"Live life as though everything Is rigged in your favor" - Rumi

As I write this Venus has entered Pisces and the Moon is in Taurus (a sign that Venus rules), both are in signs of their exaltation, a place where they are considered powerful.  And from my viewpoint this symbolizes a portal that is optimal to connect with the heart of our desire.   

Venus is a powerful archetype, Venus draws, Venus seduces, Venus magnetizes, Venus attracts.  She is the connector extraordinaire. In one of the myths of her birth she arose from the sea and was immediately adorned with jewels, worshipped and spirited away to Mt. Olympus to take her place among the Gods.  

She readily and easily accepted her birthright.  She was receptive to it. Most importantly, she knew without question that she didn’t need to do anything to earn her place in the world or prove her beauty and lovability. 

Venus is all about having, she is the essence of desire. 

Here is the root of the word desire:

"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".

What the stars will bring…

As I have shared before in the ancient world the cosmos was seen as alive, enchanted and connected. Our stars, so to speak, were not viewed as inanimate objects separate from us. Everything breathed together. It is only with our modern understanding that we have in essence alienated ourselves from the cosmos.  

Last week I suggested “What is my deepest desire?” as a writing prompt primarily because over time  through my own journey I have come to believe deep within my bones that our desires, when we are willing to profoundly listen, come from our soul’s voice.  Therefore they are sacred and need to be cared for and cherished. 

We are the ones who aren’t receptive. 

Venus, and where she is placed within out birth chart,  is ultimately about our value system asking us what is it we cherish and how do we care for it?

The symbol for Venus is said to represent a hand mirror. This can be viewed from multiple places, but to me the most powerful of considering the symbolism is to gaze at the outer world as a mirror of our inner experience.  Even at a very basic level (meaning whether you believe we have a hand in manifesting our world or not), this is profoundly true because we receive or reject possibilities based on the conditioning we have received from our family, our early religious beliefs, our culture. These forces have literally shaped what we believe is possible for ourselves. They have shaped our viewpoint, both conscious and unconscious, and most often caused us to separate, walling ourselves off, from the very things we desire in order to feel safe.  

The irony is in trying to keep ourselves safe we have unconsciously fostered a sense of alienation from ourselves and others. We feel cast out, alienated from a sense of belonging. We begin to feel shame about our dreams and desires. 

The only cure for shame is love…Venus’s expertise. 

If Venus is to have a healthy expression, it has to be backed by a healthy dose of self-worth. We need to know what we have to offer another, and we must value that offering.  Valuing ourselves is a powerful spiritual practice.  

We need Venus, our desires and values, in order to stay strong in the material world.  To negotiate this world successfully, we must maintain a grounding in the world, and understand what our value is, and where we belong.  We all know that it’s impossible to attract someone, or some thing,  if you don’t feel you deserve it, deep down. If for no other reason that we are not receptive to that desire, it essentially lies outside of the realm of possibility for us and thus we discount it as crazy or impossible. 

It is our Venus’s job to connect us with the joys and the pleasures and the rewards of life and cause us to appreciate our material existence.  As Rumi said, “What you seek is seeking you.”

We are in the period of the year when every planetary archetype is in forward movement.  The cosmos, which is part of you as you are part of it, is urging you forward.  I again quote Rumi, “Act as though the universe is rigged in your favor.  

I close repeating my thoughts from last week:

We live in an extraordinary responsive universe. When we honor our connection to it, when we become aware of the correspondences between the planetary movements and our lives we are able to move into a more trusting relationship with life. We profoundly know that we are never really alone but that the ever responsive cosmos is dancing alongside leading us forward. 

Allow your focus to shift towards knowing and understanding what really matters to you. 

Owning it. 

Then use the magical 83 days ahead to actively create time and space for it within your life.