By Dorian Grimault, astrologer · Published · updated
Taurus is the second sign of the zodiac, an Earth sign of the fixed mode, running from about April 20 to May 20 (give or take a day depending on the year). It embodies grounding, patience and the pleasure of the senses: what Aries started, Taurus makes last. To read it in a chart, you also need to know who is at home there, who is exalted, who works against the grain, and how its three decans are divided. That is what this page covers, with the example of Camille Morel, AstralPro's sample chart (fictional data), whose Descendant falls in Taurus.
Ptolemy places Taurus among the four solid signs, those that follow the equinoctial and solstitial signs (Tetrabiblos, book I, chapter 11). He explains the name: when the Sun passes through them, the heat, cold, moisture or dryness of the season touches us more firmly, not because the weather is harsher but because by then we have grown used to it. These are our fixed signs. Lilly, in Christian Astrology (1647), book I, in the chapter on the nature of the twelve signs, describes Taurus as an earthy sign, cold and dry, feminine, nocturnal and fixed, of the South, “the night house of Venus”.
Taurus shares Earth with Virgo and Capricorn: the element of the concrete, of what can be touched and built. Its symbol, the peaceful animal in the meadow, speaks of a calm strength, slow to be stirred and hard to move against its will.
You work through the senses and through what is real: you need to touch, taste and experience before you believe. That solid base makes you reassuring; people know you will keep your word. Your strengths: steadiness, loyalty, practical sense, a calm that soothes and a patience that ends up paying off. Your blind spots: stubbornness, resistance to change, possessiveness, and a slowness to decide that lets opportunities slip away.
In love, you take your time before committing, then you build to last, with concrete gestures rather than grand declarations. The trap: confusing loving with owning. At work, you move forward step by step without losing the thread; finance, craftsmanship, food, real estate, anything to do with value and the tangible suits you. Constant urgency and last-minute reversals cost you; your lesson is to welcome change as a normal fact of life rather than a threat.
Taurus is the domicile of Venus, in tradition as in AstralPro. Ptolemy (I, 17) gives Venus Taurus and Libra, “exceedingly fertile” signs, in sextile to the houses of the luminaries, since Venus never strays more than two signs from the Sun.
The Moon is exalted there. Ptolemy (I, 19) explains it by her phase: conjunct the Sun in Aries, she shows her first crescent in the next sign, Taurus, the first sign of her own triplicity. Lilly puts the exaltation at 3° Taurus, in his chapter on the Moon; the AstralPro engine reads it across the whole sign.
Detriment, on the other hand, changes with the system. For AstralPro, which places detriment opposite the modern domicile, it is Pluto, ruler of Scorpio, that is in detriment in Taurus. Tradition put Mars there: Lilly writes that he “receiveth detriment in Libra and Taurus”. A Mars in Taurus, in detriment for a traditional astrologer, therefore has no dignity in your report.
Finally, no planet is in fall in Taurus. The fall is the sign opposite the exaltation, and none of the seven traditional planets is exalted in Scorpio. Gemini, Leo, Sagittarius and Aquarius have no fall either.
AstralPro calculates decans by element, with the modern ruler of the associated sign as sub-ruler:
Here modern and ancient rulerships are the same: Venus, Mercury and Saturn already ruled these three signs. The table of Indian decans given by al-Biruni (Book of Instruction in the Elements of the Art of Astrology, 1029, § 451), where the first decan goes to the ruler of the sign, the second to that of the fifth sign and the third to that of the ninth, arrives at the same sequence.
The Chaldean faces, for their part, follow the order of the planets and give Mercury, the Moon and Saturn (al-Biruni, § 449). Lilly in fact uses Mercury in the first ten degrees of Taurus as his example of a planet in its face. The two systems agree on the last third and differ on the first two. In the report, only the decan by element is written; the face is used only in the scoring that weighs the degree of the Ascendant.
Camille Morel has no planet in Taurus. Yet the sign holds an angle of her chart: her Descendant, the cusp of the 7th house, is at 15°59' Taurus, exactly opposite her Ascendant at 15°59' Scorpio. Her cusps table therefore gives Venus as ruler of the 7th house.
Venus, however, is at 6°30' Scorpio, in the 12th house, in detriment. The ruler of the house of partnership sits in the sign opposite the one she rules on that cusp: she comes to the relationship by a detour, from the most withdrawn house of the chart. Venus also rules the 11th and 12th houses, whose cusps are in Libra.
The axis shows in the dignities too. Camille's Scorpio reverses, point by point, what Taurus would have given: her Moon at 27°09' Scorpio is in fall, opposite the sign where she would be exalted; her Pluto at 25°17' Scorpio is in domicile, where it would be in detriment in Taurus; her Venus is in detriment, where she would be at home in Taurus. Her positions table shows it in three words in the Dignity column: “Fall”, “Domicile”, “Detriment”.
For Camille, the line “House 7: 15°59' Taurus, ruler Venus” in the cusps table is the starting point. In chapter IV, Life Domains, the Love life section draws on the 5th and 7th houses, their cusp, their ruler and their occupants; the aspect her report comments on there is Saturn square Pluto (orb 1°24'). The glossary at the end of the report recalls the rule that ties it all together: the house ruler is the planet that rules the sign on the cusp.
If you have a planet in Taurus, look at three things. The Dignity column of the positions table: “Domicile” for Venus, “Exaltation” for the Moon, “Detriment” for Pluto, a dash for the others. The house it occupies. Then the decan paragraph in its block in chapter I, which specifies the third of the sign and its sub-ruler.
These entries describe astrology for everyone. Your birth chart, though, is unique: discover what your birth sky reveals about you.
Discover my birth chart — €69.90 →