Taurus symbol (♉)
♉ is the glyph of Taurus, the Bull, the second sign of the Western zodiac. Astrologers give its dates as 20 April to 20 May, and in their tradition it is an earth sign ruled by Venus.
Meaning
♉ is Unicode character U+2649 TAURUS: a circle with two horns curving up from it. It is usually read as a bull’s head. Richard Hinckley Allen (1899) thought a front view of the bull’s head on ancient Mithraic gems “may very well be the origin” of the glyph, while others have read it as the full moon joined to a crescent, since Taurus was counted a night sign. Taurus is Latin for bull; in Greek the constellation is Ταῦρος (Taûros), and it was usually drawn as the front half of a bull only. The glyph is the sign’s shorthand in Western astrology.
Origin and history
Where the twelve sign glyphs came from is not known. Encyclopaedia Britannica says their history is unknown and that they first appear in Greek manuscripts of the late Middle Ages. Allen cites Clerke, who found them in manuscripts of about the 10th century but in carvings only from the 15th or 16th, and Brown, who quotes the antiquary C. W. King: King found the glyphs on no antique work and suspected “Arab sages” had devised them, a view Brown did not share. The bull’s head and the moon are both readings of the shape; neither is documented.
Allen calls Taurus perhaps the first constellation to be set out, because it marked the spring equinox from about 4000 to 1700 BC, and says that every ancient zodiac that survives begins the year with it.
The bull of Europa
Greek and Roman writers took the Bull for the animal that swam away with Europa. Allen says the mythologists used the story to explain why only the front half of the bull is drawn: his flanks were under the waves. The poets describe him as snowy white, and Chaucer’s “Whyte Bole” in Troilus and Criseyde comes from the same source.
What astrologers say Taurus means
In Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, Taurus is one of the four solid signs, those that follow the equinoxes and solstices, when the season’s weather is felt more firmly. It is feminine, one of the two houses of Venus with Libra, and the Moon’s exaltation. It heads the second triangle, Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn, governed by Venus by day and the Moon by night. Astrology today, as Britannica describes it, makes Taurus an earth sign and a fixed one, and lists “reliable, practical, stubborn” as the traits traditionally attached to it. Britannica adds that astrology is not supported by science: no correlation has been found between birth dates and personality.
See also
Libra symbol (♎), Triratna, Aries symbol (♈), Gemini symbol (♊), Cancer symbol (♋), Leo symbol (♌).
Sources
- Miscellaneous Symbols, Range: 2600–26FF (code chart), The Unicode Standard, Unicode Consortium, U+2649
- Star-Names and Their Meanings: Taurus, Richard Hinckley Allen, 1899 (reprinted by Dover as Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning), LacusCurtius (Bill Thayer, University of Chicago), Taurus
- Star-Names and Their Meanings: Aquarius, Richard Hinckley Allen, 1899 (reprinted by Dover as Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning), LacusCurtius (Bill Thayer, University of Chicago), Aquarius (on the zodiac signs’ symbols)
- Tetrabiblos, Book I, Claudius Ptolemy, 2nd century AD; translated by F. E. Robbins (Loeb Classical Library, 1940), LacusCurtius (Bill Thayer, University of Chicago), I.11, I.17, I.18, I.19
- Zodiac, The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica; last revised by Rick Livingston, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Wayback Machine copy, 11 September 2026), Signs and dates; Astrology
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Last reviewed September 30, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research