We shall see again and again art and life mirroring astrology as we progress through my "Welcome to the Zodiac" Series, and Taurus is certainly no exception. In fact, those fixed realists who are so insistent on the tangible proof of things tend to bombard you with their bullishness! We'll start with the most cutting edge, up to date news that my friend in Ireland, a Taurus ruled country notified me of, which I like to refer to as the "triple Taurus threat." From The New Republic, May 29th, 2009: "This week the Pritzker Prize committee announced this year's winner of architecture's top honor: Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. On May 29, he will receive the formal award--along with a $100,000 grant and a bronze medal--in Buenos Aires.
Zumthor commands the highest accolades from architects worldwide: Just in September 2008 he also won the Japanese version of the Pritzker, the Japan Art Association's highly coveted Praemium Imperiale. Zumthor's buildings make poetic use of architecture's most fundamental materials: translucent and transparent glass, as in his Kunsthaus in Bregenz, Austria; locally quarried stone, as in his stupendous Thermal Baths in Vals, Switzerland; wood, laid in shingles as in his St. Benedict chapel; or used as planar siding, as in the house for his wife, Annalisa." Incredibly, Mr. Zumthor's birthday is April 26th so let me put this in a Taurean formula: Peter Zumthor (Taurus) from Switzerland (a Taurus ruled country) won the highest prize in the field of architecture (Taurus ruled area of life). Not too shabby! From the ultra up to date to ancient antiquity: a great film that I highly recommend for both children and adults alike is Terry Gilliam's (of Monty Python fame) "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen", a motion picture that was in the theaters for all of 10 seconds in the late 80's and then was immediately forgotten. In the German fairy tale, the Baron manages to seduce the goddess Venus and what better choice of actress to portray the goddess who not only rules love and beauty but the sign of Taurus itself, than a Taurean! Uma Thurman to be exact, born on April 29th. When seen next to Botticelli's painting "The Birth of Venus" the similarity is uncanny!
**People I couldn’t make this stuff up even if I tried! The night before my Taurus radio show I met a very nice Gemini who showed me his birth chart. I saw immediately that he had one of the “luckiest” indicators a person could be born with – an exalted Jupiter on the Ascendant, or put another way: Jupiter rising in Cancer. He also had Mercury in the same place, so I asked him “Have you ever written anything about your heritage or ancestry?” And indeed he had. He then showed me the actual book he wrote on Bukovina, his family’s place of origin which is now part of modern day Romania. He also showed me a map of Bukovina as well as its coat of arms – Taurus anyone? It seems his luck factor rubbed off on all of us just in time for the Taurus show!