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

Because all life-energies rise in Taurus to the surface, pulled by the will-power and desire of the Sun, the individual Taurean finds the source of his power in the racial depths of his unconscious; thus, he identifies himself at root with the race that bore him, while ever striving to atune his conscious sense of purpose to that superior will-which directs him from within toward the next stage of his evolution. The outer manifestations of this impersonal, instinctual or cosmic will may be delayed; but they can hardly be stopped.
      Thus the determination, stubborn self-will and fixity of purpose of the Taurus type. These characteristics often lead to a sense of possessiveness. Possessiveness comes as a result of the deep sense of an inner need which must be satisfied. Whatever fulfills this need acquires such a value that it seems imperative to the individual to assure its possession. Essentially, the Taurus type will think of the use which a person, a situation or a relationship will be to him. Yet this may not mean selfishness, but rather the outcome of the vital realization that a fact of experience cannot have meaning unless it fulfills a definite purpose. Where anything fulfills a functional purpose, there the thing belongs and should stay.
      At the Taurus stage, personality is not yet set. But that feeling of usefulness and purposefulness is the foundation upon which a set personality will be built; for personality is an organic concept. Self-sufficiency, at least of a relative kind, is the basis of personality. Taurus provides the sense of self-sustainment, on which self-sufficiency can develop. Thus the link between Cancer, sign of rulership of the Moon, and Taurus, in which the Moon is "exalted." The purpose of procreation (Taurus) conditions the building of the home (Cancer). What is needed, however, before the home can be built is to compel the creative energy (Aries) to accept that purpose. This will be the work of Gemini, the weaver of patterns of relationship and of ideals — those nets in which the Aries freedom will be caught.
      In Taurus, the Night-force is also operative, but in an even more remote way than in Aries. The fixity of purpose of the Taurus person, gathering outer sustainment to substantiate and actualize the building of personality or home, leaves little room for the attenuated Night-force in the consciousness. But it is still evident in the subconscious or in the relation of the Taurus person to the large vistas of the Collective Unconscious. It manifests as a peculiar intoxication based on the irrational or supra-rational sense of identification with a mystical purpose; on the feeling that one is invested with the power of an invisible community. Thus the sense of being a Prophet, a Messiah, a Redeemer, an Avatar; a mouthpiece of Divinity.
      This can manifest in many small ways, or in a very big way. It may be a delusion. It may be a reality. The fruits alone can prove which of the two hypotheses is the actual one. Taurus is the sign in which the symbolical Pentecost occurs. Men are being invested with transcendent, super-conscious, irrational power. The "gift of tongues" is a symbol of the irrationality, or rather super-rationality, of that power — a particular language being always considered as the perfect symbol of the operation of the rational faculty. According to tradition, be it symbolical or a literal fact, Gautama the Buddha was born, achieved liberation, and died at the Full Moon of May during the Taurus phase of human experience. The meaning of this is that Gautama can be considered — from the point of view of occult wisdom — as the very " cream" of human evolution and the first exemplar of the highest type of consciousness possible to a human being born of this earth. Divine Manifestations, before or since him, may have been greater Personages, but if so, it is because they were descents of divine power and not, as Gautama the Buddha, climaxes of human consciousness.
      As Gautama taught in India, the constellation of the Pleiades was found at the end of the zodiacal Sign, Aries. Many seers and astrologers of the past have claimed that the Pleiades constitute the center of our universe of human experience. If so, from that center spring everlastingly the Power and the Love that vivify and integrate the entire cycle of our evolution. Indeed, Aries is the symbolical fountain-head of manifested life; but Taurus, energized by the Pleiades since the days of Christ, is the steady flowing river whose substance feeds the multitudes with "living waters." On its banks great cities are built; civilization grows and matures; and men seek for the Mystery which is beyond change — which sustains and illumines the whole universe.