Pluto in Taurus

Pluto in Taurus Traits

Pluto was in Taurus from the years 1853 to 1884, and it will enter Taurus again in the year 2098. Clearly, there is no one left alive from the last time it was in Taurus, and many people reading this article today will also probably not be alive to see the next time it will happen.

This makes it very difficult to accurately judge what the true traits of Pluto in Taurus are, so we must mainly rely on historical documents and to tell us about the sign and its effects.

The period in which Pluto was in Taurus marked a huge value being placed on physical wealth. While it wouldn’t necessarily be fair to call people born during this time “greedy,” there was certainly an increased interest on riches. Taurus, the sign of wealth and material worth, cannot surprise us when it bestows physical riches upon its people.

Taurus is also a stubborn, at times hard-headed sign. People during this period were obsessed with morality and very unlikely to bend on matters related to it. This was a period in which immoral behaviour was more strictly sanctioned, both socially, and legally, than ever.

However, at the same time, Taurus is a sign of slow, steady progress, in which the population moved slowly but surely towards a greater degree of cultural success. Taurus was constantly introducing and rigorously testing new ideas, and although many of them didn’t seem to make a dent in the overall opinions of the populace, there were slow, steady improvements to social and political issues all throughout these decades.

The traits that characterize Pluto in Taurus include a hard-working attitude, unwavering dedication to a cause, and a high value placed on material and financial gains. These qualities are ones that can lead to a lot of success, but they can also be extremely stressful to those who cannot reach the highest levels of a society that values them. People during this time had a very difficult time finding the right personal balance.

This is why there were so many movements towards reform and trying to find greater equality, especially during the later part of Pluto’s stay in Taurus. People were becoming increasingly conscious that there was something “off” about the system in which they were living.

Pluto in Taurus Women

It was during this period, especially the latter decades, that roles for women began to experience changes in Europe and the Americas. Increasingly, women became interested in entering the public sphere, and the suffrage movement, demanding voting rights for women, took off at this time. Taurean women care very much about their public lives, in a way that other signs don’t always.

Because of Taurus’s interest in morality, and its stubborn nature in moral issues, a lot of the political activities that were led by women during this time had highly moral underpinnings. Taurus  women were said to be the keepers of the moral standards. For this reason, their politics were often framed as the protection of innocents, such as children, animals, and other women.

Women also wanted more options in the worlds of the arts, as theatre became marginally more respectable, an increasingly literate population demanded more writers, and counter cultural art movements made it possible for women to create visual art without needing to attend art schools, which resisted letting women in. Remember, Taurus is ruled by the planet Venus, the planet of love, beauty, and art! It wouldn’t be a Taurean world without everyone wanting to get into the art scene.

Women during this period were highly motivated to achieve their goals in terms of politics and personal fulfillment, and it was becoming increasingly possible for them to do this. It is likely that when Pluto reenters Taurus, we will again see an increase in the possibilities available to all genders, and people will become more intentional in pursuing their personal and political goals in a highly focussed manner.

When Pluto appears in Taurus, the stubbornness that characterizes the bull creates a focus on achieving goals that cannot be brought down by anything else. It doesn’t matter how strict social censures were at the time (and they were extremely strict for women during this period) – people who want to achieve something will still achieve it.

Pluto in Taurus Men

Like the women of the Taurean period, men born when Pluto was in Taurus were extremely dedicated to achieving success in their goals. They were not easily swayed from their paths, and carried with them the belief (developed while Pluto was in Aries and maintained during this period) that hard work would always pay off.

This was a period when men carried out systemic change, restructuring, and reform, which, although not sweeping or revolutionary, did leave the world a markedly different place than it found it.

As women entered the political sphere with issues such as introducing child labour laws and criminalizing cruelty to animals, men, who already had centuries of practice in political fields, became increasingly dedicated to solving complex, top-level political problems. It was during this period that Marxism and Socialism became popular political ideologies all throughout the western world – not just in countries that would eventually become Communist. It was also the time of the American Civil War, when the abolitionist movement destroyed the last enclave of the slave trade in the American South.

This was also a great time for businessmen, as some of the most iconic (like Henry Ford of Ford Motors) were born during this period. They grew up steeped in an ideology of hard work, and quickly learned skills that would benefit them in the late-Industrial Revolution, business-driven job market.

Many Plutonian Taurean men carried a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” attitude during this time. More than any other time in recent memory, Taurus’s period was a period when personal success became seen as a moral obligation. The focus on “productivity” and finding success within the capitalist system led to qualities of hard work, diligence, and frugality being seen as highly morally desirable.

Because of this highly moralistic interpretation of success, however, it became very difficult for men who were not finding financial and business success to live happy or healthy lives in society. Remember how strict Taurus can be about morals! If a Taurean man seemed not to be working hard enough for other Taurean men, they didn’t take kindly to it.

The thing about the capitalist system that was in place when Pluto was in Taurus was that there had to be losers – there had to be people who were not successful within the system for other people to be able to reach success, no matter how hard-working everyone was. And everyone was hard-working, at least by modern standards – that’s what Taurus means!

The people who were not successful during the period when Pluto was in Taurus were taught that lack of financial success was a moral failing, and therefore that there must be something morally wrong with them if they were not successful. However, at the same time, there was no way for everyone to have the success they “deserved,” even if everyone had been as morally strong as possible.

This is the paradox of Pluto being in Taurus: financial and material success will be one of the biggest ways that “goodness” is judged, but in our current system, there is no way for success to be equally distributed among the people who are “deserving.”

Pluto in Taurus In Love

During this period, romantic love became a highly prized goal in life – a goal on the same level as achieving wealth. A good marriage (one that was both romantically fulfilling and beneficial on a class level) became a type of status symbol in and of itself.

In the period directly preceding this one, when Pluto was in Taurus, marriage was frequently a tool to achieve an end, usually one to do with attaining either wealth or a title. This treatment of marriage and romance did not go away during this time, but it became less of an ideal. Increasingly, the fashionable thing to do was to marry out of love – and if you could marry someone who was wealthy and titled, that was a good bonus.

In addition to the fact that Taurus is a sign that values wealth and status, and therefore people born under it tend to prize this fairly highly, this may also have had to do with the progress that women were making during this time towards emancipation and autonomy over their own lives. Increasing numbers of women were not content to be used as pawns in a political or financial game that they couldn’t personally benefit from – instead, they began to see their own happiness as having more worth.

Taurus is a highly stable, committed sign, and the best romances of this time were ones where each half of a couple showed utter, unquestioning devotion to the other. In this way, it was actually a more balanced vision of romance than had been popular in the past, as men were expected to be as devoted to their wives as wives should be to their husbands.

Unfortunately, there is no period in time where everything is good for every couple. It was during this period that divorce first became legal, and many couples took the opportunity to legally leave failing relationships. This more practical approach to romantic love also characterizes the personality of Taurus as a sign: while it is a devoted, emotional sign, it is also a practical one above all else, and unlikely to want to dedicate itself to a failing relationship.

Dates for Pluto in Taurus

As I mentioned above, there is no one alive today who was alive during the last time Pluto was in Taurus, and (unless there are some serious leaps in medical technology coming in the next few years), there probably won’t be a huge number of people reading this today who will be around next time it happens.

Pluto will be passing back into Taurus in 2098, 81 years from the writing of this article. It will remain in Taurus until 2129, or 112 years from today.

I hope that those among us who do live to see that will be able to take note of the spirit of the time, and recognize whether it is similar to the last time Pluto was in Taurus.

Final Thoughts

The characteristics of Taurus – hardworking, practical, dedicated, and moral – meant that the period when Pluto was in Taurus was a wonderful time for business and technological innovation, and new products and materials were finding their way into more and more households. Everyone in this time wanted to move towards progress at a steady pace!

Taurus made it possible to achieve wealth through your own hard work, rather than just a family title. It also made this a very valuable activity that was highly prized by the entire culture. While it was certainly not easy to do during this period, it was at least not unheard of!

However, while this was a period of great success and opportunities for many people, at the same time, there were other people who were downtrodden into a state of abject poverty. Even the most hardworking Taurean couldn’t win all the time (Taurus is a stubborn sign, but not a lucky one). The system of unrestrained capitalism that was in place at the time meant that some people had to be poor, and when being poor was seen as a moral failure, those who were not able to rise within the system were open to severe oppression and mistreatment.

While it is impossible to say today what the next appearance of Pluto in Taurus will look like, we can hope that it will bring some of the hardworking diligence and desire for progress, without the moralism that crushed an entire sector of society in the nineteenth century. If we can be as practical as a Taurus and as optimistic as a Gemini, the world will move in a good direction!

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Kathy Freeman

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