Taurus in everyday life

Between 21 April and 20 May the Sun stands in Taurus. Anyone born in that stretch is reckoned placid, dependable and a little stubborn, and with that the pigeonhole is shut again. This page opens it once more and looks at how the sign makes itself felt in everyday life: in the pace, in love, at work and with money, in an argument.

The season the sign comes from

The signs of the zodiac can be understood from the course of the year. Aries before it is the setting off, the first shoot through cold ground. With Taurus, spring has arrived: things are no longer only flowering, they are growing. The days are long, the nights mild, everything is putting on mass.

So the sign describes the phase in which a beginning turns into substance. Not starting, but keeping, building up, letting things ripen. For anyone who holds that in mind, most of its quirks follow of themselves, without having to be learned one by one. How this assignment comes about is shown on the page about the four elements.

Pace, habit and the senses

The most striking thing is the pace. A Taurus person does not decide slowly out of slow-wittedness, but because a decision is only made once it can also be carried. Once made, though, it holds. From outside the first looks like hesitation and the second like stubbornness; from inside it is one and the same quality.

Then there is the part habit plays. The same regular seat, the same kind of coffee, the walk always the same round. That is not a want of imagination but a way of saving energy: what stays the same does not have to be negotiated again. And a great deal runs through the senses, through food, fabrics, music, warmth, smells, the garden. An evening that smells good and tastes good weighs more here than an exciting plan.

In love

In relationships Taurus is a long-distance runner rather than a sprinter. The courting drags on, the staying comes easily. Affection is seldom put into big words and all the more into the tangible: meals get cooked, things get mended, plans get thought through, lifts get given, and what you mentioned in passing a year ago sticks. Anyone waiting for declarations easily overlooks it.

The reverse side is called possessiveness. Anyone who draws their security from constancy soon confuses holding on with attachment, and takes it badly as soon as something changes without them. Jealousy rarely arrives loudly here, it shows itself as quiet checking. What helps is advance notice: the problem is not the change itself but the surprise.

Work and money

In working life the strength lies in staying power. A Taurus brings to an end what has been begun, even when the enthusiasm has long since gone. These are the people relied on when a project turns unspectacular in its third month and everyone else is already eyeing the next one. The sign, on the other hand, is of little use for the quick sprint, the constant replanning and working without a fixed framework, and surroundings that demand exactly that wear away at its strength.

With money both sides are there: thrift and providing for later on the one hand, a marked leaning towards the beautiful object on the other. The motive behind it is not meanness but security. Savings are less a number than a condition of calm. Where that turns into fear, every small outlay becomes a matter of principle, and then the saving itself becomes a burden.

In arguments and when things change

Hardly anyone here likes to quarrel. Disagreements are sat out until it can go no further, and then out comes, all at once and very plainly, what has piled up over months. Anyone who knows this point does better to raise small things early, calmly and without an audience. Arguments under time pressure have no effect, time does.

With larger changes the same holds on a larger scale. A move, a change of job, a new city cost noticeably more strength here than anywhere else in the zodiac. That does not mean it cannot be done. It means that it takes preparation, and something that comes along and stays the same: the same furniture, the same morning routine, the same person on the telephone.

If you were born at the edge of the period

The Sun does not move into the next sign on the same day and at the same time every year; the changeover shifts from one year to the next by about a day. Anyone who came into the world on 20, 21 or 22 April should therefore have the reckoning done rather than rely on a table in a magazine. At the other end, around 20 May, the same applies. Talking about being “born on the cusp” and counting oneself as two signs at once is no help here: at every moment the Sun stands in exactly one sign, one need only look it up.

And even once that is settled, the sign remains a ground colour and not a finished picture. Two people with the Sun in Taurus can differ markedly without either of them being a poor example: in one it all lies open to view, in the other it shows only in the quiet hours. You will find the remaining eleven signs in the overview of the zodiac signs, and everything else that is recorded on such a sheet is set out under the horoscopes.