Sense of Soul - Taurus- the Comic Bull in the Sky

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

Today on Sense of Soul podcast we have Stephen Palmer, he is the author of twenty genre novels, numerous narrative nonfiction and fiction books, published by various publishers since 1996. His most recent directions are into music books, and anthropology/psychology with his critically lauded work 'I Am Taurus.' His fiction has been in the fields of steampunk, SF, and near-future AI novels. The constellation we know as Taurus goes all the way back to cave paintings of aurochs at Lascaux. In I Am Taurus, author Stephen Palmer traces the story of the bull in the sky, starting from that point 19,000 years ago - a journey through the history of what has become known as the sacred bull. Each of the eleven sections is written from the perspective of the mythical Taurus, from the beginning at Lascaux to Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Greece, Spain and elsewhere. This is not just a history of the bull but also an attempt to see ourselves through the eyes of the bull, illustrating our pre-literate use of myth, how the advent of writing and the urban revolution changed our view of ourselves, and how even the most modern of rituals - bullfighting in Spain - is a variation on the ancient sacrifice of the sacred bull. His main area of interest is the evolution of consciousness, about which he writes on his Substack. A materialist, he emphasises the evolutionary description of our minds and of the human condition itself. You can find him via his Substack, his blog at stephenpalmer.co.uk, or via his Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063669513509&__n=K https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/iff-books/our-books/i-am-taurus

Hello, my soul-seeking friends. It's Shanna. Thank you so much for listening to Sense of Soul podcast. Enlightening conversations with like-minded souls from around the world, sharing their journey of finding their light within, turning pain into purpose, and awakening to their true sense of soul. If you like what you hear, show me some love and rate, like, and subscribe. And consider becoming a Sense of Soul Patreon member, where you will get ad-free episodes, monthly circles, and much more. Now go grab your coffee, open your mind, heart, and soul. It's time to awaken. Today on Sense of Soul, I have Stephen Palmer. He is an author of numerous narrative nonfiction and genre fiction books. And his latest book, which he's joining me today to talk about,

is called I Am Taurus, where in his book, Stephen traces the story of the bull in the sky, starting from that point 19,000 years ago, a journey through the history of what has become known as the sacred bull. And because I am a Taurus, I was super excited to welcome Stephen on Sense of Soul to have this conversation. Thanks so much for being with me, Stephen. I'm just going to be your student today because I want to learn. I think this is something super cool. I've been looking forward to having you. Excellent. You're very kind. I am a Taurus. We're going to be talking about Taurus. Well, I should say to start off with, I'm actually Pisces. Oh, are you? The book is narrated from the point of view of Taurus, the cosmic bull. So when the book title says, I am Taurus,

it's talking about the bull that I have imagined who is relaying information to the readers of the book. I myself am Pisces. Oh, you know what? I love Pisces, but I'm like your typical Taurus. So when it comes down to all the characteristics and what everyone says that's me and I see that you have a guitar behind you uh yes I've got a few guitars here yeah yeah so you like to play music as well yeah I'm a musician um I um to be honest I started off playing guitar many years ago and I after about 25 30 years I kind of got a bit bored with it, and I went on to play flutes and other instruments from around the world. So let's see, what have you got? Ah, you've got a lovely Native American flute.

Yes, I have one of those. They're lovely. It's made out of cedar. I like to smell it every time I hold it. As it happens, I have got one here. Yes. Oh, wow. This came from Bali. In fact, this is, I have got one here. Yes. Oh, I like it. This came from Bali.

In fact, this is one I ordered from a Balinese maker. Oh, wow. It probably has a deep sound, doesn't it? It's pretty much the biggest one I could possibly get. Yes. I've got some smaller ones. I wanted a really big one. I'll be honest with you.

I haven't played this for quite some time, so I don't know what this is going to sound like it needs a bit of moisture and to get the deeper notes yeah well I haven't played for ages but they come in quite small you know a hand's breadth or huge yeah that's super amazing I love it know, I find it funny that as a Pisces, then, are you going to write about the fish too? I've been asked this a couple of times. I doubt it. My interest in these books is to tell the story of a particular constellation or astrological sign or whatever you wanted to call it from a very long perspective. Most people don't realize that the astrological signs that we know in the West today are very old. Most of them were recognizable in Sumer, in Sumerian times, which is, you know, 5000 years ago. And certainly the four oldest constellations, Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Capricorn, almost certainly have much more ancient origins than that. So when I was telling the story of Taurus, I was taking a bit of a leap

in the dark because we don't have any particular proof that people, for instance, during the Ice Age, recognized that particular name. they wouldn't have done but they would have seen the constellation taurus in the sky they would have recognized the shape and they would have matched it to the shape of the aurochs balls which they were hunting um for you know meat and all the other products that animals can offer and so i think they would have recognized that this was a special pattern of stars in the sky that they wanted to recognize and tell stories about. So even though we can't necessarily say they definitely did that, I think on balance, it's quite likely. After all, human beings are very good at making patterns out of things. It's what we do naturally.

When you see a pattern in the sky or even a pattern of dots on a fence you make shapes out of it you make forms out of it this is what human beings are very good at and I think there's no reason why human beings weren't doing this 19,000 years ago in the caves of Lascaux and then painting bulls that had a very similar shape and pattern absolutely Absolutely. Yeah, I agree with you. So just to get some background, can you tell me about how you got into astrology? What did that journey look like? It's really more history that is of interest to me rather than astrology per se. Astrology, like, I don't know religion is fascinating for any kind of historian i think it's really important that we both celebrate the diversity of ideas and cultures that we have but also put them into a broader context the history of astrology and the particular of astrological

science is absolutely fascinating it tells us so much about early human existence, what were important to human beings 5,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago, or whenever. I think we can learn a lot from that. So really, what I'm trying to do is put these patterns and these signs and these ideas into a much broader, lengthier context than we normally see. As you will know, I Am Taurus is quite a short book. It's about 30,000 words. And yet that is a book about 19,000 years of human history. I quite like that contrast between an immensely long time and a very short book. I like that. That's funny.

I think my book is going to be kind of like that too, because I spent much of my time trying to put myself into the shoes of those before us and how they came to, you know, the ideas they had, which play out in our lives hidden in plain sight, basically. How did Taurus become worshipped? Well, we will never know for sure, because the first record we have that we can actually rely on is a written record. Well, writing as we would recognise it today is about 3,200 BC,

so about 5,000 years ago. But at that time, urban culture was relatively advanced. There had been small cities and large towns in the Foothill Crescent and the East Mediterranean area for centuries, if not millennia. Jericho, for instance, is an extremely ancient city. It's really inconceivable to think that the idea of Taurus, as we know it from early written records, appeared then. That constellation will have been known and recognised and had stories told about it for thousands of years.

I think, as you said, we have to do something historians and certainly archaeologists find difficult, which is to put themselves in the position of other human beings. I think many archaeologists, quite understandably, would like to see their subject and what they do as a science. And it is a science. It's a very useful, useful very interesting science but we mustn't lose sight of the fact that what we are digging up from let's say the eastern mediterranean let's say you know 8 000 years ago is human objects and and the results of human activity and so we really must put ourselves in the position of those human beings to try and understand how they were thinking, what their cultural forms were. So for instance, you know,

what they thought about patterns of stars in the sky. It's really important that we actually make that imaginative leap. And those imaginative leaps will be speculative, but that's fine. This is all part of humanity understanding its ancient past and putting together really good, interesting, worthy stories about the things that matter to us. If you were living in that area of the world about 10,000 BC, you were living just a few years after the end of the Ice Age, an absolutely critical point in human history. There would have been a huge amount of climate change affecting your life. And all the things around you, including the Orochs bulls, which ancient people identify with Taurus, the pattern in the sky. Sheep, obviously, we have a constellation

called Aries. Goats, obviously, we have a constellation called Capricorn. And lions, we have a constellation called Leo. These are all animals which were absolutely central to the lives of human beings of that time in that area. And that is what they are astrological signs now. They were fundamental to ancient lives and they stayed with us because they have that depth and profundity. So it's really important that we imaginatively say, well, why would they have done this? Because it was important to them. When you think about Western and Eastern astrology have so many similarities. So of course, they're looking up at the same sky as, you know, that's just pretty amazing. Or you wonder if maybe something

merged at some point. I'll be honest with you, I don't know very much about Eastern astrology or indeed Eastern history. But what I can tell you is that just above the shoulder of Taurus, the constellation in the sky, is a group of stars called the Pleiades. I'm sure you'll have heard of this, this group of stars. And I'm sure from your perspective that you will know that stories are told about these stars and what they might represent right across the world. So West, East, North America, there are stories about the Pleiades right across the world. And that in itself tells us that just the fact that those six, well, actually there's seven stars, but one of them is not quite as obvious as the other six. Just the fact that those six stars are grouped together was important to human being and so it you know the fact that it was an unusual thing in the sky an unusual pattern recommended itself to

human beings and they started to tell stories about it as human beings always do what's so fascinating about the Pleiades when we go further back in time is that if you look at the bull in the caves of Lascaux 19,000 years ago in what's known as the Hall of the Bulls, just above the shoulder of what's called Bull Number 18, which is very, very similar in form to Taurus the Const the constellation, are six black dots. We can't be certain. We never could be certain. But it's quite likely, and I think it's beyond reasonable doubt, that those six dots represent the Pleiades. And therefore there was a clear match between the shape of that particular ball on the wall and the actual stars in the sky.

And there's nothing wrong with saying that. Human beings would have seen a pattern match and would have expressed that. I think some people are afraid of saying these things because some people think these ideas are a bit crazy. But actually human beings are constantly finding patterns in what they see, what they hear, what they do, their lives. It's what we do. It's a completely normal activity.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, whenever I even look at my wall, I see, you know, if I stare too long at a wall, which sometimes I do, and I'm like, oh, that looks like a cow. That looks like a fish. And you do usually see animals, which is kind of interesting. It's called pareidolia. It's basically a function of the brain. It's how the human brain assesses objects in its field of view and patterns and works out what they are and what the meaning might be for any particular human being. It's a well-recognized phenomenon and a really interesting one, actually.

It is. And it's obviously primal. And it's not like they had a lot of things to do back then. Well, I mean, somebody said this to me recently, actually. They would have had very full lives. I mean, you know, they would have had extremely full social lives, quite apart from anything else. But if you look at hunter-gatherer societies across the world, who are relatively untouched by modern civilization today, they actually have quite a lot of free time, leisure time, as we call it, to sit around the campfire and tell stories. It's a comparatively relaxed life. So, yes. Yeah, they're not busy. They're not always busy and on a bunch of different devices. I've got three devices right in front of me right now.

You know, there's oftentimes a connection to, I don't know if it's just Taurus, but to the moon or, you know, many goddesses also have. Oftentimes you'll see like a crescent moon or something above and throughout different mythologies. Yeah. Well, if you go out to look at the crescent moon, you see what appears to be a gray disc inside the crescent moon that's usually known as the ashen light it's basically light that has been reflected off the earth being reflected back off the moon and we see it back on the earth again and you only see it for a few days when the when the moon is just a fingernail crescent. And it's again, it's a completely obvious normal optical phenomena. But people 5000 years ago, didn't know that that was how

their solar system was arranged. So as you say, that particular site was very often called the old moon in the new moon's arms. And because the crescent, the very thin fingernail crescent, is reminiscent of the horns of the bull, that crescent shape, they made an equivalence between the horns and the crescent shape of the moon. And so you often do get a mythological link between a bull, often a cosmic bull, but it could be any other form of mythological bull and the moon. But I think that's probably the main reason. Again, it's a pattern match. It's seeing the shape of one thing and seeing that shape in something else and therefore making quite naturally a link. And if you are a storyteller as most human

beings are that's what you tell stories about something which which attracts your attention in the sky human beings are great sky watchers we also forget i think sometimes that until comparatively recently most people did not live in cities they They live in open land or in rural environments. And so their view of the night sky was far, far more profound than we who live in towns or cities have. And so the sky would have been something of constant fascination. Every night that it was clear, people could look up in a way that we can't now if we live in a city and see extraordinary things and things that demand in a very human way explanations so this

is another thing we've lost I think especially you know now more than half of human beings on this planet live in cities and just don't see the night sky hardly at all. It's really sad. It is really sad. I'm fortunate. I live in Colorado and, you know, there are places in Colorado where I level with the Milky Way. And so, you know, in those moments that I've had with, you know, those blackout skies is unbelievable. But even here, even where I live, I have the most

amazing sky. And when I go to other places, so I'm originally from Louisiana, so that's like deep South. I'm a mile high while they're under sea level. And the moon and the sky seems so far. And it's so crazy because I feel like I'm in this dense, which I am in this dense swamp. But yeah, I've always been a night sky watcher. We have other mythological hints, too, as to what pre-urban people thought of the sky. If you go back to the very, very earliest myths that we have access to which are written down myths obviously and which are about 5 000 years ago then the elder gods are always sky deities you get this in in sumerian culture you get this in the hittite culture all these ancient um mediterranean These ancient Mediterranean cultures that are that old have sky deities.

And that tells us what human beings thought of the sky and how crucial this concept of an unattainable, perpetual empyrean was to them. It was absolutely fundamental to their worldview. And it's really interesting that if you then take the story of these sky deities further through the centuries into classical times, the myths start telling stories about how the old sky god was cut down or killed by his son or his grandson. And if you look at, for instance, the tales of Zeus and Kronos, then they match more ancient tales, which tell similar stories of a son or a grandson usurping the throne of an ancient sky god. And this reflects, I think, how our need for the sky to be a particular way and our imagining of it and our mythological stories as a consequence changed as society changed.

How generations have a part in how things end up as well. Yeah. It seems to be, and this is just how I look at it, and I think maybe we've been conditioned to see that the horn gods are always in opposition. Right. And when you think about Taurus, they're stubborn, they're bullheaded. You know, you have like sometimes there's, well, there's negative characteristics to all signs, but that seems to be a very strong headed one. But you can see why that would happen.

Some people are like that. And when we think about people who are like that, we want to use a metaphor to encapsulate what we feel about a particular character type or a particular person, in fact. So again, this is a very natural thing to do, I think. There can't be many people alive who haven't done this, who haven't used a metaphor of some sort, often an animal metaphor, as you said before, which is an interesting point, to describe the immensely complex social world that we live in. Again, I think, you know, as you were saying about the various devices that we have in our lives these days, which like you, I try to minimize, we forget that our lives are entirely social. We are creatures who want to understand and, you know, imaginatively understand other people in our social world. And the way we

do that is by metaphors. And Taurus is a great one. Stubborn can be a good thing. It could just mean persistent, right? Well, I'll tell you this. If I was a Taurus, which I'm not, the persistence you need to be an author in the modern world is quite astonishing. It's an incredibly hard world out there in publishing. Publishing is changing so fast. You have to have phenomenal powers of persistence. Well, hopefully you have someone amazing like Gavin on your side. I don't know if you've met Gavin. I haven't yet. No, but he's been brilliant.

I should say that I have written a second book, which is called I am the moon. So I wanted to do the same thing and tell an extremely long story, in this case, 35 to 40,000 years, about how we have related to the moon and our various concepts of the moon. So I have finished writing that. That was a very, very interesting story. Well, it was harder to encapsulate because we have far, far more legends and myths and concepts and ideas about the moon than we do about almost any other object. I mean, the sun possibly. But there are as many stories about the moon as there are individuals almost. It was quite a hard one to actually pin down. But it was it was an interesting book to write. It was very interesting, in fact. Oh, well, the moon is one of my best friends.

So I've learned so much from her. And in my book, I have several stories, great wisdom that I received from the moon, which I'm going to have to have you back on for that one, because I love to talk moon. Okay, will do. Yeah, love, love, love the moon. You know, when I think about like early times from, you know, I have a Catholic background as who was it? Was it Ball? You know, when I think about like early times from, you know, I have a Catholic background. Who was it? Was it Ball?

I can't remember who it was in the Old Testament, but they used to carry around, they idled this cow with horns. And, you know, and then, of course, Moses, you know, it was told to him, you know, no worshipping, you know, these idols. But this was a huge one that they were worshipping. Yeah. That case is actually a particularly interesting one. When that particular people left Egypt in the Exodus, they had, as part of their collective experience, knowledge of the Egyptian world. The Egyptians that far back in antiquity worshipped and worked with

something called the Apis bull. Now, the Apis bull was a sacred bull in the same sense as the other sacred bulls that I talk about in my book. When the Apis bull that was alive died naturally, the high priest would go out into the fields and find a bull, a young bull, that had the correct markings on it. So they would look for a particular marking on the forehead, under the tongue, and they would look for a particular hair type on the tail. And when they found that bull, they would take that bull back and it would become known as the Apis bull. And this is a very well-known Egyptian religious ritual that went on for a long, long time. But it's not impossible that the particular

strictures against worshipping idols that are mentioned in the Bible that go with the people who were following the Exodus, it's not impossible that that golden calf was actually an equivalent to the bull, that that's where they got the idea from and that there's actually a conceptual link between the two things, that when that particular people were out in unknown territory and were struggling and had no food,

they turned to something which actually they knew from their Egyptian masters. And that is why they chose a cow symbol, a golden calf, as we know it from the story now, which is a very intriguing link, really. Again, there's no proof of that, but it does seem quite likely that a people in dire straits with no land of their own would do that sort of thing and would turn to an idol and they would choose that particular idol because it's one that they knew from Egypt so that's a really interesting story I also find it interesting you know that if you just read the bible it actually says you know like what an angel looks like, you know, six wings and four faces.

Right. And one of them, you know, there was, I think, the eagle, the lion and the ox. I think what we can say is that because human beings only work in metaphors and symbols, those particular three animals that you've chosen have deep meaning for human beings symbolically so the ox as you say so when we look at the sacred bull in history they the aurochs bull which we now call ox or cattle um symbolize strength ferocity power sheer physical power they also symbolize fertility because of the fact that Taurus, the constellation, rose in the springtime just before the start of the dry season in the eastern Mediterranean. So there was a link between the spring equinox and Taurus rising.

That's clear. When you look at the lion, you're looking at agility, ferocity, skill as a hunter, again, and theity, skills, a hunter again, and the eagle again, a raptor, flies, an immensely powerful bird. You can it's so obvious why human beings chose these symbols because they are big, big symbols. And when you live in an oral culture, any culture that doesn't have writing, you live by myth, you live by stories. And these stories often contain wisdom or knowledge that communities need to keep. So when you choose symbols, you want to choose a really good, big, obvious, strong, powerful symbol. You don't want to choose the mouse or the worm or the bush. You choose the lion or the big fir tree or the bull.

That's because these symbols need to be memorable. Human memory is limited. We have a certain skill at memorizing things. But if we have fantastic symbols to work by, like the sacred bull, like the lion, as you say, and even things like, of course, the ram. Rams are immensely powerful creatures. Goats are also, you know, they have their ways. They're not perhaps as powerful, but they have their own characteristics. These are all highly significant animals and therefore, they are worthy of being symbols

of other things. So I think we can certainly say that we use those symbols for a very good reason. Absolutely. So I just recently discovered because I had a Chinese astrologist on, that I'm a dragon. And of course, this is the dragon year. This is the year of the dragon. So I'm embracing the dragon. And then I thought about how, like you said, those were the animals that they saw. And so they named these stars or associated with what was around them. So there's, I guess, the dragons and the dinosaurs must not have made the cut. Or maybe we've lost some of the knowledge from those before them. It's extraordinary how many of our modern signs were present in ancient Babylonian culture. They had a constellation called the twins.

They did have signs that were different to ours. There was one which I think was called the worker in the field. So that's not a sign that we have in our modern astrological set of 12. But it is extraordinary how long-lived these concepts are. You do find the dragon in some Sumerian texts, like the story with Gilgamesh and the Huba Lupus or whatever, the phoenix as well, which is, I think, very similar. What do you make of Scorpio? It's almost certainly one of the foremost ancient constellations that were recognized and therefore astrological signs. It is mentioned in certain very ancient texts. There was a mention of the Scorpion gods in the legend of Gilgamesh,

but Scorpio is rather a curious sign, I find, and a curious constellation. What do you make of that? There's that one story, that old myth and an old wise tale i'm not really sure where it's from about how i think it's is it the turtle that's going across the creek and there's a scorpion on his back oh i don't know i'm afraid i don't know that one the scorpion asks for a ride and and i want to say it's the turtles like no no, I'm not going to give you a ride. You're going to kill me. And he does. He ends up giving him a ride.

And in the end, he stings him. He says, I thought you weren't going to sting me. And he said, it's in my nature. Yeah. Scorpions would have certainly been a dangerous animal in that Mediterranean area, particularly in the Southern Mediterranean. You can understand why

that could be the case but it's a very enigmatic mysterious sign it is right it's one of the four cardinal point constellations so taurus is typically linked with the vernal equinox leo is typically linked with the summer solstice capricorn is linked with the summer solstice, Capricorn is linked with the winter solstice, and Scorpio is linked with the autumnal hyponauts. So that being the case, those four markers in time through the solar year are clearly very important markers. You and I today will be celebrating the summer solstice in a few months, and we'll do that for a very good reason, because it's something worth celebrating. So Scorpio does happen to be at the autumnal equinox, and so may be ancient for just for that reason. But I don't

know, that's quite a mysterious one. I mean, obviously, it's a dangerous animal. one it's it's i mean obviously it's a dangerous animal maybe it's just that it is a poisonous dangerous animal and that is the reason it became significant in in a way that the bull and the lion because they're so huge and powerful they have their particular way of being significant i almost have and i'm not really sure why but when i think of the bull and I think of Taurus and I think of being a Taurus, like I have this, like I'm proud. I have this pride about it. I've always felt that way. I think everyone really does about their sign, right? My daughter always says, Pisces, the best sign. What are you saying? They're the best ever, ever, ever. But it's interesting that you do sort of match the characteristics. And I'm not sure if we have manifested this collectively, but, you know, or if we've read it before and we say, oh, this is how I'm supposed to be. is pretty amazing to me these how just overall there's all of these archetypes with characteristics

and they seem to be just around the globe just collective understanding but then again when you're in a group of people a community let's say even a small community one of the things that all human beings do which you will have done and I have done is to try and understand the people who are part of our lives I think it's a very natural thing to do to use quite broad brush metaphors to you know categorize people and put them in a particular area or box if you like because that's what we do we say oh that person oh he's very um stubborn and you know maybe he's a taurus so we that's that's a natural thing to do and of course when you get to know people better then you have a more profound and deeper understanding of them

then those broad brush descriptions aren't necessarily quite so relevant. But again, it's such a natural human thing to do. If you imagine going into a brand new community and sitting around the campfire, and there's 11 people there that you don't know, the first thing you're going to do is try and get some kind of basic impression of what these people are like you know who is the mouthy one who is the leader who is the who is the mysterious one who is the musician who is the storyteller it's what we do it's absolutely what we do we we make very broad brush assumptions about people and we put them in certain categories and then as we get better that knowledge gets more refined and perhaps on often these categories aren't so relevant but it's natural and I think also we forget that when

we're very very young if you if you look at how very young children acquire language language the first part of language that they acquire in almost all cases are nouns so they are objects so you know mother father then what they will go for next is all the animals they can see young children young children typically learn the names of all sorts of animals. And the sound. Yes. Yeah. It's a very natural category to want to understand and to find words for. And I think, again, I think this is probably why so many of the astrological signs are animals. Because the animal kingdom and the animal world in all its amazing variety means a lot to us. It's really important to our cultural and our conceptual lives.

And, you know, we tell as many stories about animals as human beings almost. Right. The cow jumps over the moon. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's completely natural. Again, going back to archaeology, it's a shame that the archaeologists can't relax a bit and bring a little more, you know, educated, informed speculation into their science. But it's a shame that we can't actually bring a little bit more of a human element and tell some stories which may not be exactly true, but may be true beyond reasonable doubt. I mean, that's not unreasonable. I think we need to just make this, I think we need to make our understanding of human evolution and how we thought and acted and behaved long, long ago, when we basically have very little evidence, we need to make that more human, I think.

And as you said before, we can do that by imaginatively putting ourselves in their places and thinking, well, if they looked up in the sky, they would have seen a bull shape there and they would have made a relationship between that bull in the sky and the bulls on the plane that they were hunting. It's a completely natural thing to do. Well, and that's what I think about when I think of the indigenous people

and here in Colorado, how they followed the buffalo. I mean, they worshipped this animal and it was everything to their well-being and they followed them. If you imagine a hunter-gatherer, um often a man but by no means always a man there is plenty of evidence to show that women hunted as well in in hunter-gatherer societies hunters were very ambivalent about taking the lives of the animals that they hunted if they had animist beliefs they saw the animals on the plain, the animals in the trees, the animals in the rivers as sibling creatures. And so to take the life of even, you

know, a huge, powerful bull, that made them feel often they felt guilty about doing that thing. And when you look at very early sacrifices and sacrificial rituals there will often be a small pause or a little time period where the animal in question is about to be sacrificed or or dispatched in some way is given the opportunity to permit the hunter to do the deed. It's kind of like a two-way transaction between the hunter and the animal. And I think we seem to have lost that respect for our fellow animal creatures on this planet. This is partly why I became a vegetarian 40 years ago,

because that aspect of modern life seemed wrong to me. And I've stuck with that for 40 years ago because that aspect of modern life seemed wrong to me and I've stuck with that for 40 years it'd be nice to see more of that in in the modern society um yeah I learned that in scripture and a lot of vegetarians know this that they've taken and said well it says we have dominion over and that that actually translates as really as a helper, not permission to eat me. That's not my purpose here on Earth. And we're here to help each other, which is kind of what you just explained a little bit with that. would agree with this but I would argue that that particular ethical stance is basically to do with men and patriarchy which is a pretty extreme dangerous distressing social system that we could well do without. Patriarchy is not a norm, Patriarchy is not natural. It's an imposed social system

by an elite. All of them are men. And I think the men who wrote those words, which I agree with you are very important in our cultural life. They did that because that was their ethical stance. They wanted to control, they wanted to dominate, they wanted things their way. And I think we need to move on from that very, very dangerous, unhelpful, unethical attitude. And we need to basically have a much more female centered way of living. And you're right. There is a very close relationship with humans and animals. This is shown in the stars and in all mythology and history throughout time. Do you think the moon is fundamentally a feminine symbol? I have connected with that, yes, because of the different cycles. I feel like as a woman,

I can relate where that masculine energy is. It rises and it falls every day in the same place, but yet the woman is more mysterious and has her different sides as a woman going through like the different cycles of a woman i could relate to the different cycles of the moon i feel a lot of energy around the full moon i mean i get just i mean i could howl like a wolf, but when a new moon comes around, I'm inside. So, yeah. And I don't know if I've just spent so much time with the moon that I started to go really deep into that.

But I think, like you said, we have, we should, you know know as humans or archaeologists or scientists or whatever like all the elements are to be felt more on a deeper level yeah there are some ancient cultures that had a male moon deity yeah that might indicate that men were taking over um more and more symbolic territory as as it were. But like you, I think the moon is fundamentally a feminine symbol in so many cultures. Yeah. I've been connecting more with the sun lately, which is something that I have never done. I've spent many nights and told many secrets to the moon.

But even though I love sun, I never saw many nights and told many secrets to the moon, but I was, I mean, even though I love sun, I never saw it on that deep level until recently. And part of that was because my last name is Vav Ra, right? And so in studying Vav under the Hebrew alphabet, I did that. And then Ra being the sun. And now I've been following the sun and I feel like I needed to do that because I needed to balance that I was pushing away and so you know I feel like the balance in even between human and animal you know we should seek balance yeah balance is sanity oh yes that was yes it is

and that's what we're missing yes yes yes yeah i just i love that you wrote this book and i look forward to the moon book have you wrote books before this as well? Oh, yes, many. Yes. Gosh, I'm gonna have to go find your library. Well, I was first known as a fiction writer. I wrote, well, I wrote science fiction novels, but they weren't at all like what most people think of as science fiction. They weren't Star Trek or Star Wars. They were much more about social situations, you know, social issues, you might say. My first novel is set in the very far future. And it's set in a city which is entirely inhabited by women. So it's the last city on earth.

And there's one man in the entire book. So that was why i'm still quite well known for that particular book i think what's it called that one's called memory seed memory seed that sounds really good um i couldn't possibly comprehend he got well reviewed that's all i can say i i've written all sorts of novels um dark fantasy, steampunk, many, many different novels. It's become very hard to get published in fiction. Publishing has become very conservative and risk averse. Because I'm interested in music, I've tried to write some books about music. And because I'm interested in human history, particularly ancient human history, I started writing books like I am Taurus and

I am the moon so um it's it's basically I've had to reinvent myself to be absolutely honest with you um because it's so hard now to get um a book of fiction published even with my back catalogue um in fact I sometimes think that that's actually a hindrance that I'm too well known and what some publishers want is a brand new young thing who's fresh and exciting that's what they want to promote um so to be honest with you going into non-fiction was a bit of a bit of a step in the dark and a bit of an accident but it turned out very well good I'm glad well I i'm gonna definitely look at that book and of course you know i am taurus you know has to be on my shelf and that's i think another

thing it's like i get all of these books daily you know by pdf but when i really like a book i have to have it in my hands. Likewise. I have to smell it. I wouldn't. Yeah. Books are marvelous things. My partner, Nikki, she is a bookbinder. So she works in the local bookbinder. So they will often, members of the public will bring in old battered books and say,

can you rebind this book and make it back to what it used to be? And that's what she and the company that she works for do. So both me and my partner live in a world of books. It's a great world to be in. Books are so important. It's so important to write it down. And so are pictures. I always think

because you know I'm Gen X and I always think you know I have so many pictures and I'm so grateful for the pictures that my dad had passed down to me of his family but like we don't do that anymore we don't print pictures you know they're all on our phone I mean what happens if it all goes yeah yeah no that that is again a very strange development isn't it we we again actually me and me and my partner we do have a lot of pictures but it's becoming increasingly rare to have these things printed out they're on phones and they're in this virtual digital space that no one knows exactly where it is because it isn't really anywhere. That is strange. Yeah.

Because if everything goes, goes down, which absolutely could the likelihood that you'll be able to retrieve it. Yeah. No, you're so right. It's it's, we don't realize how ephemeral these things are in my life.

I have got actual physical copies of it's really important. Have an actual physical copy of it. Yeah. It's really, really important. Every time I like a book, that's got actual physical copies of. It's really important to have an actual physical copy of it. Yeah. It's really, really important. Every time I like a book, that's what I do. Yeah. You know, I'll hold off until I learn more. And then I'm like, yeah, this is it. I'm going to buy.

I'm going to have to buy this one physically in my hands. There's, you know, a lot of talk about, you know, that this world is changing. And I was thinking about this, and I think people should think about it, that maybe, you know, hopefully not in our lifetime, but possibly, that we may have to live like they did before without electricity. And, you know, if something happens for the solar flares, I follow them, you know, the solar storms are very bad. And if something happens and takes out, you know, satellites and, you know, how long would we survive? I feel like I really need to teach my children how to be self-sufficient and maybe even get land and kind of look differently in the future. Well, as vegetarians know a little bit more about how food is sourced

and brought to customers than perhaps most do. And maybe you and I have considered this a little bit more than most people and are vegetarians as a consequence. It would be really nice if as part of the education of young people, that understanding of what food is, where it comes from, how it's prepared and its importance to human beings is actually part of the curriculum. That would be a really nice change and an important change for exactly the reason that you've said. It should be. I mean, you should know exactly what you're eating and doing in your life. And we all should learn how to be able to do this for ourselves. That should be important. Yeah, I agree. And there's a lot of things that need to change.

I do think that the younger generations, though, they care about these things. My younger kids have taught me about things around the world I didn't know. They're much more educated when it comes to, I mean, my youngest daughter is like, we can't use straws, mom. You know, and she'll explain to me why. And so, yeah, I'm looking for them to step up and being the generation that makes a real change. Yeah. Well, let's hope so. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

And you know what? Not only is she a musician, though, she's also a tourist, too. Oh, right. Another. Yes. Yep. Yeah. And we sure do do this sometimes.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was so nice to meet you, Stephen. Thank you so very much. You're such a pleasure. Thank you very much for inviting me. It's been really lovely talking to you. Yeah.

Anytime. I can't wait till the Moon Book comes out. So let me know. I will let you know. Do you have a website that you want to have all of my listeners go check you out at? Yes. It's stephenpalmer.co.uk. Or you can just Google my name or I am Taurus and you'll get there straight away.

There's a Facebook page for I am Taurus that you can follow. So there's plenty of things out there to follow. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for listening to follow. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for listening to Sense of Soul podcast. And thanks to our special guests for joining me. If you want more of Sense of Soul, check out my website at www.mysenseofsoul.com, where you can work with me one-on-one or help support Sons of Soul Podcast by donating to my coffee fund. Thanks for listening.