The Cosmic Story:
Venus
- Mars conjunction, July 13, 2021 at 20* Leo
Once upon a
time, a King and Queen had 3 daughters. The older daughters were
beautiful, but the youngest daughter was exquisite and her beauty was
breathtaking. Her name was Psyche….She was so beautiful
that people began to talk about her as the ‘new Aphrodite’.
Well, you can
imagine how the great Goddess Aphrodite took that!
Psyche ~ Susan Seddon Boulet
This
week there is a Cancer New Moon on July 9th, and the
planets Venus and Mars will come together in the heavens in a ‘sacred
marriage’ to begin their new cycle early next week. Both planets
are Evening Stars and they will appear right at sunset with the
Crescent Moon in Leo on July 12th-14th,
depending on where you live. Look to the West!
The
Cancer New Moon is the most fertile Moon of the astrological year.
It is the Mother Moon, the birthing Moon, the caretaker of the Soul.
This New Moon in Cancer considers the family first – not just blood
family but our tribe of like-hearted people. With support from both
Uranus in Taurus and Neptune in Pisces, the seeds we plant hold our
intention for what makes a good, secure, sustainable, loving life and
community. As the Moon also opposes Pluto in Capricorn, it seeds a
renewed vision of our culture, one that allows what is dying to die,
so that Mother Moon can birth the new collective life the world needs
and deserves. A society that really takes care of community as
extended family.
Venus
and Mars symbolize the archetypal energies of desire, need,
connection and love. Both are passionate energies; both emerge in us
as desire or need. The last time they began a new cycle, on August
24, 2019, they were both in Virgo and they were in their underworld
phase. Both planets were hidden behind the Sun.
Venus
was being
transformed in the fires, stripped
of all her allure, letting
go of what she
had desired
before, so she could
understand her needs
again, wiser and more clear-sighted because of Virgo’s gift of
discernment and
integration. Mars embraced her new knowledge and gave his energy to
strengthen the new integration that
needed to be birthed within
each of us. This was an
inner, perhaps unconscious, union.
Venus
vanished from our morning
sky
on February 14, 2021 while she was in Aquarius as a Morning Star and
reappeared as an Evening Star on May 7th
in Gemini. It seems Venus had to die to some of her ideals and fixed
judgments and emerge all the wiser in Gemini knowing there are many
truths that make up The Truth. And each of us has our own lessons to
learn and beliefs to express.
Just
a reminder. Earth
can be a harsh school, but we’re here to learn Love.
The most precious gift of our life here on Mother Earth. Once we
‘become as little children again’ we’ll remember love and how
it can turn our world into paradise.
This
year,
these two passionate planets come together in the fires of Leo, and
are visible
to us, so that we can consciously
connect to them.
They are getting ready to birth some new creation into the world.
We each have a part to play in this. The world needs our input. So
practice opening up your imagination and see what wants to come out
and play with you. This is Leo, after all.
Where
in your birth chart is 20* Leo?
While
you’re at it, check out Uranus at 15* Taurus and Saturn rx
at 12*
Aquarius. The houses they occupy will be the areas of your life that
are going to be part of this change and where your gifts will be used
and appreciated.
The
Sabian symbol for Venus and Mars at 20* Leo is: Zuni
Indians perform a ritual to the Sun.
The
Zunis are ancient Pueblo Native Americans whose religion is central
to their culture. They worship Earth Mother, Sun Father and Mother
Moon. This image suggests that we too need to honor and respect the
world we live in and all of Nature through
ritual,
connecting
with life’s creative powers.
What
is Need? What is Desire?
Desire: verb
"to wish or
long for, express a wish to obtain," c. 1200, desiren, from Old
French desirrer (12c.) "wish, desire, long for," from Latin
desiderare "long for, wish for; demand, expect," the
original sense perhaps being "await what the stars will
bring," from the phrase de sidere "from the
stars," from sidus (genitive sideris) "heavenly
body, star, constellation".
Need: (v.)
Old English
neodian
"be necessary, be required (for some purpose),"
intransitive; also transitive, "require, have need of,"
from the same root as need (n.). Meaning "to be under
obligation (to do something),"
especially in negative or interrogative sentences implying obligation
or necessity, is from late 14c.
What
is the shape of your desire? What do you need for a fulfilling life?
When
Venus and Mars come together in love and desire, what do you want the
outcome to be? Do you have a desire for something vital? Is there a
need in you that is required for your continued sustenance?
With
the Crescent Virgo
Moon providing their marriage bed, we have the
opportunity to reach
into the heart of the spiritual
flame that burns in our
souls. And
then bring what’s
there out of the
creative fires and into
the world.
Leo’s
desire
(from the stars)
is that we each become our own unique Self. That we learn to express
that Self in our life and in our creativity, whether
in literal children or creative children.
Venus and Mars in Leo
and the Virgo
Moon will help you birth that new life.
What
creation is waiting to be birthed by you?
If
you don’t know the answer yet, don’t worry. Mercury has just
come out of its Gemini shadow, hopefully understanding something that
it worked on from May 3rd to July 7th. What
are the new perspectives you’ve gained in these past months?
I
learned that I still needed some work on going with the flow – and
I got a chance to let go and flow. And it worked! So I also learned
to trust a bit that the world wasn’t going to ignore my needs;
rather it would make things easier for me. And I definitely
re-claimed the wonderful truth of kitty love! And also children
love.
I
haven’t put it all together yet to have a clear focus on what
comes next. But now I know more about what I want it to feel
like.
As
in the myth of Psyche and Eros (yes, I’m getting back to them soon)
I will just say: Follow your heart’s desire.
Uranus in Taurus is squaring this union, challenging
it to embody your Self (soul consciousness). Uranus is the wake-up
call to follow your heart! That
takes courage.
Recognize
what you need
to to
do to
change.
Saturn in Aquarius
stands opposite this sacred
marriage, meaning
he wants to
integrate the new life direction that is being conceived
into the Aquarian mindfield. He’ll
create the structure for this new life to thrive in, available
to all humanity, not just the few.
And
I might add: Go through this initiation. Maybe the
initiation is just for the healers and light-bearers; for conscious,
wild women and strong green men; for our children and wonderful
youth. Maybe it’s for everyone in the world. But these few years
of necessary chaos and change must be met and embraced and
transformed if we want a future where we all will thrive.
It
is the divine Feminine that will ground in this work, as she
always does. She appears to us now, in this time, as Lady
Wisdom/Sophia/Mary Magdalena. And she is appearing most often in
women – because Wisdom is always seen as feminine. (Of course
there are exceptions – Thoth is the Egyptian God of Wisdom or
Hermes Trismegitus).
But
Wisdom is a gift that our world has suffered without for too long.
And it needs to come back into collective consciousness for our
survival as a species.
Women
are the bearers of Wisdom. Hopefully men will work with Wisdom and
share in the labor of birthing a new world order, not one organized
and run by corporations, but one created by, for and of the
people!
Venus
& Mars Sacred Marriage
So
to go to back to the Psyche & Eros story:
Psyche is
condemned by the Oracle of Delphi to marry ‘death’
and ‘a beast’, but instead she finds
herself married to the god of Desire and Love himself. But at first
they only make love in the dark (Venus and Mars’ union in
Virgo, hidden behind the Sun). But when Psyche wants to discover
who her lover is, he runs away. And She must go on the search to
find again. Because she shows up, Aphrodite (our primal,
oceanic feminine nature) initiates her through four tests. And when
Psyche completes her tasks, she is reunited with Eros.
Because
if you’re going to take the place of a goddess, you need to know
and own that goddess energy in yourself!
Psyche & Eros
In
this ancient story, which has given rise to many of our western fairy
tales, Psyche is the human soul who has to own Love and become Love.
She has to unite with Eros, the desire to create and generate life.
Out of Love.
(I’ll
be writing about Psyche’s four tasks next month when Venus and then
Mars goes into Virgo.)
These
are the archetypal energies that this ‘sacred marriage’ embodies.
Before we look outside ourselves for this love, we need to birth it
within ourselves.
Mars
is the archetypal energy of the instinctual will to live, our desire
and vitality, as well as our ability to act on that desire. Like the
Greek God Eros, Mars represents our sexual drive, the outward yang
energy of the universe to create life. It can also represent the
darker energies of that desire nature like aggression, domination,
violence and anger.
In
King, Warrior, Magician, Lover,
Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette say this about Eros/Mars
as
the Lover:
The Lover is the
primal energy pattern of what we could call vividness, aliveness and
passion. It lives through the great primal hungers of our species
for sex, food, well-being, reproduction, creative adaptation to
life’s hardships, and ultimately a sense of meaning, without which
human beings cannot go on with their lives.
The Lover
archetype … is the energy of sensitivity to the outer environment.
The Lover is the
archetype of play and of ‘display’, of healthy embodiment, of
being in the world of sensuous pleasure and in one’s own body
without shame.
Venus
is the archetypal energy of connection, of love, of beauty and
wisdom. Venus describes what we value, what our feeling nature needs
to feel loved and worthy. She energizes the wisdom of the body –
our instinctual, feeling, intuitive nature. She speaks through our
heart.
Venus is
challenged by Saturn in Aquarius to stand up for her principles and
she is also in
a
tense aspect to Uranus (exact Wednesday 7/7). This opens her
initiation into claiming greater authority of the beauty
way
as an expression of her Heart's wisdom and activates her role as
Queen of Rebellion during this turbulent time.
(Sasha Benedetti)
Leo
concentrates our heart
energy. With the
Saturn/Uranus square pushing us to let go of what no longer serves us
so we can create something new, this Venus/Mars union will bring that
revolution into our daily life.
Our
modern culture is based on desire. We don’t need to work as much
as we do. We could all survive by working less and needing less.
But capitalism is based on stoking our desires for more, for all
those things advertisers make us think we need to survive and be
happy.
We
humans are thinkers, doers, creators, makers. What happens when we
turn our attention away from desiring ‘things’ and look instead
toward our inner wealth? We can enrich ourselves spiritually,
mentally, and physically. We can enrich the greater social good. We
can heal Mother Earth.
Let
this union of Venus and Mars open your imagination to the treasures
of your Soul. Let Psyche/Soul meet your divine lover in the light.
And let your creativity flow.
Blessed
Be!
Cathy
Concerning
the Atoms of the Soul
Someone
explained once how the pieces of what we are
fall downwards at
the same rate
as the Universe.
The atoms of us, falling
towards the centre
of
whatever everything is. And we don't see it.
We only sense their
slight drag in the lifting hand.
That's what weight is, that
communal process of falling.
Furthermore, these atoms carry
hooks, like burrs,
hooks
catching like hooks, like clinging to like,
that's what keeps us
from becoming something else,
and why in early love, we
sometimes
feel the tug of the heart snagging on anothers heart.
Only
the atoms of the soul are perfect spheres
with no means of
holding on to the world
or perhaps no need for holding on,
and
so they fall through our lives catching
against
nothing, like perfect rain,
and in the end, he wrote, mix in
that common well of light
at the centre of whatever the
suspected
centre is, or might have been.
~
John Glenday ~
(Soul
Food: Nourishing Poems for Starved Minds,
ed.
by Neil Astley and Pamela Robertson-Pearce)