Taurus in Tarot Cards: Learning to Finish What You’ve Started
(Note: Instead of using the Smith/Waite suit name of “Pentacles,” in this article I use the more abbreviated Harris/Crowley suit name of “Disks.” In other words, the “suit of Pentacles” and “suit of Disks” are just two names for the same suit.)
According to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the following tarot cards represent Taurus:
- Hierophant (V)
- King of Disks
- Five of Disks (Mercury in Taurus)
- Six of Disks (Moon in Taurus)
- Seven of Disks (Saturn in Taurus)
In this article, I’m going to give some traditional ideas about Taurus, then three new ideas I associate with Taurus, and last I will give my personal interpretations of each tarot card.
Traditional Ideas about Taurus
In her book “The Only Astrology Book You’ll Ever Need,” Joanna Martine Woolfolk describes Taurus as “quiet, affectionate, patient, stable, determined and practical, stubborn, and resistant to change.” (p. 13)
In his fifth lecture on Astrotheology, Manly P. Hall describes Taurus the Bull as representing the virtue of dedication and perseverance, and the vice of stubbornness and a fear of change. He said that, oftentimes, when we believe we are being “loyal,” we are actually being “bullheaded” — which Merriam-Webster defines as “stupidly stubborn.” As long as we remain bullheaded, we will be like the literally bullheaded Minotaur of ancient Greek mythology — unhappily trapped in the confusing labyrinth of our ever-changing world. However, when this principle of “determination” is applied toward the pursuit of our purpose, instead of maintaining our prejudices, we become as powerful and unstoppable as “the plodding ox that draws the plow through the ancient muddy waters of the Nile bank.” I think of this idea as: It might be hard to get a bull moving at first… but once it is moving, you better stay out of its way.
Teaching from an esoteric astrology standpoint, William Meader said in his blog and lecture at the Theosophical Society that the lower personality nature of Taurus, with its traditional ruler of Venus, represents not only groundedness and dependability, but also desire itself. In traditional astrology, the fixed Earth sign of Taurus tends to get associated with what I call the “desire to acquire” (or the “desire to acquire more”) — whether that is more money, more material objects, or more comfort and pleasure. However, Venus’s “desire to acquire” is just a by-product stemming out of its deeper, more fundamental drive and mission in Life: to appreciate Beauty. Thus, the higher soul nature of Taurus, with its higher ruler of Vulcan (the blacksmith of the Gods), becomes dedicated to not only the appreciation of more Beauty in the physical realm, but also the creation of more Beauty in the physical realm — which I call the “duty to beauty.” About this point, Meader makes sure to emphasize that when the Taurean artist creates a beautiful work of art, they are not actually “creating” the Beauty. Instead, they are “revealing” the Beauty that pre-existed the work of art. Thus, the sign of Taurus is said to be a sign of revelation.
Now that I’ve touched on some traditional ideas, let’s move on to the new concepts.
Concept #1: Quantity Leads to Quality
Whereas Aries is all about having the courage, strength, willpower, and excitement to start something brand new, Taurus is all about having the perseverance, dedication, commitment, and resilience to see new things through to their completion. Without Aries, we would never start anything new. But without Taurus, we would never see anything through. Taurus is not about new beginnings. Taurus is about finishing what you’ve started. Although I can only speak for myself, from my perspective, starting things is easy and finishing things is incredibly hard. Concept #1 is about the idea that, if you want to get better at the skill of “finishing things,” then just like any other skill, you need tons of practice “finishing things.” The more things you finish and see through to their completion, the better you will get at finishing and seeing things through to their completion.
On his website, James Clear retells the story originally told by authors David Bayles and Ted Orland in their book, “Art & Fear.” The story goes like this: A photography teacher divided his class into two groups. The first group was told they would be graded on the “quantity” of photos produced — 100+ photos would be an A, 90 photos would be a B, 80 photos would be a C, and so on. Meanwhile, the second group would be graded on the “quality” of a single photo submitted at the end of the semester. These students only needed to submit one photo, but in order to get an A, it had to be an essentially perfect picture.
Clear summarizes the results as follows:
“At the end of the term, he was surprised to find that all the best photos were produced by the quantity group. During the semester, these students were busy taking photos, experimenting with composition and lighting, testing out various methods in the darkroom, and learning from their mistakes. In the process of creating hundreds of photos, they honed their skills. Meanwhile, the quality group sat around speculating about perfection. In the end, they had little to show for their efforts other than unverified theories and one mediocre photo.”
In other words, while the “quality” group was more focused on “finishing perfect work,” the “quantity” group was more focused on “finishing work.” They did not care whether the work was good or bad; they only cared whether the work was finished or not. By practicing the skill of “finishing work,” the work they finished became better and better.
The big takeaway here is that, if you are trying to develop a new skill, it is more important to create a large quantity of work than it is to create high-quality work, because creating a large quantity of work eventually leads to creating high-quality work. To say this another, more crude way, using the quote that my Uncle John used to say to me all the time in relation to songwriting: “If you throw enough shit against the wall, some of it will stick.”
Iconic author Ray Bradbury emphasizes this same point in his essay, “Zen in the Art of Writing.” Here’s a passage from that:
For I believe that eventually quantity will make for quality.
How so?
Michelangelo’s, da Vinci’s, Tintoretto’s billion sketches, the quantitative, prepared them for the qualitative, single sketches further down the line, single portraits, single landscapes of incredible control and beauty.
A great surgeon dissects and re-dissects a thousand, ten thousand bodies, tissues, organs, preparing thus by quantity the time when quality will count — with a living creature under his knife.
An athlete may run ten thousand miles in order to prepare for one hundred yards.
Quantity gives experience. From experience alone can quality come.
The point is not to create good work. The point is create work regularly enough so that, when you experience that fleeting brief moment of divine inspiration or creative genius, you have the skills and the space in your schedule to harness that idea and see it through to completion.
This brings me to concept number 2.
Concept #2: Perfection Leads to a Scarcity Mindset
As mentioned earlier, Taurus has the traditional ruler of Venus, whose earlier Greek equivalent is Aphrodite. Both Venus and Aphrodite represent beauty, love, and attraction, among other things. Thus it is said to be this rulership that gives Taurus its fundamental drive to appreciate the beautiful things of the physical world, whether it is nice furniture, a great meal, a cool car, etc.
Humans are born with an innate ability to appreciate beautiful things. However, just as a child is born into the world dependent upon the adults around them, we enter this world dependent upon our environment to provide us with these beautiful things. In order to grow into adults , we must take on the responsibility to not only actively and consciously appreciate beauty, but to help create (or “reveal”) more beauty in the world, both for ourself and for others. I call this our “duty to beauty.”
There’s just one problem. When we first set out to create “beauty” in the world, we are pretty much guaranteed to absolutely suck at it. (See my article on Aries for a detailed elaboration on this.) This presents us with the incredibly frustrating and discouraging situation where we want to create beauty, but we keep creating ugly. Ira Glass, creator and host of This American Life, describes this situation as follows:
“All of us who do creative work… we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there is this gap that, for the first couple of years you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good… It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. But your taste — the thing that got you into the game — your taste is still killer. And your taste is good enough to know that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you, you know what I mean? …the thing I would say to you is everybody goes through that… you’ve got to know it’s totally normal and the most important possible thing you could do, is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month, you know you’re going to finish one story. Because it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap, and the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions.”
Ira Glass, https://vimeo.com/24715531
Here we can see a kind of unexpected antagonist. If someone has a keen sense for what is “beautiful,” that sense can actually work against us when we first attempt to create beautiful things ourselves. Since we believe our work is not beautiful or high-quality enough, we don’t release it, which means we aren’t finishing it. Thus, we must not let our own sense of “good taste” discourage us. We must internalize the mantra that, “Bad work released is a success.” (I personally believe that a work cannot truly be “finished” until it is released to the world. As Seth Godin says, we must ship the work.)
As an artist myself, I’ve experienced the psychological tarpit that results from having a work of art that you think has the potential to be amazing, so you spend hours, days, months, years sitting on it and never finishing it because you can’t quite get the physical form to match the imaginary form in your head. I believe that, when you think like this, you are operating out of a fear-based scarcity mindset, instead of a love-based abundance mindset. Perpetually working on the artwork and never releasing it is essentially saying, “I’ve found something so very beautiful in my mind’s eye, and if I screw this up and physically manifest it in a way that does not truly capture the beauty in my mind, I’m scared that I may never get another chance to create something so beautiful ever again.” Instead of this scarcity mindset, we must have an abundance mindset toward beauty. Years ago, I heard Tim Ferriss say that he approaches Life with the mindset of, “I can always create more opportunity.” I would say we must approach our work with the mindset of, “I can always create more beauty.” By this I mean: You must finish what you are currently working on, doing the best job the current you can do, then release it and move on, so you can create new, better, and more beautiful things. Working on the same work of art forever is like walking through a room full of treasure clutching the coins in your pocket. Until you let go of the coins in your hand, you will not be able to pick up the diamonds and rubies and sapphires all around you.
I’ll wrap up this idea with something James Clear wrote in one of his recent 3–2–1 newsletters: “Finish something. Anything. Stop researching, planning, and preparing to do the work and just do the work. It doesn’t matter how good or how bad it is. You don’t need to set the world on fire with your first try. You just need to prove to yourself that you have what it takes to produce something. There are no artists, athletes, entrepreneurs, or scientists who became great by half-finishing their work. Stop debating what you should make and just make something.”
Concept #3: Union with the Laws of Nature
In the book “The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order,” Paul Foster Case wrote that, in the tomb of the legendary Christian Rosenkreuz, there was a brass plate with the 4 figures of the fixed Zodiac signs — Leo, Taurus, Scorpio, and Aquarius. Each sign had a corresponding “motto” engraved with it. Taurus’s motto was “Legis Jugum” which is a Latin for “The yoke of the Law.”
A “yoke” is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a wooden bar or frame by which two draft animals (such as oxen) are joined at the heads or necks for working together.” (It is interesting to note here that the “neck” — where a yoke is attached — is the body part traditionally associated with Taurus.) According to Wikipedia, it is believed that the word “yoke” and the word “yoga” both come from the same ancient Sanskrit root, which means “to unite.” Thus, anytime the idea of a “yoke” is brought up, it seems to imply a sort of “cooperation” that allows two or more life forms to work together as one. For example, Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:29–30). This could essentially be interpreted as, “My teachings are not that hard to follow, and once you do follow them, you will feel better.”
Paul Foster Case wrote that, on its surface, “the Law” in the motto above refers to the Law of Moses. However, at a deeper level, he says the Law of Moses, “…which was a law of sacrifice, is itself a symbol of those preparatory processes of yoga, in which the seeker for enlightenment loosens the bonds of material form and appearance, represented by Taurus…” (p. 125)
While Case associates the yoke of Taurus with yoga, I like to associate it with “the laws of nature“ — also known as “natural law.” I think of the “yoke” as “the rules of the game of Life which we are all harnessed to, and thus which unite us all.” When a group of people all meet together to either play or watch a game of baseball, everyone present is united in adherence to a specific set of rules. The batters walk up the plate one at a time, in a specific sequence, only when it is their turn to bat. The coaches provide guidance to the team but never step up to the plate themselves. The spectators scream and yell from the sidelines, but they never walk out into the field to catch fly balls for the inning. Everyone in attendance is following certain rules, and anyone who doesn’t follow the rules gets ejected from the stadium. Like John Dewey wrote in Experience and Education, “…rules are a part of the game. They are not outside of it. No rules, then no game; different rules, then a different game.” (p. 52)
Manly Hall points out that, “Man makes rules; nature makes laws.” We have all sorts of “laws of nature” that we must obey and play within if we want to grow into the Life-form that our intuition is urging us to become. I divide these laws into three types of “nature” — the laws of human nature, the laws of Mother Nature, and the laws of divine nature.
My understanding of the laws of human nature is shaped largely by Human Givens theory. As the biological organism called a “human being,” we are all born with a set of common needs and resources. For example, all humans have a need for security, for autonomy and control, for status, for privacy, for attention, and so on. We also have resources such as the ability to remember things, to imagine things, to develop rapport with other human beings, and so on. By studying the laws of human nature, we become better able to recognize the “unconscious mind” at work in ourselves and others around us. Once we gain this insight, we can then work “in union” with our unconscious mind so it becomes an ally and advocate of our growth, instead an antagonist.
The next “yoke” we are harnessed to is the laws of “Mother Nature.” These are the laws that all of Life on planet Earth adhere to. According to Manly Hall, we must learn to live with nature as a friend, instead of as something to be dominated. In the lecture linked above, Hall alluded to two laws of nature that we must obey in order to become friends with nature. The first is to “do everything as economically, carefully, and moderately as possible.” (12:30) Energy is the force or fuel that gives Life-forms the ability to do anything. Thus, since Mother Nature recognizes energy as the incredibly precious resource that it is, she always rewards Life-forms that conserve energy and punishes Life-forms that waste energy. In the name of this conservation of energy, Hall said we must maintain the balance of nature by preventing excess, “whether this is excessive poverty or excessive wealth.” (31:26) The second law of mother nature that Hall mentions is, nature rewards that which is constructive, collaborative, and virtuous, and punishes that which is destructive, selfish, and indifferent. He said, “Nature does not destroy anything for the pleasure of destroying.” (36:39) Again, I think this is because it is more energy efficient for us to work together than it is us to fight each other.
The final “yoke” alluded to by Manly Hall is the idea of “divine law.” He did not elaborate on this in the lecture above, but I think “divine law” can be boiled down to two ideas. The first is that, at your core, you are a free eternal spirit of consciousness. You are not a human being, but an ancient, vast, and eternal spiritual being having a human experience. It may feel like you are trapped within all of the laws and rules of Life and society, but at your deepest core, you are God — just as everyone and everything else you interact with is also God. The second is that, just like the God in the Bible, you have a creative power that is fundamental to and irrevocable from your essence. In the Bible, it is said that humans are made in the image of God. It follows then that, if God created the world and Life, then us humans also have the ability to create new worlds and new Life. I’m reminded of something Alan Watts said: “You are not something that is the result of the big bang, on the end of the process. You are still the process. You are the big bang — the original force of the universe — coming on as whoever you are.” In other words, the creative force of the big bang is not over, but echoing through you. You are an agent of the big bang continuing to cause change in the world.
The takeaway here is that, if we expect to grow into what we were meant to be (what Ivan Tyrrell calls our “genetic potential“), we must study and obey the laws of human nature, the laws of mother nature, and the laws of our divine nature. Just as an acorn requires a specific balance of soil, water, air, and sunlight in order to grow into the oak tree it is meant to become, we too must obey natural law in order to grow into the cosmic being we are meant to become.
Tarot Card Interpretations
Keeping in mind these traditional and new ideas, here’s some of my personal interpretations of each of the Taurus tarot cards.
Hierophant (V)
In the Hermetic Qabalah, the Hierophant sits on the path between the second sephira Chokmah and the fourth sephira Chesed. According to Dion Fortune, Chokmah is the radical force of change emanating from God, while Chesed represents the principle of organization and construction. In other words, the Hierophant is where the will of the Higher Power becomes the organizing principle in your life. Living a good life requires the wisdom to know what we must do, and the courage to actually do it. This card represents the wisdom that comes from listening to your Inner Teacher.
In his book “The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order,” Paul Foster Case says that all human beings have an Inner Teacher who can guide them through their life. The Hierophant is this Inner Teacher. The idea of the Inner Teacher is similar to what we call in modern times our “intuition.” Intuition is defined by Merriam-Webster as “the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference.” When your intuition tells you to do something, you feel it as a “hunch” more than an intellectual analysis. However, what’s fascinating is that your intuition can be grown. Every time you ignore your intuition, you are conditioning it to stay quiet. However, every time you make space for the silence that is required to listen to your intuition, and every time you actually do what your intuition is telling you to do, your intuition grows just a little bit. If you do this long enough, you can eventually get to a point where you become a faithful, obedient disciple of your intuition. At this point, you no longer go through Life on your own, for you have become a follower of the secret hidden teacher that only you can follow. According to Paul Foster Case, the Hierophant card represents that stage of the journey where you begin to actually hear the voice of your intuition, which he calls “interior hearing.” If you stick with this long enough, you can eventually develop “interior vision” of your Inner Teacher.
Since The Hierophant is the intuition and Taurus is associated with physical manifestation and perseverance, I would say that this card can be interpreted as having the fixed determination to see the recommendations of your intuition through to completion. It can be about acting in the outer physical world in accordance with your inner spiritual world. It can also be about creating physical works or behaving in a way which help others connect to their own Inner Teacher — which, by the way, should be the end all goal of all priests and holy people. Lastly, the Hierophant card can represent taking that “desire to acquire more and more things,” and shifting it inward, transforming it into a “desire to acquire more and more intuition.”
King (or “Prince”) of Disks (or “Pentacles”)
The King of Disks represents “airy earth” which can be interpreted as “earth shaped by mind” amongst many other things. Joe Monteleone, the awesome teacher over at the Tarot Mysticism Academy whose Level 2 class inspired me to start this blog in the first place, associates the King cards with interactions between you and groups of people, whereas the Queen cards are more about interpersonal one-on-one interactions between you and someone else. Thus this card can represent using conscious thinking, planning, and communication to interact with and influence the external physical world.
To me, the King of Disks can represent anyone who communicates with a mass audience through a form manifested in the physical world — whether that form is a book, a video, a website, a painting, etc. What’s important here is that, the work is shared not with just one person, but with large groups of people. For example, instead of making a painting and giving it to a friend, ask a local coffeeshop or business if you can present your work there. Find some way to share this work of art so that it is accessible to more than just one person. Since Taurus represents not only physical manifestation but also the “yoke” of the law of our three natures, this work would ideally be intended to help your audience understand and connect with our human nature, our mother nature, and/or our divine nature.
I also see this card as someone who takes responsibility to act in the world as a patient parent tending to the physical and emotional needs of their tribe. In terms of physical needs, maybe the King of Disks would encourage people to exercise their bodies by organizing a group hike, or a basketball game, or a group trip to a yoga class, or a group outing to play some laser tag. While these activities would get the body some exercise, they would likely also help people satiate their emotional needs to an extent. According to the Human Givens theory, humans have very specific emotional needs which are as follows:
- The need to feel safe and secure
- The need to have a sense of autonomy and control
- The need for status in the community
- The need for privacy, so we may reflect and consolidate experience
- The need to give and receive attention
- The need for connection with others: friendship, love, intimacy, and community
- The need to learn, which results in more competence and achievement
- The need for meaning, which comes from pursuing a personally-engaging challenge
As the responsible, thoughtful, and mindful parent, the King of Disks interacts with the entire tribe of humanity in a way that acknowledges their needs and satiates them if he can. In order to learn more about how you can communicate and interact with others in a way that caters to both your needs and the needs of others, I recommend looking into Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication, Mark Tyrrell’s Uncommon Practitioners and Uncommon Knowledge YouTube channels, and Dr. Paul Jenkin’s YouTube channel.
Five of Disks
The Five of Disks is composed of 4 building blocks:
- Disks as Earth, representing the physical world and manifestation.
- Five as Geburah (Mars), representing courage and willpower.
- Mercury, representing thinking and communication.
- Taurus, representing physical manifestation and the desire to acquire.
In this card, we have the tag-team of Mars’s courage and Mercury’s communication to balance out our Taurean desires for the Earthly physical world around us. Do you have something you’ve been wanting to do? This card can represent writing out what you want to do, and writing up your plan for how to do it. Unsure what your plan should be? I’d recommend watching this video by Mark Tyrrell called “How To Turn Vague Therapy Goals Into Actionable Steps.” About five minutes in, he talks about writing a “instruction manual” for life. The idea is to take yourself out of the equation and write an instruction manual filled with “practical advice” for other people who are pursuing the same goal as you. Make sure the advice is practical and actionable, and not theoretical or abstract. When you are done writing it, you will have an exact game plan for yourself to follow. By taking our vague thoughts and desires, and concretizing them into a physical piece of writing, we change it from something happening inside our mind to something that exists outside of us in our environment — and it is much easier to follow a rule if it exists outside of our head and externally in the world.
Another interpretation of this card is that, since Mars represents conflict, you may experience conflict with other people when you try to express or communicate your vision of what you want to manifest. Other people may not understand your goal, or they may not believe your goal is important enough to pursue, or they may not believe “you” are able to do it. Luckily, the Mars and the Taurus in this card will give you the strength of the charging bull to persevere through this discouragement. If you share your goal with others hoping that they will flatter you and encourage you, then you might giving your external environment too much control over your internal vision. Instead, listen to your intuition. What does it want you to pursue? Because at the end of the day, your soul’s intuition is the opinion that matters most.
Six of Disks
The Six of Disks is composed of four building blocks:
- Disks as Earth, representing the physical world and manifestation.
- Six as Tiphareth (Sun), representing higher consciousness and awareness.
- The Moon, representing the imagination and the autonomous bodily systems.
- Taurus, representing physical manifestation and the desire to acquire.
In this card, we have a unique and rare combination of the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth. While Dion Fortune associates the Sun with the “soul” and “higher self,” I am beginning to associate it more-and-more with what is called in psychology “the observing self.” As Nesh Nikolic writes on his website, “The Observing Self is that part of us that is able to ‘watch, observe and witness’ the Physical Self and the Thinking Self.” In other words, we are not our thoughts or emotions; instead, we are the consciousness witnessing and experiencing those thoughts and emotions. When we truly internalize this idea and gain the ability to tune into the anchor of our observing self at will, we unlock a secret power — the power to control our thoughts and emotions, instead of being controlled by them. The first step to getting out of a bad headspace or a bad emotional state is to identify with the observing self experiencing those thoughts and feelings, because it is from that level of awareness that change can happen. For example, instead of saying, “Ugh, I am such an idiot,” speak from the perspective of your observing self and say, “My thinking self is calling me an idiot again.” Making this simple change takes an extraordinary amount of power away from your thinking self, which is great because the thinking self has this tendency to be like a gossipy and mean friend who is constantly judging and crapping on people — especially you. Would you want your most gossipy and judgmental friend to be the leader of your business, of your family, your country? Or would you prefer it to be someone who is calm, attention, and receptive? In this card, the Sun represents giving the power of rulership back to the our observing self, where it belongs.
The second important aspect of this card comes from the tension between the imaginary realm of the Moon and the physical realm of the Earth. This tension is well-summarized by Seneca’s quote, “We suffer more in imagination than in reality.” Far too often, we are not seeing things as they actually are, but how we imagine them to be. In his video on the history of psychotherapy, Mark Tyrrell says, “Anxiety, anger, depression, and many other psychological conditions are as much disorders of the imaginative mind, as of the cognitive or thinking mind — as with ‘jealousy’ when a jealous person imagines stuff.” In fact, in this video Tyrrell goes on to posit the idea that all “worrying” is a result of the use — or misuse — of the imagination and our creativity. Dr. Paul Jenkins echoes this idea in his videos when he says, “Your brain is constantly predicting what’s coming… and you suck at that!” In other words, anytime you are scared that something might happen, you are living in your imagination — not reality. Now, this isn’t to say that your fear is totally unwarranted and there’s not any real danger in your future. Instead, this is a call to action to do a better job of consciously distinguishing between what is an observable, undeniable fact in physical reality right now, and what is an imaginary extrapolation or evaluation in your head — because it is often these extrapolations and evaluations that we incessantly ruminate upon, causing a tremendous amount of unnecessary suffering to ourselves and others. Thus, the big takeaway from this card is to use the higher awareness of the observing self to consciously distinguish between physical reality and imaginary reality.
Seven of Disks
The Seven of Disks is composed of four building blocks:
- Disks as Earth, representing the physical world and manifestation.
- Seven as Netzach (Venus), representing emotional needs and beauty.
- Saturn, representing form and restrictive discipline.
- Taurus, representing physical manifestation and the desire to acquire.
In this card, the slow and static symbols of earthly Disks, earthly Taurus, and restrictive Saturn are contrasted by the active emotional force of Venus. For the most part, our “e-motions” are exist to “encourage motions” or actions. The perfect example of this is our fight or flight impulse. However, in this card, the motion of Venus is stunted by the discipline, obstacles, and restriction of Saturn. Dion Fortune said that, while Mars represents destruction through action, Saturn represents destruction through passivity. For example, if someone is giving you trouble, Mars will attempt to stop the trouble by confronting them and fighting them — a more active strategy. Saturn on the other hand will simply cut that person out of their life — a more passive strategy. A more brutal example is, whereas Mars would defeat their enemy by taking an army to battle against them, Saturn would defeat their enemy by starving them — cutting them off from all resources, blocking their trade, destroying their crops, and so on. In the Seven of Disks, Saturn is essentially “starving out” our emotional needs by presenting us with challenges in the physical world that prevent us from fulfilling these needs. Thus, card can represent all of the feelings that result from not being able to act out your desires.
In this card, it is a good time to reflect on two questions. The first question is, “What needs and desires of mine are currently not being met?” When we experience frustration, sadness, anger, and so on, our body is signaling to us that one of our emotional needs is currently not being met. With this card, we must really reflect on what we are feeling, and what starved emotional need is causing this feeling. Once we are clear (or at least we have a good guess) about what emotional need is being starved, then we can ask the second question: “What things can I cut out of my life in order to better meet this need?” Instead of working against the restrictive force of Saturn, try working with Saturn to eliminate things from your life that are preventing you from addressing this need. Perhaps now is not the time to add more things to your life, but to remove some things already in your life. I’m reminded of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry quote: “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”
One final note is that, in this card I also see a lot of potential for what I’ll call a “comfort trap.” Venus’s emotional instincts and Taurus’s “desire to acquire” can both veer you toward what is instantly gratifying, and Saturn’s death-by-passivity can trap you there, stunting your growth. When you pull this card, remember that the goal of the Life is to grow, and oftentimes, growth is uncomfortable. This is because, as our uncertainty about a situation increases, typically our discomfort levels also increase. However, all brand new situations will have at least some element of uncertainty to them, so avoiding all uncertainty and all discomfort in our Life will inevitably cause our Life to stagnate and stop growing. The acorn cannot grow into the oak tree until it first leaves the comfort of its shell. We must remember that discomfort is also a nutrient of the soul, and that above all else, what’s most important at the end of the day is that you grew, not that you were comfortable.
Conclusion
To summarize, Taurus is about following through with steadfast determination on the journey that was initiated in Aries. On a surface level, Taurus seems to be about the “desire to acquire,” but at a deeper level, it is really about a “duty to beauty.” Taurus at its core is about appreciating the beautiful things in the physical world, whether it is created by human nature or Mother nature. When you grow from a dependent receptive child Taurus into a responsible creative adult Taurus, you accept that you must not only appreciate the beautiful things in Life, but also create and contribute more beautiful things back into Life. Thus, Taurus becomes about materializing things into the physical world — taking the idea that was in your head and concretizing it into a physical form that hopefully somewhat resembles what you were imagining. In order to do this well, the creative Taurus must have the practical recognition that what you create in the physical world will not always meet the level of “beauty” that it had in your imagination. This is because the imaginary realm is vague and forgiving, while the physical realm is rigid and mandates unwavering obedience to the laws of nature. The Taurean creative must recognize that “finished work” is better than “good work” — and the better you get at finishing work, the better you will get at finishing good work. Taurus must switch from a scarcity mindset of, “This specific project is my only shot at creating beauty” to an abundance mindset of, “I can always create more beauty.” Once we transmute the desiring power of Venus from a “desire to acquire more things” to a “desire to always obey our intuition,” we become yoked in union with the mighty bull of Taurus whose incomprehensible cosmic power will help us persevere through any obstacle that could ever come into our way.
