Taurus
Taurus, known in Persian as ثور, is the second sign of the zodiac and the second month of the Persian solar year. In this calendar the sign is not laid over the month from outside; the month itself carries the sign's name.
The sign at a glance
- Place in the zodiac
- 2
- Persian month
- Ordibehesht
- Element
- Earth
- Quality
- Fixed
The element and the quality are the classical groupings: every fourth sign shares an element, and every third shares a quality.
The second borj
The borj are the twelve zodiac names as Persian astronomy received and used them. They were not only a sky map. When the Persian solar calendar was arranged, its months were cut to follow the same twelve divisions, and the names came with them, so that a month and a sign could share a single word. Taurus stands second in that order, directly after the sign that opens the year at the vernal equinox.
The Iranian calendar in use today gives its months older Persian names — the second is Ordibehesht — while the borj remain in wide use in Persian astronomical and astrological writing, in almanacs, and in ordinary speech about the signs. In the Afghan Solar Hijri calendar the borj are still the month names outright: the second month of the year is ثور, and to say the month is to say the sign.
This page treats the two as one thing, because the calendar does. The classical element assigned to Taurus is earth, and its classical quality is fixed; both come from cycles counted around the ring of signs from the first, and both are worked out from that position rather than taken from a list.
What the tradition associates with this borj
In the tradition, this borj belongs to the element earth, and much of what is said about it follows from that assignment: solidity, patience, and a preference for what can be held, tended, and kept. Persian usage associates ثور with the ox and with the work of the ox — ploughing, husbandry, the care of land and herds — and with the settled labour by which a season's growth is made to last. The tradition reads it as the sign of what endures rather than of what begins.
The tradition assigns this borj to Venus, called زهره in Persian, and from that assignment draws its associations with beauty, harmony, and craft: fine workmanship, music, cultivated gardens, and the pleasure taken in a made thing that is well made. Where earth supplies steadiness, the tradition holds that this rulership supplies the taste for the tangible and the well-formed.
Among the qualities the tradition names for this borj are steadfastness, loyalty, thoroughness, generosity with what one has gathered, and a calm that is slow to be disturbed. It describes the sign's characteristic strength as holding rather than pushing — a resolve that does not need to be renewed each morning. The same tradition notes that a nature this settled is not easily turned once it has chosen a course, and it records this as the plain other face of constancy rather than as a fault.
These are readings the tradition carries, recorded and retold over centuries. They describe the sign, not any person born in its month.
The sign, the month, and the moving date
The Persian year begins at the vernal equinox. The months were then cut along the zodiac, one after another, so the sign follows from the month rather than being fitted to it afterwards. Taurus is the second of those cuts, and the month it names is the second month of the year.
Its classical quality is fixed, and the word is doing plain work: a fixed sign sits in the middle of its season, after the season has been opened and before it is handed on. The month of Taurus falls in the settled middle of spring, when the growth begun at the equinox is simply carrying on. That is the sense in which the tradition calls this borj fixed — the season is fully itself here, and is not turning.
Because the equinox does not land on the same Gregorian day each year, the Gregorian day on which this month begins moves. Over the span of years covered here it begins on more than one Gregorian date, and the year in question decides which. A printed table that gives a single fixed Gregorian range for Taurus will therefore disagree with the calendar for some years. This product reads that disagreement as the table's approximation rather than as an error of its own, and computes the boundary from the year at hand.
One thing worth saying plainly: the mapping here is to the calendar's own month boundaries, not to the sun's position measured in degrees. There is no cusp, no decan, and no hour of birth in this page, because a civil date could not carry them.
What Ordibehesht, the month itself, is called in Iran and in Afghanistan
When Taurus began
The Persian year starts at the spring equinox, so each month starts on whichever Gregorian day the equinox falls on. That is why these dates move.
Across the 101 years below, Taurus began on 3 different Gregorian dates. A printed table prints one of them.
From 1950-04-21 to 2050-05-21.
April 20
1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020, 2024, 2028, 2029, 2032, 2033, 2036, 2037, 2040, 2041, 2044, 2045, 2048, 2049
April 21
1950, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2025, 2026, 2027, 2030, 2031, 2034, 2035, 2038, 2039, 2042, 2043, 2046, 2047, 2050
April 22
1951, 1955, 1959
Sources
- Borkowski, The Persian Calendar for 3000 Years — the vernal-equinox anchoring of the Solar Hijri year
- The traditional Persian borj month names, still used as month names in the Afghan Solar Hijri calendar
- The classical triplicity and quadruplicity cycles of the tropical zodiac, counted from Aries