Taurus

Taurus is the second sign of the zodiac and the first of the earth signs. This year the Sun is in Taurus from 20 April to 21 May 2026. Ptolemy counts it among the fixed signs, gives it to Venus as a house, and places the exaltation of the Moon in it.

What “fixed” means for Taurus

Ptolemy’s fixed signs are the four that come straight after an equinox or a solstice sign, and Taurus comes straight after Aries. He explains the name by the weather: in a fixed sign “the cold, heat, moisture or dryness, of the season, which commenced on his arrival in the preceding tropical or equinoctial sign, is then more firmly established”. For Taurus that season is the one the Sun opened in Aries, which is spring in the northern hemisphere. Applying his rule to Taurus alone is our step.

He is careful about what he claims. It is “not, however, that the temperament of the season has in itself actually increased in vigour”, only that it has lasted long enough to be felt more strongly.

Taurus is also the first feminine sign in his order. Aries and Libra are masculine, and of the two signs next to them he writes: “The signs immediately following them are feminine and nocturnal”.

Venus by house, the Moon by exaltation

Ptolemy hands out the signs to the planets in pairs, and the pair he gives Venus is Taurus and Libra. Both signs, he says, “are of a fruitful nature, and preserve harmony by the sextile distance”.

The Moon comes to Taurus by a different rule. After meeting the Sun in Aries, Ptolemy writes, she “makes her first appearance, and begins to augment her light in Taurus, the first sign of her own triplicity, which is consequently ascribed to be her exaltation”.

The same two bodies return when he sorts the signs into groups of three. The group of Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn “is allotted to the dominion of the Moon and Venus, since it consists of feminine signs”. Noticing that Taurus meets Venus and the Moon twice over is our reading; Ptolemy gives each rule in its own chapter and does not add them up.

The Taurus character, as the old books give it

William Lilly’s line on Taurus calls it “an Earthly, Cold, Dry, Melancholy, Feminine, Nocturnal, Fixed, Domestical or Bestial Signe” and “the Night-house of Venus”. These are qualities for judging a chart, not a description of people.

Alan Leo does describe people, and slowness and patience lead his list: “The Taureans are slow, plodding, patient, enduring, persistent, executive and matter-of-fact persons.” He credits the sign with unusual will and names the cost in the same breath: “Persons possessing the strongest wills are born under this sign, but when living for themselves exclusively, they become as obstinate as it is possible for them to be.” In conversation, he says, “they usually speak with a quiet, firm, inflexible and almost authoritative tone”.

His portrait of Taurus in friendship is warmer: “They can be secretive and very reserved, but make faithful friends to all whom they give allegiance.” He also sets the sign against its neighbour himself, writing that Taureans “may be contrasted with the Aries types by the fact that they are more inclined to live in their feelings than in their minds”.

An earth sign among three

Virgo and Capricorn are the other two earth signs, the same three Ptolemy joins in his second triplicity. In the list of matches below, which comes from our formula, Capricorn is first, Taurus with Taurus is second and Virgo is third. Cancer and Pisces, two water signs, follow them, and Gemini is last. The method behind the order is on how we score.

Set beside that list, and the comparison is ours, Alan Leo’s one sentence on marriage for Taurus names the same two elements, the other earth signs and the water signs, and limits the remark with the words “so far as mental or physical marriage is concerned”. That is a nineteenth-century astrologer’s view of signs, quoted as history, and not advice about a relationship.