Just as the Great Goddess – whose ancient archetypal power is the very world that we live in – expresses herself as a cow goddess, the bull stares at us from the creative core of our being. Rooted in the soil of civilization’s very beginning, the bull archetype connects us to some of the key ingredients in the soup that make us human. 

The great valor and vigor of the bull belong to the power of nature. Virile. Tireless. Fierce. These qualities wake in us humans a sense of confidence. We are pulled toward the bull’s big, unapologetic sense of presence. We are tiny specks of dust, we want to feel tattered to something, we want to nourish a sense of meaning in a world within which we are otherwise meaningless. 

The bull archetype has been drawing us through the fields of our layered complexity, the process of our evolution, the story of how we’ve become no longer only beings of nature, but beasts of culture and civilizations. 

Explore the way that this beautiful, important thread in humanity’s cultural evolution has also been demonized in this video:

Cattle, Capitalism, and the Call to Creativity

Animal nature has been diminished and demonized by patriarchal culture – a culture that rose out of the very soil that once nurtured the reciprocal relationship between humans and the natural world. 

The bull and other animals that were worshipped by humans as gods, were slowly turned from the creativity that made us, into something humans took ownership of. Whatever we couldn’t tame, make useful, or take control of, our species deemed as evil.

The strength of the bull has been embraced. Its wildness? Diabolical. 

Cows and bulls have been sacred to humans since before early civilization. They provided a source for nourishment, clothing, and tools in paleolithic times. Our relationship with cattle was so important, humans deified and worshipped cows and bulls as gods and goddesses.

A cattle was worth a lot to humans at the dawn of civilization. One can say that the process of domestication had a lot to do with cattle. Cows and bulls became symbols of wealth. The word cattle and the word capitalism come from the same root. 

The Creative Power of the Sacred Bull 

The bull archetype is saturated in the milk of the cow – a symbol of creativity, nourishment, motherly love, and resourcefulness. 

I don’t want to demonize civilization. There’s a lot that is wrong about how we’ve done this, no doubt. The word civilization itself carries in it problematic – racist, misogynistic, patriarchal, colonialist – meanings. But civilization is where we’re at. We are no longer hunter gatherers. And there’s no way back. So how do we regenerate and recreate a more reciprocal relationship with the earth and with one another? 

There are also lots of gifts in civilization (books, literature, poetry, to name a few). I don’t want to look at this story through a binary lens – the same binary lens that the patriarchy itself taught us to look at everything through. 

I want to consider cattle and the symbolic milk that flows through it as a call to turn toward our nourishing, creative core. I want to look at the bull and remember the strength of nature. The archetype lives in me. And I also live inside the archetype. The bull is the body of the earth. Solid. Big. Stable. It holds us. 

The bull is the ferocity of nature as well. The fury of the bull in stampede is the power of an earthquake. The bull is thunder and lightning and stormy weather. The intensity of desire. The fierce power of life and death. 

This intense wildness is the impulse of our creative nature. Its thunder is the roar that sparks inspiration. Our inner animal is the force behind song and dance and music. It’s the howl that propels brush into paint and onto the canvas of life.

The Power of Creativity is Not Meant to Be Tamed 

We have domesticated the bull and the cow. We have made the cattle our own. I don’t need to get into this here, but the meat industry is somewhere we can clearly see the perversion of humanity. Some of the methods we’ve developed are definitely inhumane. So who is civilized, really?

What would happen if we reintroduced ourselves to the archetype and showed up to it in stewardship instead of ownership? What would happen if we reorient ourselves around the bull archetype and the sacred cow, and see the layers and textures woven through it? What would happen if we receive the invitation to reconstruct the relationship between the wild and the civilized, the domesticated and the untamed?

To turn toward the cow and the bull as wild beings is to remember that we are not only cultural creatures, but natural ones as well – part of something greater. It’s a process that moves us into our animal nature through the vision of myth and story and art. It’s a curriculum that regenerates respect and reciprocity. 

Bull symbolism grounds us in the body. In sensuality. In pleasure. In sexuality. In strength. The gender of the archetype does not need to hinder our journey into the wild, erotic feminine riding on the back of the bull. The power of the archetype is that it is non-binary. 

I won’t get deeply into this here, but the bull is one of the forms of Dionysus. This is a deep topic of history and intricate mythic narratives. The Greeks received the deliciousness of Dionysus as a character that came from somewhere else, and arrived into the depth of their culture wearing women’s clothes, moving not only in the non-binary territory between and beyond masculine and feminine, but within the interstitial fluid – the milk that baths the space between human, animal, and plant.

Sacred feminine mythology is woven through its horns, moonlit and mooing in the dark. 

To turn toward cow goddesses is to remember that we live in a loving universe. One that doesn’t exclude the ferocity of its nature, but one that includes the nourishment and nurturing power of it. To turn toward the archetype of the cow is to invoke the power of care and support that flows between us and others, and within ourselves. It’s to show up to the earth not only as a mother that we take for granted, but as a mother we must take good care of. 

You can read more about the archetype of the cow goddess here. 

The weaving of the ferocious and the loving, the intense and the nurturing, offers us an indirect pathway through the forest of our complexity – a forest that gives us shadow and dappled light, food and death, a diversity of species and the breath of feral imagination. 

The Bull Archetype in the Stars – Taurus as Mythic Medicine 

The creative, imaginative power of the bull archetype is anchored in its physicality. Its wildness orchestrates the magic of inspiration as it moves through the senses. Art comes from this deep, soulful, and untamed storm in us, unfurling from a primal, primordial pulse within our cells. The soulful, stormy sense of the bull’s beingness is somatic. 

The sacred cow and the bull symbol in mythology and in the psyche, guide us on the milky way into the constellation of Taurus and the traits it has become known for. 

The Season of Taurus – Sacred Sensuality

The season of Taurus arrives with the sensual whisper of ripening Spring, with the intoxicating scent of roses, and the sonic spell of romance cast by an orchestra of birds. The air feels warmer on your skin, and your heart feels the earth pulsing as an unfolding project of sacred art – as a blossoming sculpture that shapes itself like a goddess ready to be worshiped. 

The lush tapestry woven with soil and sun is sending waves of pleasure up and down our spine, luring you out of the cave. This fertile fantasy of flowers is only possible because death and decay nourish the earth. This season’s vitality leads us on a dance that guides us into the ground where life and death are ever intertwined. 

Virile, fertile, and enchanting; the strength of Taurus inspires you to be generous. She is an earth queen. Ever so grounded in yourself, you stir the magic of abundance and spread it all around you. With the powerful stamina of Taurus, we tend to the web of life. This giving spirit is anchored in confidence and competence, cultivated and nurtured in the heart of the earth, rooted in robust vigor, blossoming as the most refined beauty of who we are.

New Moon in Taurus – Embody the Beauty of the Bull Archetype

Taurus invites you to embody the strength and the softness of the earth, teaching you to move in a slow and luxurious way, to presence your passion, and to give ground and form to who you want to become. 

When a new lunar cycle begins in this astrological sign, we can set in motion a sensual, somatic spell that invokes pleasure and generates beauty. We teach ourselves to be more intentional in the ways that we move our body, in the ways that we move through the world. 

This is a time to spark a more generous way of being – with ourselves, with others, with the earth. Where can we give our gifts more freely? Where can we show up more fully? It is also an invitation to become a receptive vessel to life’s beauty and pleasure. Where can we allow life to pour its nourishing milk into us with less restriction?

This is not an invitation to drop our boundaries. The Taurus archetype is a body. A body is a boundary. Taurus is strong and solid. It offers us a nuanced, sophisticated, wise way into generosity that comes from a grounded place, a receptivity that breathes with discernment, a way of being that is free and open and soulful, because it is clearly rooted in soil and in somatic reality. 

On the new moon in Taurus, you can dance to your favorite music, make a nourishing meal with local, organic, seasonal ingredients (if possible), feed yourself and others, make art that expresses the sensual experience of being alive, make love to life itself. 

Beyond the Bull Archetype – Your Path to a Deeper Experience

If this is inspiring for you and you want to turn it into ritual, the Beltane Somatic Ceremony is a deep dive into archetypes, symbols, and myths that bring us deeper into our relationship with the sensual, the earthy, and the pleasure of being of the earth, in an embodied way. Go here to learn more and to sign up. This is a Taurus Season sanctuary. 

If you are inspired by the archetypes of the zodiac, and you are a luna lover, subscribe to my mailing list below. I send moon messages on the new and full moon, saturated with symbols, and mythopoetic contemplations. 

If the mythical and the magical are inspiring for you, and your relationship with your Muse is important to you, subscribe to my Substack here and receive Muse Medicine every Monday, to support the poet, dancer, artist in you, and stir your creative energy. 

If you are in a place where the shadow of the bull – stuckness, stagnation, and stubborn, unmoving energy – is palpable, join me on a journey From Stillness to Spark. If you want to honor where you are, and make space for movement to return, this five session program will help you build a temple for your inspiration. Reorient yourself and let Muse become your North Star. Learn more and sign up here.

Resource:

The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Barbara G Walker 

The Book of Symbols published by Taschen

The Flowering Wand by Sophie Strand 

The Urban Priestess course I took many years ago with Sianna Sherman and Ashley Turner

Decades of studying with professor Douglas Brooks