Aries and Taurus sit side by side in the zodiac. The Moon walks straight from one into the other, about once a month. Yet the oldest rulebook we have puts these two signs in a bleak group. Ptolemy, the Greek astronomer who wrote the Tetrabiblos in the second century, called such signs disjunct. In his scheme they share no link at all. This page looks at an Aries Moon and a Taurus Moon in a couple through that lens, and through a few numbers we measured.
A fair warning comes first. Astrology is not a science. No study has shown that Moon signs predict how a couple will do. Treat what follows as a way to put words on two styles of feeling.
The two Moons in brief
Your Moon sign is the sign the Moon stood in at your birth. Astrologers read it as the private self: how you react, what soothes you, how you show care. It is not your Sun sign, the one from the daily horoscope.
| Trait | Aries Moon | Taurus Moon. |
|---|---|---|
| Element | Fire, the element of heat and drive | Earth, the element of the body and the senses. |
| Mode | Cardinal, the kind that starts things | Fixed, the kind that holds things in place. |
| Ruling planet | Mars | Venus. |
| Rank of the Moon | None, a guest in the sign | Exalted, its best sign. |
| Pace of feeling | Fast to flare, fast to clear | Slow to stir, slow to let go. |
For each sign on its own, see our guides to the Moon in Aries and the Moon in Taurus. For all Moon pairs side by side, see our Moon sign compatibility guide.
Why Ptolemy set these signs apart
Ptolemy gave signs three ways to relate. The first is an aspect, a set angle between them. He used four: the sextile, two signs apart; the square, three apart; the trine, four apart; and the opposition, six apart. The second is a pair of signs that rise in the same span of time, one of which commands the other. The third is a pair of signs with days of the same length. He said these signs see each other.
Aries and Taurus have none of the three. They are one sign apart, which is no aspect in his list. They do not rise in equal time. Their days are not the same length. So in Book One of the Tetrabiblos, Ptolemy files them among the disjunct signs. Later writers use the word aversion for the same idea. It means the two signs cannot see each other.
Of the 78 possible pairs of signs, 16 are disjunct in this strict sense. Aries and Taurus is one of them. Every pair of neighbors that is not saved by one of the other two links lands there.
Modern astrology gives the one-sign gap a name, the semi-sextile. It was added long after Ptolemy, and most writers treat it as a minor link. The usual reading is two people with little in common, who must learn each other from scratch.
A gap the old rules see, and one they miss
Signs are not the whole story. In degrees, the two Moons can sit very close or quite far apart. A degree is one part in 360 of the sky, and each sign holds 30 of them.
Picture an Aries Moon at 28 degrees Aries and a Taurus Moon at 2 degrees Taurus. The signs are in aversion, but the two Moons sit only 4 degrees apart. In degrees, that is a conjunction, the closest bond there is. Now picture an Aries Moon at 1 degree and a Taurus Moon at 29 degrees. They are 58 degrees apart. That is close to a sextile, a link Ptolemy called friendly.
We measured how many Aries and Taurus Moon couples fall into each case. We used an 8 degree margin, the range most astrologers accept for a close link. They call that margin an orb.
| What the two Moons form in degrees | Share of Aries and Taurus Moon couples | Put simply. |
|---|---|---|
| A close one-sign link, within 8 degrees | 46.22 percent | Fewer than half. |
| A true conjunction across the border | 3.56 percent | About one couple in 28. |
| A true sextile, near 60 degrees | 3.56 percent | Also about one in 28. |
| A conjunction or sextile, either one | 7.11 percent | About one couple in 14. |
So about one Aries and Taurus Moon couple in 14 has a real, close link that the sign grid calls absent. Astrologers who read by degrees would treat those couples very differently from the rest. Astrologers who read by whole signs would not. Both methods are in use today, so ask which one your reading follows.
One Moon at its best, one Moon with no rank
The second theme of this pair is rank. The old astrologers scored each planet in each sign. They called these scores dignities. William Lilly set out the full scheme in Christian Astrology, in 1647.
In Taurus the Moon is exalted. That is its best sign after its home, Cancer. Lilly gave exaltation four points. The Moon can earn more there. It shares rule of the earth signs by night, worth three points, so a night birth adds to its score. It also rules the middle ten degrees of Taurus, a small rank worth one point.
In Aries the Moon has none of this. It holds no rank of any kind. Lilly called a planet in that state peregrine, which means a wanderer or a guest. He scored it as a five point weakness.
So this couple joins the Moon at one of its strongest spots with the Moon at one of its plainest. Read loosely, one partner feels at ease with feelings, and the other feels them as a spark that must be acted on. The Taurus Moon holds. The Aries Moon moves. Neither is wrong. They run at two speeds.
Mars and Venus at the helm
Each sign has a ruling planet, and here the two rulers are Mars and Venus. In Greek myth, Ares and Aphrodite, the gods behind those planets, were lovers. Homer tells the tale in the Odyssey. Astrologers have long paired the two planets as the drive and the pull of desire.
In a Moon reading, that gives a simple picture. The Aries Moon, ruled by Mars, wants to act on a feeling. The Taurus Moon, ruled by Venus, wants to savor it. One says “let us fix this now”. The other says “let us have dinner first”.
How the pair plays out day to day
Here is how astrologers read the pair in practice. None of it is proven.
The Aries Moon brings pace. It starts plans, pushes for change, and gets over a bad day fast. The Taurus Moon brings ground. It keeps the home warm, sticks to routine, and stays loyal through slow years.
The friction comes from the same place. The Aries Moon can find the Taurus Moon too slow, even stuck. The Taurus Moon can find the Aries Moon rash and hard to rest with. In a fight, the Aries Moon wants to have it out and be done. The Taurus Moon goes quiet and digs in. Then the Aries Moon pushes harder, and the wall gets taller.
A few habits help this couple.
Name the pace. Say “I need to act on this” or “I need a day”. It stops each side from reading the other as cold or rude.
Give the Taurus Moon comfort before change. A good meal, a calm room, a known plan. Then bring up the new idea.
Give the Aries Moon a real task. Sitting still with a feeling is hard for this Moon. A walk or a job to do turns the heat into something useful.
Do not keep score. Taurus remembers. Aries forgets. Agree that a closed fight stays closed.
Are you sure it is Aries and Taurus?
This pair has one more twist. The Moon passes from Aries straight into Taurus. So a person born on the day it crosses that line could have either sign.
The Moon changes sign every two and a quarter days on average. We counted every change from 1600 to 2400. A pass through one sign lasts 54.6 hours on average, and from 46.9 to 61.1 hours. On 43.92 percent of all days, the Moon changes sign at some point.
Free tools that skip the birth time put you at noon. Across all births in our count, that guess names the wrong Moon sign 10.98 percent of the time. For a couple, it gives the wrong pair 20.75 percent of the time. That is about one couple in five.
For this couple, the wrong answer has a clear shape. A noon error only ever moves the Moon one sign back or one sign on. So an Aries and Taurus couple can be misread as two Aries Moons, two Taurus Moons, a Pisces and Taurus pair, or an Aries and Gemini pair. Only 31.45 percent of couples can know both Moon signs from the dates alone. Check the birth certificate before you settle on a reading.
Moon phase at birth
Some people are born with the Moon in the same sign as the Sun, near a new Moon. Others have the Moon in the opposite sign, near a full Moon. These shares shift a little by sign, because the Sun moves slower in early July and faster in early January.
Among Taurus Moons, 8.35 percent have the Sun in Taurus too. That is above the Aries Moon figure of 8.21 percent. For the full Moon side, 8.04 percent of Taurus Moons have the Sun in Scorpio, the sign opposite Taurus.
| Who is in the couple | Share of Aries and Taurus Moon couples | Put simply. |
|---|---|---|
| At least one partner born with Moon and Sun in the same sign | 15.87 percent | About one couple in six. |
| At least one partner born with the Moon opposite the Sun | 15.56 percent | Also about one in six. |
Our Moon phase compatibility guide explains how astrologers read the phase of each partner’s Moon.
What the research says
The best test of sign matches used the Sun, not the Moon. In 2007 the sociologist David Voas studied the 2001 census of England and Wales. He looked at about 10.3 million married couples. No pair of Sun signs married more than chance would predict. A small excess of same-sign couples came from errors in the data.
A census has no birth hours, so it cannot test Moon signs. As far as we know, no one has run a test on that scale for the Moon. The fair view is that Moon matching has not been shown to work. It can still help two people talk about how they each react.
How we measured it
We used two routes that share no code. The first used the Astronomy Engine library. It found every Moon and Sun sign change from 1 January 1600 to 1 January 2400, to within a tenth of a second. It then added up the time spent in each sign. The degree counts came from a scan of the Moon once an hour.
The second route used the Swiss Ephemeris, a star table used by many astrology programs. It read the Moon and Sun once an hour over the same span, on a grid set half an hour apart. That gives more than seven million moments. Neither route used random numbers. The two agree to within 0.05 points on every figure on this page. We used the tropical zodiac, the one most Western astrologers use.
Related Moon pairs
If you think a noon chart fooled you, read the next pair over. Our guide to two Aries Moons covers the double fire pair. Our guide to an Aries Moon and a Gemini Moon covers the sextile two signs on. For the Taurus sign as a whole, see our page on the Taurus sign.
Frequently asked questions
Are an Aries Moon and a Taurus Moon compatible?
The tradition calls them a hard fit. The signs are neighbors with no link in Ptolemy’s scheme, and they run at two speeds. No study has shown that Moon signs decide how a couple fares.
What does it mean that the signs are in aversion?
Ptolemy said two signs are disjunct when they share no aspect, no equal rising time and no equal day length. Later writers call this aversion. It means the signs cannot see each other.
Can an Aries Moon and a Taurus Moon form a real conjunction?
Yes, across the border. With an 8 degree orb, 3.56 percent of these couples have a true conjunction. Another 3.56 percent have a true sextile.
Which Moon is stronger, Aries or Taurus?
By the old rules, the Taurus Moon. The Moon is exalted in Taurus. In Aries it holds no rank, which William Lilly called peregrine.
How rare is this couple?
Not rare. About one random couple in 72 pairs an Aries Moon with a Taurus Moon. Each Moon sign holds 8.33 percent of all moments.
Go deeper with your personal Astrovision report
Reading about astrological concepts is a great start, but nothing compares to hearing how they apply directly to you. Our users love our audio-first approach, calling it “friendly, personal, and easy to understand.” While this article gives you the “what,” a personal report gives you the “so what.” Discover your unique path with an Astrovision report—your personal ‘user manual’ delivered in our celebrated podcast format.