Venus: Relating from the Heart (Part 1)

Venus is a dualistic archetype, that is one that reflects inwardly and expresses outwardly. This means that you need to relate in an authentic and true way to yourself before you can engage with others, because how you relate to yourself is how you attract the way others relate to you. If we engage with ourselves in a negative way, that is we self judge, indulge in our paranoias or are basically self defeating, this has a huge impact on the way our energy is projected to other people. How we relate to ourselves is the beautiful energy generated between our mind and our heart, that projects outwardly when we begin to connect to others.

The inward relating to the self is governed by the reflective nature of Taurus. Yin energy, looking within. All of us have different needs in life in order to find contentment and satisfaction. Needs that fill our heart with a subjective emotion that resonates deeply and fills us with joy, and it is what we all gravitate towards, in order to find meaning we wish to fulfill that what we need in order to find peace and happiness. When these needs are met we feel them in the body, the light heartedness, the deep seated fulfillment that completely relaxes the body, or in whatever way it is expressed in you, as we are all unique living beings. Needs are separate from desires, and in this modern society have I never witnessed so much confusion between the two. Needs are governed by you, and are fully capable in being fulfilled by you. In fact most needs in life can only be fulfilled by you. We desire what we cannot readily have, a need does not have the luxury of wistfulness, it needs to be met in order for wellness to occur.

If we allow ourselves some time now to close our eyes and look within for the answer to this vital question.

Breath in, Breathe out

Turn your attention inwards

and with an open heart ask yourself

What do I need in order to feel content?

To feel happy

At peace?

Wait for the impressions to come, they may come as thoughts, feelings, visuals, whatever they may be. It will help you on your journey if you articulate them, have them defined.

Using Astrology we can look at the Venus archetype in the chart and simply state; Well it is indicative that as a Venus in Aries you need freedom to be yourself. And everything that you have stated in your piece of paper may be the complete opposite. Let’s suppose you said to be Loved. That implies a union, a sharing of a life together with another person. That means that there several pieces of this puzzle missing, and this is why cookbook astrology does not work. When Venus is relating inwardly who is she listening to? The answer for most human beings is our inner narrative, that is our Ego, which is represented by our Moon sign. If you felt within you a need to be Loved as a Venus in Aries, and a Moon in Pisces, is this not a relationship that unifies love to one’s own identity?

 Did this need not arise from a lack of self love? self acceptance?

I have said it before that it is a strong belief among EA astrologers that the ego cannot be ignored as a human incarnate, the Soul has needed to create this ego as a way of perceiving and emotionally integrating the reality of this human experience. We can push forward the Neptune/Pisces connection and talk about receiving and giving spiritual love, but that is another conversation. This is a discussion about how we inwardly relate to ourselves via our Venus/Moon signs and is indicative of the natural sextile that occurs between Taurus and Cancer.

To reiterate, the Moon is representative of the emotional body, which is governed by the inner narrative that is in our Mind/Ego/Persona. Sometimes this can get warped in childhood or in early development, how? Because our parents are fallible humans and may not have had the understanding of what our emotional needs were, perhaps they just concentrated on the physical, or projected their own needs onto us. This can record an inner narrative that is represented in the shadow side of the Moon sign. For example, I had a client in Hobart who had a very conflicting Capricorn/Cancer dynamic with her Moon. She was constantly worried that she would fail at life, her inner narrative would tell her that no matter what she did, it was never going to amount to anything, that she was never prepared enough, that she could never get it right. This is the exact narrative that was given to her by her mother, when all she needed as a child, having a Moon in Cancer, was to be nurtured, held, and loved and above all else, to be defined as someone who could receive love unconditionally because she was someone’s daughter. So if this is the inner narrative of the Moon, where does Venus fit into all of this? In the chart Venus is what listens and therefore responds to this inner narrative. This client had a tense Moon dynamic that was listened to by a Venus in Virgo. She not only criticised herself constantly, but she attracted partners that were also critical of her. And the more she felt criticised the more of a failure she felt, so it was this endless loop! I advised her that she was someone who needed to listen to her inner narrative in a more analytical way. Virgo energy is still earth energy, it needs to know the reality of the situation, through analysis one can pinpoint what is truly happening rather than the bias of internalisation. Analysis can bring to light the realise that this inner narrative doesn’t belong to her but rather to her mother. She had no evidence that all she did was fail at life, or that she was any less unlovable because things didn’t work out. In life one has to record over this inner narrative if we feel it no longer serves us. How does one evolve and relate to oneself better? By looking at the evolutionary pathway of Venus. All planets have a path, and it’s from going to one polarity to the next. The opposite of Virgo is Pisces. In order to act upon this narrative for healing, the client had to practice Pisces energy in how she related to herself, and what is that? Self forgiveness, compassion, acceptance and to engage with unconditional love, the love she had for herself and for her children. It’s alright if things didn’t work out the way she had envisioned, her body and mind survived the ordeal, and in fact was able to glean something from the experience, she has after all tried her best and that if she truly wanted to make something happen she had to understand that it takes time, perseverance and all of those Capricorn lessons that needed to be kindly taught, rather than berated.

Soul Compass: Journey of the Soul

When I was a child, perhaps 9 or 10, I used to lie down on my neighbours trampoline after dark to look at the stars. I learnt to ask existential questions on those nights, queries like “Why are we changing all the time?” or “What does all of this change mean?”. Time and time again, that expansive cosmic sky drew me in, creating a wonder in my heart which never wavered. I felt that somehow the stars held the answers to all my questions and that one day those answers would be revealed to me. It was that simple belief that led me to discover Astrology, and eventually the branch of it that resonated with me the deepest: Evolutionary Astrology.

I have always had a genuine love for the Universe, because it never dictated ritual, it just was, and yet it followed some very interesting rules. As I got curious about the world around me, I noticed just how much natural law played a big part in life. The Moon ruled the tides, the position of the Sun governed seasons and when I learnt about Darwin and this theory of Evolution it sparked another series of observations, for it wasn’t just the physical aspects of species that adapted and evolved over time. I found with people, that our ways of being could evolve too, for the more we experienced, the more the possibility existed for us to inherently change.

A memory comes to mind when I think of this; It was Monday morning, I was in high school assembly and I was witnessing a classmate named Stephanie openly weep as the Principal droned on about something or other. Stephanie had been quite the bully, and being a victim of her aggression, I reacted by being quite indifferent to her. But on this day, as I watched her cry, I felt curious enough to tune in to what was being said over the microphone. A drunk driver had lost control of his car, and two teenagers had died while they sitting out by a sidewalk late Sunday afternoon. I learnt that one of those teenagers had been Stephanie’s cousin and that they had been very close. I began to feel sorry for her, but at the same time I was quite immature and couldn’t forgive her past cruelty, and so I felt no need to act on my compassion when we all broke up for class. However months later, she saw me struggling with some papers that I had been asked to staple, but instead of bullying me, she came over and helped me out. She was actively trying to be a nicer person. I could see the change in her smile, her stance and even in the tone of her voice. Stephanie had completely transformed from being someone who thought she was invincible and could do and say whatever she wanted, to someone who truly understood loss and the finite nature of life. Perhaps she understood on some level the need to return kindness, because everyone had been so compassionate to her for her loss. Stephanie had changed, and I kept wondering why. Was it the fear of God and his judgement that was responsible? Did she pray the night that her cousin had died and felt a calling to turn away from her selfish cruelty? When we had finished putting together the papers, I found myself smiling at her and even making a joke that we both laughed over. In my heart I had released the person she had been, and embraced the person she had become. When we graduated in Year 12, and I saw her for the last time, I remembered all the instances of kindness she had shown me those last 2 years of High School, and how that she had changed my own ways of thinking. In my heart, I had witnessed a positive change in a person, and therefore my belief that people had the capacity to adapt and better themselves in the face of adversity grew in me, a belief that fundamentally changed the way I perceived humanity. Stephanie and I are part of the Pluto in Libra generation, a group of Souls born with an inherent extremity within their nature that could only be balanced by an exterior influence. It needed something to happen, to point this imbalance out because the Soul was so used to it that it could no longer separate itself from it. Learning how to relate better to people in order to find one's own shortcomings or idiosyncrasy that was holding it back, is a crucial Libran lesson.

At the time I did not know this, but I was curious. It was around this time that I had begun studying Western Astrology. I was fortunate to have met an older friend who inspired me, and I went to visit her often. She was an Astrologer and she taught me not just Astrology but also introduced me to various other New Age Philosophies, igniting a lifelong curiosity in theosophy. From when I was 14, and for the next 5-6 years, I had numerous conversations with her, I read and studied many spiritual teachings, all with a very real desire to expand my mind. I knew that the planets with their gravitational pull, magnetic fields, and even the hypothetical Zodiac belt had some way of influencing life on earth. I studied and practiced Western Astrology with barely a pause after that.

And although some of the influences could be explained with tradition astrology, I knew that there was a piece of the puzzle missing. I felt that human beings were more dynamic, they showed growth via adaptation to both exterior and interior influences. Where was that shown in the natal chart? Not just through transits or progressions which explained some but not all. Sometime in my mid twenties I had learnt that the Universe was constantly expanding, and we couldn’t fathom the edge of the Universe because it was always growing past the point of discovery. That the star filled sky which I looked up to in wonder, was growing and changing as I was growing and changing. There had to be a philosophy that could explain this, and then one day in 2015, I discovered the phrase “As above, so below” and such a simple sentence was enough to electrify me with resonance. I had heard it while watching what I had thought was just a simple Astrology YouTube video. The Astrology video belonged to a South African astrologer named Simon Vorster, who was practicing Evolutionary Astrology in Sweden. This led me to the works and teachings of Jeff Wolfe Green, Mark Jones and Stephen Forrester. I discovered other great Astrologers like Deva Green, Ari Moshe Wolfe and Kristin Fontana, plus numerous others. From the approaches of these Astrologers, I had found EA to be a practical, accurate and deeply spiritual form of Astrology that embraces our ever unfolding nature through self awareness and development. We trace our Soul from it's strongest karmic ties of it's past incarnations, to the challenges and evolutionary lessons it has today, and with a clear vision we can see the trajectory, the line that the Soul is following to continue it's journey. I felt I had finally found a resonating philosophical way to read the chart that not only resonated with me, but from then on with my clients. In my practise I have helped many people understand themselves and their place in the Universe in a two way conversation. For Astrology is a reflection of life, and the client is but an agent of freewill that is either an active or a passive member of it's own power. By understanding why your Higher Self has chosen a Gemini Moon or a Uranus signature, we can see what needs to be evolved and integrated on both a conscious and subconscious level. We discuss the Soul's signifier, Pluto, and where it is along in it's evolutionary journey. What is the Soul's bottom line? The cellular change that needs to occur to bring you closer to that ever growing edge of the Universe?

EA aims to answer the big questions; What is my spiritual purpose? What am I supposed to be integrating into this lifetime? What does all of this change mean? And if you take the responsibility for your own development, you will see that your potential is limitless, the awareness ever growing, and you will start to live from your heart.