Taurus

When is Taurus? Dates, element and ruling planet

Taurus is the second sign of the zodiac and sits in the middle of spring in the Northern Hemisphere: Aries opens the season and Taurus roots it, grows it and gets it ready to bear fruit. The Sun passes through Taurus from about April 20 to May 20. If your birthday is around April 19–20 or May 20–21, check your Sun sign with your birth time and place, because the changeover moves by a few hours from year to year.

Taurus is an earth sign, the element of the body, the senses, work and things that last. Its modality is fixed: it does not open a season, it sustains one. Its ruler is Venus, and here Venus shows the most earthly side of love and beauty: good food, touch, music, a garden in bloom. In classical astrology the Moon is exalted in Taurus, a traditionally strong placement linking emotional needs with continuity, familiar surroundings and tangible forms of comfort. Its opposite is Scorpio: Taurus keeps and protects what it has, while Scorpio teaches letting go and transformation.

The symbol is the bull: strong, calm and content in its own pasture, yet impossible to move once provoked. Earth, a fixed modality and Venus together make an energy that builds slowly and solidly, loves what is beautiful and, once attached, does not easily leave.

Taurus traits: patience, loyalty and a stubborn streak

Taurus is the sign of patience and permanence. It does not rush, because it knows that rushed work is left half done. It wants to get to know something, try it and digest it; after that, the thing is truly its own.

Patience centres on sustained effort and an unhurried pace, with time to attend to the task at hand. Loyalty gives continuity a place in friendships, work and familiar surroundings. Sensual awareness draws attention to life’s small pleasures: a carefully made meal, the texture of a fabric or the sound of a favourite song. Reliability concerns keeping track of a commitment, recognising what it requires and giving practical promises the same attention as personal comfort.

The shadow grows from the same root. Patience can harden into stubbornness, loyalty into possessiveness, and the need for comfort into avoiding change. A familiar routine can become a way of avoiding a fresh decision. The tension lies between taking time to consider change and leaving frustration unspoken. Its task is to say what feels threatened, hear the reasons for a proposal and distinguish a valued commitment from a habit kept only because it is familiar. Taurus’ growth lesson is to recognise its own worth alongside the things it owns and the routines it keeps. When considering a change, ask what kind of security feels threatened, which commitments still matter and where familiarity is taking the place of a fresh decision.

Sensory enjoyment is another Taurus theme: walking in a park, preparing a meal, tending a balcony garden or listening to music. These activities express its wish for an unhurried encounter with familiar things. The question is what kind of time and attention it wants, how that need is communicated and which concerns still need words alongside the pleasure of an ordinary afternoon.

Taurus in love, the Taurus woman and man, and compatibility

Taurus’ approach to love centres on an unhurried pace and the wish for continuity. Its language of closeness includes shared meals, familiar rituals and quiet time together. Trust brings questions of consistency: what both people have promised, how affection is expressed and where a familiar pattern needs to make room for change. Its relationship tension is between valuing steadiness and expecting someone else to stay the same.

What works with a Taurus is words and actions that match. Time to think and tangible care matter to its style of closeness. Discuss how those needs fit with both people’s wishes, and what reliability means when circumstances or priorities change. The Taurus share of the work is not to confuse possessiveness with love and to leave room for a partner to change and grow.

That earthy steadiness is the same whoever carries it; women and men differ only in how they express it.

The Taurus woman

A Taurus woman’s symbolic style combines clear preferences, an unhurried pace and attention to her surroundings. Beauty and personal space matter alongside the wish for continuity in relationships. Her growth theme is to give needs and frustrations words: which routines she values, what a proposed change means and how both people want to respond when their wishes differ.

The Taurus man

A Taurus man comes across as calm and composed. Consistency is central to his symbolic style of interest: making time, remembering a preference and giving practical promises attention. The relationship questions concern how both people express affection, what pace suits each of them and how personal space fits with the commitments they agree to share.

Taurus compatibility

The other earth signs, Virgo and Capricorn, speak the same language as Taurus: all three believe in effort and trust, though together they may need to add a little spontaneity on purpose. The water signs, Cancer and Pisces, water the Taurus earth, and emotional closeness meets practical steadiness. The work is to discuss what reassurance means to each person and how care is expressed in everyday routines. With its opposite, Scorpio, practical security meets emotional depth; fixed modalities bring persistence and resistance to change into focus, including how a shared decision is reached. Leo and Aquarius form squares to Taurus: pride and freedom create friction, yet these relationships can help both people grow. Two Taurus partners share the themes of continuity, comfort and familiar routines; the tension concerns whose preferences shape daily life and when a habit needs reconsideration. Aries, Gemini, Libra and Sagittarius live at a different tempo, and the work concerns patience, different priorities and how each person’s preferred pace fits with plans and responsibilities they need to share.

Sun signs describe the moment two people meet, not the relationship itself. Synastry, where Moons, Venus, Mars and the rising signs are read side by side, shows the real dynamic; where a bond goes is decided not by signs but by how two people treat each other.

Taurus career and money habits

At work, Taurus is a builder. It shines in work whose results can be touched, grow over time and reward care: banking and accounting, food and cooking, farming and gardening, architecture, crafts, music, beauty and design. Once it has learned a job, it can do it skilfully for years.

Constantly shifting targets, last-minute panic and places where nobody knows who is doing what drain it. The Taurus lesson at work is to recognise the moment when it is time to leave the safe option; staying in the same place for years is not always loyalty, sometimes it is only habit. Colleagues value it as the person who stays calm when deadlines tighten, and who still remembers how things were done three restructurings ago.

As the sign of the natural second house, Taurus has a strong relationship with money. It likes to save, does not mind paying for quality and wants to see value for what it spends. The need to feel secure can make it miss an opening, or spend more than planned on comfort. Its money habits favour saving steadily and choosing objects intended to last. Before a purchase, quality, texture and everyday usefulness matter to Taurus; the question is how that preference fits with the budget and whether the desire for comfort is outweighing other commitments already in place.

Reading Taurus in a natal chart: Sun, Moon, ascendant

Taurus tells a different story depending on which planet or point sits there in your chart.

Sun in Taurus

With the Sun in Taurus, your identity is shaped by what you value: your work, your body, the people you love and the life you have built. You express yourself best when you grow something slowly and get to see the result.

Moon in Taurus

The Moon is exalted in Taurus. This placement’s emotional needs centre on continuity, familiar surroundings and sensory comfort. A good meal, closeness and a predictable routine express that wish for security. Its task is to recognise what feels uncertain when circumstances change, give those concerns words and decide which habits still belong in the new situation.

Taurus rising

The rising sign describes how you come across at first and how you approach new situations. Taurus rising leaves an impression of calm, reassurance and unhurried presence, and is often remembered for a pleasant voice or quiet elegance. The Ascendant moves into a new sign about every two hours, so you need your birth time to know it.

Taurus is the natural second house: personal resources, money, possessions and self-worth. The house that begins in Taurus in your chart, together with the position of Venus, shows the area of life where these themes play out. To see this in your own chart, the Birth Chart section of the Larisa app works out planet positions, your rising sign, Placidus houses and major aspects from your birth date, time and place. When no time is entered, it takes 12:00 noon as the default, and then your Ascendant and house cusps are estimates rather than exact.

The Hierophant and Taurus: the sign’s tarot cards

The Golden Dawn correspondences that the Rider–Waite–Smith deck is built on link Taurus to the Hierophant. The Hierophant stands for tradition, teaching and knowledge handed down through generations; the Taurus need for permanence and roots becomes a whole system of values in this card. In the Rider–Waite–Smith deck, two crossed keys lie at the Hierophant’s feet. In the Larisa deck he holds the golden keys in his left hand and blesses with his right, while two figures, one in blue and one in red, kneel before him.

The three decans of Taurus are the middle numbers of Pentacles, the moments when earth is tested through effort:

Five of Pentacles (0–10°, Mercury) describes material hardship, scarcity and exclusion. Read Taurus’ need for security alongside the resources that are lacking, the weight of the loss and how isolation is experienced within the situation.

Six of Pentacles (10–20°, Moon) explores giving, receiving and the distribution of resources. Read who gives, who receives and who sets the conditions, including the power difference within the exchange. In the Rider–Waite–Smith image, a man holding a pair of scales hands out coins to people in need.

Seven of Pentacles (20–30°, Saturn) centres on patience and assessment: weighing what the work has produced against the time and effort given to it. Read what remains unfinished, what deserves continued attention and where familiar persistence is taking the place of a fresh decision.

Venus, the ruler of Taurus, belongs to the Empress in tarot; abundance, care, the body and beauty are what Taurus inherits from Venus. Because Taurus is a fixed sign, its bull is one of the four creatures in the corners of the Wheel of Fortune and the World in the Rider–Waite–Smith deck, and a bull appears on both cards in the Larisa deck too. When one of these cards shows up in a spread, look at the part of the question that touches security, effort or your sense of worth.