It would be nice if we could go back to the topic of the thread.
Yes, it would.
Venus in Aries:
The most important animal cults were the bull cults in Egypt in the 1st Dynasty. The ancients believed that the powerful bull represented the personality of the king with slate palettes dating back as far as 3100 BC even show kings as bulls. This animal was chosen because it symbolized the king’s courageous heart, great strength, virility, and fighting spirit. The bulls horns even embellish some of the tombs of courtiers who served the first Saqqara kings. / Once the bull was proclaimed to be a god incarnate, it was taken to the temple compound where it was purified, stabled in majestic quarters, fed the best foods, and given a herd of the finest cows. So even during this period in history I can still see both. The strong fighting bull that the kings like to be personafied as and then to be pampered with the finest bed and spoiled with the best food and sex a cow could have. How can you get more Taurean than this?
How can you get any less feminine, venusian or lunar?
The bull is associated with kingship and male supremacy because it is a solar animal, not a lunar one.
The bull is definately a solar animal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bull_(mythology)
Taurus is a feminine sign, ruled by Venus and the Moon. As such, it is the most feminine of feminine signs. You don't get any more feminine than Taurus in the zodiac. Venus and the Moon are both associated with motherhood, and the Moon is certainly associated with milk, as it presides over female biological processes and so over the process of lactation. We depend upon the cow for her milk, making the cow something of a surrogate mother to humanity. Taurus is the sacred cow, and will have been altered for some reason, somewhere along the line.
The bull represents masculine sexual drive, virility and agression, it always did and still does, so how can it be emblematic of the most feminine of signs when the bull has always represented the most potent masculine characteristics in the human psyche in animal form?
The first sign, masculine and ruled by Mars and the Sun represents the primal masculine, the second sign, feminine and ruled by Venus and the Moon, represents the primal feminine.
If anything, it would probably make more sense in seeing the first sign as the solar and martial bull, and the second sign as the venusian and lunar cow. I am not of course suggesting that Aries should be turned into a bull, not at all, certainly not, but I am saying that Taurus should definately be a cow. It makes crystal clear, perfect sense. Understanding Taurus as a cow is a bit of a 'eureka' moment, where all the symbolism falls into place.
As many of you are aware, I take a traditional perspective in astrology, and I do not believe in coming along and twisting thousands of years of tradition to suit personal whims or to bridge gaps in learning that one cannot be bothered to fill, but I do believe strongly, and on grounds of sound reason and common sense, that we would be better served, and glean a better understanding of Taurus, in seeing that it is a cow, and not a bull.
I do in fact wonder if there has been a mistranslation, misunderstanding or deliberate corruption somewhere along the line when it comes to the symbolism of Taurus, as this has happened before with Aquarius, which I will mention shortly.
Lilly said:
I've never wondered whether the goat was a female or a male nor have I ever considered till about an hour ago that the virgin might be a male virgin.
I have wondered about this, and the goat of Capricorn, a feminine sign, represents a nanny-goat and not a billy-goat. The goat of Capricornus represents Amalthea, the she-goat who nursed and suckled the infant Zeus when he was abandoned on the mountainside. In honour of this, Zeus immortalised his surrogate mother into the constellation of Capricornus.
Virgo, a male virgin? Most certainly not! It's a question of perspective, but properly, there is no such thing as a male 'virgin' in the physical sense, at least, not heterosexually. Virginity is the female state of having an unbroken hymen. We may casually refer to a man who has not had sexual intercourse with a woman as a 'virgin', but really this is a generalisation, understood in a physical sense, men lose their virginity in a different way, and in the modern world, most never do, which again taps into Aquarius which I will mention shortly.
Venus in Aries:
I mean is the water bearer really female or just a pretty male?
Ganymede of Aquarius is most certainly not a female, he is a beautiful male youth, and a masculine sign of course, a big clue. You will, more often than not see the character of Aquarius symbolised by a woman. This is a deliberate corruption of the ever meddling Christians, to disguise the mythology behind the sign, in which Aquarius is represented by Zeus' young homosexual lover, and cup-bearer of the gods of Olympus. In Tarot 'The Star' is often associated with Aquarius, based upon this corruption of Aquarius as a female figure, as is traditionally depicted in the card.
Ganymede as 'cup-bearer' is emblematic of his receptivity, in that he plays the role of catamite, which for those of you who don't know, is the complementary opposite of a sodomite, it is the passive party in homosexual intercourse. As Aquarius represents a catamite, and as this taps into the practice of pederasty, the initiation of male youths into manhood by acquiring the seed of an older male, we can see why the moralising Christians had to stick their oar in, and make haste to transform poor Ganymede into a woman, the way it 'should' be, according to them.
As with Amalthea of Capricornus, Zeus honoured Ganymede by immortalising him in the stars of Aquarius beneath the protective wings of Aquila the eagle, Zeus' animal form, in order to place him out of reach of and to protect him from the wrath of his furious wife, Hera.
Now earlier I mentioned how Taurus may have been deliberately corrupted from a cow into a bull, just as the interfering Christians corrupted Aquarius from a lad into a woman, albeit for opposite reasons.
In the classical world, there was much derision for the female and the feminine, and perhaps that as the masculine virilty of the bull was so important to them, they decided to have Taurus as a bull rather than a cow, and this has lasted ever since. I'm not necessarily saying that this is the case, just an idea, but I do feel very strongly that there has been some misunderstading or deliberate corruption somewhere along the line, just as the Christians did with Aquarius to suit their own ideology, then perhaps this also took place much earlier in the classical period with Taurus being changed from feminine cow into masculine bull, given the great glorification of all things masculine back then. None the less, Taurus, feminine and residence of Venus and the Moon, just doesn't make sense, its the most feminine bloody sign of them all, the primal feminine for goodness sake!
I think it's time that we honoured the primal feminine again and give the cow back to Taurus as it always should have been.
While I am aware that the 'masculine' and 'feminine' division of the signs is not necessarily a reference to 'male' and 'female', but can signify polarities such as active and passive, creative and receptive, I do think that for the purposes of gleaning understanding as to the appropriate sexes of the symbols of the signs, seeing them as male or female on this basis is a sensible application.
This is why Aries is a ram and not a sheep, why Taurus is a cow and not a bull, why Virgo is a woman not a man, and why Aquarius is a man and not a woman.
One thing that does take my interest regarding this discussion, is why Virgo should be represented by a virgin woman, and Aquarius by a non virgin man (remember that I am understanding 'virginity' as the state of being physically unchanged via phallic intervention).
Virgo and Aquarius are the only signs to be represented by a single human female and male respectively, and as such, represent the females and males of humanity in a mundane sense.
What intrigues me, is that Virgo, as virgin, represents what women 'should not' be, as it is 'unnatural' for a woman to remain a virgin, hymen intact. Aquarius represents what men 'should not' be, as it is deemed 'unnatural' for a man to have his virginity taken.
I do wonder about what this symbolism is all about. I think that this is interesting and worthy of deep thought. Virgo symbolises the opposite of our value judgements of what a woman should be, Aquarius represents the opposite of our value judgements of what a man should be. Interesting stuff.
Pixiequix quoted:
"Taurus is the "good earth," the bountiful Great Mother; and it can be considered as a feminine Sign. Nevertheless, strangely enough, it is represented in astrological symbolism by the Bull, and not by a female animal. This should make one careful not to overstress the passive or receptive characteristics of this Sign.
Taurus is indeed the bountiful Great Mother, the primal feminine in fact. Not overstress the passive or receptive characteristics of the bountiful Great Mother? What? The matriarch of the feminine signs ruled by Venus and the Moon? Yea right. How can, in one sentence, a person refer to Taurus as Mother Earth, and then in the same breath tell us not to overstress her femininity. I never envisioned Mother Earth with a great pair of swinging testicles personally. Make your mind up Rudhyar, you contradict yourself mate!
Charm said:
1/ how an original cow name for this sign has been mistranslated into something else with a differrent meaning,
2/ how people will try to fit characteristics of a bull that don't fit as a result of trying to adapt to the new image created by the mistranslated name,
3/ how the error is perpetuated by being passed along to others
4/ how being read by others who don't think for themselves will keep calling it bull - what a load of!
I totally agree Charm. However, I would imagine that Taurus as bull rather than cow, was a deliberate corruption, like the Christians did with Aquarius, rather than a mistranslation, by the macho adoring patriarchs of the classical world.
