Taurus in the Tropical Scheme

Taurus is the second sign, the thirty degrees following Aries, and in the classical doctrine it is fixed, earthy and ruled by Venus, with the Moon exalted in it. Fixed signs fall in the middle of each season, when the weather has settled into its character, and the tradition reads them for stability, persistence and resistance to change; Ptolemy treats the sign as consolidating what Aries begins.

The Venusian rulership gives it the sensory and appetitive side of that planet rather than the social side, so the sign is associated with the body and its comforts, with land, and with things possessed and held. The classical texts also class Taurus among the bicorporeal in some schemes and note its semi-fertile character in agricultural questions, a reminder that much of the sign doctrine was developed for practical use in weather, farming and medical judgment rather than for describing personalities.