Taurus: Archetype of The Hedonist
Your bare feet pressing into the soft earth as grass pushes up between your toes. That lusty feeling you get when eating delicious food, butter and juices running down your chin and dripping off your elbow as you give in to the pure pleasure of it all. The heat of two bodies pressed against each other as physical sensations flood and overwhelm you. This is the realm of The Hedonist, seeking pleasure, deliciousness and leisure.
In Astrology, the sign associated with this energy is Taurus, the Bull.
Figure from the “Hall of Bulls” in Lascaux Cave, France - painted by our ancient ancestors c. 15,000 BCE
When it comes down to it, the only real experience we have is a physical one. We can debate about spirits and souls, but those aren’t experiences we actually have, they are subjective, far ranging ideas, guesses and, most of the time, if we are honest, wishful thinking.
The glyph for Taurus - the head and horns of a Bull
The symbol for the Planet Venus
Taurus is the second sign of the Western Zodiac, ruled by the planet Venus, and represents the Fixed nature of Earth (learn more about that here). It is stable, materialistic, and not into change all that much. The Earthy nature of Taurus places its focus squarely on the physical, natural world. Money, things, sexual pleasure, food, and lazing around is the world Taurus engages with.
Hedonism gets a bad rap in our society. We categorize it as simply over-indulgence or a lack of impulse control, but without The Hedonist within, we would not drink in the pleasure that the physical world offers. There would be no restaurants, massage therapists, flower shops, bars, dance clubs, national parks, or Disneyland.
The reasons we are so uncomfortable with the idea of seeking physical pleasure come from religious and moralistic belief systems that have prevailed in our Western culture and society. All one has to do is look at the “Seven Deadly Sins” and you clearly see the demonization we have placed upon physical pleasure. Lust, Gluttony, Greed and Sloth make up the first four and clearly call into view the idea that the pursuit of such material pleasures is wrong, even evil!
However, this is simply a reiteration of ideas that started long ago as ancient Greek Gnostic schools of philosophy debated the issue. They typically divided the human experience into a dualistic model of Spirit vs Matter. In most schools, the spiritual attainment of gnosis (where we get our words “knowledge” and “knowing”) was elevated as the goal of humanity, requiring the suppression and denial of physical enjoyment as stumbling blocks and distractions from our real purpose - spiritual enlightenment. For instance, if you have ever heard someone described as “stoic”, this comes from one such Gnostic school, known as Stoicism, which belittled and disparaged pursuits of physical pleasure, believing them to be contradictory to the real purpose of their existence.
The Heretic Astrologer calls bullshit on those conclusions.
When we are ready to be honest with ourselves and pull back from the psychological preoccupation with supposed spiritual “truths”, we are forced to embrace the fact that we, as humans, are built to experience and enjoy the natural world. While moralists describe these abilities as something to subjugate, even exterminate, The Hedonist (archetypal energy of the sign Taurus) understands it is life itself.
This debate is not something new. Going all the way back to the earliest civilizations that came together in Ancient Mesopotamia, ideas around the purpose of the human experience were discussed. For example, the oldest literary text discovered, a Sumerian account known as the Epic of Gilgamesh, represents what is potentially the earliest Hedonistic philosophy. Written down on cuneiform tablets soon after the invention of writing itself, it lays out some of the earliest stories, ideas and beliefs ever recorded. If you have never heard of this epic poem, you have very likely heard myths and legends that were directly inspired by it. The Garden of Eden, the Biblical flood narrative starring Noah, both were simply Semitic developments of these ancient prototypical legends laid out long before. In the “Old Babylonian” version (c.1800 BCE), the following line is recorded:
“ Fill your belly. Day and night make merry. Let days be full of joy. Dance and make music day and night...These things alone are the concern of men.”
In other words, stop chasing the ghosts of some spiritual world and nebulous ideas of a potential afterlife, you are a physical being in a physical world, “So get some!”
Tablet V, Epic of Gilgamesh
Such ideas are typically met with caution and hesitation. We are so steeped in moralistic ideas imported from religion, we feel something is wrong if we feel desire, lust, or even the slightest inclination toward enjoying earthly delights. And this isn’t only the realm of mainline religious thought. Many a new age guru or hippie philosopher have parroted the dualistic view of reducing the physical, natural enjoyment of the world to something less than, or even detrimental to, “the real purpose” of humanity.
We are physical beings equipped with all kinds of anatomical inputs and physiological functions that allow us to not just engage with the natural world, but to have a profound experience that comes with all of all those sensations. And this is where Taurus, The Hedonist lives.
Taurus is often accused of superficiality or shallowness because of this pursuit of physical experience. However, this is totally unfair and flat out wrong. The Hedonist is not about escaping profundity or depth through pleasurable experience. Instead, this archetype finds it in such things.
Food, drink, sex, nature walks, naps, laying in bed eating Doritos all day, these are not diversions for The Hedonist, they are the meaning of life. It isn’t about avoiding depth, it is about being able to embrace the unfathomable complexity of everything in the simplest pleasures of life. To sit in the depths, and yet not need to explain it to anyone, not even themselves. Let everyone else run about chasing meaning and preaching spiritual ideals, the Bull just shrugs it all off as unnecessary, as it ponders the nature of the universe in the greasy deliciousness of a slice of pizza.
The Hedonist does not see physical delights and the material world as a poor substitution or simulation of what is real. Quite the opposite. Taurus views it all with a reverence. The world you can touch, hear, taste, see and smell is its cathedral, and it is always ready to worship.
Like all of the archetypal energies of the signs, The Hedonist has its shadowy side as well. Most would think over-indulgence is its foible, however this is not the case. The Bull seeks a quiet calm, both mentally and physically. The peace of simply existing in the moment. The issue is, it can substitute material security for the profound growth it actually desires. When in a state of stagnation, surrounded by all the stuff that money can buy, the Bull gets bored, and that boredom quickly turns into an obstinate aversion to change, Taurus’ famous stubbornness. In this state, Taurus can become intolerant and overly dependent on possessions and money. Remember, the peace you are looking for is in the physical experience, not the physical stuff. Have it, just don’t let it have you.
No one is defined by a single sign, each of us is a combination of all twelve, expressing themselves at different levels and in varying situations. If your Sun, Moon or Ascendant is in the sign of Taurus, these tendencies will likely show up fairly strong, however, everybody has a little Hedonist inside.
Where does Taurus, The Hedonist, show up in your profile?
