owns them.