Part Two:
Twelve Phases of Human Experience
TAURUS - Page 1 of 3

After having triumphed over the Night-force at the equinox the Day-force which, throughout Aries, rushed forth in adolescent desire for self-manifestation, becomes in Taurus steadier and more persistent. It ceases to fight — often merely against ghosts and windmills — for the privilege of exteriorizing its energy as a personality. It seeks to establish itself in a tangible manner. It demands results; and it learns that results are gained through repetition, through set motions, through stubborn insistence and undeviating effort. It learns, moreover, that only intimate contact with the substance of the earth can bring forth these concrete products, the fruition of Night is human personality. In Taurus, therefore, the Day-force is seen acting upon the substantial foundation of all organisms, stirring the soil of mankind into fruitfulness.
      Taurus is the reaction which follows Aries action. After the peculiar inner insecurity of Aries, of which the Aries person often makes a challenge and a virtue, Taurus presents the spectacle of an emphasis on security. The pioneering instinct gives way to the settler's organizing faculty. Energy transforms itself into power; this, as sheer ability to move finds a resistant material into and against which to move. Sheer motion in Aries becomes, in Taurus, emotion aroused by objects. In Aries, universal Life pours through an adolescent ego craving for individual selfhood. In Taurus, the forces of tradition, of habit and of material inertia blend with that selfless, half-conscious outpouring of energy; a rotational movement is produced, whence will grow a definite sense of personality, a limited destiny.
      Aries acts in a straight line; Taurus in a circular motion — Gemini will combine both through the spiral. A straight line can always be seen, in geometry, as a tangent to a circle. It shows the action of a force which escapes the bonds of circular motion. Likewise, germination breaks the closed globular unit constituted by the seed. Aries (the germinal up-shoot) is thus release through tangential motion; after which Taurus bends the tangent back to a circular orbit, stopping what otherwise would be a constant exhaustive flow of energy into space: an explosion.
      Aries and Taurus are complements. But not in the sense in which Aries and Libra are also complements and polarities. Aries is fundamentally opposed to Libra. The directions of their activities are opposite. Aries is moving toward a maximum Day-force; Libra toward an ever stronger Night-force. On the other hand, both Aries and Taurus are characterized by a mounting Day-force. But in Aries that Day-force is straightforward action, because its main problem is to overcome definitely the Night-force. The Night-force having been definitely overcome, a new need arises: the need for stabilization and voluntary restriction. This is Taurus' work.
      In Aries, activity is sought for activity's sake. There is a will to freedom, a fear of bondage, an identification with sheer mobility and the systemless-ness of first conquests. This leads obviously to dispersion and to a peculiar sense of futility of life flowing like sand through open fingers. Then the need for coalescing action arises. Taurus fills that need; not by fundamentally opposing the direction of the Aries Day-force, but merely by modifying it through the realization of a new purpose.
      The difference between Aries-energy and Taurus-energy is a difference of purposes. The two energies have the same direction. They are indeed only one energy, which after reaching a certain end in Aries, seeks to fulfill a new phase of its development in Taurus. The purpose of Aries is dynamic; that of Taurus is organic.
      When an acid corrodes a metal somewhere on the surface of the earth, such is a disintegrating, dynamic activity. But when the hydrochloric acid in a man's stomach digests proteins, there an organic function is operating. In other words, the acid in the stomach fulfills a function in terms of the need of an organic whole, the human body; and its operations are more or less rigidly controlled by that need. On the other hand, free acid will corrode everything it touches. In itself and of itself, it has no particular functional purpose in any definite organic whole.
      The Aries type acts; and that action is its own justification. There is a compulsion of Destiny back of it, but the Aries person merely takes it for granted and his consciousness is all satisfied by the sheer fact of activity. For the Taurus type action is essentially meaningless without a purpose. It must be related to something. There is in Taurus a compulsion of relationship; in Aries, a compulsion of activity. In Taurus activity must be functional in terms of the organism, the purpose of which it serves.
      Sex, for instance, is for the Aries type almost solely a mode of actional release. It is in itself its own justification as a thrill of activity, of projective strength in operation. But for Taurus, sex means the condition for the production of a definite result; normally, a child.