CHRIS BRENNAN: Hi, my name is Chris Brennan
and you're listening to The Astrology Podcast. This is episode 315. And in this episode,
I'm going to be talking with Becca Tarnas about the significations and meaning
of the planet Venus in astrology. Hey Becca, welcome back to the show.
BECCA TARNAS: Thank you so much for inviting me back.
CB: Yeah, I'm excited to do this episode. This is the fourth episode in my
series on the significations of the planets, which started with the Moon and then I did the Sun and
then Mercury. And today we're finally going to do a deep dive into the significations of Venus and
some of the different astrological techniques associated with Venus. And you've seen I
think all the previous episodes, right? BT: It's a wonderful series. It was really
enjoyable to listen to each one in preparation for this and just get a sense of the different
voices you brought in to illustrate these different planetary archetypes. Yeah, well done.
CB: Yeah, thank you. For those that are just finding this series, part of the approach
is that we're going to read through a series of translations of different passages
and excerpts from some ancient astrologers and some modern astrologers to see how they talk about
Venus and what it means in astrology and we're going to use that as the jumping off point for a
discussion about the significations of Venus and developing a deeper understanding of what
that means from an astrological standpoint. So, I think that's the main thing that
I wanted to mention and introduce. Are there any other preliminaries that
we should get out of the way before we jump into our first set of passages?
BT: Well, I have to say it feels like an honor to be able to discuss Venus. I was really
excited when you invited me to do this episode. I've always had a deep love of that archetype and
the different goddesses and gods associated with Venus, so just thank you. Thank you so much.
CB: Yeah. And you've done a lecture I think not too long ago on Venus, you said, right?
BT: Focusing on Venus retrograde periods, yes. Yeah.
CB: What was that for?
BT: That was for the Association of Young Astrologers, actually.
CB: Okay, nice. That was like an AYA lecture. Is that recording available on your website?
BT: It isn't available through my website, but I think it's available through theirs.
CB: Okay, cool. So, I think that's youngastrologers.org or .com or something
like that if people want to Google that. Excellent. All right. Well, let's go ahead and
jump right into it then I think with our first set of passages just to get a starting point
for what this planet means in astrology. Our first author is the second century astrologer
Vettius Valens. Can you see the text okay here? BT: I can, yeah.
CB: Okay. So, Vettius Valens was an astrologer who lived in Egypt in the second
century. This is a translation of his text from my book. His book is called the Anthology. And
right at the very beginning of the Anthology, he outlines the significations of the planets pretty
extensively, so he's one of our best sources for understanding how the ancient Greco-Roman
astrologers understood the different planets. I'll go ahead and just read it and then
we can talk about it. So, Valens says, Venus is desire and love and signifies mother and
nurse. She makes priesthoods, public benefactors, wearing of golden ornaments, the wearing of
crowns, merriment, friendships, companionship, the acquisition of additional property, purchasing
of ornaments, reconciliations for the good, marriages, refined arts, pleasant sounds,
music making, sweet singing, beauty of form, painting, mixing of colors and embroidery, purple
dyeing and perfume making both the inventors and also the masters of these professions,
artistic or commercial works involving emeralds and precious stones, ivory working, and those who
spin gold thread, decorate with gold hair cutters, those who are fond of cleanliness and play. She
brings the past within its own bounds or degrees of the zodiacal signs and she grants the office of
market overseer, measures, weights, trades, shops, giving, receiving, laughter, rejoicing, order,
aquatic animals, and she gives assistance from royal women or relatives and secures a remarkable
reputation, especially when Venus cooperates in such matters in the birth chart. Of parts of the
body, she rules the neck, face, lips, nose and the front parts of the foot to the head, the parts
of intercourse. Of the internal parts of the body, she rules the lungs and Venus is also the
nourishing of another who's capable of receiving and of pleasure. Of substances, she rules precious
stones and multicolored adornments. Of produce, she rules the olive. She's of the nocturnal sect,
the color white and very oily in taste. So, that’s Valens’s super long passage on Venus and the
significations of Venus. What are some of the things that stand out to you there? One of the
things that's interesting is like there's some that are very obvious ones, especially
from our perspective as modern astrologers. But there's also some that stand out as a little
different than some of the ancient astrologers that people are sometimes surprised at
like the association with priesthoods, cleanliness, and other things like that or
interesting ancient associations that aren't normally mentioned as frequently in modern times.
BT: Yeah, the cleanliness really stood out to me and yet the more that I thought about it, the
ritual of readying oneself to be beautiful, to be adorned is one of cleaning oneself or perfuming.
And if we think about everything that goes into that cleansing ritual and even sweet-smelling
soaps and perfumes and so on, that would be probably even more important in a time where you
don't have modern plumbing and so on. So, I can see that connection even when it's a surprise.
CB: Yeah. And it makes a lot of sense also as the contrast like what's the opposite of cleanliness
would be like dirtiness or things being disorderly or out of order as opposed
to Venus which is very good at putting things in order or in a nice order, something
like that. So it's an interesting contrast, I guess that's a good starting point for
actually also talking about since we've done the Sun and Moon and Mercury, Venus is actually
the first of the benefic versus malefic planets and so this is the first one where
we'll start to see a lot of contrasts of one planet signifying something and that being
opposed to or contrasted with some opposite in the benefic-malefic spectrum,
especially in ancient astrology, where Venus and Jupiter were said to be the two benefic
planets or the two good doers whereas Mars and Saturn were said to be the two malefic planets
or bad doers or evil doers. And even though that distinction was not always very strictly held
because sometimes the benefics could indicate challenging things and sometimes the malefic
could indicate constructive or positive things, it was oftentimes like a good starting point for
understanding some of the basic significations and contrasts between different groups of planets.
BT: Definitely. I mean, when we read through this paragraph, there's just the sense of these are all
the nice things in life. These are the luxurious things and the beautiful things. And while the
first two significations of desire and love are one of the things that we would immediately
think of even as contemporary astrologers of what Venus is about, but moving into the more specific
expressions, it's just like a multifaceted expression of those desire, love, beauty
that carries so fully what the rest of these descriptions are. Looking at the ornaments
and the gold, wearing of golden ornaments and everything around, painting and mixing
of colors and embroidery, it's all about adornment. It's all about beauty even when it's
specific. And another one that really stood out to me was the purple dyeing because at that
time to dye something purple was the most rare of colors and the most expensive color to be able
to dye a piece of cloth and therefore, it was only reserved for royalty. So, Venus would oversee
purple dyeing as well as perfume making and so on, just each one of these you're given a rich
image of yet another expression of beauty. CB: Yeah. There was like a snail or like
a mollusk or something that was in the Mediterranean that was very special and
very rare and I think they used it so much for dyeing purple of royal garments and stuff that
eventually went extinct or something like that. BT: So many of these things that are limited
when it comes to Venus, looking at the precious stones or the diamonds, the gold, the ivory.
There's another one that might be Venusian, but we don't want to be touching that anymore.
CB: Right. And one thing I meant to share really quickly for those that are new to
astrology is just a basic graphic that shows Venus and this is the symbol for Venus or the
glyph for Venus, which is traditionally a circle with a cross directly underneath it. And in terms
of the zodiacal signs that Venus is associated with, she's said to have her domicile or
her home sign in the signs of Taurus and Libra and the two signs opposite to that are said
to be the signs of her antithesis or detriment as it's sometimes called, which are Scorpio which
is opposite to the domicile of Taurus and then Aries which is opposite to the domicile of Libra.
And then finally, the exaltation is said to be in Pisces and the sign opposite to that is said to
be the depression or the fall of Venus. That's just the basic essential dignities of the planet.
BT: With the domiciles Taurus and Libra, I was thinking about this the other day, how the time
of the year, if we're thinking within the Northern Hemisphere and a temperate climate, the time of
the year where the Sun is moving through Taurus is that middle of spring when all the blossoms are
out, where the world is coming alive with beauty. And when we think of the time when the Sun is
moving through Libra in the tropical zodiac, that's the beginning of autumn when all the leaves
are turning these brilliant, beautiful colors. And just thinking about those two moments in
the year, they’re not exactly parallel, they're not opposite each other, the
angle that they make to one another and they really are in some ways, of
course it's open for argument, the most expressively beautiful times
of year where you have these blossoms in spring where you have these colorful leaves
falling in the autumn and how appropriate those would be the times that Venus oversees.
CB: Yeah, definitely, the period in which nature is sort of the height of its beauty in some
sense as opposed to the signs opposite to the two luminaries which happen, the luminaries have
their signs in the middle or the height of the summer in the Northern Hemisphere and opposite to
that as the signs of Saturn in the winter, where everything is cold and has sort of
died at that point and at least in terms of most plant life is gone dormant.
BT: And when we look back at what Valens is saying that one of the qualities is mixing of colors
and that's what we see at those times of years. All the colors are out and present and adorning
nature. I think it's Ralph Waldo Emerson who said that nature laughs in flowers. And that in this
paragraph, the association of Venus with laughter and with rejoicing and how flowers in
some way or the autumn leaves I would add or that kind of rejoicing of nature.
CB: Yeah, and of color and rejoicing and also like play. And by extension, some of the
authors start mentioning things like games and other things that bring enjoyment or pleasure.
BT: Yeah. When we think about the relational element of Venus, when I am describing Venus,
I'll often start by saying, well, Venus relates to the heart and any relationship where
your heart is involved whether that is love or romance or friendship and friendship is mentioned
here, companionship is mentioned here, and those like games of pleasure are ones maybe not
necessarily the heart is always involved, but that there's friendship, that there's companionship,
that there's that kind of an intimacy that's present in those sorts of settings where we're
exchanging energy with others, laughter and so on. CB: Right. So, there's this almost like relational
component to Venus that's a heavy underlying theme or trend and there was a little bit of that
with Mercury, the previous planet, but it was more in the idea of transmitting information
and communication and transmitting knowledge as Mercury's being the gatekeeper between the Sun
at the center of the solar system and the rest of the planets so there's this idea of transmitting
something or transmitting information. And with Venus, which is the next inner
planet after Mercury, we also have that almost relational component in some way, but it's having
to do with other people or bringing in the other and the idea of relationships in general.
BT: And this is something I would love to hear your thoughts on this on the very first
line from Valens of Venus's desire and love and signifies mother and nurse.
And I've very much associated the mother or the maternal and I think you discussed
this in the Moon episode with the Moon, the lunar archetype. But what we can see in these sources
is that there is this connection to the mother to nurturing or caretaking that is also connected
with Venus. And of course, it takes lovemaking to become a mother, to become a parent so I can
see the connection there almost like a graduation from Venus toward the Moon to parenthood
or motherhood. But I found that association right in the first line to be really interesting.
CB: Yeah. I mean, one of the things that really comes up with Venus and especially in terms
of the traditional planets when it comes to the breakdown of the assignment of gender
to different planets in ancient astrology, it was a bit lopsided so that the two main
feminine planets that get associated with women in the ancient texts are the Moon and then
also Venus. And so, they end up having to share, I'm not sure a lot of significations,
but in between the two of them, most of the significations related to women end
up getting jammed into those two in one way or another. And I think that's a big part of it is
just that Venus in general is said to be one of the planets that signifies women in a person's
life and in a person's chart, and so one of the primary ways that that can come into play very
early in the life is either through the mother or through whoever's nursing the infant at the time.
BT: Looking at that gender role and the relationship of the different planetary
meanings to that, that's what's so fascinating about doing a study like this where
we go back to an ancient text and we look at a medieval or early modern text
or a contemporary text is that we can see the evolution of a planetary
meaning or set of meanings or an archetype and simultaneously recognize a core
of meaning there. All the way through, I think we're going to be seeing references to
love, beauty, desire, the arts, but then some of these more specific expressions will change
and that speaks to the culture, the time, this participatory relationship between that moment
and how the planets meaning would be interpreted and would have to be interpreted because that's
the culture it's coming into, so of course it means that then. But now when we read these texts,
we're almost being asked to see through them and how can we apply this without getting lost in the
literal and rather see through it symbolically and therefore apply it in a contemporary context
knowing there's been this symbolic evolution and that’s where we can really free up how we
apply these different planetary archetypes without losing that core of meaning that was
there present from the beginning, maybe even before human participation in it, we don't
necessarily know. And so, in today's context, I like to speak about if we need to bring in the
feminine or we need to bring in the masculine, I’d really like to speak about like a
Venusian masculine or a Venusian feminine and you can do the same with the
Sun and the Moon, for example, a solar feminine. What does it mean to be a
solar woman? What does it mean to be a lunar man? And yet the gift of astrology is that it gives
us these terms where we can still describe these qualities of being say relational
or receptive or nurturing or caring, but not then saying, well, that's feminine and
that's only feminine. It really gives us more nuance to how we can allow the conversation to
unfold and that's where I would love to see the language of astrology almost leap beyond the
walls of astrology, even if you're not using it in a technical astrological sense. How can we
use, oh, he's so Venusian or she's so Martian, in our everyday language? So that's
my hope how that would be able to be applied in a contemporary context.
CB: Yeah. And astrology is always partially a product of the culture in which
it's practiced and so you'll see the astrologers expressing the language of astrology through
the lens of their culture in different time periods and that's something we'll see
as we read through different passages. And I think, yeah, when you're studying older
astrological texts even going back a few decades, it's always important to look at them within that
cultural context from a historical perspective as just being a representation partially of the
times in which the astrologer lived, but then also trying to read between the lines to understand
the deeper or underlying archetypal meaning of the planet that might be more consistent throughout
and might be slightly less dependent on culture. BT: Absolutely. Yeah, it's like intuiting
to some core of meaning that in each era or through each individual astrologer even takes
on a different refraction and I recognize that I'm going to speak about Venus a little bit
differently because of my Venus placements and someone else would speak about it in a totally
different way, but we can still recognize the common Venusian element that's present there.
CB: Right. And definitely in the past few decades there have been a lot of discussions and
a lot of effort has been put towards by contemporary astrologers to look at the
planets and redefine them in terms of the current understanding and current cultural
norms in terms of things like gender and sexual orientation and gender roles and other things like
that and that's still an ongoing dialogue in the astrological community today. I mean, it's an
ongoing dialogue just in our culture in general, so of course the astrology itself is also
going to be a reflection of that and it's going to have to grow and change in different ways
to adapt to the sensibilities of modern times. So, finding a middle ground and a way to
balance understanding the historical view of Venus and other planets, especially once
you start getting into issues of things like gender is tricky, but it's just finding a balance
I guess between that versus the more contemporary views is really important.
BT: Yeah, it's exciting to be part of an evolving tradition and to see how something
so ancient is also alive and changing with us and how the language can adapt and will continue
to adapt. I think that's so important not to get overly stuck in any particular past definition of
someone said it this way this time and therefore, it's always going to be that way. And
again, just the importance of that seeing through to the symbol that lies behind it. Yeah.
CB: Yeah, definitely. And the tradition has always been growing and changing, it's never been static.
And that's sometimes a misconception that some astrologers, especially some traditional
astrologers have this idea that it’s always been this one singular thing but that's never been
true. While there have been core components that have stayed consistent during different periods
or for long spans of time once they're introduced, almost every concept or technique in astrology
was new at some point and was introduced at some point before it became like a standard idea as
part of the tradition. And sometimes even very standard concepts or ideas that we take for
granted and we think have been around forever may have been different or looked
at differently in different eras. So when it comes to Venus, one of the things
that's interesting and that might be a good segue to talk about is part of the cultural, maybe
even more than some of the other planets that I've talked about at this point in this series, some of
the cultural understanding of Venus, especially in ancient astrology was very much tied in with the
mythology associated with the goddess Aphrodite as well as some of the other goddesses that were
part of that lineage or part of that tradition in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern culture, which
is basically where Western astrology comes from. It's like we have somebody like Vettius Valens who
was living in the Greco-Roman world in the second century, the name he used when he referred
to Venus was Aphrodite. So when astrologers used to that name, that automatically would have
invoked some of the mythological and cultural associations with that goddess in ancient times.
BT: Yeah, it's interesting to look at different cultures to see who carries that expression
of the deity of love or the deity of beauty. And often it does overlap, but every so often it
doesn't. And it's true that in many pantheons, it is a feminine figure, but every so often it
isn't, and that's also just worth making note of which cultures will choose a more masculine
expression or some will have both, which I think makes a lot of sense. And that in any myth that we
invoke that expresses this Venusian quality, she or he is inevitably going to be blended with what
we might think of now as planetary archetypes, but these myths are always relational. All the stories
that are being told, the gods and goddesses don't come in isolation. And so, it's like we again
get to see different refractions of Venus depending on which culture you look at, which
particular story, even whether it's of Aphrodite or if we look to the Norse mythologies, to Freyja
as an expression or if we look to the Yoruba tradition and the Orisha Oshun as an expression
of that Venusian archetype or in the Egyptian, there's quite a few actually coming out of Egypt
that we would think of as expressions of Venus, one of them being Hathor but Isis in some ways
carries qualities of that as well several others. Same with the Vedic tradition, multiple
different gods and goddesses who have these Venusian qualities. I think the one
maybe closest to Aphrodite might be Lakshmi, but we can see Sita or even the
artistic element in Saraswathi. And then of course, there's the myth of Inanna in
the Sumerian tradition, Ishtar is another name for her that's so intimately connected to the cycles
of Venus. And then we have some male ones. I mean, even within the Greek tradition the son of
Aphrodite and Ares is Eros and this is a god of love or Plato described Eros as a daemon
of love, not quite at the same level as the gods and goddesses but more of an intermediate
being who traverses between the realm of the gods and the realm of human beings carrying love
messages, Eros which in the Roman becomes cupid. Or we have Adonis is another male figure
coming out of the Greek. So just getting to see these different figures who carry
this Venus energies, it's fascinating to know all their stories and compare them.
CB: Yeah. The last time you were on the podcast, I actually put you on the spot and asked you to
define what is an archetype and I've realized I need to stop doing that, making people define
something so broad. But this is a really good example of that in practice where part of the
concept is just that there is this concept or this archetype that exists out there perhaps
independently of Venus and what Venus signifies or what it represents in our world or in our
universe and that that concept or that archetype can manifest itself in different cultures in
very similar ways or archetypally similar ways and that's the reason why you can list off so
many goddesses in different cultures that have a similar role or a similar
meaning in those cultures even though it was developed independently, right?
BT: Exactly, it's as though this archetypal principle, which depending on your philosophical
position could be seen as transcendent, that that archetype is then manifesting
through different cultures and not just manifesting through different cultures, but being
participated in and knocked it forth, called forth into different forms and
that all of these different goddesses and gods that, let's use
the name Venus just because we need a name and that's the name of the planet that
we're using, but it's like they're all different symbolic clothing almost to allow that
transcendent principle to come to us in a particular cultural form. Because in its full
transcendence, we can't quite perceive it that it's something beyond what is really given form.
And so these different mythic expressions allow us to see a figure and recognize what animals or
what colors or fruits are sacred to her or to him. But that's all kind of a cultural clothing that
nonetheless resounds true to that transcendent archetype. And in this discussion of Venus, I do
think it's helpful to bring in not just the mythic side but also the philosophical side. That
when we look to Ancient Greece, it was the philosopher Plato who really articulated the idea
of an archetype or for him was a form or an idea, the archai, first principles to articulate
it philosophically rather than religiously or mythically. And in that articulation, we can
see exactly what we're talking about here, but for a moment may be separated from that particular
being or form without the clothing, without the humanoid guys even, but just simply for Plato,
it's the archetype or the ideal form of beauty, beauty with a capital B and that we can
recognize that archetype out in the world in all its diverse forms, whether that is in a
rose that we're looking at or the sunrise or our beloved's face or even Venus. It seems so clear
to me when we are out early in the morning or late at night and Venus is in either the morning
or evening star phase and you look at Venus and there's no question that this celestial body is
the seat of the deity of beauty and love. That diamond shining brightness of Venus, in my
mind, in my imagination, there's no question about that. And when you see her sparkling
like a diamond there, it's breathtaking, it's exquisite. No wonder that there’s very
clear association between the planetary body and this particular god or goddess and this
particular archetype of beauty and love all became associated as one.
CB: Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned that seeing Venus in the night sky because
Venus is actually the most bright planet, it appears to us if you just look at it in the
night sky and if you can see Venus at that time of the year that it's like a really bright star. It's
actually brighter than any of the other planets that can be seen with the naked eyes. That's
one of the things that stands out about Venus in terms of just the visual observation of it
and probably the starting point for its meaning in astrology is that it's this very bright
beautiful star that will either appear very briefly either early in the morning just before
sunrise or it will appear very late just after sunset in the evening in some parts of the year.
BT: I think if you brought together like a group of children, for example, to watch Venus after
sunset and you just could ask them what do you see? Give some descriptors. I imagine that you
would hear something like dazzling, shining, breathtaking. Maybe these are very articulate
children. But that first impression of seeing this particular planetary body I think really carries a
lot of the qualities that we are using when we're reading these different descriptions of what Venus
means, you can take so much of it just from the experience of gazing upon Venus in the night sky.
CB: Yeah, and I think that's really important. I'm trying to find a picture, I’m finding
a good stock picture that I can share. Actually, here's one. Let me take that picture
really quickly. Venus standing out to the naked eye and just appearing as this bright star in the
sky. Here's a little image of Venus, for example, where this must be just after sunset, so the Sun's
gone down and then all the stars start to appear in the night sky. But there's this one that's just
much brighter and stands out compared to the other stars. Isn't that what the Latin name for Venus
ends up being tied in with where it's named Lucifer I think which means like morning star?
BT: Right, Lucifer would have a loose light, the light bringer and that light-bringer just so
captivates our attention. When we see Venus there, there's this sense of what is that compared to
all the other stars? And that's very much the experience for anyone who's had the experience of
falling in love, you say, "Who is that? They stand out like that bright star against all the others
because there's some special connection there." CB: I love that. And that's a really great
point, the original Greek term for Venus besides Aphrodite which some of the attributions of the
names of the gods to the planets came a little bit later and before that they had purely descriptive
names. And in Greek, the term was Phosphorus which means literally light-bringer in Greek.
BT: Oh, that's a perfect name. And I believe that in Greece as well as I think maybe also
in Mayan culture, there were different gods ascribed particular points to the morning and the
evening star, and that the morning star was seen as more of a lover and the evening star was seen
as a warrior and a number of these different gods or goddesses of love also are gods of war
and we see how intimately connected those are, whether we're seeing that connection just within
Venus as morning and evening star or particular gods or the special connection that Venus has
to Mars whether that's mythically or even just in terms of celestial placement on either side of
the earth or in terms of the rulerships if we come back to the essential dignities and that the Venus
is in antithesis in Mars's signs and vice versa. So, they have this relationship, but it's a bit
of a contentious one too. They're opposites, but as they say, opposites attract and so we have
a very dynamic lover warrior kind of mythic relationship playing out in multiple cultures and
also in just astrological technique and system. CB: Yeah, totally. And that's super important in
that whole connection in the Greek pantheon of Aphrodite or Venus as the goddess of love and
beauty and the contrast with Ares or Mars as the god of war and it's interesting. Let's see.
Another image I want to show for the YouTube viewers or the video viewers was the famous
painting of course by Botticelli of Venus emerging from the waves as part of the mythology of
the origins of Venus and how that contrast of another way that's sometimes talked about in the
philosophical tradition between love and strife as being core archetypal principles in the world and
how that concept gets built into the astrology as you're saying through the contrast between Venus
and Mars that are the two planets that are thought to represent those two core principles.
BT: Yeah. I mean, this speaks to something larger too
that we see throughout the astrological system, whether it's looking at planets or looking at the
configurations of the signs, but how they really are all relational that they’re all of these
opposites in qualities and that it's almost as though one archetype calls in the other. If we
are too Martian, if we're too angry or violent or assertive, it's almost as though we have to
call in the love and the harmony and the grace. But at the same time, we can't just be passive or
only receptive or nothing will happen, so we need Mars to come in to make a little action happen
and I think that's why Venus and Mars are such great counterbalances to each other that there
is this kind of lover’s friction between them and that, for example, you need both the principles
of Venus and Mars for a kiss to happen because Venus is there to attract, to
allure, to be beautiful but for that moment of connection, you also need
that Martian assertion that is nonetheless attuned to be able to make that connection or for
there to be this erotic friction between the two, and I guess that makes so much sense
erotic and coming from Eros which is the child of these two gods of Aphrodite and Ares.
CB: Yeah, that makes sense. There's this more somewhat like receptive or attractive quality with
Venus whereas there's this other quality of action but it is the other side of the coin with Mars.
BT: Yeah, definitely, they really seem to balance. CB: Okay. And here is just a diagram again for
those just curious about some of the basics just in terms of the two home signs of Venus which
are Taurus and Libra being opposite to the two home signs of Mars which are Aries and Scorpio
and that just sets up a fundamental opposition and tension between those two planets as
opposites but oftentimes in a way where it's just the reverse side of the same coin in some sense.
BT: Definitely, yeah. I mean, I remember when I was learning just all those details of the zodiac
and the great joy of when you go, "Of course, Venus is opposite Mars, of course, Saturn is
opposite the Sun and opposite the Moon." It’s just the complementarity is extraordinary.
CB: Right. Yeah. And actually, going back to part of the contrasts, I think very early
in ancient astrology when it came down to some of the fundamental principles of observational
astronomy, one of the things that you'll notice and just going back to the benefic-malefic
distinction is Venus and Jupiter in the night sky appears these two bright, white twinkling
stars that are very notable and that you'll see move against the backdrop of the other
stars over a long enough period of time over several nights because the planets move of
course and the other fixed stars stay fixed. But in contrast to that, Mars appears as this
reddish darker star and Saturn appears more brown and even darker and more dim compared to the
other planets, so that's part of what I think sets up the basic contrast between the benefic and
malefic planets is that initial observational component of their appearance to the naked eye.
BT: We're really getting into the phenomenology of astrology where we're looking at what do the
actual planets look like from our perspective and how much of a story that tells. I'm sure
that this comes up often amongst astrologers, but I just always feel like it's such an important
reminder to say astrology students to actually go outside and gaze upon the stars and let them
be your first teacher before any book, before anything else, just allow the stars to speak
to you, allow the planets to speak to you and use every sense to be able to take in those
meanings and then check that against the books and the articles and the tradition and your teachers
and so on. But that importance of first experience and actual witnessing I think is really essential
and just exactly what you were describing how those appearances do give us a really clear
sense of why Venus and Jupiter are the benefics and why Mars and Saturn are the malefics.
CB: Yeah. And also just in terms of first principles and going back to first
principles and imagining that you didn't know any of this or there was no established or
pre-inherited tradition that you're just the receiver of our learning, but imagine that
you had to recreate astrology from scratch and decide what everything means, one of the
most fundamental starting points is just if something is going to mean something,
then there would need to be a second thing that would indicate its opposite. So, starting
to establish what means what, one of the great starting points is by just setting up groups of
opposing principles as just a basic fundamental building block of score or starting point.
BT: What this conversation is making me realize is how much this Venusian principle of beauty and
harmony and order is part of the development of the astrological system in general, but
also we refer to the cosmos and cosmos means ordered beauty. And so, in this speaking about
this ordered system, we inherently have to reference Venus or that Venusian principle at
least as part of all of it. It must be harmonious, it must be balanced, it must be beautiful
in order to make sense and how that speaks to the consciousness that the astrological
tradition was emerging out of, one that really privileged that, prioritized harmony and beauty.
CB: Yeah, and harmony and beauty and saw that as important property in the cosmos that
kept things together and led to coherency. Okay. Well, let's go back, see before we move
on to our next author where we jump forward several centuries just to keep us going, let's
see if there's anything else in Valens that's worth mentioning briefly before we move on.
Is there anything that stands out to you? I mean, we've got all sorts of arts
and artists, music making even. Yeah. Is there anything else that either
makes sense or anything that stands out that's odd in Valens compared to other things?
BT: As you just brought up, focusing on the arts especially on music, pleasant
sounds as opposed to say loud sounds, which we could think of as being
more Martian, sweet singing, the use of the word sweet to not just in terms
of singing but how much sweet can be applied to a lot of different elements related to Venus.
CB: Right. Harmonious is a really good Venus term, especially when contrasted with its opposite which
is something that's unharmonious or disharmonious. Is that the correct opposite to harmonious?
BT: Yeah, disharmony or discordant. CB: Discordant, that's a really good term.
BT: Yeah. So, that stood out. And also just noting some of the body parts mentioned as
well. I mean, of course, it makes sense that Venus would rule the parts of the body related
to intercourse, but also just like the face, the neck, the face, the lips, the nose. I mean,
many of those parts of the body are ones that particularly women, but that human beings adorn,
adorning the face, the lips, even adornment in the form of like, piercings, for example, or
jewelry in that way. And then I did think it was interesting the whole front part of the body from
foot to head, that Venus oversees all of that. What do you feel about the lungs? That
one stood out to me as interesting. CB: Yeah, I don't actually know. I was
thinking about that as well because I know Mercury is usually like the mouth
and the hands and things like that and sometimes things that come in pairs, but I
did think lung association in Venus in Valens was interesting, but I'm not sure symbolically
why they went for that versus something else. BT: Yeah. I know I want to run with it of like,
okay, well, the breath is moving through the lungs, the breath is obviously life giving
and that at that time breath would have been associated with spirit. And actually, okay,
now I'm really going to run metaphorically. With the lungs being where the breath comes
in which is the spirit which is the wind, we see translations of the same words kind of
meaning the same thing there, both in Greek and in Latin like spiritus or anima. But that there's
this mention in Valens, she makes priesthoods and that there's this connection to religion.
And that if we think of the breath as the spirit as the divine and the priesthood is overseeing the
divine, overseeing the relationship to the divine, mediating between that and being in the role
of devotion, which is one of love as well. I'm kind of running metaphorically with
this, but I can see how the lungs might symbolically connect to that, that kind devotion
to spirit which we actually experience with every single breath into the lungs like that
love of the gift of life really that comes in through each breath.
CB: Yeah, totally. He talks a lot about receiving and I can think also about
the idea of how you breathe in like take a deep breath and you sort of receive the air very deeply
into your body and then that process of exhaling. And there's something maybe tied in
there as well in terms of this notion of inhale versus exhale and receiving versus giving
that's tied in with some of the dynamic of Venus. BT: That's beautiful. I love that. That totally
makes sense with the receiving and the giving. And even what I'm noticing, we're talking about
breath, so of course I'm breathing a little more deeply and consciously and how it calms
us and that it brings us more into a place of harmony and one of ease and relaxation and
therefore a pleasant experience when we feel more calm through that breath in the lungs.
CB: Right. Like the calming breath, I like that or even the quickening breath of desire and other
things associated with Venus and the way that breath is intimately tied in with that as well.
BT: She took my breath away, that kind of experience. Like oh,
there goes the breath in the lungs. CB: Yeah, or breathtaking saying that somebody
is breathtaking or something like that? BT: Yeah, yeah. And Venus, whether
we're speaking of the goddess where the planet is definitely breathtaking.
CB: Yeah. And so, I mentioned very quickly before we move on, just to touch
on because you already mentioned the other goddesses, but it's like we have Aphrodite but
then Aphrodite was tied in with some earlier goddesses for Mesopotamia which were Ishtar and
Inanna and some of the mythology associated with them, which is interesting if you trace it far
back and in terms of not just things that are associated with but also the major religious
component of some of these very important and like widespread cults in the ancient world and
that maybe where some of the religious portion is coming from in ancient authors like Valens
that might be more prominent than compared to some later authors in modern times.
BT: That makes a lot of sense. Would you want to explore it all a
little, the relationship between the myth of Inanna, her descent into the underworld
and how it maps on to Venus's synodic cycle? CB: Sure, that would be a great segue
for showing the synodic cycle diagram and just talking about that, so yeah. Should we
start with the diagram or start with the myth? BT: Let's start with the myth first then
we can illustrate it with the diagram. So, I learned this from a few different sources.
My first deep exposure to the myth of Inanna was through an amazing psychological book called
Descent to the Goddess by Sylvia Brinton Pereira. And then with the connection to Venus, I actually
learned a lot of this from a really excellent lecture by the astrologer Shu Yap, and she
gave a talk at the Astrology of Awakening conference in April about this. So, I want to
credit her for really teaching me about this. But in the Sumerian tradition, the synodic
cycle of Venus maps exactly onto the myth of Inanna's descent into the underworld, and it's a
long myth, so we don't have to tell all of it. But she makes the decision to enter into the
underworld to meet her dark sister, Ereshkigal, and Ereshkigal’s husband has recently passed
away so this is why she's making this descent. And Inanna, who is known as the Queen of
Heaven, sometimes she's called the Queen of Heaven and Earth, she comes to the entrance
to the underworld adorned in her seven powers, which are symbolized by seven pieces of clothing,
one crown and a number of other, a robe and so on and those seven pieces of clothing
also correlate with the seven chakras. And in her descent into the underworld at each
gate, there's seven gates, the guardian of that gate has been given the instruction that she has
to remove one of these items, therefore giving up this particular power of hers, whether it's her
authority or with the third eye, her sight all the way down to the root. And so each of these gates
she's stripped down until she arrives naked and alone in the underworld. And here she encounters a
panel of judges as well as Ereshkigal, her sister, and they deem her to be guilty and her
punishment for this guilt is to be killed and hung on a meat hook, a visceral. And
so, she left instructions in the upper world if she didn't come back within a certain period of
time for one of her servants to come look for her, and so the servant goes seeking help from
the other deities, for a long time can't find anyone to help, finally turns to Enki who
is Inanna’s grandfather who offers help giving a resurrecting potion to two little insects who are
small enough to enter into the underworld unseen and there's a whole connection with the underworld
and of course, the invisible phase of Venus. And so, they come down and when they arrive in
the underworld, Ereshkigal is in labor pains. And in these pains, there's no one with her and so
these two little beings sit with her and they hold space for her until she has given birth and moved
through this pain. And she's so touched by their attention and their care that she says, “What can
I do? What can I offer in return?” She's never been cared for in this way. And they say, “We're
actually here for Inanna. Can we take her back up?” And so, Ereshkigal agrees, and so they give
her drops of this potion one for each of the days that she is in the underworld or in her invisible
phase and she's reborn. And that rebirth, that moment aligns with when Venus is exactly
conjunct the Sun at that Cazimi point and so then she's reborn and she's able to return. But there's
an agreement that she makes with Ereshkigal that she has to send someone in her place. And so,
when she comes home, she's feeling this weight and responsibility, who am I going to
send down into the underworld in my place? And when she comes home, she sees her husband
and her husband has not been mourning her absence, missing her. He's off having
affairs and flirtations and she's like, "Him, he's the one going down into the underworld in my
place." And yet another pairing of Venus and Mars, her husband is Mars, and so now it's time for his
descent into the underworld to take her place. And so, the phases how they align when Venus is
in the morning star phase, that is the period of Inanna’s descent into the underworld and each
conjunction of Venus to the waning crescent Moon in the morning sky, each conjunction is one of
those seven gates leading down into the underworld where she's stripping off her powers and her
adornments. And then the superior conjunction I believe is the phase when she spends
50 days in the underworld or 50 days behind the Sun or hidden, invisible. And
then once she comes out of the underworld, she's reborn at the exact conjunction and
then her ascent out of the underworld is when she becomes the evening star. And so each
of those conjunctions now to the waxing Moon is her gaining back each of her adornments
or each of her powers. Those again, the Moon, Venus conjunction symbolizes the gates. Again,
I just really want to give credit to Shu Yap for that story and that mapping because
her research on that is highly invaluable and I just found that story to be so
compelling and how it's a myth, but it also really allows you to remember how these
patterns work, these celestial patterns work and how all the alignments are timed.
CB: Yeah, it's really amazing how some of the ancient myths were tied in to astronomical
properties of different planets and were set up to evoke or to carry some of that knowledge
and to pass it on in different ways. In this instance, really talking about
the astronomical phases of Venus and how due to its relationship with the Sun, it does have
these different phases where either it emerges when it gets enough distance from the Sun in
the morning and you see it as a bright little twinkling star that rises an hour or two before
the Sun does during different parts of the year. Or alternatively, Venus in its evening star phase appears just after sunset and appears as this
bright little white twinkling star for like an hour or two just after the Sun goes down.
BT: Yeah. And that whole cycle, by the way, the synodic cycle is 584 days. And so Venus
spends 263 days or nine months in the morning star phase and then 50 days invisible in one of
those conjunctions, I think it's the superior conjunction. That makes sense because Venus
would be passing behind the Sun, and then 263 days or nine months as the evening star before
the inferior conjunction, which is very short. It's only eight days. And that's the full cycle.
CB: Right. What was the full number of days? And that's from one conjunction with the Sun to
another, that's the synodic cycle. How many days is that?
BT: 584 is the full cycle, yeah.
CB: Okay, got it. After it's like in terms of the swift moving planets, we
have the Moon that's extremely fast and it only goes around the entire zodiac in like
a month, and then we have Mercury is the next fastest planet and then after that we have Venus.
BT: Yes. And I should differentiate. Venus's orbit around the Sun is 225 days, but the synodic
cycle is 584 because that's taking into account our relative position on the earth in relationship
to the Sun and Venus and so that 584 days I guess that would be from superior conjunction
to superior conjunction so there's actually the inferior conjunction in between.
CB: Got it, right. Because due to what side of Venus that we're on since
Venus is the last inner planet, their conjunction with the Sun can take place either on the closer
side of the Sun from us or it can take place on the further side of the Sun from us. Actually,
let me show a diagram that will do a better job of illustrating that just because of the
sequence of the planets where you have the Sun at the center of the solar system, and
then you have Mercury, and then you have Venus, and then you have earth. A conjunction between
the Sun and Venus from our perspective on earth can either take place on the closer side to
earth or it can take place on the opposite side of the Sun, basically.
BT: Yeah. And when it's on the opposite side of the Sun, that superior conjunction that mythically
is when Inanna is in the underworld for those 50 days. And so that's really the core part of the
myth and this diagram or this image is really helpful too because we can picture ourselves
there on the Earth that Mercury and Venus from our perspective are never going to get that far
from the Sun and so you're never going to get a Sun-Venus opposition or a Sun-Mercury
square or something like that. They can't get out that far from our perspective.
CB: Right. Venus actually never gets more than 48° away from the Sun in
the zodiac before it turns retrograde or direct?
BT: Right, yeah. And therefore, we see that in relationship to Mercury and
Venus as well, they're never going to get more than a sextile apart. They're always
going to be in a harmonious relationship. They can't be at a hard angle to each other.
CB: Right. Yeah, there's a lot of interesting implications and, of course, that's partially
where the domiciles scheme comes from where the domiciles of Venus and Mercury basically are
adjacent to the Sun and the Moon, basically. All right. Good. Well, I think we're getting a
lot of good basics and there's some other stuff we're mentioning in passing about synodic cycles,
but maybe we can save that for later in terms of like the eight-year cycle and the pentagram
of Venus that it makes around the zodiac during the course of those successive cycles.
BT: Sounds good. Yeah, we can come back to them. CB: Okay, cool. Well, let me pull up our
next passage then which we're going to jump forward from Valens several centuries to
the ninth century astrologer Abu Ma’shar and his Great Introduction to Astrology that
was written in Arabic probably in Baghdad sometime around the middle of the ninth
century, so around let's say like 850 CE or something like that. This comes from the new
translation that just came out in the past year from Benjamin Dykes who retranslated the text
from Arabic. It's titled Abu Ma’shar: The Great Introduction to the Science of the Judgments of
the Stars. Here's a little passage. I'm going to read from Ben's translation. Or actually, do
you want to read it? I mean, we should trade off. Can you see it clearly?
BT: Sure. I think I can unless it just goes on to the next page a little bit. Okay.
CB: Yeah. It's just the left side and then just the top paragraph in the right page.
BT: Perfect. All right. As for Venus, her nature is cooling, wet, phlegmatic, temperate, a fortune.
She indicates women, the mother, younger sisters, cleanliness, clothing, ornaments, gold and
silver, graciousness towards close friends, conceit, vanity, haughtiness, boasting, the
love of wealth and entertainment, laughter, adornment, joy, delight, dancing, playing horns,
plucking the strings of the oud, weddings, perfume and good smelling things, the gentleness in
composing melodies, playing backgammon and chess, idleness, casting of restraint, going too far in
what is bad, buffoonery, occupying oneself with men and children in fornication and every male
or female fornication or male and female singer or one playing types of instruments,
and much swearing of oaths and lying, wine, honey, drinking sweet intoxicants,
having sex in various ways as well as intercourse in the rear and lesbianism. And
she indicates a love for children and a love of people and showing love towards them,
tranquility towards everyone, tolerance, generosity, kindliness, liberality, freedom,
a good character, beauty and handsomeness, ingratiation, reception, brightness, splendor,
pleasantness of speech, the feminine, flirtation, passion, ridicule, wishing good health,
strength of the body but weakness of the soul, much flesh in bodies, an abundance of
craving for everything, joy in everything, making demands for everything, being eager for
it. And she indicates different types of clean admirable crafts and works, stringing garlands and
decorating them, wearing crowns, dyes and dyers, sewing, houses of worship, virtue, adhering
to religion, performing devotions, justice, fairness, scales and measuring, a love of
markets and being in them, business and selling good smelling things. That's fantastic.
CB: Yeah. So, that is our friend Abu Ma’shar from the ninth century. And now, all of a sudden,
we're talking about a much different cultural context for astrology where we've jumped from
second century Greco-Roman society where Venus is Aphrodite and now, we're in the middle of
the ninth century in the heart of Baghdad in the newly established Islamic empire. And Abu Ma’shar
himself I think was originally like a religious scholar who got into a debate with a philosopher
Al-Kindi who he was attacking for believing in astrology, and Al-Kindi somehow was successful in
getting him to look into it himself and then Abu Ma’shar became one of the most famous astrologers
of the medieval and subsequent periods. But you do see some of that coming through I think a little
bit in the text in terms of different cultural perspectives and in terms of some of the ways
that Venus is described astrologically both in terms of some positive things and what
is viewed as positive in ninth century Islamic or Arabic society versus some of
the things that are viewed as negative. And that's actually an interesting component that
comes through a little bit more in this text than I think compared to Valens is that Abu Ma’shar
does mention some things that he associates or are like negative things that
he's associating with Venus. BT: Right, there's much more of a sense of this is
a good expression, this is a negative expression. You do get a little bit of a sense of there's a
judgement about this, there's a judgement about that. Sometimes they're right next to each other
though, so you're like, "Wait, do you think that's a bad thing or do you think that's a good
thing?" And what would we think now about that as being a good thing or being a problem?
CB: Right. And then sometimes it's like good things contrast with bad things so it's like
graciousness, close friends, then it's like conceit, vanity, haughtiness, boasting, the
love of wealth, but also of entertainment, and then it switches to positive things again,
it starts saying laughter, adornment, joy. It’s almost a little bit more nuanced here than
it was in Valens because it is acknowledging some of the potentially the downsides of Venus when
certain things that maybe in a certain context are positive but could turn negative. For example,
vanity or conceit, so let's say Venus does represent beauty and things related to beauty and
that can be fine in it of itself. But then in a certain context, it could be negative if it turns
into vanity or conceit or something like that. BT: Definitely, yeah. I love what you said that
it is a bit more of a nuanced perspective and there's more just detail in it too, whereas in
Valens we have marriage, here we have all kinds of sexual acts and dynamics and it's a recognition
that Venus rules all of these things. And so, whatever the cultural perspective on that might
have been just a recognition of Venus is here, Venus is present in all of this.
CB: Yeah. And I think that's important because one of the things I was noticing when I
was reading the Wikipedia entry for even Aphrodite where there were some things that Valens left
out that were associated with the goddess, so it's like saying Aphrodite is an ancient Greek
goddess associated with love, beauty, pleasure, passion and procreation, so it's like some of
those things are in Venus but it also mentions at one point it says she was also
the patron goddess of prostitutes and that's something that comes through in some
of the mythology that isn't as clear in Valens but some of the things that related to like Venus was
connected with sex and sexuality and all different manifestations of that in many different ways
including sex workers or other people that were connected with different manifestations of that.
BT: Yeah, now that makes a lot of sense and it is so much clear coming through in Abu Ma’shar’s
writing that… Again, if we look back at Valens, so much gets wrapped up in just saying Venus is
marriage and all kinds of things can unfold in a marriage but that particular connection to the
sexual, to bodily pleasure and so on. I thought it was interesting this strength of the body, but
weakness of the soul. That was an interesting dichotomy that's brought up there just in what
context I guess strength of the body would be in a good placement of Venus but weakness
of the soul could be present in that. CB: Yeah. There's a whole tension in ancient
astrology that…. I'm working on an episode on Hermeticism that I've been wanting to do for
a while and I'll probably do it in the next month or two, but one of the great tensions
in Hermetic texts and Gnostic texts in the ancient world was this tension between
the body versus the spirit and viewing the body and the physical incarnation as something
that's fundamentally negative and dark and that our spirit is trapped here in the physical body
and our spirit is something from somewhere else that wants to escape back into the non-earthly
realms. And this sometimes comes through I think in some traditional astrological texts as
associating and acknowledging Venus's association with the body and physical things and physical
pleasures and that being a property of life that sometimes from a religious or theological
standpoint that's viewed negatively because being attached to physical pleasures is something they
would view it as like distract you either from your religious practices or from
intellectual pursuits or what have you. BT: In this same passage, it's interesting
then that there can be that strength of the body but weakness of the soul. But then there's
this other connection to adhering to religion, for example, performing devotions and that
comes back to what we were talking about before too like performing devotions. Even the word
devotion really carries that element of love, the heart and so on, but it's a devotion to
the gods or to God or the divine or the sacred. CB: Yeah, it's almost similar to the distinction
between devotion to one's partner, one's spouse versus the opposite and I wonder if that's part
of the connection there when it's talking about devotion and things like fidelity, for example.
BT: Right. And just all the ways that we can see Venus expressed and maybe this is the
participatory element or how do we choose to engage with how Venus is coming through
in our lives? Is it going to go in this devotional direction or is it going to go more in like a
faithless or lost without love direction and the more problematic sides of that when it comes
to manipulation or lying which are different things that were mentioned in that passage.
CB: Right, yeah. Let's see. What else? Fairness, justice, some of that is interesting, especially
in terms of it mentions those actually in a line just after performing devotion so it's
like performing devotions, justice, fairness, skills and measuring, a love of markets
and being in them, and I thought that was interesting in terms of Venus's association
with Libra, which is literally the sign of the scales and perhaps some connection there.
BT: Definitely, which is informing which first, you know? Is it Venus's relationship to justice,
fairness or is it Libra’s relationship to that? And it makes sense that Venus would be the ruler.
CB: Right. All right, let's see. What else do we have? Generosity is a good one. It mentions beauty
and handsomeness. One of the interesting things, Venus is said to signify beauty. One
of the ways that that sometimes gets applied going back to very basically
traditional texts and delineations is they would say that sometimes the placement of
Venus in a birth chart is where a person will find beauty in some way or encounter the concept of
beauty in their life in some way. And I think that's what's underlying some of the delineations,
for example, that I think Ptolemy gives of Venus in the first house which is said to signify
a person's physical body and appearance, they would sometimes delineate that as what the person
then will be physically beautiful or physically attractive or striking in some way if they have
Venus on the Ascendant or something like that. BT: Definitely. Something I've actually noticed
with people who have Venus on the Ascendant is that their beauty, their illusion way of being
is the first thing that people often notice about them, which very much fits the Ascendant. But it
even can obscure seeing other parts of who they are. And it's similar to when the Sun is rising,
all we can see is the Sun on the horizon or with our discussion of Venus earlier, when you see
Venus there on the horizon and it's dark out, everything else fades away and that
quality I have noticed with individuals who have Venus at the Ascendant, you're like just
wow, here's Venus. Venus has walked into the room. And I think this can be a painful side of that for
individuals who have that placement is sometimes the rest of their chart or the rest of who they
are doesn't get seen as much and they're like, "Wait, I'm all these other things too," and that
can be applied to any planet on the Ascendant, which is thinking of it particularly with
Venus where someone's beauty might obscure their intelligence or their kindness or their
interest in horseback riding or archery or whatever it is, that the wholeness
of who they are isn't always seen. CB: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense
especially in terms of the common idea that the Ascendant is what a person sees in their first
appearance of you or what first appearances are versus let's say somebody’s Sun sign or Moon sign
representing more of who they are internally or emotionally or their Mercury placement
and how they communicate and think and things like that, but sometimes things can
get wrapped up especially in terms of superficial relationships with just first appearances.
BT: Definitely, yeah. And also with this discussion of Venus and beauty, one thing that
I really find interesting when it comes to looking at planetary aspects and so
alignments of other planets with Venus is what individuals find beautiful and how
they carry or express their individual beauty depending on whether they have Venus in
alignment with Saturn or Uranus or Neptune or how much that changes the aesthetic,
stylistic taste and expression both physically but also in terms of adornment.
CB: Yeah, like what are the aesthetic because it's such a subjective thing like what a
person finds beauty in or what a person finds to be aesthetically appealing like
different artists or artwork as a observer, where you might go to like a museum and you might
really like a certain artist’s style of painting versus you might not like another artist style of
painting and so it comes down to that subjective notion of what a person finds appealing
and that's very much tied in with I think position of a person's Venus in their birth
chart in different ways in terms of describing what appeals to them in some broader sense.
BT: Absolutely. I mean, I'm certainly guilty of that where I’ll find something beautiful
or be drawn to a particular art form or style if it reflects more of what my Venus aspects
are. And so, as someone who has Venus-Neptune, I'm really drawn to a more of a ethereal
aesthetic or something that like Art Nouveau. But then as a Venus-Saturn person, I also really
appreciate more classical form, simplicity, the pared down aesthetic, but then that's also
contradicted because Venus with Uranus and that’s like the unusual or the unexpected
or what some might find eccentric or unique and just being able to see those
different kinds of aesthetic expressions in others is so fascinating to me.
CB: Right, for sure as well as in terms of both what people like and also sometimes even just
studying the charts of different artists and seeing how their Venus placements
might describe in different ways their art styles and what they end up creating
or the way in which they manifest and bring concepts of beauty into the world in terms of what
their subjective conceptualization of beauty is. BT: Absolutely. Yeah, I find this really
fascinating when it comes to music, I mean, all of the arts, but music is great for
teaching because you can play a song and someone can immediately get an archetypal essence. And
there are so many extraordinary songs about heartbreak and most people I think go through
heartbreak in some time of life or other, but there's a very special connection
between Venus-Saturn and the heartbreak or the heartache and the bitter sweetness of that
and I think of a song like by Adele, for example, who's born with Venus-Saturn, her song Someone
Like You which she wrote right after a breakup. If you listen to that song, every single line
is just resonating with Venus-Saturn archetypal qualities and all the negation, Saturnian
negations in it, but there's this line, sometimes it lasts in love and sometimes it hurts
instead, and how much that's the Venus-Saturn experience. Or another heartbreak if we think
of Janis Joplin's Take Another Little Piece of my Heart. Now she's born with Venus-Pluto and
so there's more of that raw visceral intensity to that kind of pain and heartbreak where
she's saying, “Take a piece of my heart.” And then compare that to Joni Mitchell or
Jeff Buckley, both born with Venus-Neptune and how they both have these just exquisite
angelic voices and you can hear it in any of Joni Mitchell songs where it's like an
angel singing or Jeff Buckley, especially his cover of Hallelujah, which he’s singing to God, to
the divine, to the sacred in this angelic voice, and the person who wrote that song Leonard Cohen
was born with Venus-Neptune also. Anyway, I could keep going down that path, but thinking about
those different combinations with Venus and how it gets expressed through music, through lyrics,
through vocal tone and musical quality and style, it's all there, but what's at the core? Venus.
CB: Right, definitely. Somebody I sometimes think about when it comes to this topic is Yoko Ono, who
has a like a Venus-Saturn conjunction and Aquarius in the fifth house as the ruler of her Ascendant
actually in a night chart, and just the way that she expresses her artistic tastes in a way that
it's almost like to some people is discordant or in a way that's just very different compared
to what the standard assumptions of beauty or harmony are supposed to be.
BT: I think of that iconic image of her with John Lennon where he's curved around her in the
fetal position naked and she's dressed all in black and how the Venus-Saturn dressing all in
black. That's something that I've sometimes seen with Venus-Saturn, where it can be dressed in all
black or gray or very simple pared down colors, yeah, how she would often be dressed in black.
CB: Totally. And that brings up another thing in addition to appearance and aesthetic
and beauty but also just Venus as a general significator of relationships and sometimes the
way that either a person approaches relationships or sometimes some of the experiences that they
have at different points in relationships. for her, of course, a very important
characteristic thing in her life was that she lost the love of her life at one point when
he was murdered by like a crazy fan and having that Venus-Saturn conjunction so close there in
her birth chart and just having that experience obviously there's other stuff going on in her
chart as well, but that's a whole topic in and of itself in terms of the experience of relationships
in partnership and sometimes marriage based on the situation and condition of Venus in the birth
chart as well as other placements like the seventh house or the ruler of the seventh house.
BT: Yeah. And I feel like I should say too for those born with Venus-Saturn, that well a
correlation can be the death of the beloved which very much fits Venus-Saturn, but obviously does
not have to play out that way. It can also be the long-lasting enduring relationship or it
can be the love that comes in late in life after waiting a long time. That’s another way that I've
seen that come through. So, while there is the heartbreak that ending the loss could sometimes
quite literally the death of the beloved, there can also be that long-term enduring commitment
that's present with Venus-Saturn as well. It doesn't always have to go that way.
CB: Yeah, good point. And also, sometimes working together or finding pleasure
in work with one's partner could be a very good Venus-Saturn combination as well.
BT: Absolutely. And creating like a solid container for the relationship too, I feel like
that can really meet some of those Venus-Saturn needs of where Saturn instead of being the barrier or the boundary between, you can
see Venus-Saturn in long distance relationships, but it can also be that solid container
around a relationship that can hold it, that can be relied upon like a foundation in the
relationship. The marriage vow until death do us part is a great Venus-Saturn statement, really.
CB: Right. Yeah. And that reminds me that Saturn is exalted in Libra and has its exaltation in
Libra and that Venus in some way is able to refine and get rid of some of the less negative or
the rough around the edge’s components of Saturn. And I think that's one of the reasons why Saturn
is thought to be exalted in Libra and the two sometimes in their highest expressions can do
very well together by creating a bond that is very long lasting and permanent.
BT: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense in terms of that exaltation and how
they really can work so beautifully together even if they seem to be contradictory.
CB: Right. Let's see. So, Saturn can sometimes indicate delays, sometimes it can end things
that are long lasting. Sometimes Venus-Saturn combination can indicate like a delay in
relationships or delay in finding the one in some sense because Saturn has to do with like time and
age and one of the other funny and often mentioned Venus-Saturn combination components is sometimes
like age disparities and relationships, which is a very common and interesting manifestation to see
when Venus-Saturn is prominent in a birth chart. BT: Definitely, yeah. It's often the love of
the older partner being a consistent expression there or whether it's waiting a long time to
find a partner or falling in love with someone and waiting a long time to even be with
them. I've seen that play out whether it's six years or 10 or 30 in one case, and yet
being able to see those relationships manifest in the fullness of time and being all the richer
for the maturity in a Saturn relating to maturity that is brought to the relationship then.
CB: Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. And a lot of the ancient texts also I think
there's just something about Venus-Saturn combinations where it's sometimes
viewed as something that's challenging or difficult or what would be challenging
compared to a conventional relationship, especially in the traditional texts because
they didn't have Uranus, so sometimes Saturn would almost act as a stand in for Uranus as that
which is unconventional in some way or that would create a complication that's an obstacle but
sometimes it's a surmountable difficulty of some sort. So like age disparity, for example,
can sometimes be viewed as something that can be like a problem or an area where people
are coming at a relationship from very different perspectives if they're like, I
don't know, more than let's say Venus cycle of eight years apart or something like that,
but it's something that when they work towards perhaps it's something that can be overcome.
Or some of the ancient texts also mentioned being in a relationship with somebody who
had a disability or something like that is a very common Venus-Saturn delineation
in ancient texts for different reasons, which I always thought was interesting from a
cultural standpoint just in terms of why they were mentioning that delineation so regularly.
BT: Yeah, yeah, that just makes a lot of sense in that particular context as well where
there would be that caretaking or nurturing element in that relational dynamic.
CB: Right, yeah. All right. We've gotten into talking about planetary combinations which I
think is a really good thing and good idea and we focused on Venus-Saturn, Mercury-Venus I talked
a little bit about in the last episode on Mercury where it has to do with ways in which one could
articulate beauty which is Venus through like a Mercurial component which is usually things like
communication. And so, I cited, for example, different poets that have Venus-Mercury
conjunctions and express language or communicate in an artistic or aesthetically appealing fashion.
BT: Yeah, when I was looking into different Mercury-Venus figures, coming across different
poets makes sense, you know? It's the word as art form, the use of language in a beautiful way.
I thought it was interesting that if the birth data that we have for Shakespeare is correct, that
Shakespeare would have had a Mercury-Venus sextile and then Venus in hard aspect to all three
of the outer planets, so a conjunction with Neptune and opposition to
Uranus and a T-square with Pluto. And so, you have the Mercury-Venus, it's the
poet's aspect. But then with all three of the outer planets, you just see the breadth
and depth and complexity in heights and complexities of Shakespeare's plays coming in such
an extraordinary artist who's been so celebrated, of course, you would have to have a
complex Venus to go along with that. CB: Yeah, for sure. Or I think the
one I often cite is TS Eliot who had a Venus-Mercury conjunction in Libra right
on the Ascendant in their birth chart. All right. That's pretty straightforward I think
in terms of Venus-Mercury combinations. What are some other combinations of planets that would
be good ones to just touch on really quickly? BT: Well, I mean if we look at the Sun and the
Moon, if we dip back to our luminaries, I was looking into a number of different figures just
in my archives who have Sun-Venus conjunctions and noticed certain themes around people who just
radiate that sense of either love or beauty. Like Oprah has Sun-Venus. Jane Fonda has
Sun-Venus. Leonardo DiCaprio has Sun-Venus and Whitney Houston, Coco Chanel. I mean,
I'm just pulling some random samples that jumped out to me. But something with the Sun
is one of the expressions of the Sun is what we not just identify as, but what
we name ourselves, what we call ourselves. And so, Venus Williams is Sun-Venus.
That's so fitting that her actual name solar identity is Venus and she has a
Sun-Venus conjunction. It’s just like Freddie Mercury has a Sun-Mercury conjunction
and how that comes directly into the name. And then in terms of Moon-Venus, the archetypal
expression of Moon-Venus really tends to have, we're talking about sweetness earlier, Moon-Venus
might be the sweetest of all aspects that the expression of love and connection is coming
through the emotions in a really nurturing, connecting, caretaking way and some
of the figures who have Moon-Venus that I was thinking about like Mister Rogers has
Moon-Venus. He actually has Moon-Venus-Mercury. It's a triple conjunction and so that
sweetness in relation to children, the Moon being a symbol of children about like
love of children. But then with Mercury in there, there's the educational piece as well, really
loving communication. Oh, great, perfect. CB: It's all in Pisces, that's great.
BT: Yeah. It's all in Pisces, right. Now we can bring in the exaltation too of Venus.
CB: And he actually has Taurus rising, so Venus is the ruler of the Ascendant.
BT: Beautiful. Yeah, and the Sun there in Pisces, too. He was one person I thought of that really
carries that Moon-Venus sweetness and nurturance and care. I also thought of Paul McCartney who has
so many very sweet, almost innocent love songs, I Want to Hold Your Hand, silly little love
songs, so many of the extraordinary lyrics in the Beatles catalog. Michelle Obama was
someone else who came to mind with Moon-Venus and her focus as well on children that her time
as First Lady in the White House, that a lot of her campaigns focused on children and on food and
that's bringing in the lunar, but in relation to Venus. It’s like expressions of love as well.
CB: Yeah, that's a good one, Moon in Venus and her focus was on what you eat and especially what
we were feeding children in public schools and improving the nutritional value of public school
meals and that's a great Moon-Venus manifestation just in terms of Venus is nurturing and also
the moon is like the body and questions of what is nurturing or what is healthy and what
is going to nurture and help a person grow over the course of their early life.
BT: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Those are some of the figures I thought of with Moon-Venus and
also coming back to what we were talking about before with gender, Mister Rogers is a really
great example of like a lunar and Venusian man who's expressing that nurturance
and care for children in a way that it's both maternal and masculine at the same time
if that makes sense. Yeah. I just thought he was a great example of that.
CB: Yeah, I like that Mercury-Venus conjunction in Pisces in his chart
because he was very soft spoken, just the speaking style was very soft but also just encouraging and
helpful and that's a very good example to use of I guess partially a Pisces stellium, but also
just Mercury-Venus not just being something that's aesthetically appealing, but that’s
also soft in some way and can be helpful or supportive or nourishing.
BT: Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's see. Then we have Venus with Mars and
we obviously discussed that polarity at length. I mean, often charts that I'll
see that expressed in is where Venus as art form is brought into motion or
into action or to life through Mars. And so whether that's like dancers or singers,
musicians, performers, graceful athletes as well in terms of musicians, Bruce Springsteen is
a great example. Someone who really has that Martian edge, but it's coming through his music,
his art form or Neil Young. One of my favorite examples of this is if you're familiar at all
with the Broadway singer Idina Menzel. She's probably best known for being the voice of Elsa
in Frozen. But she has such a powerful voice and how Mars can give that loudness to the voice.
We saw in one of the description, I think it was Abu Ma’shar talking about sweet singing,
but with Venus-Mars, it's like loud, powerful, forceful singing that really carries with
strength. Yeah, she was someone who came to mind. On the athletic side, Billie Jean King the tennis
player, the woman who I'm forgetting the name of the man she beat in a match in the ‘70s, but it
was like this really breakthrough feminist moment. She has Venus-Mars and she was known to grunt on
the tennis court, I almost said the battlefield, with each time she would hit the ball. And there
was a film made a few years ago with Emma Stone playing her called Battle of the Sexes. And
even in the title of that, they show like the Venus-Mars symbols of the Battle of the Sexes on
this war between men and women playing out on the tennis court and how she was such a breakthrough
feminist symbol in that time and that she has the Venus-Mars alignment, which I'm sure no
one making the film knew. Yeah, she's another example I thought of with that dynamic.
CB: And I forgot we hadn't mentioned that but for the symbols of Venus and Mars and
that those became like in the 20th century, the generic symbols for men and women like Venus
for women and Mars for men which somebody pointed out that that association was relatively
recent on Twitter recently, although it is interesting that I'm not sure how recent it is
necessarily because Venus traditionally would have been associated with women or femininity versus
Mars being associated sometimes with men or with whatever was conceptualized as masculinity.
BT: Right. It's interesting to hear that not as a planetary glyph but just as a symbol for like a
bathroom sign or something that they would be used and now we're in a moment where that's breaking
down again. We can put Venus on all bathroom doors and we can put Mars on all bathroom doors.
CB: Yeah. It's interesting that that's one of the ways that astrology permeates our
culture still in different ways and it has influenced it sometimes in ways
that you don't initially realize are imperceptible until you start
studying astrology and realizing where some of these things come from.
BT: Yeah, absolutely. Something's lept the walls you could say.
CB: Yeah, exactly. And really quickly before I forget, there's also associations with the days
of the week and Venus is associated with Friday and I meant to mention that because you mentioned
one of the gods associated with Venus and that's where we get the name Friday from, right?
BT: Yes, Freyja, Friday. And actually, there are two Norse goddesses who both seem to
carry elements of Venus. Freyja is the one that I've most associated because she is the goddess
of love and war and she rides a chariot pulled by two cats. Inanna, by the way, her steed, her
mount is a lion, which I thought was great. But the other one in the North is Frigga. And the
Fri of Friday, I'm actually not even sure if it's from Freyja or from Frigga. But Frigga is like the
queen of the gods and so would be very different character but would be somewhat comparable
to Hera or Juno in the Greco-Roman pantheon. CB: Okay, awesome. Here's a little diagram
that just shows the seven-day week which is the traditional week of Monday, Tuesday,
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and this seven-day week actually comes from or
the reason we have a seven-day week is because each of the days was originally associated
with each of the planets and there's a whole interesting story there in terms of where
that comes from in Greco-Roman society and things like that. But for those that are not
familiar with that just for the purpose of this, Venus is the planet that's associated with Friday.
BT: I always like to think what do you think the first Monday was like? We
are implementing this now. First Monday or the first Friday to unfold.
CB: Yeah, I often wonder when the counting started because it's been going on for so
long now. This is something that's been in place for over 2,000 years and it's wild to
think about something that can be passed down that consistently for over 2,000 years now.
BT: Absolutely. And even though the names of the days of the week as we have them
translated into English I should say, that we have multiple pantheons coming
together, some are speaking to the Greek and some to the Norse. Yeah,
it's just amazing how all these different cultural threads came together.
CB: Yeah. And some of them are still clear like the Sun and Sunday of course or Saturn and
Saturday, but others have been lost or are a little bit more obscure at least in English.
BT: Yeah, yeah. Moon Monday, that one's a clear one, too.
CB: Yeah. All right. So back to our discussion. Oh, right, we were going through planetary
combinations. Maybe we should finish that and then move on to our next astrologer, next excerpt.
BT: Perfect. Well, if we leave Venus with Mars, then I guess we’re going to
look at Venus with Jupiter, and I did find that a lot of the qualities that I
would associate with a Venus-Jupiter combination, a lot of those both felt present
in these descriptions of Venus. Maybe that's just the marriage of two benefics
and how two energies come together where it's very luxurious and indulgent and the focus
on the finer things in life, the opulence. The astrologer Matthew Stelzner, I've heard him
call Venus-Jupiter the weekend in Paris aspect, and I think that's such a great description
where it's a beautiful hotel room and the bouquet of bright beautiful huge flowers
and fine art and good food and good wine and creamy sauces and rich desserts and lovely
company and so on. So that's my feeling around Venus-Jupiter.
CB: Yeah. And I think you mentioned like Beyonce as somebody with a
Venus-Jupiter conjunction although it's tied in with like a wider stellium in the sign of Libra.
BT: Yes, she has such a powerful chart and the Venus-Pluto is tighter. I mean, she is really a
Venus. Yeah, the whole stellium Mercury, Saturn, Jupiter, Venus, Pluto at the Ascendant. But
there's a quality with Venus-Jupiter where someone glows, they radiate this golden element to the
beauty and I feel like she's a figure that really carries that in an extraordinary way.
She's got the Plutonic power as well very much in the mix with the Venus-Jupiter. I
mean, Jupiter-Pluto that combination with Venus, it's such an elevated power. And the way that she
carries that being the queen of R&B like her song Brown Skin Girl which is such a celebration
of beauty and of the beauty of dark skin. If you watch the music video for that song, you
just see her Jupiter celebration and every single image in that music video is a celebration of
beauty. You can see that throughout her catalog. But that's a particular favorite of mine because
there is this really centering of a beauty that has been, here's where the Plutonic element comes
in, a beauty that has been culturally oppressed and denigrated and the song is instead
celebrating that and she's singing about her daughter's nappy curls and that
our skin is like pearls and just the Venus-Jupiter element there is just elevating
that beauty to such an extraordinary height. And so, I think that's what Venus-Jupiter is so
capable of. It's the grandeur of beauty, art, of love as well. Speaking more generally, I mean
Venus-Jupiter is the open heart and it's the kind of generosity of love that is present there.
Another figure I think of with Venus-Jupiter is if you're familiar with the song Higher Love that
was originally written by Steve Winwood, he’s Moon-Venus with Jupiter and Neptune, and that idea
of higher love like searching for a higher love you get the transcendence of the Venus-Neptune
but you also get that expansion, a different kind of Higher Love with the Venus-Jupiter and he has
both. And the song was, we want to dip into some Venus-Neptune here too, the song was covered
by Whitney Houston who is a Sun-Venus figure, but she's also Venus-Neptune. And so, she
sings her version of Higher Love which has a different quality to it for sure than the
original by Steve Winwood, but you see in both that they are carrying this Venus-Neptune, this
sense of a transcendence or sacred or divine love in their portrayals of the song. And just
to take it one layer further, there is a remix version that came out in 2019 remixed
by the house DJ Kygo who has Venus-Jupiter, and you hear the Venus-Jupiter in a lot of
his music. He's also Uranus-Neptune so there's that dazzling element there. But there's a very
uplifting quality to how he creates his music and I think that fits the Venus-Jupiter as
well. Like you feel happy, you feel joyful, it's upbeat. So he does this great remix of
Whitney Houston singing Higher Love. And so, putting it all together, her voice is carrying
the Venus-Neptune, his remix is carrying the Venus-Jupiter and that all adds back up to
Steve Winwood’s natal of Venus-Jupiter-Neptune, who originally wrote the song. I just loved seeing
that chain of archetypal patterns around that one song. I also just really love that one song.
CB: Yeah. I wish in episodes like this, I could play like an excerpt from it because that
would be nice to hear it sometimes and I know sometimes that's a good way to connect with some
of these things in terms of music is to actually hear it and have that visceral experience.
BT: Well, maybe we can recommend the different songs that have been mentioned unless I can
send the listeners and the viewers off to watch or listen to these various songs after to
get a more encompassing musical visual experience, whether it's the Beyonce song or this remix
of Higher Love or some of the others that we mentioned in Venus-Saturn or Venus-Pluto.
CB: Yeah. In Venus-Jupiter, the two benefics is traditionally viewed as like
a positive or a lucky aspect, lucky in different ways. One of
the ways that that's sometimes been reinterpreted or pointed out in modern times
just thinking back to your first example of that about like the hotel room, one of the
downsides can be like overindulgence is sometimes stated to be a potential downfall with Venus
or a potential challenging point where it can have negative manifestations and that was
one of the things that we started to see I think a little bit of in Abu Ma’shar.
BT: Absolutely. Overindulgence, I'm spending too much money can definitely
be an issue there or coveting things that you can't maybe afford or don't really need
where that Jupiterian side becomes too much. Whenever either I have a personal transit of
Venus-Jupiter or it's in the world transits, I always find that I'm like, "Oh,
how did I just spend all that money? All right. There's that alignment."
CB: Right. Or that makes me think also of being overly generous, for example, let’s say.
BT: Yeah, yeah, that's another good example. Overly generous and then suddenly you realize
you can't sustain that, the bubble bursts. CB: Okay, so that's Venus-Jupiter, Venus-Saturn
we've talked about and that's an interesting contrast, of course, because Saturn is the
opposite of Jupiter in many ways and so that could be the other side of that which would be
like being overly, let's say, stingy could be like a Venus-Saturn downfall type component.
BT: Certainly, yeah, yeah, where it's like the scrooge figure of withholding the gift or
withholding the money owed or something like that. CB: Right. Whereas maybe the positive
manifestation or more constructive would be getting the thing after you've completed
the task or something like that. BT: Totally. Or something of value because Venus
relates to what we value, something of value that endures through time. I've seen Venus-Saturn
individuals will be drawn toward beautiful things that are old like antiques or family
heirlooms, something that's been passed down, maybe not having very much in the home. The Marie
Kondo is a great example of Venus-Saturn stripping things away so you only have what gives you joy.
CB: Yeah, so aesthetic beauty through simplicity or through taking things
down to just the bare essentials. BT: And then really taking care of those
essentials or really making sure those essentials are beautiful and practical. That
feels like a very Venus-Saturn dynamic, too. CB: Yeah, so form and function as to components.
I was thinking about that also when you're mentioning Mars because you were talking about
how does it look, but also what does it do and that notion of doing is more of a Mars thing.
BT: Right, absolutely. How do you put that into action? How do you put that into motion? For sure.
CB: Right. Okay. We're getting to some really good Venus-Saturn stuff. I'm not sure if
there's anything else to mention there before we move on to the next combinations.
BT: Well, I think because we naturally dove into this by talking about Venus-Saturn, maybe it is Saturn's nature, isn't it? To either
be cut off short or to go on way too long about it taking too much time.
CB: Okay. Let's see, so Venus-Uranus combinations you mentioned in passing
but sometimes Uranus can be like that which is unique or sort of eccentric or avant-garde.
So Venus-Uranus combinations can relate to that in terms of a person's aesthetic interests.
BT: Absolutely. In terms of contemporary artists or musicians, someone who comes to mind for me is
Lady Gaga and how much she has really experimented with her clothing, with her style and that she
takes eccentric to the edge of unusual, and whether it's showing up in a meat dress or in
just something... Venus-Uranus is an expression of beauty or style or taste that has leaped beyond
what you could even conceive of someone would create or do. There can be this kind of dazzling
side of it as well with Venus-Uranus where it's unexpected or sudden. Katy Perry's another
example of a Venus-Uranus person who's brought like a lot of unusual style into her performances
or into her videos, even like her song Firework, which came out about 10 years ago. Then she
performed again at the US inauguration this year, where the firework is this kind of Uranian
bursting, but it's beautiful. It is an art form and her song, in the original video of it, there's
actually fireworks bursting forth from the heart. There's something orgasmic about it as well, which
I think fits the Venusian piece here, too. Yeah, she's another one with an extraordinary stellium.
CB: Yeah. Well, Katy Perry is my time twin cause she was born like a week before me. BT: Oh, wow.
CB: So yeah, in another life I always joke I could have been Katy Perry
and it's like a recurring joke on the podcast. We'll see what happens in the next life, but it's
also interesting like her first song, I remember when she first got really big just in terms of
that Venus-Uranus conjunction. But it was for that song, it was like 2008 or something like
that, but it was for the song, I kissed a girl and I liked it, which at the time was kind of
somewhat edgy, especially cause she was coming from being a Christian singer and it was like
2008. Even presidents like Obama and Biden at the time in the 2008 election were officially
against same sex marriage and would only change their minds publicly four years later during the
2012 election. So it's interesting seeing somebody like her initially become very well-known through
expressing a different take on relationships that let's say went against the grain in what
was the established norm up to that point. BT: Yeah. Wow, we really have come far in the
Uranus-Pluto era, haven't we? What a accelerated human evolution has taken place, it's amazing.
CB: Well, and that's actually an issue even when it comes to some astrological texts that
are a few decades old, is that sometimes there's a whole discussion I think I had with
Christopher Renstrom in very early episode of The Astrology Podcast, which is that some astrological
texts from the '60s and '70s associated Uranus and like a Venus-Uranus aspects with
same sex relationships. But we had a whole discussion about whether that was like an
inherent property or if it was just because Venus-Uranus aspects are supposed to
represent something that's different compared to whatever the cultural norm is at the
time and whether that would continue to be true, that that would be true or whether that
would only be true contextually like 40 or 50 years ago or something like that, but
that it sort of ceases to be as relevant as society sort of grows and changes.
BT: I mean, that's so relevant to Uranus placements in general because they seem to express
through whatever is going to be cutting edge for the culture at that time. So yeah, I can see how
that would be valid in that time but no longer necessarily being applicable. Now Venus-Uranus,
the baby born now with Venus-Uranus, that's going to be expressed totally differently.
But I'm sure they will find how to love in a way that nobody expected or how to
express their beauty or their style in a way that is different than ever came through before.
CB: Right, or uniqueness is like another good term for Uranus and Venus-Uranus aspects and there's
something being unique in some way about not just the aesthetics but also
relationships in a person's life. BT: Absolutely. Yeah.
CB: Uranus also speeds things up and it can be sometimes very quick and very unstable.
I think Uranus sometimes has a reputation for, and sometimes I know Venus-Uranus combinations in
modern astrology can have a reputation for things that spring up very quickly. But sometimes
don't have as much long-term staying power as let's say like a Venus-Saturn aspect.
BT: Right. Yeah, with Venus-Uranus and relationship you know, if someone is in a
long-term committed relationship and has Venus-Uranus, there can often be the need for
just new kinds of experiences or excitement to be shared within the relationship so that things
don't get stale. Routine within relationship can be very dull or very boring for the Venus-Uranus
person. So being able to adventure together, being able to do different things and try new things,
whether that's sexually or creatively or in terms of travel or having more independence, more
freedom within the relationship whether that's from the relationship or within the
relationship obviously is going to depend on that particular person and
their relational dynamics. But yeah, really recognizing that that's an aspect
that doesn't necessarily want to be confined or isn't comfortable with that in a relationship.
CB: Yeah. That's a great the desire for freedom and freedom of movement in relationships, whatever
that means is relative to that person or societal norms or whatever that means for that person that
just being sort of tantamount to them is just the notion of freedom in their relationships.
BT: Absolutely. Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense.
CB: Okay, great. All right, I think that's good for Venus-Uranus. Venus-Neptune,
I know you mentioned briefly in passing already. BT: Yeah, Venus-Neptune that aesthetic or way of
relating, it is very much the romantic idealist and that there's a sacredness, I think that
can be brought in to an understanding of love or an understanding of romance. It's like
a longing for the fairy tale romance or the idealized lover beloved. And with that, some
of the shadow side of Neptune can be illusion or delusion, confusion, where you can project an
ideal, where you can project your own soul or the divine onto the beloved which can sometimes
be devastating, shattering for the Venus-Neptune person going through that experience.
CB: Right, so idealizing a person, but maybe prematurely and not seeing them for what
they are and then when that illusion is shattered, there being a sense of not taking it very well.
BT: Yes, exactly like having to see the human flaws of the beloved. I think it can go the
other way too, where the Venus-Neptune person might be more likely to merge or flow into being
the ideal of the person they're with and so then they're not seeing either necessarily.
Then there's this recognition of maybe having diluted themselves or diluted the
other in order to fit this perfect exquisite angelic image. That's kind of jumping in with some
of the shadow side, but I mean, it also can be a kind of love that we're speaking about with
a song like a higher love, a transcendent love, bringing in the sacred, the religious, the
spiritual into relationship and seeing that as kind of its highest value aesthetically. I
mean, this really can come through in terms of ethereal or other worldly or transcendent quality.
One of my favorite examples of a Venus-Neptune person as J.R.R. Tolkien the Lord of the Rings
and you can see the Venus-Neptune expressed in in the elves, for example. He has it in this
beautiful grand trine with the Neptune-Pluto conjunction at the top, that very rare
conjunction, and then grand trine to Saturn. He was someone being a Saturn who waited agonizingly
for the woman that he loved and then they were together up until her death and he passed just
two years later. But he had this very mythic view of her, which is more of the Venus-Neptune
and you see that in the romances in his stories, which interestingly for a Venus-Pluto person,
they're not very visceral or he's kind of known for not having sex or anything like that in his
stories. But you get more of the Venus-Neptune kind of transcendent love, sacred love expressed
in his stories, but very much that aesthetic too, anyone who's connected to the world of middle
earth. And especially the Elven Realms, that's Venus-Neptune, or a fairy tale aesthetic
where it's like fairies, mermaids, sylphs, nymphs, butterflies, that all kind of carries that Venus-Neptune element, I think.
CB: Yeah. So Venus-Neptune has more of an idealistic or sometimes spiritual or
transcendent quality. That's really funny point cause he has a very close Venus-Neptune trine in
this chart between Venus at nine, Aquarius versus Neptune at six, Gemini. But that's a
really funny contrast cause that is commented on a lot recently, especially in
contrast with more recent fantasy writers like George Martin and the Game of Thrones
and being very much more focused on more, let's say Venus-Mars type
writing of sex and sexuality and that being much more front and center for
the focus versus Venus-Neptune, which is much more the transcendent non-material quality.
BT: They're really opposites there where Tolkien has the grand trine with Venus-Saturn. Saturn
also kind of more the conservative view on it, Venus, Saturn, Neptune, and Pluto there as well.
He certainly brings the plutonic in just in other forms throughout the Lord of the Rings, where
it's very much showing up in terms of the mythic expression of the dark lord and all of that. Could
talk forever about that since that's my area of expertise, but contrasting Tolkien to Martin who
has a Venus, Mars, Pluto T-square, I believe. CB: Yes. So it's like he's actually Taurus rising,
so Venus is actually really in the Ascendant, but it's conjunct Pluto and it's a very closely
square Mars in Scorpio, which is at 11 degrees of Scorpio squaring Venus at 12 Leo.
BT: So, not a T-square, but yeah, Venus-Pluto conjunction square Mars,
totally see that in his style of writing. And then of course the films or the
series that was made based on that, quite a contrast for sure.
CB: Yeah, all right. So let's see. So that's Venus-Neptune,
and also just Venus-Neptune is being a tremendous wealth of creativity and the ability to
create entire worlds. Yeah, I think that's another good manifestation of Venus-Neptune and
to bring something other worldly or transcendent into this world through creative and artistic
expression as a really core Venus-Neptune concept. BT: Absolutely. I mean, Neptune as imagination
itself or the idea of an imaginal realm as a kind of intermediate or
transcendent realm that we can experience not physically, not in a tangible way, but through
meditative practices or through spiritual or religious practices that can take us to those
places. And then art Venus as art being the translator of those visions, those dreams, those
fantasies into this realm in an exquisite form. Another example of a Venus-Neptune person,
actually, this kind of covers several of our different combinations is the romantic poet, John
Keats. He has a stellium of Sun, Mercury, Venus, Neptune and he said in one of his letters,
there's holiness to the heart's affections and that is Venus-Neptune. There's the holiness
to the heart's affections. And also on his tombstone it was written the words, “Here lies one
whose name is as writ in water, and you can see the Sun, the reference to the name again Mercury
that writ, but as in water that the Neptunian ephemeral just passes by, fades back into the
all, the everything, the oneness that Neptune is. CB: I love that. All right and the
very last combination that we haven't touched on is Venus-Pluto combinations.
BT: Probably my favorite example of, I mentioned Janis Joplin, you know, take another
little piece of my heart. That song, by the way, she didn't write that was written by Erma
Franklin, the older sister of Aretha Franklin. Erma Franklin also has Venus-Pluto. So the writer
of the song and then the most famous singer of the song both have Venus-Pluto.
CB: Wait, Aretha does? BT: Erma Franklin, her older sister,
has Venus-Pluto, and she wrote that song which Janis Joplin sang. But probably my favorite
example of Venus-Pluto is Frida Kahlo. And she has Venus-Pluto square to Saturn. And seeing
it through her art which... Venus-Pluto, it's intense, it's extreme, it's raw, it's visceral,
but it's also beautiful. It's also artistic. Like Venus with Mars, Venus with Pluto I think
really carries that deeply erotic expression. She had such an intense dynamic relationship with
Diego Rivera and both artists, both heartbreakers and both having relationships, affairs outside
their marriage deeply intense dynamics, I think really fits the Venus-Pluto element. And
then how she painted her pain and experience, this speaks to the Venus-Saturn as well, you
know, physical pain that she was in kind of being confined into her body after the bus
accident she was in as a young woman. But yeah, I mean, just when we sit and
look at her artwork, which is often so just exposing and raw and visceral,
there's one painting of her... She painted a number of paintings around her
miscarriage, and I think there's one also, if I'm remembering correctly for birthing herself and
just that the experience of birth, the cycles of birth, sex, and death, the death rebirth mystery.
These are all expressions of Pluto and putting that into art finding the beauty of that even when
that beauty is raw and messy and sometimes even like disgusting biological, that's very much I
think a Venus-Pluto expression. But it's so deep, it's so kind of primal love that cuts to the core.
CB: Yeah. And just intensity and Venus already being about desire and attraction and Pluto just
taking whatever it touches to the utmost extreme, which can be like in, well, let's say, positive
manifestation in like literature could be like Romeo and Juliet type situation where
you're just like willing to die for a person in, let's say, a romantic sense of just
being willing to take things to that extreme. But then also the negative manifestation
can sometimes be something similar in terms of taking things too extreme or the
obsessive or sort of compulsive component, which can sometimes manifest in relationships
in a more let's say negative way of being overly obsessed or unwilling to let go in some way.
BT: Yeah. Absolutely. The possessive element that Pluto could bring in, or that as you
said, obsessive expression as well definitely, there can certainly be problematic sides
of Venus-Pluto. And there can be such deep, extraordinary transformative
sides when it's held in a container, that mutual transformation through love, that
impulse to go really deep with another person. CB: Right, perfect. All right, so let's go ahead
and jump into our next set of passages and our next excerpt. The last one was from the ninth
century astrologer Abu Ma’shar, but now we're going to jump forward several centuries to the
first major textbook on astrology that was written in English in England in the year 1647. And
that's William Lily's book, Christian Astrology. So in book one, he has some basics on the
significations of the planets. And interestingly, it's structured a little bit better because he
talks about the general nature of Venus, but then also talks about people signified and what
Venus indicates when it's well-placed in the chart versus what it indicates when it's
poorly placed. So we start to get even more nuances than some of the previous texts
introduced. All right, so let me share the passage and do you want to go ahead and read this one?
BT: Gladly. All right, so Venus nature, feminine, nocturnal, temperately cold and moist, the
lesser fortune, author of mirth and jollity, people signified are musicians, gamestars, silk
men, mercers, linen drapers, painters, jewelers, players, lapidaries, embroiderers,
women tailors, wives, mothers, virgins, choristers, fiddlers, pipers.
When joined with the Moon, singers, perfumers, seamesters, picture drawers,
gravers, upholsters, limners, glovers, all as sell those commodities which adorn women either in
body as clothes or in face as complexion waters, manners when well dignified. Venus signifies a
quiet man, not given to law, quarrel or wrangling, not a vitious, pleasant, neat and spruce, loving
mirth in his words and actions, clean in apparel, rather drinking much than gluttonous, prone
to venery, often entangled in love matters, zealous in their affections, musical, delighting
in baths and all honest merry meetings or masks and stage plays, easy of belief and not given
to labor or taking any pains, a company keeper, cheerful, nothing mistrustful, a right virtuous
man or woman often had in some jealousy yet no cause for it. Manners when badly placed, when
Venus is ill placed, then the man is riotous, expensive, wholly given to looseness and lewd
companies of women, not regarding his reputation, coveting unlawful beds, incestuous, an adulterer,
fanatical, a mere skipjack of no faith, no repute, no credit, spending his means in ill houses,
taverns and amongst scandalous loose people, a mean lazy companion, not careful of the
things of this life or anything religious, a mere atheist and natural man.
CB: Nice. I love it. So that is-- BT: It’s great.
CB: We are now firmly in like 17th century England at this point.
BT: That's fantastic. I learned a lot of words from these passages.
CB: Okay. Well, please inform me because I am not... What is a limner? Do you have any idea?
BT: A limner is someone who- CB: Google this?
BT: I looked this up the other day.
CB: So it’s a painter, especially of portraits or miniatures.
BT: Yes. Yeah, so that one definitely surprised me. The lapidary, lap comes from lapis meaning
if you think of like the lapis philosophorum, the philosopher's stone is someone who works
with stones or gems, carving them. Let's see. CB: Yeah. I hesitate to like
Google all of these live. I don't know what a skipjack is, for example.
BT: I think a skipjack is just someone who can't be relied on. They skip out on being there.
CB: Okay, that makes sense. BT: Let's see, mercer, it's between silk
men and linen drapers. It's someone who sells fabrics. Let's see what else we have.
Chorister, someone who sings or leads a choir and a seamster is just simply
an archaic form of seamster. CB: Oh yeah, like a seamstress.
BT: Exactly. A graver, I figured it was like an engraver, but I actually didn't look that one up.
CB: Yeah, probably engraver because it's right in between it's like seamstress, picture
drawers, gravers and then upholsters. BT: Right. Glover, I mean, that makes
sense, someone who's making gloves. And let's see, the manners when well dignified
saying not vitious, meaning they're not cruel or it's similar to vicious, but
I guess it's actually a different word, probably is what gave birth to our word vicious.
CB: Okay. Something like that. [inaudible 2.26.51] oh, not vicious. Okay. It's
a fancy spelling of vicious. So it's just the opposite of opposite of being vicious. Yeah.
BT: Right. CB: Got it, that makes sense cause it's in
between like pleasant and neat and spruce. BT: Right, and then I thought that was so
interesting, rather drinking much than glutinous, which made me wonder if that would be contrasted
with Jupiter where the gluttonous might be more of a Jupiterian fault where drinking
too much is more of a neuson fault. CB: And that last one actually going
back, I was just thinking of a good term. One of the things that he's saying here is that
Venus, one of the things that does actually come up is that Venus is polite and Venus would be like
a person with a prominent Venus where politeness or let's say decorum would be sort of important
to them or would be more front and center, as opposed to the opposite. If you think of
somebody, let's say, it's like a prominent Mars or something, then politeness is usually like one
of the last things that they're sort of thinking about or sometimes like the impolite person says
the first thing that comes to mind, even if it's not a nice thing to say or something like that.
BT: Right. Yes. Now that makes perfect sense. You know, we can think of it like
with Mercury-Venus, for example, can be the honeyed tongue or the silver
tongue depending on whether you're just kind of being kind or sweet to someone or the
silver tongue being more maybe manipulative in relationship to someone like, "Oh,
we can be very harmonious and pleasant," but maybe it's actually not to the best
interest of the person you're talking to. CB: Right. Or a Mercury-Venus can also
be like clever or have a way with words, whereas a Mercury-Mars might be a
different type of humor could be crudeness like saying something crude would be more
of a Mars type approach aesthetically. BT: Totally. Yeah. That makes sense.
CB: All right. Let's see back to this. So I mean, one of the things that's
interesting here, of course, that maybe Lily is spelling out a little bit more that
might've been a little bit more implicit is he's making a distinction instead of just
putting them all together in a single paragraph of when Venus is, he says, well dignified, which
could mean a number of different things. But let's just say generically well-placed or prominent in
some way versus when the planet is badly placed or is afflicted in some way in terms of how the
expression of the planet is sort of experienced or how it manifests in a person's life. This
just going back to the notion that different Venus placements, depending on the condition
of Venus in the chart are going to manifest in different ways different parts of the archetype.
BT: Yeah, absolutely. I really appreciate the kind of separating out that he's done here in
the manners when badly placed are definitely amusing, I guess you could say to read.
CB: Yeah. One of the things that's funny is that the religious component, I didn't realize
the religious component kind of carried through a little bit, all the way into 17th century
astrology in Lily, because he contrasts, in the negative ones, he starts talking about
when Venus is poorly placed the person being an atheist or being not religious in some way.
BT: Yeah. It is really interesting how that keeps being a consistent theme and how maybe
in connecting it to some of these really core themes of Venus, like love or devotion as we've
been talking about that that's where religious expression is such a… It is an expression of
love, a love for God or a love of the divine. And so not having that would lead one then to
be an atheist or a natural man, as said here. CB: Yeah. And it's interesting, at least in
modern Astrology, I think we tend to associate Jupiter more with religion and one's religious
belief or philosophy and it's interesting just seeing more of the religious component in some
of the older traditional texts with Venus. BT: Absolutely. Yeah. That was an
eye-opening one for me definitely. CB: Let's see the right or virtuous man or woman
and that issue. That's really interesting and tricky component of some of the traditional taxes,
the notion of virtue and that which is virtuous and whatever societaly counts for virtuous
conduct as opposed to essentially the opposite. BT: Well, here we're getting into one of the
Socratic dialogues that Plato wrote out where, you know, how do you identify virtue? What is
virtue? What is a virtuous person? So it's a conversation that's been had for a long time.
CB: Right. All right. Let's see. Is there anything else that's new or worth dwelling on
before we move on to some more recent or more modern astrological authors? [2.32.20]
BT: Well, I do find interesting the masks and stage plays. It's another art form or
performance being brought in here that we've seen a lot of emphasis on music and painting. And of
course, clothing, so much of a focus on clothing and the people signified silk men, mercers, linen
drapers, but I thought that was interesting with masks and stage plays players in the people
signified players then would have referred to what we would call as actors now. And
so the performative element of Venus, yeah, I find that quite interesting.
CB: Yeah, definitely. And one other mentions perfumers, which I
thought was interesting, cause that came up in the last two, the notion of that which smells
good or like good smelling things. And that being contrast of course with the opposite,
which is like bad smelling things. And again, just benefic, malefic contrast of like Venus
being good smelling things in perfumes versus Mars or Saturn indicating bad smelling things.
BT: Perfume, it's the original love potion. So it makes sense in this placement and also that
mention later on delighting and baths and how that connected to cleanliness and the other ones.
CB: Right. Yeah. All right, I like that. All right, I think then we are now going to
transition into 20th century astrologers. One of the earliest of which that I wanted to
mention that I've been using for this entire series, cuz I've just been using the same authors
for the entire series is Reinhold Ebertin and his book The Combination of Stellar
Influences, which was published in 1940 in German originally. But this is from a
English translation published by the AFA that ended up being very influential and influenced
a number of later 20th century authors. That's one of the reasons I wanted to mention it.
BT: It was one of my first astrological texts that I had.
CB: Okay. BT: Yeah.
CB: Nice. When did you start with it? BT: I started with it in 2010 was the beginning
of my seriously getting into astrology. And my dad was the one who turned me toward it and so this
was one of his big texts that influenced him. And so it was on the, you must have this list.
CB: Yeah. Ebertin was hugely influential, especially for a number of like English or English
speaking authors in the second half of the 20th century. And I know both your father, as well
as Rob Hand and a number of other astrologers who were very influenced by it.
BT: It's so concise. You just pop it in your pocket, you're set
CB: Yeah, exactly. You really can't beat that, it is not wordy. I think definitely that's
a pro of this book. So he breaks it into different categories. There's four different
categories. One of them at the start, it just says the principle of Venus is love
and art. For psychological correspondences, positive ones, which are physical attraction,
feeling, a sense of harmony, beauty and art, a positive outlook or attitude towards life. Then
the negative psychological correspondences are sexual aberration, sentimentality, a want of
taste, heedlessness and vice. Then biological correspondence are glanular products, kidneys,
and veins, and then sociological correspondence intellectual, a young girl or maiden. Actually,
I wonder if that's a typo, but that's a typo. BT: It’s maybe handover for Mercury.
CB: Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Sociological correspondence, a young
girl or maiden sweetheart, or mistress, people who are connected with centers of art or
centers of entertainment. So that is definitely more concise than our last three authors.
BT: You could just take all of upper teams categories and then take all of the previous
authors and divide up what they've said and just put them into all of his categories, very
neatly. And with the principal just love and art, it really does in some ways kind of boil
down to that love and art or love and beauty. Yeah, it's so wonderfully clear.
CB: Yeah, definitely. I thought it was funny, interesting. Sentimentality is a negative
one, like being overly sentimental is kind of interesting to think about as a negative trait.
BT: Yeah, absolutely. There's like a saccharin quality that
could be a negative Venus expression. Like we've been talking about sweetness, but when sweet
becomes a little too much and like, what is that? CB: Right or like movies where
they're trying too hard to pull on some sort of sentimentality or something
like that, but it's not really working or they're not doing it very well and not like a genuine way.
BT: Absolutely. You know, in films where it's the, as we call it, the fairytale ending where you're
like okay, well, what happens after the kiss or after the wedding? Well, then there's the
rest of life. That's why we need a whole pantheon of archetypes to help us understand them.
CB: Yeah, and I like the next one as well, a want of taste. So tastelessness or saying
like the other side we hadn't necessarily talked about because it's a little tricky because
obviously that's very subjective, but what is tasteful versus what is tasteless. And
if you can create a category like that you know, positive versus
negative manifestations of taste. BT: Yeah. I mean, it's as subjective as
what do we each find beautiful or what do we each find attractive. Taste is subjective.
CB: Right. And then finally vice which nicely kind of summarizes a bunch of the individual
significations and some of the number of the other earlier traditional authors were
mentioning. But again, coming down to two issues or questions of like, what is a
vice or what are vices or like indulgences and what is overindulgence in something versus
what is an appropriate level of indulgence? BT: Yeah, absolutely [inaudible] really fitting.
CB: Yeah. All right. Well actually, let me mention something really quickly in
connection with that, which would be gambling, for example. So let's say there's a positive,
let's say just hypothetically manifestation of gambling occasionally or something like that. As
let's say a game and something done for enjoyment versus let's say there's unhealthy addiction to
gambling where it's something that's taking over, like ruining a person's life or something like
that. As a modern day, let's say, example of a vice, where there's not too much of a judgment
call that's being put on that, but it's more just something that's either done for
enjoyment or something that's done in a way that the person doesn't even
enjoy it anymore, but they're just doing it almost, let's say compulsively.
BT: Definitely. That makes me think of the contrast you brought in going back
to William Lily, where one of the people signified the second one listed after musicians
as gamesters and gamesters are those who will make money at playing games. So, as you're
saying, it could go either way, whether it's a vice or I guess, a pleasure or even a gift. I'm
thinking of, I got really into watching the show, The Queen's Gambit, if you've seen it. I ended up
watching it twice and reading the book as well. She is a great example of both
simultaneously extraordinary chess player and therefore kind of a gamester, as we're
talking about someone who makes money from the skill of playing chess, but then her
vice is addiction to alcohol, to pills. So she's kind of holding both simultaneously.
CB: That's actually a good sort of transition, but one of my favorite examples, here's
a good one. Chess player, Garry Kasparov, who actually has Sagittarius rising and has
Jupiter in the fifth whole sign house which is actually two things we haven't mentioned so
far. One, traditionally the fifth house being the house associated with Venus and
that is said to be the joy of Venus. So there's a lot of interaction and interchange
and traditional texts between things that are signified by Venus and things that are signified
by the fifth house. But one of them that comes off or rubs off from Venus onto the fifth house is
like games and things that are done for enjoyment. BT: Absolutely.
CB: And Garry Kasparov, of course, is the world’s famous and was at one time the
top chess player in the world at one point. BT: Yeah. That's a great example for
sure. I'm glad you mentioned that Venus’ joys in the fifth house and also tying
in a number of the passages we read that with the connection to mothers that were, you
know, love making makes children, makes mothers, parents, and the fifth house being the house
of children as well, but also in procreation, you need Venus there to make that happen.
CB: Yeah, and really a lot of significations of the fifth house in traditional texts really
emanate from that association with a Venus. The longer and longer that association is around, it's
sort of the fifth house just keeps getting more Venus significations basically.
BT: Yeah, makes sense. CB: Venus, or the fifth house, it was called the
place of good fortune and it was associated with the concept of fortune and with physical incarnation, because it's one of the houses that
are below the horizon in the sphere of the earth, which gives it more of a physical component
compared to the houses that are above the horizon, which were associated with the realm of
spirits and the intellect and the mind. So that's another sort of fifth house component.
BT: There we are back with the strength of the body, weakness of the soul dichotomy as well.
CB: The whole spirit matter or spirit, body distinction that was so
strong in ancient astrology. BT: Absolutely.
CB: All right. So let's see, going back to that, now we're going to get to some
more recent authors. The next one is Steven Forrest and his book, The Inner Sky, which
was published in 1988. I think I've only used this in the past one episode, but it's also a pretty
good summary of like late 20th century views on astrology and where things started going. I
think, is it your turn? Do you want to go? BT: Sure.
CB: Actually, I think I should do this one because then you can read the next passage.
BT: Okay. CB: Last author.
BT: Sure. CB: Okay. All right. So Steven Forrest, he breaks
it into three categories. The first one is the function of Venus. He says, there is restoration
of equilibrium to the shattered sensitivity, the stabilization of a network of supportive
emotional bonds, the development of the capacity to make an aesthetic response. The dysfunction
of Venus is indolence, manipulativeness, vanity, spinelessness, chronic abandonment to
sensuality. Finally, the key question of Venus is, how can I calm down? What do I need in a
partner? What can I bring to a relationship? So we see at this point that we've taken a pretty
major shift more towards psychological and sort of character orientation in terms of Venus, in
terms of the way that it's being described and talked about and especially, in terms of
the questions about what the person needs in their life and in terms of relationships.
BT: Yeah. It feels like this one really stands on a lot of what we've already read. It's almost
assuming behind it, the understanding of love and relationship and attraction and sexuality
and so on. And yeah, those key questions are quite interesting that the second two make a
lot of sense, what do I need in a partner is a really important Venusian question, and what
can I bring to a relationship? So it's looking at your side of the equation and how one needs to be
met in relationality. I find the first question quite interesting, how can I calm down? Actually,
I brought all the way back to that to the lungs in Valens of that deep breathing that calms us. But
how can I calm down coming more into a harmonious, easeful, relaxed, pleasurable state as opposed
to being agitated or something like that, which would, I guess, be more motion.
CB: Yeah. What can I do to relax and sort of which can see them to be like your
past times, the things you do outside of work. BT: Right, absolutely.
CB: So one of the shifts at this point is that it's interesting when it
talks about what do I need in a partner and what can I bring to a relationship? Some of the things
that came up in late 20th century astrology about it not necessarily being the placement
in the chart and indication of that, which will happen, but instead, sometimes
more of an active process of what you're putting out into the world. And sometimes what
you're attracting to you in some sense, which in some instances can be taken too far into an
extreme of let's say, like the secret or something like that. And the belief that you can sort of
manifest anything you want in your life just by desiring or just by wanting it,
or focusing your thoughts on it. But there can also be a more positive
component or limited component to that of just recognizing maybe let's say the type of people
you attract in relationships, if there are sort of repeated versions of like the
same thing, and maybe it's not always a component of those people picking you, but
sometimes what you're actively attracting to you somehow, even if subconsciously.
BT: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I feel like that is really such a helpful place of when we
can turn to astrology, when we can turn to our Venus placements, if we find ourselves caught in
particular repetitive relational patterns of okay, how do I break this pattern and getting to
know what the placements are that stand behind those patterns. Then asking ourselves,
how can I redirect that same energy, but towards something that's more life enhancing or
that feels healthier, that feels more balanced. So it's kind of like a relationship
diagnosis or something like that to help us for see the pattern and then break it. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. And not that, I don't know, not that if a person does sort of attract certain types of
relationships, not that that's necessarily always a person's fault because it may very well
not be, but it's interesting thinking about one of the things that's interesting is sometimes,
especially in younger people's charts, the Venus placements sometimes describing something that
they don't want or identify with initially, but at different points in a person's life. A person
might identify with their Venus placement more strongly, or there might be aspects of a person's
Venus placement and what they want or need in relationships being different at different points
in their life. And sometimes that can be through just different variations of the same archetypes
being activated at different points in time. BT: Absolutely. I mean, I can certainly
attest to that personally, just seeing my own Venus placements and how they came
through earlier in my life and it totally fit with those placements and then realizing that
those expressions might not have been working and then seeking something else out that also happens
to fit those same placements, but creatively turns them in a really different orientation.
I'm sure, that will continue to grow and evolve. I think we're meant to grow with our charts
throughout our whole lives. We don't ever arrive. The seed keeps growing.
CB: Yeah. It keeps growing and developing and there's different branches that like
sprout off or shoot off in different directions than you might've anticipated initially and a
lot of that is just different. It's both maturing sort of in growing as an individual and
having one's Venus placement mature, but also having things like the transits and experiencing
different transits to Venus where you might have, let's say a Jupiter transit one year, or you might
have a Saturn transit another year, or even a Uranus transit that comes in and shakes
things up with one's a Venus placement. But then also secondary progressions and
sometimes Venus can station retrograde or station direct at different points in a person's
life showing important turning point, for example. BT: Absolutely. Yeah. It's really interesting if
someone is born with a Venus either retrograde or stationed, and especially if it's early in a sign,
how it can be in that sign for so long throughout their life, and then at some moment, maybe quite
late in life, when it changes signs. There's suddenly this whole other opening up in terms of
relationships or in terms of how one loves or how one expresses themselves aesthetically and so on.
CB: Yeah, for sure. Different phases and different chapters in a person's
life with respect to relationships or even secondary progressed Venus making aspects
to other planets describing different periods or different episodes in a person's life with respect
to relationships that may be notable in some way. BT: Yeah, absolutely.
CB: Yeah. All right, so let's move on to our last one. So this is from the last
one I've been using this. I didn't just like pull this quote out for hearsay, but I've been using
this just because I thought it was a very good Richard Tarnas Cosmos and Psyche, which
was published in 2006 was kind of a good summation of a lot of the astrological
tradition when it came to describing the significations of the planets in one of the
first chapters of the book. Although one of the things I noticed I thought was interesting
and I don't know necessarily what to make of it, but that the passage on Venus is actually
shorter than any of the other passages for other planets, which I thought was interesting.
BT: Yeah, it is curious, especially because he is known for long languorous sentences and
paragraphs and books and Mercury-Jupiter will do that. Mercury, Venus, Jupiter will do that.
CB: Right. Yeah. It is not a short book and the passage on Mercury I think is like super long.
But this is Venus and I think part of it is just being able to summarize, as we were saying,
some of those core principles in some way, in a way that's maybe easier to summarize
than some of the other planets, perhaps. BT: Absolutely. Well, should read it?
CB: Please. BT: Okay. The principle of desire, love, beauty,
value, the impulse and capacity to attract and be attracted to love and be loved, to
seek and create beauty and harmony, to engage in social and romantic relations, sensuous
pleasure, artistic and aesthetic experience, the principle of arrows and the beautiful
aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, really it's concise. It's very much to the point.
CB: Yeah. I mean that pretty much sums up most of what we've just spent the past three hours
talking about pretty well. I almost wish we had run through and just done the passages
really quickly at the beginning, because that would have been a great starting point, but
instead we've sort of come full circle at this point back to where we started in some ways.
BT: Absolutely. And just on a personal note, this is where I started too. This was my
first understanding of what Venus is, and so each of these words, as descriptors
of Venus is just deeply familiar. And I think as you say, coming full circle can
be seen and everything we've talked about or everything I've contributed has very much
influenced my view and understanding of Venus. CB: Yeah, and I think we can see how this has
remained remarkably consistent actually throughout the astrological tradition going. You know, we
started in the second century CE and now we've come all the way up until the year 2006. And yet
astrologers have been saying some very similar things at this point for about 2000 years now.
BT: Yeah. It's like, if you took everything we read and you boiled it down to reduction,
like a culinary reduction and here it is [laughs] cooked down to the essence.
CB: Yeah. Is there anything here we haven't touched on or dwelt on at this
point or anything that's different or, I mean, I guess this really is more just
summarizing where we've come to at this point? BT: You know, the one thing that I will
just mention is that the word social, because we've been focusing a lot on the
romantic, we have talked about friendship and companionship, but how social really
encompasses all of that social relations and that Venus does have that connection to our
social relations and that it isn't maybe just a heart connection, but those we keep harmony
with, those we keep companionship with. So I think maybe that's the one word
[laughs]that we hadn't said thus far. CB: Yeah, that's great. And that also caught my
eye as well, because we've all, or in some ways over the past year, since the pandemic, we've all
had a crash course in the thing that people always said, but it became much more clear last
year, which is that idea that humans are social creatures and that social interactions are
actually a very important part of having a healthy life. And the deprive, being deprived of
social connections with other human beings is actually something that's often experienced
as painful or harmful or just not pleasant for humans in general. And of course,
obviously there's ways in which that can be inverted and people can feel awkward in social
situations or not have a good time in social situations, let's say, but for the most part
having some sort of social interaction with other humans is something that's like a
core need for everybody on some level. BT: Yeah. We need each other. I'm thinking of
the Beatles song, like All You Need is Love and well, I think we do need more than just love. We
absolutely need love and therefore we absolutely need Venus in our lives in whatever particular
form Venus takes for each of us. That, that is a fundamental need, to be loved, to be connected, to
be able to commune through the heart is essential. CB: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense and yeah, and
there's many different ways in which a person can find that either in terms of love or in terms
of relationships. Relationship being a very broad category and also being something
connected to the seventh house as well, but there's certainly overlaps there between
Venus and the seventh house and where we meet the other in our life and how that's contrasted
with the self and the ways in which sometimes one only finds oneself through the other.
BT: Absolutely. Yeah. Venus really reflects that to us and yeah, that mirroring.
CB: All right. Well, I'm wondering if that's a pretty perfect stopping point. So I'm trying
to think if there's anything else we should mention or that we're going to regret not
mentioning. I think you did write a passage related to Venus that's connected to something you
wrote that's like a homage to the planets, right? BT: Yeah. And this is even briefer than the
last piece that we read. This comes out of a longer kind of poetic homage that I
wrote coming out of a very profound kind of experiential encounter. This was at the
very beginning of my astrological journey and it was a kind of meeting of the planets, like
this is who we are. I've never been able to see the world without them since, you know, being
able to kind of see through that astrological lens. And so this is just the line on Venus and
you can see tingings of my own biased perspective here as a Venus-Neptune person, for example,
and a couple other things. But this is how I-- CB: Did we mention anything about your chart
at this point? Because that was actually part of why we did this episode because you fit in
with part of my attempt to have some continuity in this episode of people that match the rising
sign of the planet we were talking about. BT: We hadn't mentioned that. Yes,
I have Taurus rising in my chart. CB: That is your credentials that we should
have mentioned as your street cred for the beginning of this episode primarily.
BT: Perfect. Yes, I have Taurus rising and have a lot of Venus aspects in my chart too, just
planetary aspects. So Venus is part of a stellium with Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and then that's
trine to Jupiter and it’s sextile to Mars as well. CB: Do you want to show it? I give
everyone the option. You don't have to, but it's up to you if you're just describing it.
BT: Sure. I mean, we don't need to take up too much time with it, but I don't mind showing it.
CB: Okay. Let me see if I can pull it up. Okay. So, and this is an accurate birth time?
BT: 4:17 PM? CB: Yeah.
BT: Yes. CB: Are you sure? Is there any questionability
about whether it could be ambiguous birth time? BT: There is absolutely no question
whatsoever. It’s on the birth certificate, my mother likes to tell the story about
how she looked at me, looked at the clock, looked back at me. And so she knew exactly I'm
sure my dad was looking exactly at that as well. We're timed down to the second in my family.
CB: Nice. That is one of the great advantages of having astrologer or astrology adjacent
parents is having an accurate birth time. BT: Yes, it is. I actually shared this story
very briefly on Twitter a few months ago that when my dad drew up my chart for the first
time, which was probably within the first 24 to 48 hours of my existence, he's drawing it
up and my mom was there and he just says, "Uh-oh," and she's like, "What? Why are you saying
uh-oh?" And he says, “She has an aspected Sun.” And my mom was just like, “Aspect it to
something.” Then from there, my dad had to go on to learn about midpoints because I have a
lot of midpoints to my Sun even though it doesn't make a major aspect to any other planets.
CB: Okay. I'm going to put together a list, but that's going to be in the top 10 things like
not to say after you've looked at somebody's chart is uh-oh, it's going to be in like
the top three I’m want to say. BT: Yes, especially when
it's your newborn daughter. CB: Right. We'll have to do a separate
episode on like chart reading etiquette. BT: That's actually a really important episode.
CB: Yeah. Actually, no, no, I think about that. That was just a joke, but that
would actually be a good episode. BT: Absolutely, etiquette and ethics in astrology.
CB: Definitely. All right, so back to the chart, just describing it for the audio listeners,
you have 24 Taurus rising. So Venus is the ruler of the Ascendant and it's located
at 28 degrees of Sagittarius in the eighth whole sign house. I'm not sure what house it's in
quadrant-wise. Do you know? Of course you know. BT: It's still in the Eighth house. Yeah.
CB: Okay. Let's see, it's conjunct to Uranus at 25 Sag and Saturn at 21 Sag and as part of
a broader Sag stellium with the Sun earlier in the sign at four degrees of Sagittarius.
So that is the notorious unaspected Sun? BT: That is the notorious unaspected Sun,
it does make it 10 degrees off of the Descendant and then it's at a bunch of midpoints.
Some are more exact than others. The Mars-Neptune midpoint is exact to the minute actually, and
then it's at the midpoint of Venus with Pluto, Uranus with Pluto, and then a little
more broadly the Mercury-Saturn midpoint. CB: Yeah. Well, and it's like almost exactly
sextile the Midheaven, which actually in like ancient astrology was a major mitigating factor
for planets that are in more challenging houses as Paulus Alexandrinus I think mentioned in like
the fourth or fifth century, that an aspect within three degrees to the Midheaven can counteract
and can help improve planets in any sort of houses by making them more active or busy. So you
know, it's not aspecting other planets per se, but it is aspecting an angle pretty strongly.
BT: Leisa was actually the first person to point that out to me.
CB: Okay. That's funny. BT: Yeah. So now you're the second. So I really
appreciate that. Yes. It's aspected to something. CB: Okay.
BT: But in terms of Venus and our themes here that it is part of that Saturn,
Uranus, Neptune stellium and sextile to Mars. It's part of some of those midpoints too, like
the Sun at the midpoint of Venus and Pluto. Before I ever knew anything about astrology
and although, you know, was in the milieu of it of course, but you know grew up around a
lot of myth telling in my schooling and just as my own interests and I was always drawn
to the Venusian figures. I always wanted to be them and whether it was in a school play or
just in my own imagination, wanting to be Freyja, wanting to be Aphrodite. And yeah, I
remember when I first started studying my chart being kind of disappointed that I
wasn't Sun-Venus because of that impulse to be Venus but then I learned about the Ascendant.
CB: Right, as the ruler of the Ascendant. I mean, if it's any consolation, a Valens or any
astrologer they use this whole sign aspect would consider that to be like a really loose
conjunction or co-presence between the Sun and Venus for whatever that's worth.
BT: I will take it and my six-year-old self will really take it.
CB: Right, all right. Awesome. And all of that, the stellium is trining
Jupiter pretty closely which is over 20 Aries. So that's a nice trine as well.
BT: Yes. Yeah. In terms of the refractions of Venus, I guess
I've had my different experiences of that variety of ways it comes through.
CB: Right. Awesome. All right, and going back to... Did we just like
interrupt reading the passage? BT: Well, I think that probably
introduced maybe some of how my own perception of Venus would come through. So,
and the whole poem, I have various recordings of it out there. If anyone's interested, I have the
full one that I put out last year. So, these lines from the homage to the planets. Venus,
a verdant green of flowering beauty, vines growing in curls that turn into exquisite
art, the silver sparkling of dew under leaves mirroring a reciprocity of love and heartwarming
presence, the shiver of pleasure and desire. And that was my best way of translating into words
just a kind of fully embodied experience of what Venus was and these images coming up of
like the silver sparkling of dew under leaves. A line that didn't make it in there was
Venus as fairy's laughter. And that's kind of some of my Venus-Neptune probably, but I was
struck by the laughter throughout the older descriptions of Venus to laughter, joy and so on.
CB: Yeah, and a like also use the word reciprocity because that's something that
was kind of implicit, I think, in a lot of the earlier texts, but was
never, I don't think it's stated explicitly, but that's a very Venusian concept as well.
BT: Definitely. Yeah. The reciprocity, whether it's to love and be loved as in Rick's description
or to give or receive in all of its senses. Yeah. CB: Yeah. Give and take is a great
core Venus principle it seems like. BT: Absolutely.
CB: Brilliant. All right. Well, I think that's it for our deep dive into the significations
and the meanings of the planet Venus. Thanks a lot for joining me today to do this.
Is there anything else that we need to mention that we didn't mention that you can think of?
BT: I think that's all, I think we've really thoroughly explored Venus and if
we missed anything, it was meant to be missed to be discovered at another time.
CB: Okay. Yes, part of the great mysteries of astrology and the lifelong study of astrology.
Well, hopefully we've given people some insight into the planet. Where can people find out
more information about you and about your work? BT: The central hub to get all that information
is my website. It's just beccatarnas.com and that will actually lead to my
consulting site as well. I give readings and I can also be found on the various
social media platforms also under my name, just @BeccaTarnas on Instagram and on Twitter.
CB: Awesome. Do you have anything coming up in terms of lectures or
classes or teachings in the near future? BT: I do actually have a couple of things. I a
couple of months ago released an evergreen course that's an introduction to archetypal astrology.
So, it's really just covering the basics for someone that's new to astrology or wants to
deepen in but through kind of introductory lens and really defining what an archetype is and
how it relates to astrology. So, that's available, can be found through my website. I offered
it through the Academy of Oracle Arts, which is based in the area of Northern
California where I live. I also have my third time teaching my Lord of the Rings course
coming up this autumn. It's a kind of guided read through of the Lord of the Rings for those who've
explored it many times and those who've never explored it. I love teaching this class, it's
my third year doing it. I get a number of repeat students who want to read it again in community.
So very simple class, it's just reading the one book and kind of having your handheld through the
experience. And I just bring different things that I know about Tolkien and his writing process
and imagination and myth into it. And then I think the last thing I would mention is I have
the honor of being one of the keynote speakers at a online conference on astrological magic,
Astro Magia is the name of the conference. Austin Coppock is one of the speakers there too and
that will be happening the weekend of September 17th through 19th. And it's just Nina Gryphon is
also speaking, really amazing lineup of speakers and I'm kind of amazed and awed that I get to be
part of it. So anyone interested in astrological magic, it's going to be a beautiful weekend.
CB: Nice. That's sounds amazing. Actually I saw the lineup for that just the
other day and it looks really good. BT: Yeah. I'm so excited. I'm going
to try and attend every single talk if I can. There's so much I want to learn.
CB: Awesome. Cool. Well, thanks a lot for joining me for this today. I really
appreciate it, and yeah, thank you. BT: Oh, thank you as well. It's
been such a pleasure. Thank you for letting me explore Venus with you.
CB: Awesome. All right. Thanks everyone for watching or listening to this
episode of The Astrology Podcast, I guess that's it for this episode. Thanks for
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