You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.
Some of my best friends are Taureans. They can be warm and friendly people, who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Yet of all the twelve signs, they arguably have the greatest capacity for causing misery.
To understand why Taurus might be the nastiest signs of the Zodiac, one has to think about its basic attributes. Taureans are often very focused, and once they decide on a course of action, they can be almost impossible to stop. At the same time, their brains can be one-tracked – they get an idea into their heads, and they then pursue it until the very end, ignoring or even destroying alternative viewpoints.
This means that Taureans have a tendency to regard the ends as justifying the means. They think about what they want to achieve, and they regard their goal as being absolute, and they’ll do whatever’s necessary to accomplish it.
An example of a Taurean who has quite recently been in the news is Bernard Madoff, the American stock broker who defrauded his clients out of billions of dollars. His fraud took place over many years, and once it started, it was apparently unstoppable. This is so typically Taurean – they move in a particular direction, and having gathered momentum, they can’t apply the brakes.
Bernard Madoff had personal contact with many of his clients, and he was able to reassure them that their money was safe with him. This is of course a very nasty way to treat people, but if you’re a Taurus the ends often justify the means.
Moving from finance to terrorism, we notice that Timothy McVeigh was a Taurus. In the mid-1990s he got upset about the way the American government was supposedly interfering in people’s lives, and as a result he blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.
So Timothy McVeigh got an idea into his head, and pursued a plan of action with ruthless efficiency, not caring about the human cost of what he was doing.
When you move from terrorism to politics, Taurus gets even scarier, and we find that some of the world’s most infamous dictators had Taurus as their star sign.
Saddam Hussein, the former president of Iraq, was probably a Taurean. As we know, he was someone who was very brutal. He had no hesitation about executing his enemies and critics, and if a community defied him, he was prepared to destroy it. An example was the use of nerve gas again the the town of Halabja, which killed around 5000 people.
In the case of Saddam Hussein, we see another of Taurus’ less pleasant features – vindictiveness. Taureans don’t like it when people cross them, and acts of rebellion or defiance are neither forgotten nor forgiven.
Whatever Saddam Hussein’s crimes, he was outdone by Pol Pot, the Cambodian leader. Pol Pot was motivated by a powerful ideology – it was an extreme form of Maoist communism, which vilified urban lifestyle. Cities were emptied, and the regime’s enemies, real or imagined, were executed in their droves. In fact up to two million people were killed by Pol Pot’s government. This was a clear example of ideology being everything – an ideology that destroyed a whole country.
Then there’s the most infamous Taurus of them all, Adolf Hitler. He had an idea, and he followed it to the letter, quite literally. If you read Mein Kampf, which he wrote while serving a prison sentence, years before he came to power, you can immediately understand his view of the world. It never changed, and he pursued his objectives to the bitter end.
One thing that is interesting about Adolf Hitler is that he had very few vices. He didn’t drink, he detested smoking and to a great extent he was a vegetarian. This puritanism is actually quite common amongst Taurean dictators.
English dictator Oliver Cromwell, who was in power in the mid-Seventeenth Century, was a religious Puritan, with a capital ‘P’. He made the life of his subjects a misery, and activities such as sport, dancing and the celebration of Christmas were restricted or banned.
Another puritanical Taurean was Maximilien Robespierre, who was the man in charge during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror. He was someone who had strict morals, who was regarded as being completely incorruptible. Yet he believed that the only way to safeguard the revolution was to guillotine hundred of people, including some of the very people who had created the Revolution in the first place.
Another incorruptible and very moral Taurean was the Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin. He meant well, but a lot of people died because of his actions.
Now, I should emphasise that I am not saying that all Taureans are nasty. However if they’ve got strong political beliefs, and they’ve apparently got no vices, they should probably be avoided.
Copyright © 2010 Archie Dunlop
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{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
I am a taurus with sagittarius rising, reading this post made me realize my stubborn opinions abt people, world. The greatest strength of taurus can become the cause for doom to taurus & humanity. Thank you for this post, now I am more open to other view points.
I am not sure I agree with you here. Mao Zedong was the worst dictator in history by death toll, and he was a Capricorn. Stalin was a close second, and he was a Sagittarius. Marx and Lenin were both Taureans, and Lenin even tried to warn the nation of Stalin’s approach. Saddam was heavily influenced by the US government, but even his era was far more efficient and peaceful than what is in place in Iraq today. As for Hitler, he was very close to Aries, and he grew up in a crazy time. But even then, his death toll wasn’t even close to Stalin’s or Mao’s, and he helped usher in the space age, the atomic age, and the beginning of the information age, because he valued science and true materialism (empiricism, not social materialism, i.e. bling). And yes, I am a taurus, thank you very much. : )
Ryan,
My article was slightly tongue in cheek, though I’ve always found it amazing how many dictators had Taurus as their star sign.
As far as Hitler is concerned, I don’t buy the cusp argument. It doesn’t matter how close he is to Aries, he’s a Taurus.
It’s true that Mao Zedong was a Capricorn. In fact, until recently, it was thought Stalin was a Capricorn as well. Someone found some church records to show that he was actually a Sagittarus, as you point out. While Stalin and Mao might have been responsible for more deaths than Hitler, I’m not a relativist. I think there was something uniquely evil about Nazism, that you can’t bracket Communism with it. Stalin was not interested in destroying whole races, as Hitler was. Instead, Stalin was trying to destroy classes, not always be killing them. Indeed there is evidence that once Hitler had killed the Jews he would have turned his attention to those Slavs that weren’t ‘Germanised’ – in particular those in Poland and Russia.
Hiter also demonstrated the vindictiveness of Taurus. For example, the way the 1944 plotters were hanged with piano wire, and the attempts made to execute everyone involved in the plot before the war ended.
As for Hitler valuing true science… it was surely a science that was not objective… he got obsessed about rockets. He fortunately didn’t get very far with this atomic program – his racial policies had driven out some of his best scientists. Though sometimes subjectivity can be proved correct – Hitler hated smoking, and I believe Nazi scientists were first to discover a connection between smoking and lung cancer.
On the other hand, when writing the article, I tried to find famous serial killers that had their Sun in Taurus and drew a blank. So are Taureans less likely to be serial killers than other signs? Every sign has its nastiness, and I was just focusing on Taurus!
well, to be honest i see your point about Taureans and I was being defensive, because given a NORMAL list of histories worst dictators, there certainly do seem to be more of us. However, my point was simply that normal definitions of dictatorship/genocide are not necessarily correct.
For instance, Harry Truman (a taurus), in my mind, was guilty of genocide, because he did not really need to drop the bombs on Hiroshima/Nagasaki (which was also the opinion of Einstein, Eisenhower, and most of the high-ranking generals of WWII). However, most Americans, TO THIS DAY, feel the ends justified the means, and that those bombs saved far more lives than they killed.
Ulysses S. Grant, another Taurus, was notorious for being willing to sacrifice an enormous number of his own troops in order to win the Civil War in his battles of attrition. Yet, Lincoln agreed with his methods despite public outrage. And Grant was later elected president (he was also rather incapable as President, because people felt he tolerated corruption too much, even though he had a very difficult job with reconstruction and his attempt to give slaves real freedom).
Anyhow, if you are wondering whether or not Taureans are utilitarians more often than most signs, I would certainly say yes! We are probably more willing than most people to make tough decisions, even when it might not make sense.
Plus, you have to realize Taureans are not usually academics, so of course we’re going to look bad from that perspective! I would not be surprised if the history books make Geminis appear as if they are total angels more often than not, and we all know that is not the case, hahaha! ; )
Taureans not academics? Well, both Lenin and Marx were Taureans, and both had a very academic approach. And Marx, with Taurean vigour, really got to the bottom of the capitalism system. Marxism, as a descriptive, rather than prescriptive, theory, it still has a lot of value.
Marx had a mercury sign in gemini, lol. he was a special case. lenin was not so much an academic as a politician on the cusp of power who liked Marx’s ideas. It is funny that people think Taureans are capitalists though when May Day is smack dab in the middle of our sign. hahaha! We might be possessive, but we also try our best to take care of the downtrodden. I believe we are associated with the high priestess on the tarot and Isis for a reason. We’re like overbearing mothers more than anything.
by the way, i thought you should know my own mercury is in aries, hahaha! so i hope you are not offended and that i did not come off as being dismissive and arrogant, because that was not my intention. i thought your post was well reasoned, and i was just trying to build on on it a bit with a different perspective. if i am debating with you it means i find your thoughts challenging, so I hope that you take it as a compliment. ; )
Well i know being a Taurus has its good points and bad points but its only 1 out 12 and I know there are others that have been more cruel some say Hitler was cruel and true he was a Taurus bordering Aries but one has to remember it was WWII and at war one does not send out roses they send out bullets and bombs but Stalin was much worse he alone killed more people at peace time then any other dictator and the prison camps that would have people sent off to was not only a crime but mass genocide with astronomical atrocities that would run till the end of the world as we know it i think that a better evaluation has to be done of all the 12 signs before we mark one out of context just because there may be more at our time that stand out and just happen to be a Taurus its like saying the Bats come out only during a fool moon.
I AM A TAURUS AND I AM PROUD THAT MY SIGN IS PERHAPS THE MOST UNIQUE OF THE 12 SIGNS THAT WE CAN REPRESENT BOTH EXTREMES OF THE SPECTRUM SO BEFORE BEING JUDGMENTAL ABOUT ONE SIGN EVALUATE ALL SIGNS AND HAVING ACCURACY IS A BIG PLUS THEN JUST SIGNALING US OUT OF THE PACT AND THEN MAY BE WE SHOULD BE SINGLED OUT CAUSE WE ARE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE ON EARTH REMEMBER THE SAYING DRIVERS WANTED THE REST ARE JUST FOLLOWERS AND WE TAUREANS ARE THE DRIVERS BECAUSE WE ARE SINGLED OUT THANKS FOR PITTING US AT FRONT THE OTHERS DESERVE THEIR WEAKNESS CAUSE WE ARE BEING SO LOVED AND THE MOST TALKED ABOUT.
LONG LIVE THE TAUREAN EMPIRE AND ALL THOSE WHO SUPPORT US.
You can accuse Stalin of many things, but not genocide. Stalin never tried to eradicate a whole race. Hitler, by contrast, was trying to wipe out the Jewish race. There is also evidence that we wanted to wipe out Slavs, or at least the Slavs in some areas, once he had won the war. And with Hitler, it’s the percentages that get you. He wiped out 20% of the population of Poland and 30% of the population of Belarus.
Dear Archie
I am not jusitifying the wrong of Hitler nor should you be justifying the wrongs of Stalin what I am saying is that if u kill 1 or 1,000,000 their both wrong Hitler started a war that killed over 60 million and Stalin killed 20 million after the wars end one was a Taurus the other was a Sagitareous its not in Iran we have a famous breakfast called lambs head and some people want some more broth on it to make it jucier we know that might taste good but when does killing 20 million spice up killing 60 million we know that 6 million people of the jewish faith got killed and erased of the Earth and that is really horrible the Torah and the Qu’ran both state killing one person is equal to killing the whole world and the saving of 1 life is equal to saving the whole world it is not right to say Hitler was bad but Stalin was not they were both horrible people and the means for these people justified the means either way they were both people that planned out calculated tragedies and genocide. LONG LIVE THE TAUREAN EMPIRE HELP ERADICATE CAPITOL PUNISHMENT.
You forgot Taurus Jim Jones and the Jonestown Massacre. He had a classic Taurus meltdown and took everyone down with him. Other highly evil Tauruses: Martin Bryant (spree killer – 35 dead), Thomas Hamilton (gunned down 16 first graders and their teacher)
captainwigger,
Thanks very much! I kind of got side-tracked by the political side of things, and my brief searching didn’t show up any serial killers.
Hi again Archie its your TAUREAN friend again just wanted to say since you know my sign what is yours thank you.
Hosni Mubarak, another Taurus, 30 years dictator of Egypt.
I can see this argument. I am a Taurus and I can be extremely one sided and biased to my opinion. I like things done my way and accomplish a lot on my own. I can get people on board to follow my ideas and have a quiet but strong leadership, especially under pressure. I can see how a Taurus could use these traits for evil. Once we feel so strong about an idea or ideology, it’s almost impossible to change.
Pope John Paul II and Leonardo da Vinci were Taurus either…
I hate to tell you that as hitler was born on April 20th he is an Aries, and the Queen is a Taurus born on the 21st. Get you facts right people
Don’t forget Jim Jones of Guyana fame, and Ayotollah Kohmeini. Both Tauruses.
It’s quite common for people to think that Hitler was an Aries. However in 1889, in Austria, the Sun moved from Aries to Taurus on the previous evening, on April 19.
That’s Right Giles get YOUR facts right
-Another Taurus.
Hey lets not forget Machiavelli. I think that Taureans are less academic, but able to see the Physical world and the way power works much clearer than either the intellectual signs or the idealistic signs. Also our ability to temper our emotions is why we can become powerful leaders.
If you look at other aspects of dictators natal charts, you’ll notice that some of them have a prominent Capricorn in fx. their moon; Capricorn moon.
MALCOLM X))))!!!!!
After reading some of these comments, I had to laugh as that Taurus personality really shined through!
I am Taurus through and through and what made me a better Taurus was reading about the negatives of this star sign and admitting to myself that yes, it was me.
I chose the path of enlightenment and open mindedness and let go of my ego. I learned to help others realize their dreams and support them.
Yes the old bull attempts to resurface sometimes and is put back in the pen as soon as I am able to chase him down and catch him. hahaha!
As for these others I believe your article is very right on.
What might have made the difference in these Dictators is them having had the foresight to truly understand their sign and overcome the negatives.
All of them had the potential to become beloved leaders as we Taureans aspire to be.
Their unrealized potential was truly a great tragedy in consideration of the people they might have been!
Having a strong spiritual belief system was the other factor for me and I thank God for these beliefs because I know the person I would have been without accountability to a higher power.
Yes, I am fully aware of the ingenuity of the Taurus mind when it comes to vengeance!
I have known other Taureans who chose that other path and they were very ugly people, full of that unrelenting vindictive nature that we Taureans can have and were ingenious in their plots and conspiracies to get even with those they felt had wronged them.
It’s also that insidious justification that Taurus can find in any situation to justify what was done.
We are the only sign that can get into an argument with some one, not see them for any amount of time and then pick up the argument exactly where it left off. lol
We are also unrelenting, especially when we feel wronged and this one negative can be our greatest enemy or friend depending on our understanding of how to use this ability in a positive manner.
Oh and BTW Archie, take another look at cusps, they really do exist, I have seen this on the Taurus/Gemini cusp and that cusp is deadly especially combined with the unrelenting nature of Taurus. Its like two raging bulls.
Same for the Aries/Taurus cusp. Imagine the power of the high intellect of the Aries influence with the power and strength of the Taurus. Nothing more deadly than a smart Bull, lol
But on the other hand when the Taurus/Aries cusp is fully understood by these people theres no stopping them and it has the potential to be very positive.
To date I have not met this type of personality, the ones that I have met were the ones who had little knowledge or understanding of these astrological parings and even then they were very powerful in intellect, perseverance and strength. I would not challenge them.
Any way great article and that was my two bits!
Have a great Day!
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