Neptune in Taurus would be associated, according to astrologers, with a dream of tangible beauty.
Neptune in Taurus would give the dream a substance: a color, a field, a patient object, something the hand can hold.
Turning a landscape, a fabric, or a meal into a lasting source of wonder.
Believing that a possession will calm an anxiety that has nothing material about it.
By Thomas Guilhot · updated
Neptune entered Taurus in June 1874, backed into Aries for a few months, then traveled through the sign until 1887 to 1889, when it crossed over to Gemini several times.
People born in this interval would now be more than one hundred thirty-five years old: the placement is found only in the chart of a great-great-grandparent, cast out of family curiosity. The next passage will begin around May 2038, with a return to Aries, and will last until around 2052.
Astrologers would read here an imagination that settles on things. The ideal would take the form of an orchard, an inherited piece of furniture, the light of late afternoon on a field. The calendar offers a coincidence often cited: the first exhibition of the painters known as Impressionists was held in Paris in the spring of 1874, a few weeks before Neptune entered the sign. It proves nothing, but it illustrates the tone attributed to this passage. One could add the family vegetable garden, the house built by hand stone by stone, the taste for sturdy fabrics that you darn rather than throw away.
The downside would be expecting more from matter than it can give: a country house meant to repair a family, an estate kept like a relic. Lived well, the same ideal would instead teach you to enjoy what is there without trying to possess it: a walk in the forest, a seasonal fruit. For the future generation, this reading remains a description of tone; it announces no event of the 2040s.
In the chart of an ancestor born around 1880, astrologers would read a tenderness that passes through concrete proof: a garden kept up for the other person, a Sunday dish, a gift kept for decades.
This silent language lands well when it is understood. Its downside would be mistaking loving for providing, or idealizing stability to the point of hiding a discomfort. For the generation of the 2040s, the same tone would be colored by the house occupied.
On the work side, this passage would be associated with the ideal of patient workmanship: crafts, cultivated land, the gesture repeated until it is exact.
A generation that would have dreamed through the workshop and the harvest more than through speeches. The flip side would be a distrust of the invisible, or a nostalgic attachment to know-how to the point of refusing any change. The house of Neptune would say in which area this taste for the concrete is expressed.
The days described by this placement would follow the rhythm of the seasons and the senses: the smell of bread, laundry drying, the pleasure of a quality fabric.
Dreaming, here, would consist of savoring. The modern reading would nonetheless recall that this taste for comfort can become a routine you no longer dare disturb. For births from 2038 on, nothing allows us to go further: a tone can be read, a life cannot be foreseen.
In Ptolemy, Venus would have her nocturnal domicile in Taurus, and the Moon would be exalted there.
Neptune, absent from the ancient treatises, would receive no dignity there, ancient or modern. Some modern authors nevertheless perceive a complicity between the planet of dreams and the planet of beauty, one lending the other a sensible form.
For so-called mundane astrology, which compares slow cycles with historical periods, this passage would serve mostly as a landmark. Amateur genealogists come across it when casting an ancestor’s sky; others will find it again, around 2038, in the sky of transits. Practitioners would look in it for matches of tone between an era and a symbol, never for causes or announcements.
Neptune has neither domicile, exaltation, detriment, nor fall here: the sign colors it without strengthening or hindering it.
Transpersonal planet. Modern planet, observed in 1846 (Johann Galle, from calculations by Urbain Le Verrier).
The profile of NeptuneA earth sign, fixed, ruled by Venus.
The Taurus signNeptune has neither domicile, exaltation, detriment, nor fall here: the sign colors it without strengthening or hindering it.
Planetary dignitiesPeople born from about June 1874 to 1889, with a few months of uncertainty at both ends because of retrograde motion. No member of this age group is still alive. Neptune will return to this sign for children born from about 2038 to 2052. The exact dates depend on the day and sometimes the hour, which the birth chart calculation checks.
According to the position calculations, Neptune should enter Taurus around May 21, 2038, go back to Aries from October 2038 to March 2039, then stay in the sign until around May 2052. This is astronomical data. What this return would mean for the world is not announced here: astrologers describe a tone, they do not foresee facts.
First out of family interest: the chart of an ancestor born in 1880 contains this Neptune, and it sheds light on an entire generation. Second, for mundane astrology, which compares the great cycles with periods of history. Finally, to understand the zodiac as a whole: each sign crossed by Neptune adds a nuance to what astrologers call the collective ideal.
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