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in his goals, always setting them where he can fulfill them. Taken by itself, Taurus isn't an ambitious sign. He can quite happily remain the unseen power behind the scenes: the investor, the accountant, the one who keeps the business running without getting the public laurels. Taurus is realistic enough to know that you can't eat laurels, and they won't fix a leaky roof.
The other side of the coin with this great realism is that Taurus often misses what's not visible to his earthy eye. He values simplicity and basic facts; but many aspects of life are neither simple nor reducible to formulae. We might call this the Boring Pragmatist syndrome. He's boring largely because, if he can't hold it in the palm of his hand, he has nothing to say about the matter, let alone any appreciation for its nuances. Never mind all those hyacinths for the soul. A scenario might run like this:
FRIEND TO TAURUS: I have the most wonderful idea. You know that novel I was working on? Well, I thought it might go really well as a film script. All the battle scenes staged at night, with torchlight and bonfires and stuff…really dramatic! And the fifteenth-century costumes…
TAURUS: I can't understand why you're bothering with that stuff. It isn't making you any money.
FRIEND: Well, not yet. But if I' lucky, I can get some help from this friend who…
TAURUS: You'll never get into the film business. It's too competitive. It's dead. I don't see why you're wasting so much energy on it.
FRIEND: It's not dead. It has all kinds of symbolic significance today….
TAURUS: Symbolic? What are you talking about? Something's dead or it's not. I don't understand what you're talking about. Why don't you train at something that can make you a little money?
This scenario has several different versions. It can apply, as here, to the complete lack of understanding of the symbolic, the romantic, the dramatic. Taurus likes his meat and potatoes plain, without sauce. They must, of course, be of the absolutely best quality; but he doesn't appreciate frills. He also doesn't appreciate possibilities. For something to be real to Taurus, it must be more than possible. It must be definite.
Other versions to this scenario occur in all areas where the physical reality of something isn't immediately apparent. Many Taureans are notorious skeptics of anything they consider 'mystical' - like astrology, for example. I've noticed over a decade of teaching that fewer Taureans enroll in my courses than any other sign. There are also very few Leos. For the latter, of course, it's probably that they would rather be teaching themselves; and also, Leo doesn't like to learn from anybody else. But Taurus will be terribly cautious about something like astrology unless he can be shown, definitively and scientifically that it works. And not once but several times, in case the first time was a fluke. I once had a Taurus client who, although he was quite ruffled and impressed by his horoscope reading, doubted that I could repeat such a performance. He wasn't prepared to accept that the chart worked; he thought (which seemed an even wilder interpretation) that I had somehow acquired my information psychically or telepathically. He asked if he might sit in on several other chart readings for some of his friends. Because he was a Taurus, and I knew there was no other way, I conceded. After about fifteen such sessions he begrudgingly admitted that there must be something to it. And like a good Taurus, once a change of attitude has taken hold of him, he swung into action. Not content with merely accepting it, he decided to learn it. He learned in the way Taureans do when they have finally got moving: obsessively. Now he's a practicing astrologer.
This pragmatism about things which might be foggy, woolly, charlatan, or false, works to Taurus' advantage as well. It keeps him out of mischief, and helps him to establish the absolute reliability of anything he allows into his life. This applies to relationships as well. Taurus is the kind of person who prefers to know a lot about you, to 'check your
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