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TWELVE PHASES OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE: TAURUS
After having triumphed over the Night-force at the equinox the Day-force which, throughout Aries, rushed forth in adolescent desire for self-manifestation, becomes in Taurus steadier and more persistent. It ceases to fight often merely against ghosts and windmills for the privilege of exteriorizing its energy as a personality. It seeks to establish itself in a tangible manner. It demands results; and it learns that results are gained through repetition, through set motions, through stubborn insistence and undeviating effort. It learns, moreover, that only intimate contact with the substance of the earth can bring forth these concrete products, the fruition of Night is human personality. In Taurus, therefore, the Day-force is seen acting upon the substantial foundation of all organisms, stirring the soil of mankind into fruitfulness.
Taurus is the reaction which follows Aries action. After the peculiar inner insecurity of Aries, of which the Aries person often makes a challenge and a virtue, Taurus presents the spectacle of an emphasis on security. The pioneering instinct gives way to the settler's organizing faculty. Energy transforms itself into power; this, as sheer ability to move finds a resistant material into and against which to move. Sheer motion in Aries becomes, in Taurus, emotion aroused by objects. In Aries, universal Life pours through an adolescent ego craving for individual selfhood. In Taurus, the forces of tradition, of habit and of material inertia blend with that selfless, half-conscious outpouring of energy; a rotational movement is produced, whence will grow a definite sense of personality, a limited destiny.
Aries acts in a straight line; Taurus in a circular motion Gemini will combine both through the spiral. A straight line can always be seen, in geometry, as a tangent to a circle. It shows the action of a force which escapes the bonds of circular motion. Likewise, germination breaks the closed globular unit constituted by the seed. Aries (the germinal up-shoot) is thus release through tangential motion; after which Taurus bends the tangent back to a circular orbit, stopping what otherwise would be a constant exhaustive flow of energy into space: an explosion.
Aries and Taurus are complements. But not in the sense in which Aries and Libra are also complements and polarities. Aries is fundamentally opposed to Libra. The directions of their activities are opposite. Aries is moving toward a maximum Day-force; Libra toward an ever stronger Night-force. On the other hand, both Aries and Taurus are characterized by a mounting Day-force. But in Aries that Day-force is straightforward action, because its main problem is to overcome definitely the Night-force. The Night-force having been definitely overcome, a new need arises: the need for stabilization and voluntary restriction. This is Taurus' work.
In Aries, activity is sought for activity's sake. There is a will to freedom, a fear of bondage, an identification with sheer mobility and the systemless-ness of first conquests. This leads obviously to dispersion and to a peculiar sense of futility of life flowing like sand through open fingers. Then the need for coalescing action arises. Taurus fills that need; not by fundamentally opposing the direction of the Aries Day-force, but merely by modifying it through the realization of a new purpose.
The difference between Aries-energy and Taurus-energy is a difference of purposes. The two energies have the same direction. They are indeed only one energy, which after reaching a certain end in Aries, seeks to fulfill a new phase of its development in Taurus. The purpose of Aries is dynamic; that of Taurus is organic.
When an acid corrodes a metal somewhere on the surface of the earth, such is a disintegrating, dynamic activity. But when the hydrochloric acid in a man's stomach digests proteins, there an organic function is operating. In other words, the acid in the stomach fulfills a function in terms of the need of an organic whole, the human body; and its operations are more or less rigidly controlled by that need. On the other hand, free acid will corrode everything it touches. In itself and of itself, it has no particular functional purpose in any definite organic whole.
The Aries type acts; and that action is its own justification. There is a compulsion of Destiny back of it, but the Aries person merely takes it for granted and his consciousness is all satisfied by the sheer fact of activity. For the Taurus type action is essentially meaningless without a purpose. It must be related to something. There is in Taurus a compulsion of relationship; in Aries, a compulsion of activity. In Taurus activity must be functional in terms of the organism, the purpose of which it serves.
Sex, for instance, is for the Aries type almost solely a mode of actional release. It is in itself its own justification as a thrill of activity, of projective strength in operation. But for Taurus, sex means the condition for the production of a definite result; normally, a child.
"Production" is a key-word with Taurus. Everything which Taurus touches should be productive if it is at all to be considered as significant. But production depends upon the control of the basic energies of human or earthly nature. Aries seeks only release of energy; Taurus insists on making energy productive. It puts to use the Aries energy. Productive energy energy which is controlled and formed is power. Thus Taurus is a power-Sign of the Zodiac. It is one of the four great moments of the year-cycle when life operates definitely and creatively in terms of power and purpose. The fifteenth degree of Taurus is, in relation to the cross formed by equinoxes and solstices, a 45-degree point of the circle the others being Leo 15°, Scorpio 15°, and Aquarius 15°. These points are gates through which power and purpose are released and experienced. They are "alchemical" points and, in the Bible, they are symbolized respectively by the Bull, the Lion, the Eagle and the Angel.
Taurus is the "good earth," the bountiful Great Mother; and it can be considered as a feminine Sign. Nevertheless, strangely enough, it is represented in astrological symbolism by the Bull, and not by a female animal. This should make one careful not to overstress the passive or receptive characteristics of this Sign. It is not only a sign of strong ascendancy of the Day-force and a symbol of purposeful determination. It represents that very power which surges from the depths of inchoate substance and constantly seeks to reach the higher level at which the basic awareness in any natural organism can operate. It is the "good earth," but what we name thus is the very thin layer of the earth-surface which is susceptible of bearing a harvest of plants and trees. It is the rich, black soil (a few inches deep perhaps) without which there could be no life on earth.
This surface layer of the earth is the place of meeting for earth-vibrations and sun-radiations. It is there that the fecundation of the earth by the solar force takes place; there that living organisms are born whether it be in shallow sea-waters or in the humus which forms the thin layer of top-soil. Indeed, all life on our planet is only "skin-deep." Likewise all our experiences of the outside world are gained through the skin and specialized portions of its surface: the senses. The realm of the conscious is also the topmost layer of the vast Unconscious, and the rational and analytical faculties covered by the term "intellect" are again but the very last, topmost development of human consciousness. The intellect cream of the conscious faculties which, in turn, are the cream of man's mind or intelligence will not reveal its real possibilities until Gemini is reached; yet, this Gemini spring-harvest is largely conditioned by the Taurus soil from which it must grow, as well as by the Aries fecundating power which makes that soil fruitful.
Taurus is the phase of life and experience in which the upreaching surge of evolution finds its most concentrated and most vocal expression. It is the fruitful surface of the earth; but that surface seen as the highest level reached by the ιlan vital and from this surface, plants rise further to meet the sun and perform the alchemy of light. The earth reaches up through its trees whose chlorophyll captures the solar radiations, and, in the leaves, the sun's energy is chemically fixed and made usable for further evolution on this planet. Animals eat up the leaves. Tree-trunks decompose and become coal. The trees condense the moisture of the air and help in bringing down the fecundant rains; and the rains make rivers and waterfalls whence electric power is produced.
All power on this earth has its substantial base in the chemical action of the green plants and of their chlorophyll which is nearly identical in chemical nature to the red blood cells. Green and red: two polarities Taurus and Aries. The former gives energy to living organisms; the latter after a further alchemical process, produces in man conscious thought for there can be no conscious thinking on earth without red blood. Aries is a divine Visitation, a descent of power; but to Taurus belongs the substance of every new evolutionary progress, for Taurus is the symbol of that power which forever produces new organisms. Taurus' keynote is evolutionary fulfillment from the depths upward. Because all life-energies rise in Taurus to the surface, pulled by the will-power and desire of the Sun, the individual Taurean finds the source of his power in the racial depths of his unconscious; thus, he identifies himself at root with the race that bore him, while ever striving to atune his conscious sense of purpose to that superior will - which directs him from within toward the next stage of his evolution. The outer manifestations of this impersonal, instinctual or cosmic will may be delayed; but they can hardly be stopped.
Thus the determination, stubborn self-will and fixity of purpose of the Taurus type. These characteristics often lead to a sense of possessiveness. Possessiveness comes as a result of the deep sense of an inner need which must be satisfied. Whatever fulfills this need acquires such a value that it seems imperative to the individual to assure its possession. Essentially, the Taurus type will think of the use which a person, a situation or a relationship will be to him. Yet this may not mean selfishness, but rather the outcome of the vital realization that a fact of experience cannot have meaning unless it fulfills a definite purpose. Where anything fulfills a functional purpose, there the thing belongs and should stay.
At the Taurus stage, personality is not yet set. But that feeling of usefulness and purposefulness is the foundation upon which a set personality will be built; for personality is an organic concept. Self-sufficiency, at least of a relative kind, is the basis of personality. Taurus provides the sense of self-sustainment, on which self-sufficiency can develop. Thus the link between Cancer, sign of rulership of the Moon, and Taurus, in which the Moon is "exalted." The purpose of procreation (Taurus) conditions the building of the home (Cancer). What is needed, however, before the home can be built is to compel the creative energy (Aries) to accept that purpose. This will be the work of Gemini, the weaver of patterns of relationship and of ideals those nets in which the Aries freedom will be caught.
In Taurus, the Night-force is also operative, but in an even more remote way than in Aries. The fixity of purpose of the Taurus person, gathering outer sustainment to substantiate and actualize the building of personality or home, leaves little room for the attenuated Night-force in the consciousness. But it is still evident in the subconscious or in the relation of the Taurus person to the large vistas of the Collective Unconscious. It manifests as a peculiar intoxication based on the irrational or supra-rational sense of identification with a mystical purpose; on the feeling that one is invested with the power of an invisible community. Thus the sense of being a Prophet, a Messiah, a Redeemer, an Avatar; a mouthpiece of Divinity.
This can manifest in many small ways, or in a very big way. It may be a delusion. It may be a reality. The fruits alone can prove which of the two hypotheses is the actual one. Taurus is the sign in which the symbolical Pentecost occurs. Men are being invested with transcendent, super-conscious, irrational power. The "gift of tongues" is a symbol of the irrationality, or rather super-rationality, of that power a particular language being always considered as the perfect symbol of the operation of the rational faculty. According to tradition, be it symbolical or a literal fact, Gautama the Buddha was born, achieved liberation, and died at the Full Moon of May during the Taurus phase of human experience. The meaning of this is that Gautama can be considered from the point of view of occult wisdom as the very " cream" of human evolution and the first exemplar of the highest type of consciousness possible to a human being born of this earth. Divine Manifestations, before or since him, may have been greater Personages, but if so, it is because they were descents of divine power and not, as Gautama the Buddha, climaxes of human consciousness.
As Gautama taught in India, the constellation of the Pleiades was found at the end of the zodiacal Sign, Aries. Many seers and astrologers of the past have claimed that the Pleiades constitute the center of our universe of human experience. If so, from that center spring everlastingly the Power and the Love that vivify and integrate the entire cycle of our evolution. Indeed, Aries is the symbolical fountain-head of manifested life; but Taurus, energized by the Pleiades since the days of Christ, is the steady flowing river whose substance feeds the multitudes with "living waters." On its banks great cities are built; civilization grows and matures; and men seek for the Mystery which is beyond change which sustains and illumines the whole universe.
