Venus in Taurus: God's Mycellium
Most of this article is a perennial portait of venus in her earthly domiciel, but at the bottom, you’ll find horoscopes for each rising sign. While I published these in 2021, it is my belief as a diviner and magician that we find things exactly where we need them. If you find yourself here, these messages may hold resonance for this season of your life. The rest of this breakdown of Venus in Taurus should be equally perennial.
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A horoscope is a map of a territory – the territory is time. The best way to map something so ephemeral as “the topography of time” (Freedom Cole) is to use many varied descriptors, orbiting around the idea, letting the density of many markers begin to suggest the shape of the truth in the center. As such, my style here is more poetic than technical, as she and her domicile demand. Venus will move through Taurus from April 14th until May 8th. Venus is all about connectivity - the ties that bind, the things that link us all together, the unseen web that pervades all matter. She is the felt-sense between people who are ‘attached’ to each other. This Venusian connective principle is, at its most macro level, the threads of innervation that pervade all substance. Alexander of Aphrodisias says, “They say that god is mixed with matter, pervading all of it and so shaping it, structuring it, and making it into the world.” Picture a net – made from ephemeral thread – spanning out in all directions, overlaying and running through everything. I shout at my friend from across the room and the net ripples as the sound of my voice moves through it, like a spiderweb to a gust of wind. These are the lines on which information travels – the thing that makes you think of me right before I call you, even though I live 2000 miles away – a network that connects everything and everyone.
At each nexus on the network, a glistening bead of light and moisture swells. Like dew on a pine needle, they grow and burst when they reach the point of saturation. This *stuff* is the Suchness of being alive, and much of the time, it bursts when no one is watching. But when we move in concert with the tempo of the times, we put ourselves in place to catch the diamond-jewel juice, sweet and cool on our outstretched tongues.
Ok so, how do? Bliss reaches its saturation point when it does. This pooling and bursting of pleasure cannot be rushed. There is a way of moving through the world that brings us in phase with this subtle realm, and I think a major key to that is “pace” and “presence.” Trying to “rush” the beauties of Venus in Taurus looks like running faster than a treadmill is moving. You’re not getting there any faster by rushing, and you might even wreck yourself trying. Instead, a radical ‘settling in’ is necessary. This is counter-intuitive to those of us enriched with the “wisdom” of capitalism: it tells us that striving for more, faster, is always better. Nah. To get the nectar heralded by Venus in Taurus requires radical presence in the body and in the moment. We must be all the way here to receive its fruits, with our whole self. Much of the striving to get here or there that characterizes our lives under capitalism actually sees us running full tilt off the front of the treadmill of the moment, away from where we’re “going” - we are here already, the only place Venus in Taurus wants us to go is deep into our body – in tune with our senses – to detect the speed of the times so we can dance in with her. Taurus is like an earthy drum, and following its rhythms looks like moving at the speeds our bodies allow, not the speeds that extractive, accomplishment-oriented thinking demands – sacrificing the Earth and our earthly vessels on the altar of priorities we didn't choose.
Venus is the knowledge that you can’t overburden any one person, any one point on the network, without misshaping it. Ignoring her dictums looks like the ecological collapse in Yellowstone that occurred after landowners eradicated the native gray timber wolf. If you don’t know this story- brain geniuses in the 1920s were sick of the Yellowstone wolves coming for their cattle. “The problem is the wolves. So we remove the wolves. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.” No. Difficult difficult lemon difficult. Nothing in ecology is simple, because nothing is working in isolation. Move one stone and the whole thing shifts. The elk, now free of predators, promptly FUBARed the system. That ‘isolated’ choice created one of the most noted cascade effects of negative, system-wide ramifications in recent ecological history. Here, a desire to extract more from the land than a system in balance could otherwise produce led to a stark consequence. It’s not always this clear, though. Sometimes the consequences are subtle, and they look like a general degradation of our mood that happens so slowly that we don’t even notice. Erosion of fundamental yet invisible parts of an ecosystem.
This Venus in Taurus season she will be receiving an overcoming square from Saturn. As such, her sojourn through the sign will involve more themes of the discipline, structures, and boundaries needed to facilitate her work. As the recipient of the aspect, she is the tender messenger of Saturn’s wisdom. His “no” is sweetly titrated through her honey-suckled mouth. She also, at times, acts equally as the frustrated recipient of these Saturnine messages. The ‘feels good in the moment, hurts later’ pleasures – the sugar spike that ends in a headache – we’re feeling ready to deprioritize these things in the places they keep us from experiencing lasting, sustainable joy. Or at least, we’re feeling ready to pray to our lady Venus for the desire to let those go. Joys that rob Peter to pay Paul are cancelled. If Peter is your future self, and Paul is your present. Love them both.
This could look like external pressures from another life area bearing down on our ability to relax and yield to the languid pleasures of Venus in Taurus, or staying so “on task” that we miss some of the pleasures these moments offer. There is a certain element of having to forcibly erect a container in which to appreciate the ViT sweetness. Erecting containers with boundaries is Saturn remediation. Acknowledgement of the need for Right Timing is Saturn remediation. Venus is the beauty held in the nexus points of the system of matter, but she is also right-use of the system, and sometimes that system demands you wait, stop, take a really long time doing something. In Taurus, she is in her domicile, and she is wise. She understands the lessons of right timing, and reminds us that a fruit’s stage of ripeness has nothing to do with how bad we want it. We have to yield. More sustainable, beautiful connections are possible when we don’t overdo it, when we respect the limits of The System (our bodies, our spirits, the earth), when we put in place our own systems that do not rush the physical forces we are co-collaborating with into producing more than they can stand - one of the hallmarks of exploitative capitalism. Connections feel more pleasurable, because they are not overburdened with the weight of too much.
Sometimes moving toward joy is turning away from something that doesn’t feel right. The desire body knows. “I should be able to do this” has no place when Venus is in Taurus. Listen to the body's "no." Joyfully lay down what’s too heavy. Putting stuff down to compost makes fertile soil for good grass to grow. This is Hekate’s altar. Move toward the sweetness like a plant moves - a vine doesn’t “know” where the sunlight is, It just grows toward it, because it’s all it was meant to do. Dance upon the earth lightly. Implement sustainable practices in all the regions of your life. If we go careening off the front edge of the present, pursuing busy goals, Venus will catch us and hold us gently, like a lover. But she will ask us as she sets us down, “how do we make sure this doesn’t happen again?” Let this transit chiropractically align you with a life that doesn’t create aches, that prioritizes presence, pleasure and joy - not just as a side effect from doing our work, but as the goal in and of itself. Sustainable pleasure is our birthright. Venus wants that for you. These horoscopes are meant to point to the regions of your life wherein the fruit juice of Venus is ready to burst on your outstretched tongue.
Venus in Taurus by Rising Sign
You can also read your Sun, I don’t make the rules.
- Taurus rising: This is all about YOU baby. Venus in Taurus entered your first house on April 14th. The 1st house is where things are born, and with 3 planets entering that place, the focus is on you and what you’re bringing into the world. For the first part of April, your “you” time was infused with the extra heat and magic of the exalted sun in your 12th house (a place that traditionally rules several types of difficult experiences). Maybe you cast your awareness on the darkest parts of your history, banished some cobwebs, cleared some space in the basement, attended to struggle-tasks that only you could complete. With Venus (and the Sun, and Mercury) now in Taurus, this cleaning up of the hard stuff bears fruit. The seeds you germinated in the dark of your 12th under the heat of the exalted Sun in Aries sprout up through the compost, ready to meet the world. The stuff you’ve been processing in the parts of your mind where your awareness doesn’t quite reach percolates up to the surface- an idea is born.
The first house is also related to our identity. Your sense of who you are is coming into focus, and new stuff is coming into the foreground. This is a great time to exfoliate your identity. Gingerly set down outdated ideas about the self, way you relate to people, your work, your creativity. Clearing out brambles so the you-you’re-becoming can have space to grow is an act of self-care. I like to do a prayer while I brush myself from head to toe - you can use a tool for this, something scrapey + made of iron, or a brush, or your hands. I say “anything which is ready to go, the pieces of me that hang like so many flakes of dead skin, fall away easily.” Take pleasure in letting it peel away like a snakeskin. With Venus in your first, people are thrilled to see what is happening for you. Pressures and commitments on the home front may put a slight damper on your sense that you have the *time* to commit to these tasks. Navigate that by deliberately placing blocks in your schedule for the Venus work. Also, I am contractually obligated to tell you- that gorgeous new haircut, new look, you’ve had brewing? The time is here. Look for especially dramatic opportunities to make change around April 22.
- Gemini risings: This sun in Aries has, until recently, been lighting up your 11th house of wider circles of allies and orgs, and I’m sure there was an uptick in activity in your level of engagement with your community - you were drawn for the first half of April to see and be seen among friends, peers, colleagues. But now as Venus, then Sol, then Mercury, have slipped into slow, sweet Taurus, it’s as if you’re at a party with all your friends, and then you and you alone spot a flash of light on a gossamer fabric, slipping into the trees. The pull becomes more and more irresistible. You know in your gut there’s something magical in those deep dark woods. You’re drawn toward something, not away from. The sweet allure of Venus tempts you into seclusion, into the deep dark of your 12th house, the place that rules aloneness. There are fruits here, now. Take some time for yourself and see what shoots up in the space that was once filled with joyous conversations and connections. The juice can be collected by truly being present in solitude. Institutions of law, academia, religion, will put pressure on you to draw your focus, but these structures can also be used to make a safe container for your meditation - for example: submitting to already established religious structures, or employing info gleaned from the field of psychology, or astrological tools, may provide a remediation to distraction and make your sojourn into solitude more fruitful.
- Cancer rising: For you Cancer, Venus will fall in your 11th house of community and allies. Venus in Taurus is a distributed net of care - one friend makes herbal medicines, one knows nutrition, one can magically elect the perfect time for a breakup- they don’t necessarily all know each other, but through community referral, recommendation, a network of trust, we can reach all the nodes on the net. This reminds me of companion planting, the most famous example of which is the Three Sisters – an indigenous agricultural practice wherein different plants with complimentary needs occupy the same space. Corn is planted with beans and squash. The corn shades the squash and provides a trellis for the beans, the beans act as nitrogen fixers and fertilize the soil for everyone, and the squash provides ground cover and shade. Despite their differences, the plants that share space provide mutual benefit, and everyone grows stronger as a result. The presence of each other makes sure their needs are all met. Sharing resources is a challenge though - but Saturn in your 8th sternly nudges you toward the realization that we need shared resources, or a place to gather, to flourish with our co-conspirators.
- Leo rising: This is a big season for you, Leo. Venus in Taurus is in your most visible house, joined by Sol and Mercury, and so you too are going to be visible. The 10th house is about your work in the world, what you will be seen and known for. Venus wants you to work toward visibility for the stuff you actually *want* to be known for, and she wants to make sure that what you’re doing to get there is sustainable. You can’t do your beautiful work in the world if it’s unsustainable for you. The twin demands of your closest interpersonal relationships and the work you’re doing may be slightly at odds this season. Make sure the balance, too, is sustainable. The work wants you to do it for the long haul. One tool for figuring out the “what do I want to be known for” is imagining yourself being congratulated for already having accomplished something - what is the thing your dearest loved ones and most respected mentors are praising you for? What things of beauty will you pursue with your siblings in arms?
- Virgo rising: The juice is in the pilgrimage. Obviously there is a plague, so a pilgrimage of the mind is required. This transit falls in your 9th house of foreign lands, religious pilgrimages, systems of philosophy, organized religion, law, and astrology. The thread that runs through these seemingly-disparate things is that they're all top-down-organized systems that overlay themselves onto what is otherwise boundless and chaotic. Sometimes, Virgo, we need a top-down system to guide us on the path. With Venus and all her friends in Taurus, the framework you should look to is one that that prioritize joy, not shuns it. You need to align with a version of God r that wants you to be happy, wants you to be supported, wants you to feel joy. Seek principles that emphasize Joy, love, and mutual support – this is divinity’s priority for you, sweet Virgo, and I want you to believe in it.
- Libra rising: This transit falls in your 8th house of shared resources, other people’s stuff and money, anxieties, idleness. Venus in Taurus is the best friend who, when she comes over, makes light work of a task you were struggling with. She comes over to your place and says ‘gosh this seems like a burden’ and offers to take some. What anxieties must be laid to rest in the gushy matrix of Venus, in the soil of Taurus?
This is also a fantastic time to collaborate. Libra? Meet other people’s resources. Folks who have something you need are looking for YOU right now, and these connections could endure. There is juice to be found in the coalitions you make with others. It can be hard to focus on feeding these coalitions when the time-pressure laden concerns crop up, as they might - demands on your time from your most dear projects, your children (if you have them), and the stuff you do for pleasure are present now. But trust me- make the time.
- Scorpio rising: Venus has entered the house of The Other dear Scorpio. Reach out to your closest friends and lovers. I see giggling convos with heads on pillows, fun on FaceTimes with your friends. Venus’ message of *presence* feels especially fruitful here. Love between people is ephemeral, there’s nothing material about it except what’s felt in the moment. Getting deep into the body and truly being present with another body is a magical thing, and if we aren’t fully present, the moment is missed. Tilling the field of Taurus looks like processing through the things that keep you from being present with your lovers and friends. How do we make the soil fertile? One way is by composting what’s dead. Lay down your burdens, be they a whole-ass relationship that’s gone, or outdated, inherited ways of relating. Let the worms make their way through them, until they’re fertile dirt to grow the next great thing with your lovers and friends. When it comes to our grievances with each other, words can help. Talking it out is shining a light on it. Approach the work with sweetness and you’ll be well received. Saturn overcoming from your 4th house could make it clear to you that there are some barriers to being present with the Other passed down along your family lineage. There could also be literal pressures from your fam, and on the home-front that keep you distracted - it’s hard to gaze lovingly, settled down in your body, with your boo, when you both have to work to pay the bills. But make the space, Scorpio. And finally, this could also be a time when someone juicy enters your life. For the magically inclined among you, this could be a new magical relationship with a deity.
- Sagittarius rising: The juice is in attending to the nitty gritty. We all have things that we’re avoiding that we know, if we could just bring ourselves to the task, would make our lives better, easier, make pleasure more available. Getting up earlier, not because of dogma that it’s ‘what grown ups do,’ but because you realized those morning hours to drink tea in the dawn light are delicious and precious. You want them. Writing our morning pages (especially indicated with Saturn overcoming from the 3rd). Cutting that food that doesn't work for you. The coffee habit you have been thinking about kicking, cuz it heightens your anxiety. Venus in Taurus brings us, *finally*, an internal desire that lines up with the mental ‘should haves.’ The self-compassion to stop making our life harder than it needs to be. There is no shame in not having done it already. You couldn’t possibly have done it until your intellectual understanding of what needs to be done got into communion with the desire body. Now that time is here- and we have to bottle it while it comes. How do you bottle an impulse? By enshrining it into a habit, a ritual. Banging the drum with consistency, so that when the season of motivation passes, the body has already learned how to do its job, and continues. Practice every day, Sagittarius. This transit falls in your 6th house - this house is the work that never finishes, the rolling the boulder up the hill, things like eating and drinking, where no matter how much of it you do, you are never “done.” The skincare routine that becomes a moment of softness with yourself, the daily sunshine walk that keeps the depress-y feels at bay. The laundry. Also, the routines that we’ve been putting into place all year already- they start to bloom here. Bask in it, and keep banging your drum, rolling your boulder up the hill.
- Capricorn rising: The juice is in the joy. I love this for you Cap. Your natural access to the use of a polite ‘no thank you’ when offered derailing merry-making keeps you focused and on point. This season, you’re wielding the no thank you to cut the path toward greater pleasures. You know rewarding yourself for a job well done will feel better than just taking a slice of cake and getting a sugary hangover headache. That’s not very pleasurable, actually. The headache sucks. We need to think of how to make our joy sustainable - Saturn and Venus’ shared goal this season is for you to wield your yes’s and no’s to create a bountiful harvest of joy worth celebrating. “Wisdom says: Be strong! Then canst thou bear more joy. Be not animal; refine thy rapture.”
You know resources are limited - time is short. Pleasure now means work later, so you structure your time, your resources, to create the best pleasure possible. Say no sometimes so you can “yes” harder later. Pleasure is the best when it comes in right time. And don’t get me wrong, the focus on you is very much about pleasure. This is a Venus in Taurus horoscope, the entire article could very well be about pleasure, but for you, lucky Cappy, this falls in the house of pleasure and joy. The one challenge is the time and resource constraints, or if those problems aren’t bearing down on you, perhaps constraints put in place by you, to protect your well situated time and resource reserves. Keep doing that, Capricorn, but make sure you’re doing it unto the goddess of pleasure and joy. Saying no to the social event you give zero craps about so you can bring your fullest, most undepleted self to your best friend’s birthday later in the week. Delayed gratification is a key skill in creating a joy that is sustainable.
- Aquarius rising: The juice is in the roots. This Venus in Taurus transit falls in your 4th house of home, ancestry, family roots. Did you know: the root matrix of a forest holds nutrients that can then be shared between members of the tree network? In this way, a tree who isn’t photosynthesizing can be kept alive by its compatriots. Your home is like that. It can store the juice - joys experienced here can be held in the roots after the good times pass, and nourish you when they are scarce. A home is a place we collapse at day’s end and a place where we revitalize ourselves. Think of what you want to build. Think of all the sweetness you want to hold in your life. These things need roots to settle in. Having a place to safely settle when we’re out of juice that can hold and refuel us is critical for building stable joy. Saturn in your first is asking “who do you need to be to make this stuff happen, how can you align with the version of yourself that is capable of holding all the joy I see you striving toward? And what parts of yourself are holding you back?” For some of you, a literal plan to move house is coming, a move toward aligning with joy could be highlighted as Venus conjoins Uranus on April 22nd. For the rest of you, this is a great day to change up your space.
Pisces rising: God is whispering secrets in your ear this month, Pisces. She wants you to hold a piece of information in your heart and give it away at just the right moment. From her lips to your ears, Pisces. Venus in Taurus in your third house speaks to sibling goodness, early childhood sweetness - a hint of nostalgia maybe, or, if your life involves teaching or tending to youngsters, you are Ms. Honey (of ‘Matilda’ fame) now. You can be Ms. Honey, too, for your inner child, the inner child of those who are closest to you. There are fruits to be found in your local neighborhood, in the day to day errands that make up your life. But the third is also the House of the Goddess, and the Goddess is IN. The tarot practice you’ve been wanting to take up - this is the time. If you’re already in the omen arts, hone the craft. The practice of dropping just the right words at just the right time- that’s omen-craft too. If you’re a writer, or wanting to be, you have love letters to write now, about whatever you choose. We’re all taking turns being the mouthpiece of divinity, and for her part, Venus is passing you the mic this Venus in Taurus season. Speak sweetnesses unto your loves, to your audience, to your kids if you’ve got them. Tell them the truth- that God loves ‘em and wants ‘em to be happy.
- Aries rising: The honey pot is in your wallet. Money drawing spells, wealth workings, are all rightly timed for you, lucky Aries. If you’re making something now, Aries, be process-oriented, and be ready for it to take a long time. Taurus goes at the plodding pace that she goes at. The things you’re shaping with your hands now will exude the nature of each constituent moment spent crafting them - settle in to the moments, take pleasure in the process, and the product will exude Suchness. Treat the stuff you make with your hands (and your money-making strategies) with the same level of intention and care that you would give to the crafting of a magical talisman.
Further reading and citation:
Freedom Cole on the Astrology Podcast (source of the quote in paragraph one).
That Alexander of Aphrodisias quote is quoted on pg. 231 of Chris Brennan's 'Hellenistic Astrology' (available in fine bookstores everywhere). Go read!
For more on the Net (TM): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indra%27s_net
For more on The Juice (TM): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amrita (see especially the Theravada Buddhism subheading that refers to the need to meditate on the material to get the nectar).
While I haven't read the book, I have no doubt that companion planting as a concept and the Three Sisters came into my field of awareness by way Robin Wall Kimmerer's 'Braiding Sweetgrass' [Kimmerer, Robin Wall (2013). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants. Milkweed Press. Minneapolis.]
The scraping practice in the Taurus Rising horoscope has evolved over time to become its own unique thing, but it came to me first by way of Cody Dickerson the blacksmith, of Borealis Ironworks] who sold me my very own implement for this job, and Aiden Wachter, who suggested to Cody that it be used for such a thing.
Special mega shoutout to West Ardere and Seth Russell for edits <3 <3 <3
