Jupiter has just arrived in Taurus for a year-long stay, joining Saturn in Libra to cast a lovely energetic and expanding focus on all things Venusian and quintessentially Feminine.
The Feminine archetypes make a strong presence in my own natal chart or blueprint, in general, with Venus playing a strong role as my chart ruler and a prominently placed Venus as well.
Big surprise, right?
And yet it's been quite a journey to reconnect with that original blueprint -- like doing an archeological dig beneath layers of lead and concrete to find pearls of great price and gifts that are beyond the price of rubies!
This is a journey that many are taking, or called to start, now.
Both Taurus and Libra archetypes are ruled by Venus, one in her earth manifestation, and the other in air.
Venus at the core is about love, sensuality, and beauty, going well beyond the more commercialized focus on either.
With Venus creating through the earth element, the focus is on embodying and manifesting love, sensuality, and beauty.
In her influence through the air element, we have loving, harmonious, and beautiful thought, speech, and relating, often dressed pretty well, too!
When we're really embodying the energy of Venus, we're magnetic, and both emanating and acting in harmony with love and beauty. And more; read on.
Venus is often thought of as the Goddess of Love, along with her Greek counterpart (by her Greek name), Aphrodite.
Both are later reincarnations of an earlier Great Goddess, Inanna, associated with the movement of the planet Venus through the heavens and encompassing the wholeness of Feminine creative power.
We either live our mythology consciously or it lives us, and Venus's story is no exception, whether in the amount of joy we feel and express, or sensual connection or disconnection, the patterns of our relationships, and our truest and deepest sense of value and worth -- and thus our overall awareness and experience of abundance.
When we're truly valuing our own innate or Divine worth, and appreciating others' innate value as well, we're embodying Venus.
When we're experiencing a drought or dearth in one of these areas, or several -- and I have so been there! -- we know it's time to consciously reconnect with that energy and innate part-and-power within ourselves.
We're called to gather our Venus back.
As always, when we dive into the mythology, and then go even deeper into the roots, we find the gems that are calling to come alive in us once again (and for which our soul yearns).
Venus's Story
The mythological Venus was a sensual, vibrant, passionate, ripe, juicy, joyful free-spirit, not a 'tamed woman of Patriarchy'.
In some versions, she is 'foam-born', or born from the sea. From water, the very element of the Lunar, feeling, Feminine, 'medial' nature.
Her story is a bit of a post-patriarchal soap-opera, in that Zeus, the great Patriarch God, in an attempt to tame her wild ways, married her off to the Volcano God, Hephaestus-Vulcan, a rather serious, work-obsessed master-craftsman whose modus operendi was to produce works of craft-art so beautiful as to be worthy of Venus's attention.
It's important to understand that Hephaestus-Vulcan had his own story - one of the 'wounded Masculine'.
Deeply wounded by being completed rejected by both of his parents because he was physically lame -- a serious sin to the beautiful-body-focused Greeks! -- he was ultimately adopted and encouraged to hone his significant gifts as a master craftsman.
He was further rejected by the objects of his affection, including the Goddess Athena, which pissed him off further, aggravating that original wound of rejection, and he became even more resolute to prove his worth and value through his work.
Venus, however, is not a Goddess who likes to be ignored, or tossed the crumbs of attention left over after Hephaestus's long days at work!
Though she no doubt genuinely appreciates the beautiful creations that are the fruits of Hephaestus's work, she knows that fabulous, passionate relationships -- and a meaningful life -- require more than that.
So she sought that passion and attention elsewhere, notably through her long-running affair with the youthful, brash, fiery warrior, Mars-Ares. As the story goes, theirs was not a peaceful union, but it definitely had passion!
Venus's hubby, Hephaestus, perhaps understandably, grew jealous and angry over her affair with Mars, and conspired to catch them in the act, so he could gain the sympathy of the other Gods -- "See what she's doing to me?" -- and shame Venus into being a 'good girl' of the Patriarchy.
The other Goddesses didn't want anything to do with his scheme -- they emphathized -- but the Gods were keen to get a glimpse of the desirable Venus caught up in such a way.
So Hephaestus crafted a gold-link net and hung it above the love bed, and told Venus he was going to be away on travel.
Of course, she immediately invited Mars to join her, and as they settled in to make love, Hephaestus dropped the golden net over them, trapping them for the gallery of Gods to see.
Only the sea God Neptune experienced compassion and empathy for Venus's situation, and used his influence to have the pair freed.
In the end, not a whole lot changed. Venus went her merry way, still married to Hephaestus, still living it up with Mars, and still magnetically beautiful, free-spirited, and attracting what she desired through her deep well of Feminine power.
That Vulcan attempt to tame Venusian and Feminine power, sensuality, and creativity, didn't end, though, ultimately forcing the true Venusian-Feminine spirit underground. And they did a good job at it.
But she's back.
What's Venus trying to tell us?
If we lift the lid of the Greek and Roman mythology, in which the Feminine was already being demoted by an increasingly Patriarchal culture-focus, we find threads to her earlier, more whole and powerful presence as the Great Goddess, the wholly creative Feminine, queen of all of the realms: heaven, earth, and the underworld.
Venus's earlier roots give us clues about her prize traits of beauty, harmony, sensuality, passion, creative power, and creative manifestation.
We trace the thread from Venus to Inanna, the Sumerian Great Goddess whose 'descent into the Underworld' became a primer for initiation from innocence to wisdom.
And we find similarities to Sophia and Shakti, the primordial creatrix Goddess -- Creative Power and lifeforce -- that is the substance behind all that is created and uncreated.
Venus embodied, like Shakti embodied, is our lifeforce, the Feminine creative power likened to kundalini, that rises up and expresses through us in unique and inspired creative manifestation.
So when our lifeforce, joy, creative power, inspiration, 'beautiful relating', sensuality, sexuality, and other Feminine juju have been way too tamed, vandalized, or rendered unconscious by attempts to control, suppress, or 'shame them' out of existence, we feel Venus calling to us through our longing, our yearning.
And we have to invoke and invite her back.
Invoking Venus
Ultimately, we see that all later 'faces of the Goddess' follow the thread back to the original, multi-faceted Great Goddess Feminine, and yet if we're feeling the call to re-embody specific facets, or the creative lifeforce and inspiration, we can invoke this energy and archetype.
Here are just a few of the ways:
* The invitation. By simply extending an invitation to Venus, or declaring your intention to more fully understand and embody her energy, you start the process. As the sacred texts say, she's closer to you than your own breath; her gifts and energies are already within you (even as they are around you at the same time!).
* Symbolize. Symbols and images go right to the core of our ancestral, and Feminine, consciousness. One of my personal favorites is Leonardo DaVinci's very Venusian painting of Mary Magdalene (herself thought to be an embodiment of Sophia-Venus-Shakti). Look around and see which images speak to your soul.
* Go elemental. Remember that Venus-Aphrodite is born from the sea, from the watery, Lunar-Feminine nature. Work with water and your own feeling-sensing 'medial' nature to birth, or rebirth, Venus. See 'go all Venusian' below for more elemental hints.
* Read. Explore various perspectives on Venus, intending to get beneath the hype that was constructed to 'tame' Venus. You'll find perspectives in mythology (look for those earlier roots and follow the trail!) and in astrology, which uses these mythological archetypes as well.
* Locate and explore where Venus is located in your own blueprint (astrological natal chart). Knowing your particular 'blueprint archetypes' is a great idea, anyway. Why not start with Venus?
* Reflect, meditate, and invite dream guidance on what you're exploring, reading, or asking.
* Go all Venusian. Notice and surround yourself with beauty and reconnect to the Earth. Tend plants, put your feet on the grass and soil, walk in Nature, enjoy Venusian sensual pleasures of the senses (touch, taste, smell, sight), put flowers and candles in pretty earthen bowls filled with water, put yourself in a scented-and-flower-petaled bath, intend beautiful interactions and relating with others, refine and harmonize your thoughts, and appreciate your body -- your Venusian temple for this earth walk!
As you cultivate a renewed relationship with Venus, see what else might come to you as you invite her into greater awareness and embodiment, and follow her lead.
Venusian Blessings,
Jamie
Image Credits: Sandro Boticelli, The Birth of Venus; Herbert Draper's Aphrodite's Pearls; Tintoretto's Vulcan Suprising Venus and Mars; Leonardo DaVinci's Mary Magdalene.
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