Listen for Taurus and Taurus Rising

2013 Annual Horoscope by Eric Francis

Taurus Part One
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Taurus Part Two
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Listen for Taurus and Taurus Rising | 2013 Annual Reading by Eric Francis
Full minor planet list for the day that the Sun arrives in your sign.

“The Taurean influence must now be regarded as being of exceeding potency today, particularly from the angle of subjective spiritual values; it is Taurus which is the ruler and the guiding influence of that which is occurring everywhere.” 

— Alice A. Bailey, Esoteric Astrology, p. 375 (clothbound edition)

Based on the suggestion of Alice Bailey, when I write the signs in the annual edition, I begin with Aries, and then proceed backwards through Pisces to Taurus. You can think of these two signs (Pisces and Taurus) as the interchangeable headwaters and delta of the River of Night.

Bailey describes Taurus as a deeply misunderstood sign; yes, you might be the only person you know who collects Emily Post books, but compared to what’s going on inside you that’s a kind of charming pastime. Taurus, she says, is the blacksmith shop of the soul, where the true spiritual being inside of humanity is being forged amidst the smoke, heat and clash of metal on metal.

Part of that forging process is the resolution of dualism. If you scan the zodiac, you will see symbols of dualism everywhere, starting with the horns of the Ram in Aries (which define the space around the animal), the Bull in Taurus (the horns of the dilemma), the Twins in Gemini (mortal and immortal) and the odd yin-yang that symbolizes Cancer but seems like it would be much more appropriate for Pisces (two connected fish, one seeking inwardly and the other outwardly).

The opposite signs work together as one living entity; we are constantly looking at, reaching for, and wanting to embrace our opposite, whatever we perceive that as being.

Taurus manifests dualism in a number of interesting ways, all of which are coming into focus this year. Taurus, for example, has the original Parallel Worlds chart. On several different accounts, it’s possible for you to reside within two different cosmos at the same time.

One simple way to visualize this is by observing that you have Gemini as your 2nd house — the house of values and resources. This would be your 2nd solar house if you have a Taurus Sun or your 2nd house by whole-sign houses if you have Taurus rising. The 2nd is like a bank account into which you make deposits, but it’s also a set of concepts for how you think of yourself and how you relate to the world.

Gemini in this house suggests that you can work with two different systems of values that live as next-door neighbors. This can give you two sets of priorities, two ways of orienting on the world, and two ways to frame your reality on the topic of money and resources.

Like any neighbors, they can have a friendly or tense relationship. They may be aware of one another’s existence more dimly or more vividly. Their purposes and ways of life can support or detract from one another. Before we talk about resolving this tension, I suggest you check and see if what I’m saying has any validity; see if you can identify the ways that you tend to reference one set of priorities or another when making a decision.

Perhaps the most profound quality of having Gemini on the 2nd is that you may feel two different ways about yourself: two entirely distinct self-concepts, sets of opinions about yourself or modes of existing. If you determine that this is true, I suggest you explore the idea and get familiar with both of them. There could be more — Gemini does not always divide in two; sometimes there are triplets and sometimes quads.

This can, at times, work very well for you, because you can depend on a kind of modular quality to your ability to relate to the world. It might not work well if you find yourself in conflict over what to do; if your differing views on your existence lead to struggle; or if you find yourself unable to apply the appropriate ethics to a given situation.

In modern psychological terms, the single most vital resource of the 2nd house is self-esteem. There are a number of words for this, including self-respect, love of yourself or a tangible sense of your own existence. Therefore, it’s essential to get this house working well, and it’s going to be seeing a lot of action this year.

Your quest for wholeness becomes central to your life story: for living a unified life, under one set of guidelines.

Aries in the 12th House

Another image of Parallel Worlds is having Aries as the sign right before yours. This is called the 12th solar house; it’s the 12th house by whole-sign houses if you are Taurus rising. The 12th is often like a blind spot. Aries, wherever it may fall in the chart, is a stronghold of personal identity; it’s the ‘I Am’ factor.

If you have Aries in the 12th house, that factor can be a mystery — an elusive truth that you’re always chasing, or something that’s deep within you struggling to break free or burst into your full awareness. The 12th can have a factor of what you imagine and fantasize about but cannot quite bring into 3D reality, though there are moments when it’s really compelling — and you are in one of them now. Let’s go over that, since it provides such a vital point of background, and then I will come back to the Gemini/Mercury factor (2nd house) and then a truly interesting planet that is about to arrive in your birth sign.

Aries, as you probably know, is getting a major transit now — slow-moving Uranus is working its way across this house. Uranus in the 12th is edgy. I mean really edgy. Any outer planet in the 12th house is, and Uranus at least has the advantage of being a high-voltage kind of influence that’s difficult to miss. It might feel like some intense pressure to ‘become yourself’.

This may include stepping into some role that you know you belong in — or discovering a new depth of purpose and energy with what you’re already doing: discovering a drive to excellence. This would be passion on the level of identifying with what you are creating in life, for manifesting a vision and most of all a vision of yourself as one who is on the planet to participate fully.

I cannot think of a better setup for this than revolutionary Uranus moving through Aries, providing a constant call to the thing that everyone already agrees it’s time to do — wake up. The problem with Uranus is that it’s like handling a live wire. It is erratic, brilliant at times, and disruptive at others. Even at its most brilliant it requires discipline.

You may be inclined to get that from outside structures — and that may even work, provided you use those structures and the people involved mostly as an example that you learn from. Let’s assume for a moment that you are having these flashes of insight, of spontaneous awareness of your identity and explosions of creativity (all of which are likely, though due to the nature of the 12th, it’s possible to sleep through them).

How do you get this energy into a tangible form? One obvious way is by working with Saturn, the master of form. Saturn is now in your 7th solar house, Scorpio (or 7th by whole-sign houses). This is a somewhat complex though extremely useful transit. And it’s related to Uranus in the 12th house. While Aries and Scorpio are not opposite signs, they are in a mirror image formation in your chart. If you were to take a chart with Taurus in the ascendant and fold it in half vertically, Aries and Scorpio would overlap.

These two signs — so vital to your own life — are also ruled by the same planet, Mars. They resonate vibrationally this way. One reason this is meaningful to you is how it indicates that your inner life or secret self is reflected in your relationships. It may not be a direct reflection; it may be more of a mirror image, but there is a common thread, as if your inner life and your relationship life also function as parallel worlds.

You have Uranus as your ‘inner guide’ right now, and Saturn as your outer guide. This may come with some tension, as your not-necessarily-even-keeled expressions of energy may bang into the slow, steady energy of Saturn in Scorpio. Part of the Parallel Worlds process is about integrating these two seemingly opposing realities, and part of how you do that is to let one inform the other.

Saturn and Uranus depend on one another, and as you develop mature relationships with both, you will see how much common ground is available. For example, innovation is of little use without dependable structure to contain it. Dependable structure gets boring and useless without a spirit of creative spark to keep it moving forward.

Working with astrology is all about exploring polarities. This is an unusual one, but it happens to be real for you: Saturn and Uranus expressed through Scorpio and Aries. Bookmark that — I will come back to it when I come to the topic of Mars in your chart. First, let’s go over Saturn in the 7th, which qualifies as news here in early 2013.

Saturn in Scorpio

Saturn moves around the zodiac every 29 years, so it spends about 10 seasons in each sign. That’s long enough to be meaningful, which is what Saturn wants: to have its meaning seen, respected and taken on board.

Scorpio is your opposite sign, the sign of relationships — meaning it’s your 7th solar house if you’re Taurus Sun or 7th house by whole-sign houses if you’re Taurus rising. The Taurus-Scorpio polarity is powerful. By that I mean that every topic we find on this axis is a nearly constant influence. It is all about passion, desire, attraction, instinct, attachment, merging, emotional exchange, the exchange of resources, what we value and how we negotiate shared values. Copy and paste those words large and make a poster of some kind out of them.

You live on this axis of the zodiac, one of the main streets of the human cosmos, through which all emotional reality makes its way at some point. Its experiences range from immersion into self-focused beauty of existence, to sharing that with others, to the fear of loss and loss of self, to jealousy, submission and surrender. Not everyone feels these things as poignantly as you do. It would serve you to keep that in mind.

Saturn in Scorpio is emphasizing the relational aspect of your life, in many different ways. One is reminding you that it exists as something with potency for you — not something you have power over, but something you must respect as a force with which to reckon. Saturn here is presenting something tangible, such as an opportunity for contact or to move on from a situation; a confrontation with your whole relationship past; a calling to relate to more mature people, in adult ways; or a sense of containment within which you can do some significant growth work designed to help you relate to others in a grounded way.

Saturn through the 7th can represent a thorough renovation of your partnership life. Where Scorpio is present as a factor in relationships, there can be so much influence from the past, it’s as if the past never goes away, and its tendencies stick like resin.

Saturn is here to help you drain that pond and make room for something else. This is an actual turning point in your partnership life, and if you take a positive approach and make friends with Saturn, you will profit from this greatly. With a Saturn transit, I would note that most of the time what you seem to lose is what was not serving you, or what was actively harming you. What is viable, healthy, strong and useful will be made stronger.

There is a topic that is nearly left out of the modern conversation these days, which is learning from example, and setting an example. Behavior is partly instinctual, and partly evolved through these modeling processes — which are, themselves, resident on a level of instinct. It is therefore vital at this stage of your growth that you use modeling as a way both to teach and to learn. Everyone in your life is an exemplar. You are an exemplar to everyone in your life.

Yet there seems to be a deeper level to this transit, which is about understanding the difference between conscious and unconscious behavior. Instinct is valid and it is real — though it has a way of lurking below the level of full awareness. And, like domesticated dogs do things that wild wolves would never do, domesticated humans have many hangover instincts that are converted into emotions that do not function well for us. Among these is an obsession with jealousy, and placing jealousy on a level of value over and above that of love.

Saturn in Scorpio is presenting you with many opportunities to explore your values, since you’re experiencing them as a high-contrast phenomenon to the world around you. This might, however, be keying you in to the ways in which your own inner values are in contrast or even in conflict; you have the perfect outer forum to work out your process of inner reconciliation.

1992 QB1 — and Mars: About Men

This year something extraordinary happens in your chart. A nameless planet, technically known as (15760) 1992 QB1, enters your sign. I know, you have not read about this one on Astrology Zone yet. It was the first planet discovered orbiting our Sun beyond Pluto. It is evocative, therefore, of the world beyond obsession, enforced changes and fear of death that is so often how we experience relationships and existence.

Since its discovery in the first degree of Aries in 1992, QB1 has been moving through your 12th house, describing a long gestation process of a new way of thought, and of life. This year for the first time in nearly three centuries, it reaches your sign. [You can read the history of the discovery here.]

It’s as if QB1 is fertilizing Taurus with another way of looking at life. I think this is about harmonizing your multiple points of view into one: inner and outer, your parallel systems of values, the hidden and that which you present to the world.

Remember, though, that QB1 was not just the discovery of a planet. It was the discovery that confirmed the existence of a vast region of space, and therefore of consciousness. It dissolved the false edge that Pluto (and all the ideas that surround it) confronted us with. QB1 is about healing our ideas about death and separation, our fear (and what is often, more realistically, terror) of sex and intimacy, and our misunderstandings about the nature of this thing called ‘transformation’, often attributed to Pluto. QB1 is saying that there is a better way.

Its ingress into your sign represents the beginning of your embodiment of that better way. You have been thinking about this for a while; Aries, where QB1 has been for a generation, is a dominant energy in your chart. But now it moves from the level of an idea or concept to something that can manifest tangibly in your life.

Saturn in Scorpio is going to present you with evidence of certain things that have run their course. QB1 ingressing your sign is opening up a new realm of inner experience and potential that you may have suspected could exist, but had not quite experienced in a tangible way. Therefore, if you find yourself not feeling certain forms of pathos where you expected to find them, know that you’re experiencing the seeds of a new way of perceiving existence.

The ingress itself is a truly interesting picture. The Aries/Taurus line is like your ascendant, in the form of astrology I am doing here. It’s a kind of event horizon. On the day that the Sun enters your sign, there is a conjunction of Mars and QB1 in the last degree of Aries. That is to say, the Sun passes right over this conjunction the day before ingressing your sign. So while this conjunction is happening behind the veil of the 12th, it’s very much a presence in your chart and in your awareness, and the Sun makes its way across your sign fresh with the energy of that conjunction.

Mars then ingresses Taurus; then right before the Sun leaves your sign, QB1 makes its way into Taurus for the first time in nearly three centuries.

What does all of this mean?

It’s about men and maleness. Mars-ruled signs factor prominently in your life. Your sign is ruled by Venus, and Mars is both your polar opposite (the ruler of Scorpio, your 7th house) and your secret self (the ruler of Aries, your 12th house). Mars exists within you and as an external factor; but this is embodied in one planet.

More specifically, this is about healing men and maleness; at least, making peace with the man within you, and providing a space and a forum, consciously and willingly, for the healing of the men that you know and love.

This may play out in different ways depending on your sex and sexual orientation, but the theme and the content amount to the same thing. Our society has a profoundly distorted view of men, as twisted as any other view, but sanctioned by various forms of progressivism and political correctness.

With regard to men, the only progress we need is to have respect for what they have been through and go through regularly. Women who are sexually oriented on men may complain about the male sex drive, but without it they would not have sex and would have considerably fewer opportunities for relationship. The healing process I am describing includes working through the many forms of conflict you have internalized about men, being with men, being a man, and your inner male entity.

While this year’s astrology is only the beginning of this story, the events of this year represent a turning point for you. If you’re someone whose primary relationships are with men, I suggest you make peace with the men in your life. Admit the ways in which you have made unfair or contradictory demands or have hurt them, and let them know that it’s okay with you — really okay — that they are indeed men.

Lay down your double standards. Address the challenge that your contradictory emotions present to those who love you, and resolve to be present in your relationships for working them out.

If you are a man, this is the time to make peace with that fact, and recognize that it does not inherently make you a criminal, as many men born after the 1960s were raised to believe. This includes making peace with your sexuality. Contrary to rumor, being a man does not automatically make you a prospective rapist.

Being a man in business does not automatically make you a member of the patriarchy, the world management team or the military-industrial complex; being a man does not translate to being a killer, as you have been told you are so many times in so many ways.

To this end, I recommend reading two books. One is called Iron John: A Book About Men by Robert Bly. The other is called Stiffed by Susan Faludi. Doing so will open up a new world of understanding for who men are and what they go through.

Communication Through Empathy: Mercury Retrograde in Water Signs

There is one more feature in your charts worth describing in the remaining space. That is the fact of Mercury retrograde in the water signs.

Mercury rules two houses in your chart — your 2nd house as described above (Gemini) and your 5th house, which is Virgo. The 2nd is about your values and your self-esteem and the 5th is about your sexual experiments.

Mercury is also the planet of communication. And since it’s focused on the subjects of your values and your erotic play, well, it’s pretty important in your life.

One beautiful fact of this year is how Mercury is going to be spending most of its time in the water signs Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces. [See related article here.]

The inference is that communication is as much about empathy as it is about ideas. It’s about speaking and feeling your words; it’s about feeling someone’s response as well as hearing what they say. You will get many opportunities to shift your perspective as the year unfolds, since there will be retrogrades in three different angles of your chart.

If you move through this consciously, with a focus on listening and feeling, you will learn a lot about yourself and what the people around you experience, want, feel and need.

You love people and you love your opportunities to relate to them, despite any conflict that may arise. These transits promise you many opportunities to go deeper, to feel, to express yourself authentically, and to witness the beauty of those you love.

Eric also offers birthday readings and other audio reports here.

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