Aries and Taurus compatibility

Love and romance comes to 35. No input weighs more in this facet than the angle, and the angle is where this pair has least.

Ptolemy’s word for signs one apart is “inconjunct”, and his reason is that they are “averted, as it were, from each other”. The two also differ in kind. He counts Aries among the signs that are “masculine and diurnal”, and says the signs “immediately following them are feminine and nocturnal”, which for Aries means Taurus. Noting that difference for this pair is our step.

The rulers stand at half their share. Ptolemy calls Mars “dry in nature”, and Venus a planet “possessing a favourable temperament” whose signs, Taurus and Libra, are “of a fruitful nature”. Our formula finds no link between these two planets to reward.

Trust is the pair’s best facet, at 47. Steadiness counts as much as the angle here, and it is the pair’s strongest input: a fixed sign counts in full and a cardinal sign for half.

“Fixed” is Ptolemy’s own term, and Lilly repeats it in his line of qualities for Taurus, a line meant for judging charts rather than describing people. In a fixed sign, Ptolemy says, the season “renders all things more strongly affected by its influence”. Taking that as dependability in a person is our reading, not his.

Alan Leo’s Taurus chapter does speak of dependability. “They can be secretive and very reserved, but make faithful friends to all whom they give allegiance”, he writes, and “as co-workers they are reliable, sincere and trustworthy”.

Communication is the lowest of the six, 31. This facet rewards adaptability, and a cardinal sign beside a fixed one has little of it; the elements and the angle, both weak for this pair, make up most of the rest.

Alan Leo’s two portraits, which we place next to each other, give two manners of speaking. Taureans “usually speak with a quiet, firm, inflexible and almost authoritative tone”, and “it is quite natural for them to be reserved, conservative and secretive”. Aries people are “frank and outspoken by choice, but often combative and assertive”. The comparison is ours: one voice open and ready to argue, the other quiet and unbending.

Emotions scores 37. The elements count most in this facet. Lilly’s lines show what fire and earth share and what they do not: Aries is “hot and dry, cholericke” and Taurus “Earthly, Cold, Dry, Melancholy”. Dryness is common to both; heat and temperament are not.

Here Alan Leo compares the signs in his own words. Taureans, he says, “may be contrasted with the Aries types by the fact that they are more inclined to live in their feelings than in their minds”. He also writes that “as the sign belongs to the earthy triplicity, it is more often physical and objective than subjective feeling”.

Ptolemy joins the two signs in one sentence about the lights. The Moon, “after conjunction with the Sun in Aries, the seat of his exaltation, makes her first appearance, and begins to augment her light in Taurus”. The formula looks only at the two ruling planets, Mars and Venus, so this adds nothing to the score.

Values reaches 46, close to trust and for the same reason: steadiness is a quarter of this facet, and Taurus brings it.

Set side by side by us, Alan Leo’s sentences point in different directions. Under Aries he writes that “those born under it are more ideal than practical”. Under Taurus: “The Taureans are slow, plodding, patient, enduring, persistent, executive and matter-of-fact persons.”

Shared activities scores 33. Low adaptability, a weak angle and a partial match of elements all pull the same way.

Alan Leo finds Aries people “inclined to be very headstrong and impulsive”, and says of Taurus that “Persons possessing the strongest wills are born under this sign”. He also says Taureans “are excellent companions to those possessing ideas”. He does not name Aries there. Our reading is that his Aries, with its “great mental energy”, fits that phrase.