Taurus 1 & 2: Nurturing the Seed & Letting the Light Shine
May 21st, 2009 by Bill
Taurus 1: Nurturing the Seed
On our recent daily walks through St. Stephen’s Green, Morag and I have been noticing the dramatic changes occurring in the trees and shrubs. A month or so ago, there was the budding: shoots pushing tentatively through the hardened, frosty soil, embryonic leaves scattered among the still skeletal trees. But now, the place is awash with colour, and the pathways are submerged under a canopy of green. The ducks on the lake are squawking busily, the birds are building their nests, and young couples are lazing on the grass, whispering sweet nothings as they enjoy the returning sunshine.
Spring has really taken hold. Every day brings new delights; trees seem to blossom overnight, and the bare branches of yesterday are today wrapped in pink and gold. The sun has entered Taurus, the sign of growth, profusion, opulence, sensuality, pleasure. The ancient symbol for this sign was the priapic, fertile, but languid bull, who scatters his seed where he may, who seems to have no purpose other than copulation and procreation, and who guards his own territory and his own females with jealous ferocity.
Taurus is the first of what the old astrologers called the Earth signs, and it is indeed the most ‘earthy’ of them all. People who are strongly Taurean are aware of and sometimes obsessed by, their own physicality, and of the material nature of the universe. They are ‘ruled’ by Venus, the goddess of love and beauty, and they rejoice in the flesh and its appetites, although Chaucer’s sensual Wife of Bath laments the fact that being born under Taurus has brought her nothing but trouble: ‘Taurus rising, with Mars therein, Alas, alas, that ever love were sin!’ she cries.
But Taurus is not only about sensuality and sex. More philosophers seem to be born under Taurus than under any other sign. In the summer of 2005, BBC Radio 4 held a poll to find out Britain’s favourite philosopher. The results were, to me at least, quite astonishing. The winner was Karl Marx, born on May 5th; the runner up was David Hume, born on 26th April; and in third place was Ludwig Wittgenstein, also born on 26th April. Immanuel Kant, born on 22nd April was sixth. All of these were born under the sign of Taurus. In fact, since no one knows the birthdays of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and St. Thomas Aquinas, only two of the top ten – Karl Popper (Leo), and Friedrich Nietzsche (Libra) – were certainly not born under Taurus. Although we don’t know the birthday of Thomas Aquinas, the fact that his student peers called him ‘The Dumb Ox’ would certainly indicate Taurus, and May birthdays have been suggested for both Socrates and Plato. This means that seven of the top ten were certainly or probably born under Taurus. This is a remarkable statistic, and although it may be dismissed as ‘coincidental’ by mathematicians (who, by the way, are a strongly Taurean body, too), it should come as no surprise to students of astrology. Taurus is the sign which symbolises our relationship with the material universe, and so its sons and daughters should have a particular interest in attempting to define the nature of that relationship, which, on one level at least, is the function of philosophy.
It is the sign of the builder, and it is surely not without significance that some of the human race’s grandest and most enduring structures – including Stonehenge, Newgrange, and the pyramids of Egypt – were erected during the astrological age of Taurus (c. 4,000 – c. 2,000 BCE). The Jews called Taurus Bayt, a word meaning ‘house’, and the building of Solomon’s Temple (‘The House of the Lord’) was begun when the sun was in Taurus, i.e. in the second month (1 Kings 6:1).
The ancient writers weren’t terribly kind to people born under Taurus, considering them best fitted for agricultural work. A Taurus man is a ‘dull, honest ploughman’, according to the Roman writer Manilius, fit for tilling the ground and manuring the field, and while the Taurean philosophers don’t often spend their time spreading manure (except figuratively, perhaps!), they do tend to expound one version or another of ‘no nonsense’ materialism – ‘if you can’t see it, touch it, taste it, hear it, or smell it, it doesn’t exist’ – which Britain’s pragmatic and sceptical Radio 4 listeners seem to find so congenial. Marx’s ‘dialectical materialism’, John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism, and David Hume’s scepticism, all bear the unmistakeable signature of Taurus. Thomas Reid, another Taurean, was called ‘the common sense philosopher’; Bertrand Russell, yet another, was a thoroughgoing materialist, prepared even to reduce human thought to chemistry; and Wittgenstein, who, in true Taurus style, designed and built a house in Vienna for his sister, summed up the anti-metaphysical bias of Taurus when he said, ‘Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent’. The sons and daughters of Taurus certainly seem to have their feet on the ground.
There is another very important link between Taurus and the earth. The constellation Taurus contains the Pleiades, one of the most conspicuous and beautiful sights in the night sky, six or seven stars (depending on your eyesight) closely packed together, which have probably inspired ancient poets and mythmakers more than any other stellar grouping. But they were also used by farmers throughout the ancient world to mark the times of planting and of harvesting. Virgil says that any farmer who doesn’t use the Pleiades to tell him when to plant his crops, will undoubtedly pay a heavy price.
All of which helps us to understand why, in this second section of his Gospel, Mark has given us a number of parables which are based almost entirely on agricultural imagery, the principal one being the Parable of the Sower, which we heard as our second reading today, which teaches us how we should approach those important aspects of life which are symbolised by Taurus.
Remember the story. The Sower, who stands for God, sows his seed on four different types of ground: by the roadside, on rocky soil, among thorns, and on good soil. The seed that falls by the roadside is soon pecked up by the birds; the seed that falls on the rocky ground grows quite quickly, but it has no real roots and is scorched by the sun; the seed which falls among the thorns grows for a while, but is choked by the thorns; only the seed which falls on the good soil yields an abundant crop.
The parable describes four different ways of responding to the spiritual call, the call to a transformed existence. Some will barely hear it; others will receive the message gladly, and will even make a very promising start on living the spiritual life, but they will burn out before too long, especially when the going gets tough as it inevitably will (a bit like the beautiful magnolia tree, which blossoms spectacularly, but only for a couple of weeks); some are so distracted by their carnal appetites and their desire for material possessions that any spiritual impulse they might have felt is completely overwhelmed by the cares and concerns of the world. Only the fourth group, the persistent ones, will show any real fruitage.
The lesson is very simple: the impulse to embark on a life of self transformation – that impulse symbolised in the Aries section of Mark’s Gospel by the apostles impetuously following Jesus – is not enough. All of us will feel that impulse at some time or another, at a moment of transcendent joy such as the birth of a child, perhaps, or when overcome by the beauty of some aspect of the natural world. Maybe something we read, something we hear, or someone we meet will plant the seed. Often, it will be when things don’t seem to be going right, and we begin to ask the big questions. ‘Is this all there is?’ ‘Is it just eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow I die?’
Birth, copulation, and death.
That’s all the facts when you come to brass tacks.
(T. S. Elliot, Sweeney Agonistes).
And we’ll answer such questions for ourselves, concluding perhaps that there is something more than this, that, to quote the great Taurean mystic Rabindranath Tagore, ‘the world holds a deeper meaning than what is apparent’, and we’ll want to pursue it, to find out what the meaning is, to discover who we intrinsically are, and what our life is really about. And it’s a fine and noble impulse, and all of us here have felt it, in fact we wouldn’t be here unless we had felt it, but the Parable of the Sower warns us that the impulse alone is virtually worthless. The circumstances which give rise to the impulse are fleeting, whatever we might think at the time, and when our circumstances change, our resolve can evaporate as we become embroiled in the market place once more, ‘getting and spending’, convincing ourselves that a little more money, a better job, a bigger house, a better car, more holidays, more status, winning the lottery, will turn our life around and make us happy.
Such things – mammon, material possessions – are the ‘sweet delights’ of Taurus, and they can choke the spiritual life. In the Jewish scriptures, the material world is symbolised by Egypt, the place where the belly is full but where the spirit is enslaved. When the Children of Israel escape into the wilderness, into freedom, they are constantly complaining that they want to go back to the ‘flesh pots’ of Egypt. They have their freedom, but they don’t want it, and would gladly trade it for a varied diet, even though this would mean returning to slavery, making bricks from straw – a beautiful Taurean image! And what do they do when Moses leaves them for a while to meet God on the mountain? They build a golden calf and worship it. It’s strange, isn’t it, how the ancient images crop up in our modern culture? The Bull Market is the investor’s delight, when stocks and shares are increasing in value, and on Wall Street, at the very heart of the Western economic system, there is the great big Taurean bull, introduced no doubt unconsciously, but demonstrating the power of these ancient symbols to transcend cultures and ages.
According to the Parable of the Sower, what we need to cultivate in order to overcome the temptations of Taurus is the great Taurean virtue, steadfastness. The astrological writer Isabella Pagan tells us that:
The chief characteristic of the highly developed Taurean type is his stability of character and of purpose. He is the steadfast mind, unshaken in adversity, and his the power of quiet persistence in the face of difficulties……in hard circumstances his patience and perseverance are marvellous.’ (Pagan, page 23)
Persistence in the spiritual life is what we are all called upon to exercise. The seed has been planted, but it has to be nurtured – consistently and carefully. Last Friday, as Morag and I were taking our walk around St. Stephen’s Green, we came across Chris, and we spoke briefly about the beauty and profusion of the trees and the shrubs that surrounded us. ‘That reminds me,’ said Chris, ‘I must go home and water my plants.’ Chris has got it right. It’s no good just planting a seed and hoping for the best. The plant has to be fed and watered.
So it is with the things of the spirit. They, too, must be watered. (I had originally called this address ‘Sowing the Seed’, but it should really be called ‘Nurturing the Seed’.) Do you remember the story of the manna in the book of Exodus? Manna was the food that God provided for the Israelites. It came daily, and there was just enough. Any that was left over began to rot and stink. This is a perfect image of spiritual nurture. It is a daily affair. We have to keep our spirits alive by consistent care, ensuring that daily prayer, daily meditation, a daily period of withdrawal and silence, daily acts of kindness are built into our lives. Only then can the impulse take root and grow; only then will there be any hope of an abundant harvest.
Taurus 2: Letting the Light Shine
Two weeks ago I was speaking about the Parable of the Sower, which can be found in the fourth chapter of Mark’s Gospel – the chapter which I believe reflects the zodiacal sign of Taurus, the first of the so-called Earth signs. The imagery of this chapter is almost entirely agricultural, and the lessons of the section concern growth in the spiritual life. Today I want to have a cursory look at some of the other parables which can be found in this section, but first I want to talk about parables in general: what are parables, and why are they such a popular means of instruction among the world’s great spiritual teachers?
The word ‘parable’ comes from the Greek, and it means ‘thrown beside’. A parable is something – usually a story – which is placed beside something else for the sake of comparison. The parable is an attempt to explain in simple narrative terms something that would otherwise appear complicated or abstruse, and spiritual teachers have used them since the beginning of time for three main reasons. First, they have the natural appeal of all stories. No matter how old we are, or how sophisticated we consider ourselves to be, we are all captivated by the words, ‘Once upon a time….’ Stories cannot fail to get our attention. The second reason is that stories engage our imagination and our judgement in ways that theological discourse does not. With a story we are obliged to come to our own conclusions, and these conclusions may differ according to the individual, so there is an ‘open-ended’ quality to a story, and room for the imagination to roam around.
The third, but by no means the least important reason, is that stories are memorable; generally speaking, we only need to hear a story – or a joke – once before we are ready to tell it, and once it is fixed in the memory it can be accessed even years later without too much trouble. Contrast this with mathematical theorems, chemical formulae, historical dates, geographical features, theological propositions and the like, which stay in our memory just long enough for us to use them in the examination before disappearing without trace. Sarah Tinker, our minister in Kensington, tells how she recently met up with a group of old school friends and they discussed what they could remember about their years of secondary schooling. The only thing they had a clear memory of from a dozen years of schooling was the formation of an ox-bow lake. It’s a common experience, which our educators, with their growing concern to impart a ‘body’ of knowledge, would do well to take notice of. But, for all that these women have forgotten the facts, I’ll bet they can remember the stories their teachers told them, or read to them. I can certainly recall the ones that I was told. I can still remember, well over fifty years ago, listening while the teacher read us the Labours of Hercules, or the Adventures of Wurzel Gummidge, or Peter Pan, or Children of the New Forest. Facts disappear: stories stick.
The power of the story was not lost on Jesus. When asked – as reported in Luke’s Gospel – ‘Who is my neighbour?’ by a man who wanted to put him to the test, Jesus did not reply with a philosophical or sociological definition like, ‘In popular usage, your neighbour is the person who lives in close proximity, usually next door. But, taken in a wider sense, it refers to anyone who may be in need of your assistance.’ No. Jesus told a story. ‘A certain man was travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho….’ he began, and he went on to tell the story of the Good Samaritan, one of the most important and memorable stories in the whole of religious literature. And at the end of the story, Jesus’ questioner was asked to draw his own conclusions, thereby producing an impact on the listener that would be impossible with a lengthy and convoluted argument.
But the spiritual story was not the invention of Jesus. In the Jewish scriptures we read how Nathan the prophet brought King David to repent his shameful treatment of Uriah the Hittite by telling him a story. David was taking the air on the roof of his house one day when he spied the beautiful Bathsheba, whose husband Uriah was away at the wars. David seduced her, and, on learning that she had become pregnant, arranged for her husband to be killed. He then took her as his own wife. The prophet Nathan came to David and told him the story of a poor man who had just one lamb, which he treated like one of his own children. However, a rich man, with plenty of sheep, had an unexpected visitor, and so he took the poor man’s lamb and slaughtered it. ‘What do you think should happen to such a man?’ asks Nathan. ‘He is deserving of death,’ thundered an indignant David. ‘You are that man,’ says Nathan, fearlessly. ‘Stealing the wife of Uriah the Hittite was even more reprehensible than what this rich man did.’ Nathan’s parable alerted David to the monstrous nature of his sin.
The stories I tell the children here on Sundays are for the most part similar spiritual parables, and the fact that they are taken from all the world’s spiritual traditions – Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Christian etc. – underlines the ubiquity of the story as a vital aid in spiritual teaching. Today’s story, the Dog in the Hall of Mirrors, from the Zen Buddhist tradition, illustrates one of the oldest and most widespread spiritual teachings of all: the principle of karma, or the notion that the external world reflects the internal disposition. ‘What you give out will be what you get back.’ If you perceive the world as hostile it is because you yourself are harbouring hostility; remove your own hostility and you’ll find that the external world will cease to threaten you. This principle is also found in chapter four of Mark’s Gospel, although it does not appear in story form. ‘What you give out will be what you get back,’ says Jesus.
How strange then, in the light of all this, that Jesus says something very odd about parables in the Gospel of Mark. He doesn’t say that he tells parables because they are pithy, engaging, memorable, or powerful, as we might expect. He says that he tells them in order to keep the truth from people.
When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. He told them, ‘The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables, so that
“they may be ever seeing but never perceiving,
and ever hearing but never understanding
otherwise they might turn and be forgiven.”’ (Mark 4:10-11)
What is implied here is that there is a secret teaching which is only imparted to a certain few – those ‘inside the house’; to those ‘on the outside’ everything is given in parables.
We can only guess the nature of that secret teaching, but I am sure that it had something to do with the approach to Mark’s Gospel which we are studying in these sessions: that there is a ‘hidden’ meaning behind all the Gospel stories, and that this meaning will only be imparted to those who are ready to receive it. The rest will have to be content with parables.
But this ‘hidden meaning’ will not remain hidden forever. In the verses which immediately follow the Parable of the Sower, Jesus says,
‘Do you bring in a lamp to put it under a bowl or a bed? Instead, don’t you put it on its stand? For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.’ (Mark 4:21-23)
This is one of the passages which gave me a ‘eureka’ moment when I was researching my theory of Mark’s Gospel structure. It is the only ‘parable’ in this section which does not use agricultural imagery, and so I wondered what possible connection it could have with the sign Taurus. I considered the possibility that it was an interpolation – that is, a passage slipped in by a later editor. But when I began to investigate the astronomy and the mythology associated with Taurus I realised that it was precisely where it should be. In the ancient world Taurus was always associated with ‘light’ principally because in and around the constellation Taurus are some of the most spectacular sights in the night sky. Orion, which dominates the winter sky and is probably the one constellation which everyone can identify, is close by Taurus, and Taurus itself was called ‘The Bull of Light’ by the Babylonians. In the shoulder of the Bull are the Pleiades, which have inspired more poetry and song than any other stellar grouping, and, as I mentioned last time, were used by farmers in the ancient world to determine when they would plant and harvest their crops.
But what the ancient sky watchers found so intriguing about the Pleiades was the fact that there was no agreement about how many stars the naked eye could see. Some authors say that you can see six, some say you can see seven. Consequently, the mythology of the Pleiades concerned seven daughters, six of whom were married to gods, and so became immortal, but one of whom was married to a mortal; so, while six immortal stars shone brightly, the mortal one was only dimly visible, and only occasionally seen. Now we can understand why this little piece occurs where it does in Mark: ‘For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open.’
We must be careful not to misinterpret this little saying of Jesus. It is not a threat of exposure and embarrassment: it is a promise of enlightenment. Jesus is not saying that God, like some celestial Big Brother, is spying on us and that every one of our secret vices will be made known to the world at some time in the future; he is saying that the deepest and most obscure truths about the nature of the world and the purpose of human life can and will become clear to us. How will that occur? Jesus says that we don’t know how, any more than we know how it is that the seed which the farmer scatters on the ground eventually becomes a plant. The farmer simply does what he has to do and trusts that the mysterious process of transformation will take place.
So it is with our own enlightenment. It does not require us to engage in some self-conscious and narcissistic activity called ‘spiritual development’. The promise is that it will come to us as we go about our daily life in a spirit of wakeful attentiveness. This is the enlightenment that Sue Monk Kidd spoke about in our second reading today, the kind of enlightenment which cannot be expressed even in a parable. When the seed of the Spirit is nurtured and watered by constant care; when we trust in the power of the Spirit to transform our lives in its own way and in its own time, then we may begin to hear the divine voice within the apparently chaotic and cacophonous sounds of the world. We may not be able to articulate what we discover; we will certainly not be able to put it into a creed or a series of propositions; but when we suddenly realize that the scratching on the window is announcing the presence of an angel, we will know that our world has been transformed and the kingdom of God has arrived.