Taurus Full Moon: The Sorcery of Benign Neglect

We visited a Taurus-rising friend in her Bay Area home, and she treated us to a tour of her thriving garden. My husband and his Taurus Moon were especially taken with her “tater totes”—recycled tote bags, perfect for growing potatoes. But nothing impressed him more than her elaborate, three-section composting shed. While the two discussed, at length, its design, construction, and functionality, I (no planets in Taurus) wandered off to find the cat.

Plant some Taurus in a birth chart, and it will generally grow into a green thumb. My husband has stationed a cookie-jar sized container next to our kitchen sink to collect scraps for his own, cherished compost heap. And just this morning, my Sun in Taurus neighbor cheerfully described what a good time she’d had yesterday, working in her garden. She’d started out a little bit sad and out of sorts, she said, but a day of puttering around in the dirt had set her right.

Taurus has an instinct for cultivation. Its opposite sign, Scorpio, symbolizes the process of death and decay, the spent organic matter that’s thrown on the compost heap and the busy, helpful insects that break it down. The result, to most of us, looks like plain old dirt. But from across the horoscopic wheel, Taurus recognizes the resulting loam as beautiful, nourishing, and helpful, and knows just how to use it to encourage things to grow.

It’s not always gardening that engages Taurus’ talent for growing things. Some with this sign strong in their charts kill their house plants with alacrity but are brilliant at cultivating a thriving business, a stable organization, or a devoted cadre of friends. They’re geniuses at taking over a situation that has collapsed through mismanagement, malfeasance, or pure exhaustion, and restoring it to strength and health.

Taurus has a gift for nurturing, but it’s not the tender, sympathetic nurturing of, say, Cancer. Rather, Taurus’ style is a blend of hands-on labor and benign neglect. Plants, people, and organizations thrive under Taurus’ care because they receive the right amount of support, sustenance, and stability, without getting smothered. From the time we could walk, my Sun in Taurus mom taught us manners and supervised our chores, but gave us a pretty long leash when it came to playing in the mud and falling on our butts. She used to joke, “If my kids haven’t eaten a pound of dirt by the time they’re walking, I haven’t done my job!” We got into all sorts of scrapes, but after a quick inspection for real damage, she calmly dusted us off, slapped bandages on us, and distracted us from dramatic tears and temper tantrums with a brisk joke and a cookie.

There’s something reassuring about Taurus’ cheerful confidence and utter lack of drama. As kids, we’re haunted by nameless fears—of the dark, of losing our parents, of being bullied at school. We see creatures in the shadows and are terrified by vivid, scary dreams. We’re attuned to Scorpio’s invisible, magical world, and we’re drawn to horrific fairy tales that help us understand what we find there. As we grow into adults, we don’t need nightmares or the Brothers Grimm to scare us; life itself gives us plenty to worry about. Through it all – and even now, with disruptive Uranus moving through the sign and in a conjunction with this Full Moon -Taurus is the sensible, grounded voice that reassures us that everything will work out, that makes us feel better about things by refusing to make a big deal about them.

In the Scorpio season, the shadows grow longer and the days shorter. What was planted in spring and flourished in the summer is withering and exhausted. Our late autumn festivals celebrate the crops that have been harvested and the loved ones who have passed on. We acknowledge the mystery and inevitability of death during the Sun’s Scorpio season.

But each of us, in our Taurus planets or house (don’t know how to find it? this post should help), possesses the sorcery of benign neglect. In some part of your life, you know how to make things grow, how to support life without smothering it, and to comfort those who are fearful. So at the Taurus Full Moon, gather up the compost of fears, failed dreams, and insecurities. Till them into the garden’s soil; then cover it up for the winter and let it rest. By spring, the soil will be strong and refreshed, and ready to nurture fresh, new, and abundant life.