Aries-Taurus cusp (#30)

The cusps are controversial. Although the word usually denotes a precise demarcation, I like to use it to describe the range of relationships, from antithesis to blending, which exist between adjacent zodiacal signs, a range that implicitly permeates even the purest expression of a sign. As the tropical and siderial zodiacs approach complete overlap, many new and penetrating truths are cuspal in nature.

The tragic sacrificial splendor of the corrida ritualizes the first zodiacal crisis of Self, where Aries encounters Taurus: freedom-craving spirit encounters material necessity, the obdurate World. The bull is color-blind, and it's the movement that he reacts to; it is the human participants in the corrida who react to the red color. More red even than the capote (which is in fact usually magenta) is the copious blood, the blood-soaked hide, that makes the point. The next, Taurus / Gemini, cusp is summond in the gesture of the stinging picadors and the banderillos, or the legend of the gadfly. The fixed earth principle provokes attack from both sides --