Bull-hearted: a creative toolkit for Taurus season
Including: a tarot spread, creative prompts, mantras for Taurus season, and Taurean playlist
Hi little coven, and happy Taurus season.
Before we begin - you’re invited to join me for a free journaling workshop this Sunday!
Sensuous and stubborn, Taureans are known for their good taste, appreciation of creature comforts, and a committed, clear vision for what they feel is right.
So Taurus season can be an opportunity to celebrate and luxuriate in what feels good in your creative life. The creative energy Taurus offers is as rich and lush as the card’s earthy vibes - Tauran energy calls us to appreciate the embodied experience of creating. To prioritise pleasure in our process.
Taurean creatives make an interesting bunch: Adele, Cher, and Barbara Streisand were all born under the Bull — their big talents and big personalities speak for how deftly the sign manoeuvres between power and indulgence. Taurean painter Salvador Dali’s art captures the sensuous, slow-but-smart pace Taureans thrive within. Marcus Aurelius is a mascot for the Taurean talent for vision and commitment.
But this sign is associated with a Bull for a reason. We may love the softer side of life, but there’s no denying it: Taurus has horns.
The truth is Taurus season is not going to give you the pleasure it loves for free. The ease and luxury this sign oozes is a just highlight real: behind the scenes, making the most of this sign is hard work.
This season, your journey is two-pronged: to access the creative gifts under the Taurean sun, you have to know and honour what feels right for you. But, at the same time, you can’t overcommit to what feels good for you at the extent of your compassion and empathy. You musn’t be bull-headed, but bull-hearted.
We can look to two Taurean archeytpes to help us understand, accommodate, and make the most of Taurean energy this season: the Zodiac Bull and the Hierophant tarot card.
“Bull-headeness” is a trait often attributed to Taureans, drawing directly on the Zodiac archetype that represents the sign.
But what does that mean? The dictionary chalks it up to stubbornness, but I think it’s something more complex. For me, it’s a particular commitment to routine and values; a precarious fulcrum that balances a short emotional fuse with a deep-seated need for security. The Bull knows what it is, what it wants. It uses its energy when it has it, and sleeps all day whenever it feels like it. It lives by the rules of its own logic.
When the Bull is able to pursue what it pleases, at its own pace, its commitment to its values are lauded as persistence. But, when the peace and order the Bull has instilled for itself are disrupted, the rage and obstinance that result are labelled as stubborn, uncooperative, and — here’s that word again — “bull-headedness.”
Creatively, the qualities of the Bull offer a double-edged sword: there’s something beautiful and necessary about appreciating, cultivating, and committing to what feels right for you. Enriching your creative life by prioritising and protecting your own pleasure is deeply valuable and can not be overlooked. Ignoring your creative pleasure is a crime you shouldn’t commit against yourself. But, at the same time, stubbornly pursuing your creative pleasure at the expense of all other things can make you dangerous.
Like the Bull, the Hierophant bats between honor and over-indulgence.
This elevated spiritual leader in the card represents, in many ways, a fantasy for the Taurean mind: here is someone who knows the way. Someone worth following. Someone who embodies Taurean values: a tastemaker whose clear vision for what is right has granted them physical and spiritual transcendence.
But, the card is complicated by its association with organised religion. And, like religion, the card — and Taurean energy at large — has the capacity to be healing, beautiful, and transcendent alongside the capacity to be self-indulgent, controlling, and rigid.
Originally titled La Pape, or the Pope, in the Tarot de Marseille, the card’s worst affiliations are with the greed, indulgence, and hypocrisy that go hand-in-hand with hierarchical religious systems. Here lies the dark side of the Taurean ideal of the spiritual leader: someone who has put their own comfort, taste, point of view, and pleasure over others. They’ve stubbornly committed to following the rules that suit them, and lost their compassion — and maybe even their humanity — in the process.
So, I invite you to step into this Taurus season with full awareness of the enormous strength and the tricky temptations the energy of this sign brings to the fore. To lead with your heart, but to check yourself. To meet your needs and give yourself the pleasure you deserve in your creative life, but not to get so wrapped up in indulging your desires that you forget the world you’re rooted into.
To bull-heartedly pursue love and kindness as the ultimate pleasure, and the ultimate creative inspiration.
Creative Prompts for Taurus Season
Use the following prompts as jumping-off points for your own creative exploration of Taurus season. These aren’t homework — try what feels good or interesting to you, and know you have my permission to ignore the rest.
Journal about the Taurean bull and the Hierophant tarot card.
How do these images make you feel?
What memories, desires, and questions, do they bring up for you?
What similarities and differences do you notice between them?
Make a list of what gives you creative pleasure
Think about how you can be generous with that pleasure by inviting a loved one to share in the making process with you, or making something for someone else
Design a work of art that captures the light and dark sides of the Bull or the Hierophant
Get as creative and abstract as you want
More creative resources for Taurus season (including a tarot spread, guided grounding exercise, Taurus playlist & more) are available below for paid subscribers.
If you’d like to dig deeper into what creative gifts Taurus season has to offer you, and get access to future creative tools for every Zodiac season, you can become a paid subscriber to The Shuffle for just £1/$1.25 a week (annual subscription rate). Subscriber support means that I can keep regular resources like these coming, and continue to focus on developing quality writing & resources at the intersection of spirituality & creativity.