Pink Madness: A Lunar Eclipse Conjunct Uranus in Taurus

Hey everyone, this is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology. Happy Monday, everybody. Today we are going to take a little bit of time to unpack tomorrow's eclipse. Tomorrow we have a lunar eclipse in the sign of Taurus, which is going to be conjoined the planet Uranus. And so tomorrow, we're going to go through all 12 Sun and rising sign horoscopes for the eclipse. But today, what I want to do is unpack this eclipse on an archetypal level. Let's take a look at Venus and Uranus. Because this is a lunar eclipse in Venus's sign with Uranus and so there's, there's a lot that can be said, especially about the goddess today and the goddess's relation to truth and progress and evolution, and freedom, all things that Uranus is really excited about.

So that's what we're going to do. We're going to unpack this archetypal dynamic; I have three different source texts. I'm going to read from that source text three different astrological texts. I'm going to read from a little bit of James Hillman, a little bit of Liz green, and some really nice passages as a way of unpacking five archetypal themes to watch for this week; you might have already been experiencing these themes as well over the weekend, or even since the beginning of the lunar cycle on October 25, when the solar eclipse opened up in a conjunction with Venus in Scorpio. So it's been a super Venusian-themed goddess-themed cycle, and it's going to continue that way. So that's what we're going to do today.

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And let's talk about what makes this Eclipse unique before we delve into the archetypal meaning. First of all, you have to note that the eclipse is taking place at about 16 degrees of Taurus, which is in a conjunction with Uranus. It's also happening as Mercury is Cazimi at the heart of the sun, and opposite in the sign of Scorpio, while Venus is also there in Scorpio. So it's a very Venusian Eclipse, but one where we could see some splitting within the Venusian or the notion of archetype or within the symbolism of the goddess, you could see some pretty strong archetypal dualities or dichotomies popping up. So we're going to talk about those today, what those tend to be, and how we can deal with them.

This is happening tomorrow, Tuesday. So again, horoscopes will be done tomorrow. Today, what I want to do is take a look at the inherent themes of an eclipse in Venus's sign with an exalted Moon in Taurus with Uranus and opposite Venus. What does that mean that there's almost like a Venusian opposition at work at this moment, as well as the theme of like Venusian liberation. Uranus likes to liberate things, and this has a feeling of like Venus being liberated, but also the potential for, again, splitting, which means the potential for strong opposites to present themselves and present you with like choices or the feeling of you know, a power struggle between two themes or energies. All right.

Well, so we have five themes to watch for today. And first, what I want to do is I want to read to you from a few different passages. The first one comes from one of my favorite books; I think this was the first astrological text I ever read, actually. And it is called the Astrology of Fate by Liz Greene. It's a good book. It's not necessarily Hellenistic in its orientation. It's not like a book on ancient astrology, but that doesn't matter because her approach when it comes to myth and archetype is really, really profound. So I'm going to read you a bit from her section on Taurus, which is an exploration of the mythic *bowl, and I think it's worth looking at, given some of the themes that I want to try to unpack today. So here it is from a section of her book called Myth and the Zodiac.

Taurus.
Mother of God! no lady thou: Common woman of common Earth!
Three different mythic bulls claim the honor of being associated with Taurus. One is the white bull that carried Europa from her home in Tyre to Crete; this bull was Zeus himself transformed into animal form for the usual purpose of abducting or seducing the woman of his choice. The second is a cow rather than a bull, the animal form of Io, another of Zeus' paramours, whom Hera, in her jealousy, turned into a bovine shape. The third and most famous is the Cretan bull with which Pasiphae, the wife of King Minos of Crete, fell in love and which fathered the monstrous Minotaur that the hero Theseus had to kill. We will consider the symbolism of the bull itself, and of 'coweyed' Aphrodite-Venus, the planetary ruler of Taurus, in due course; but first, let us begin with the story of the Cretan bull, which seems to have profound bearing on Taurus' fate.

King Minos was the son of Europa and Zeus, himself the child of the god turned bull. He was King of Crete and wielded great power from his island seat over all the Greek islands and parts of the mainland. When young, he contended with his brothers (Rhadamanthys and Sarpedon) for the throne and asserted his claim by divine right. He prayed to the god Poseidon lord of the sea and of earthquakes, to send a bull out of the sea as a sign, sealing this prayer with a vow to sacrifice the animal immediately as an offering and a symbol of service. Poseidon, who is also portrayed in bull shape, complied; the beast duly appeared and Minos took the throne. But when he beheld the majesty of the beast, he thought what an advantage it would be to possess such a creature in his herd, and risked a merchant's substitution, which he supposed the God would not notice or mind. Offering on Poseidon's alter the finest white bull that he owned, he added the sacred sea-bull to his herd.

Poseidon, however, was not amused at the substitution. He retaliated at the blasphemy by enlisting Aphrodite to inspire in Minos' wife Pasiphae an ungovernable passion for the bull. She prevailed upon Daedalus, the celebrated artists-craftsmen, to make her a wooden cow in which she might receive the bull in sexual union. Daedalus performed the work, Pasiphae entered the cow, and the bull, in turn, entered Pasiphae. Of this union was born the Minotaur, a hideous monster with a human body and bull's head, which fed upon human flesh. Minos in his fear and shame, hired Daedalus to construct a labyrinth in which the foul creature could be hidden, and into which groups of living youths and maidens were left for the Minotaur's meals.

The primary fault in the sorry tale lies not with Queen Pasiphae but with Minos himself, although the Queen acted out the fate he invoked. About Minos' flaw, Joseph Campbell writes:

He had converted a public event to personal gain, whereas the whole sense of his investiture as king had been that he was no longer a mere private person. The return of the bull should have symbolized his absolutely selfless submission to the functions of his role. The retaining of it, represented, on the other hand, an impulse to egocentric self-aggrandizement. And so the king 'by the grace of God' became the dangerous tyrant Holdfast-out for himself. Just as the traditional rites of passage used to teach the individual to die to the past and to be reborn to the future, so the great ceremonials of investiture divested him of his private character and clothed him in the mantle of his vocation... By the sacrilege of the refusal of the right, however, the individual cut himself as a unit off from the larger unit of the whole community, and so the One was broken into the many, and these then battled against each other- each out for himself- and could be governed only by force.

Campbell goes on to describe this figure of the tyrant-monster who is so common in fairy tales (frequently a giant, like Fafner and Fasolt in Wagner's ring. The hoarder of the general benefit the monster avid for the greedy rights of my and mine. It is interesting to note that Hitler was a Taurean, as were Lenin and Marx so is Queen Elizabeth II, who seems to have understood to a remarkable degree the deeper meaning of her investiture as Queen and remains a symbol of stability and moral firmness for the whole of the United Kingdom.

But the tyrant monster of which Campbell writes is the challenge of Taurus, its dark face, which must at some point be met in life. The earthy power which allows the tyrant to accrue his wealth, as Minos gathered wealth and power over the seas, is the gift of Taurus. But the dilemma lies in his relationship with the God and which God it is he serves, the deity or himself. The story of Minos ends in a stagnant situation where a destructive monster lies at the heart of the apparently abundant realm. The situation of stagnation inevitably leads to the coming of Theseus, the hero who must release the deadlock. It is a characteristic irony of myth, which we have already met in Aries, that Theseus- who, like Minos is a king and divinely fathered- is the child of the bull God Poseidon. The creature which he must confront at the heart of the labyrinth is the dark bestial form of his own spiritual father, as well as the symbol of Minos' sin. Thus Minos, his Minotaur, and the hero Theseus are bound by the same symbol of the bull, for they are aspects of the same archetypal core. And Minos and Theseus are, in a sense, doubles of each other, for one commits the sin against the god, while the other must redeem it.

But what is the bull, the symbol of power which much which must be dedicated to the god? We have seen, in the imagery of Aries, that the ram is connected with the hidden God with phallic power and potency and the omnipotence of the Father. The bull is an altogether different animal. He is not fiery, he is earthy, and while he is connected with the fertility of the earth, this is not the same as the fertile creativity of heaven. In the Buddhist tale of the taming of the bull (which is sometimes portrayed as an ox), a man has shown in the various stages of development where he must learn to tame the recalcitrant bull and where ultimately, man and bull vanish and are revealed as part of the same Divine unity. The bull is not evil, but if it is allowed to run the man, then it may lead him to destruction, for he is at the mercy of his desires. But repression, likewise, is not an answer. Man and bull must perform a dance where each comes to respect the other. And these Eastern images, the problem of the relation between the ego and the instincts is portrayed. And this problem lies at the center of Tauruses' pattern of development.

Other mythic stories also portray the struggle with the bull. One of the most powerful is the Zoroastrian god-man Mithras, the Redeemer, who is always portrayed in his famous cap with his hands about the bull's throat. Herakles also must conquer a bull. These motifs of the conquering and sacrifice of the bulls seem to deal with submission to a greater Self and the realization that the power of the bull is not 'mine' but must be directed toward a more transpersonal goal. Whether we consider bull or, as in the myth of Io, cow, we are faced with the same animal. The primary association with this creature is, not surprisingly, the goddess Aphrodite who is called 'cow-eyed' and whose nature may tell us a good deal about the meaning of this beast, which it is Taurus' fate to encounter and tame.

Aphrodite Venus has more personality and clearer outlines than virtually any other Greek goddess. She is not just an abstract concept meant to personify some dimly sensed order in the cosmos. She is terribly alive, and this quality transmits itself from the sculptures of her which we have inherited, dating back before the Greek heir to the great goddess Ishtar of the Middle East. She is gifted with generous and carnal affection and a complete lack of ambivalence about sex. Paul Friedrich, in his book On the Meaning of Aphrodite, calls this 'sunlit sexuality' in comparison with female deities such as Artemis and Athene, for whom the sexual act is equated with pollution. Where the body is a pollution to most of the Olympians, it is sacred to Aphrodite. This is, in part, why she is usually portrayed nude, where the other goddesses are almost always covered up. She seems to embody naked unashamed nature. She also acts as a mediator between the world of the immortals and the world of men, just as Zeus does, for she is happy to mate with mortals.

Generally, a mortal man who has sexual relations with a goddess is punished by death or castration, or worse. We have met an example of this and Ixion, who was punished by being bound forever to a fiery wheel for his attempt to seduce the goddess Hera. But Aphrodite is a potential lover for any god or hero who catches her fancy. In a sense, she's prepared to come into incarnation to relate to the world of living men and earthly things; she can be looked upon in her nudity by mortals. Therefore, she is accessible to human experience, unlike gods such as Apollo and Artemis, who remain elusive and punish those who peer too closely.

Aphrodite is an active female; she takes the active role in wooing and seduction, love, and lovemaking. She is never raped or assaulted by a male; she is so powerful sexually that this would be impossible. In no way does she resemble the victim like women whose Zeus and the other male gods pursue abduct, rape, and humiliate. Aphrodite is an image of relative sexual equality, a rare being for a time in history when the prevailing collective view leaned in the opposite direction. She was also the patroness of courtesans, although she presides equally enthusiastically over passionate sex within marriage. While Hera, Queen of the gods, stands for the structure and moral codes which bind the institution of marriage within the collective. Aphrodite embodies its conjugal joy and fertility. Procreation, desire and satisfaction, adornment and culture, beauty and erotic arts. All these belong to her. Her lovemaking is a civilized art, in contrast to the physical violence and rapacity of Aries-Mars. Paul Friedrich writes:

The drives of sexuality are natural; on the other hand, sophisticated lovemaking is highly cultural; Aphrodite mediates between the two, 'puts them together'. Or better, she does not make them identical but in her relates them and makes them overlap to a high degree. To put it yet another way, we can agree that she is a 'goddess of rapture' but not to recognize that this rapture harmoniously blends natural and cultural ingredients.

Aphrodite's gifts, however, have a double edge. The arts of love and the satisfaction of desire can unite Man and woman in harmonious sexuality and a happily wedded life. But on the other hand, they can generate rivalries, jealousies, and passions that acutely threaten the relations between individuals, kinship groups, and even nations. Thus, Minos' passion for the sacred bull leads to his wife's overwhelming passion for the same bull, and the monster that results becomes the canker that rots the kingdom from within. Even the cow, which seems such a peaceable creature, can lead to chaos and destruction. In the early cosmogonies, Aphrodite has no mother but is born of the union between sea and the severed genitals of Ouranos after he is castrated by his son Kronos. This suggests that whatever Aphrodite is, she is not maternal in the ordinary sense, although she is fertile. Perhaps it'd be more appropriate to say that she has in no sense a wife. Although she favors the physical joys of marriage. Friedrich suggests that she is the most 'solar' of the goddesses:

Artemis and Hera are strongly lunar, the former typically moving in the moonlight midnight air, the latter often depicted with a lunar crescent.
Their symbolism has rich antecedents in old European civilization, and there is, of course, the more general psychological association between the Moon and menstruation, virginity, and the female principle in general. It is Aphrodite who, more than any other goddesses, unambiguously solar in many passages, and this celerity is naturally connected with her goldenness. Note that she seduces Anchises by daylight, there is a deep-lying opposition or contrast between her sunlit sexuality, and Artemis is furtive and moonlit anxiety and hostility as regards carnal love.

All of this paints a vivid portrait of one aspect of our bull. One may well ask why Theseus or Mithras must then subdue it, for Aphrodite seems a benign goddess with qualities which our present culture badly needs. But it is due to her wiles that the Trojan War began and the havoc she causes is always a threat to relationship, whether on an individual level or a collective one. She was the most ambiguous goddess. In Sparta, she was worshipped as a bloody battle goddess, and her Egyptian counterpart Hathor, the cow-headed goddess, likewise was said to thrive on blood and slaughter. Perhaps we need to look again at Hitler, who not only had the sun in Taurus but also Libra rising and was, therefore, doubly ruled by Venus. The Buddhist formula seems to be a most appropriate one, do not slay the bull, but learn to dance with it in a developing pattern of mutual respect so that the bowl becomes more human and the human more animal.

So that is a long passage, but I think a really, really rich passage from Liz Greene that I hope you get something out of it because so much of this eclipse splits between the Moon and Venus. Moon is in Taurus in Venus's sign with Uranus, opposite Venus in Scorpio. And so, the potential for the feminine and that could be applied to a man or a woman or however anyone may identify in terms of gender. The feminine as an archetype, an image or symbol in the psyche, as something that expresses itself in all of us, no matter how we identify. That we have a Venus Moon split is interesting because the Venus Moon split tends to split between those things that provide a kind of domestic security, family group marriage, and the bonds that hold us together that are ethical that are safe. The Moon, for example, is the bondedness of a marriage of family apparent to its child, a family to its cultural or ancestral heritage, to the loyalty to family members to city or community to village to environment, and the moon bonds us to those things very deeply.

But often, the goddess image, as Liz Green was talking about throughout that entire section, can be split when it comes to Venus because you have those images, sort of more maternal lunar images, in a sense, the mother image, and then you have more like the maiden and the sexual fertile, procreative, sensual desire body of Venus. And when they're opposite to one another, during the time of an eclipse, it could be that we are at a real crossroad when it comes to how to deal with or incorporate the natural Venusian aspect of the psyche, what we are attracted to, what we desire, what we get off on, so to speak, where we need or want to be satiated. And to taste something and be satisfied, like, oh, that that's good, that hits the spot. So our instincts are involved with Venus, as we're going to see in another passage I'm going to read in a minute.

It's not going to be healthy if we, as Greene was saying if we suppress or repress Venus, so she says, the animal becomes more human, and the human becomes more animal. You don't get out of this by killing the bowl or by trying to off Venus or moralize her away, or condemn her as a part of, you know, some the body that the flesh that the world and that our desire bodies are all just illusions to be done away with that they are dangerous, that they threaten the stability.

That, in a sense, is the Moon talking potentially in a conflict with Venus within an opposition. On the other hand, if a family member, you know, in we have this in my family, extended family, if a family member becomes an alcoholic, there, let's say, for example, or they develop an unhealthy addiction to pornography or sex addiction, or their pleasure impulse gets to the point where the lust becomes destructive. And this is important because, remember, throughout that passage, it's important to recognize that Venus repressed and not such a good thing Venus. If Venus is also unchecked, it tends to lead to blood and warfare. It leads to distress and some kind of destructiveness. A monster grows in the shadow that then has to be overcome. So you can't just get rid of the animal, but you also can't let the animal, you know, trash the house. There's got to be some symbiosis between the two, the animal becoming more human and the human becoming more animal.

How does that work? How do we realize that we are animals, in other words, but at the same time that we have a rational function and there is a need to also create a feeling of stability and security. Now with Uranus and the Moon together in Taurus, the need for some kind of shift on the lunar side of things, which would be, you know, the homeostasis, let's call it Moon and Taurus is like Moon and Taurus, you could say is a combination of pleasure and stability, but peaceful, pleasant and stable, you know, kind of grounded. Well, when the Moon in Taurus at a Full Moon Lunar Eclipse combines with Uranus, it is as though that picture or image of stability, pleasure, and so forth needs to be shifted or opened up.

It's like saying, I'm going to, well, okay, I'll give you an example. This office, every office that I move into, I usually like I've had a bunch of them, but I usually have to, it has to be, it has to represent an opening or a new development in my life as a creative person. So this, the colors on the wall, the way that I decorated and set up this office to me was a very, say, full Moon and Taurus lunar eclipse with Uranus kind of moment where I said, Okay, it's time to open this all up and create some new version of the exact picture of the Moon in Taurus. Peace, pleasure, stability, comfort, right, because that's what I spend a lot of time in my office. So I need it to be an environment that's pleasant to be in, it's beautiful, and it sort of magnifies the creative spark that I'm working with. But also, you know, in the case of Uranus, this would have to be something we're recreating or pushing forward the desire to evolve or open something up or move to a different space or level.

Now, as we do that, we're also being challenged by an opposition from Venus saying, Yeah, well, are you going to include the darker, more destabilizing elements of your desire and your instincts? In other words, if I were to do if I'm not going to repaint my office right now, but if I were to do it right now, under this eclipse, I could imagine it being that there. There's something that desires to be incorporated that threatens that sense of peaceful balance. There's an upset. There's a Venusian upset in the air. And it's like, yeah, well, I want to be a part of this too. Can you own up to the fact that there's something that you want or longing for or desire that complicates that image or picture of stability and progress? So I think those are some of the things that we're looking at right now.

On the one hand, there's a desire to improve something, but it's still, you know, Moon and Taurus, that there's transformation, but ultimately, stability, pleasure, peace, and groundedness are part of it. But this change needs to incorporate a sort of divisive or more taboo, or shadowy Venus that maybe is getting left out or that is not being brought in somehow that is being marginalized or pushed out. I think that's something you really have to be careful of right now. So the theme to watch for the first one is the animal becomes human, and the human becomes the animal.

Alright, let's move along to number two. I want to talk about image, instinct, and evolution. And in order to do that, I'm going to read a passage this one not so long from an essay by James Hillman called Pink Madness. And it is a really fantastic essay that he wrote called Pink Madness, or Why does Aphrodite drive men crazy with Pornography? I love this essay. It's long been a favorite of mine. I'm just going to read you a brief section to help us unpack this at a little deeper level. Sex education. This comes from a section by the way that's called Images are instincts sex education, sex talk shows, sex help books, sex therapy, and sex workshops. Aphrodite is pink ribbons wrap our culture round. The billion-dollar porn industry is minor league compared with the haunting sexual obsessions endemic in the culture at large. But for a moment, I want to move away from both politics and morality and into psychology.

The psychology of the image. First, to Jung's psychology of the fantasy image, which, after all, is precisely what porn is lustful fantasy images, Jung places images and instincts on a psychological continuum like a spectrum. The spectrum of color band ranges from infrared and the bodily action of instinctual desire to the ultraviolet blue end of the fantasy images. These fantasy images, according to Jung's model, are the pattern and form of desire. Desire isn't just a blind urge. It is formed by a pattern of behavior, a gesture arriving, a dancing a poetics, a coming on of style. And these patterns are also fantasies which present images as instinctual behaviors.

Jung does something different from Freud. Freud regards the blue or mental end to be the sublimation of the red desirous instinct. The red transformed symbolizes sublimates into the blue for Freud. Jung, however, regards the images to be the instincts themselves. Image and instinct are naturally inseparable. You are always in a fantasy when performing an instinct and you are always instinctually grasped when imagining a fantasy. Since images and instincts are two faces of the one thing, Jung's model implies that any change in one is a change in the other. If you mess up your instinctual life, your imagination is also messed up. If you repress your fantasy images, your instinctual life is also repressed. This is important, very important. Instinct and image are each other. Your images are instincts in fantasy form. Your instincts are the pattern of behavior of imaginings.

If we split the red and from the blue, we get a blue imagination without vitality. Hallmark cliches as emotions, New Age spiritualized imagination without the course, the strong and the lurid. And we also get the course, the strong and lurid as violence, a red instinct deprived of formal containment and imaginative variety. For example, some years ago at the Kinsey archive in Bloomington, Indiana, I saw volumes of prison erotics on deposit, love letters, drawings, notebooks, artifacts, and cran sketches. The pornography made by inmates and confiscated by the guards. The blue end of the spectrum was forcibly repressed imagination under lock and key. What then happens to the red? Prison rape and prostitution. When the fireman in the Los Angeles Fire Station fought a legal battle against feminist firefighters to retain his right to look at porn magazines while on call in the firehouse. He was firing up his fantasy keeping it lively so that the instinct necessary for his job is also alive. He did win the case, by the way.

There is a lesson here the confiscation of the writings and drawings in the Indiana prisons indicates a great fear, the fear of imagination itself, the fear of the uncontrollable fusion of fantasy life that cannot be held within bars and walls. I need to explain this further. For this explanation, I turned to a book by Columbia University professor of art David Freedberg. A mammoth masterly work the power of images. Freeburg says images do work in such a way as to incite desire, and since he says the eyes of the channels to the other senses, all pictures make us look; they seduce us into looking. The gaze stimulates the other senses and arouses. Arousal fetishize is the object we are fixed by it to it. What holds the gaze is this demonic power in the image. It's superhuman or divine force images; not only sexually explicit images make arrows visible and demonic. And so, for centuries, our work has been said to lead device their beauty corrupting. Plato insisted in The Republic that the images of the arts must be controlled. This Aristotle restated in his politics, quote, It should therefore be the duty of government to prohibit all statuary and paintings which portrays any sort of indecent action.

Because images draw us into participation with them, the part of human nature for which Plato and Aristotle here speak the Apollonic, logical-mathematical idealized, is brought down by images and sullied by the emotions they arouse. The body is enlivened by images by graphic images, especially in the fear of that enlivened imagination. Falling to the image. Idol worship addiction forces the higher mind to consider censorship, such as Plato and Aristotle mentioned, censorship is an inherent response to the libidinal potency of the image and not to any particular content. As Freedberg says, the potential for arousal immediately and irresistibly accrues from the interaction between images and people. Hence, all images are threatening because the potential for arousal is ever-present. Pornographic images present only one case of wider libidinal arousal, holy images to have been savaged. He goes on to mention a variety of different ways in which sacred or religious art has been destroyed or repressed over the course of history. It's a long section, so I'll skip over it.

The history of iconoclasm of fear of the image and attempts to control it says clearly that all images are pornographic in their arousal capacity. An arousal, which recognizes the libidinal animation, the demonic power, and the active soul in the image; when I say all images are pornographic, please let's recall that the definition of Pornography depends not on what is depicted but on its effect. The instinct in the image, as Webster says, porn is material depicting erotic behavior that is intended to cause sexual excitement. Content is contingent upon effect; arousal. That's why the content has to be circumspectly, even privately defined, e.g., without scientific, aesthetic, etc. Value. Content is insufficient for definition because, as the Supreme Court declared in Cohen versus California 1971, One man's vulgarity is another man's lyric. We do not know Pornography by what it is but by what it does. That's why Justice Potter Stewart could say I know it when I see it. He knows what's porn because of what the image is due to his instinct, his emotions, and his arousal. The question of definition becomes simple does the image produce a frisson? Does it stimulate? Instinctual reverberation? Again, the definition of porn given in Fowler's definition dictionary of modern critical terms is that which is depraved or corrupt, i.e., what it does. For Orthodox monotheists, who follow a pure and abstract spirit. Any image depraved and corrupts even a dream and ought to be eradicated as its source is in the mind. The history of iconoclasm is long and bloody. The history of iconoclasm continues in subtle forms by reducing images to allegories, interpreting them into concepts, and by meditative techniques which seek to empty the mind for the sake of an imageless state.

So image, instinct and evolution. Here we have in a really brilliant passage from Hillman, something that is deeply and profoundly applicable for us at the time of this eclipse. One of the things that happen when you get an eclipse like this with the Moon in Uranus in Venus's sign, the Moon is exalted in Taurus, and but it's opposite, a debilitated Venus and Mars sign is that we are, it's going to be very tempting to try to banish the images and instincts that are most strong within us right now. Because we will potentially see them as threatening order or stability, and so that's a real beware right now is the potential to repress those images and instincts that Venus presents us with. In other words, the images that Venus presents us with, like, as Hillman said, our instincts, and so we might say, oh, that's just a fantasy. It's not just a fantasy. It's also a physical natural instinct that is in your body that is seeking to find a medium for expression. Now, sometimes that medium doesn't have to be the literal image of the fantasy, but it is the fantasy image that comes up is, often expressing something on the physical level of our bodies that is seeking some form of expression. And we probably need to find it in order to evolve.

So you think about Uranus. Uranus loves progress. Uranus loves to break free. And if we think of evolution, the word meaning to unfold, well, if there is anything in this eclipse that is seeking to unfold in a new way, then it is probably coming by virtue of listening to and sorting out which images and fantasies relating to natural instincts within our body are not feeling happy or satisfied. Now that again, sometimes that will present itself in terms of, like, I don't know, I want to eat a whole cake to myself. Well, I get that kind of stuff coming up. For example, when I'm being too strict with my diet. And because I'm working out at the gym or whatever, and I'm not allowing myself enough, just pleasure in my diet. And so I need to make room for that because the impulses will get stronger and the fantasies more elaborate and potentially destructive. And there's the Minotaur growing again. So there is an intimate connection between evolving right now, breaking free, allowing ourselves to move forward, and also allowing for the fantasy, the image, and the instinct to be part of what guides us in that next step from an evolutionary perspective.

On the same note, you probably noticed that Hillman mentioned iconoclasm; sometimes, we cannot allow for a new fantasy, a new impulse, a new instinct, or maybe just one that's been there for a while that hasn't had, you know, it's been repressed to come forward until we sort of, we sacrifice an old image, you have to break a former fantasy or let go of a fantasy.

I'll just tell you one of the ones that I deal with a lot of the fantasies; by the way, the ones that guide your instincts, your impulses, your urges, and your behaviors are found in your birth chart. So I have the Moon in Capricorn, and I have an exalted Saturn conjoined with Jupiter. So there's definitely, at times, like a perfectionist drive within me. And it could be just like, Okay, so for example, diet, I, you know, I have macros that I use and a, like, an app that I put my food into count my calories, make sure I've got my numbers on, you know, protein, carbs, fat, blah, blah, blah. And I'm, I have an image in my head of, you know, like this, I'm not like unrealistic. I'm not like crazy, but maybe a little, but I have an image of, like, following this thing perfectly. And it is a fantasy that literally is connected to an instinct or impulse that I have that guides my behavior, and it's in me, it's just, that's just a part of my animal body. And because these images present themselves and the fantasies and urges and impulses to conform and shape myself through discipline to this image, okay. But if I don't allow for other spaces, like Venus and Leo, in my chart, right, Venus and Leo are like a kind of like, more like a hungry lion, you know.

So, you know, one of the things that, like, for example, at an earlier stage in my life, I guess I was in my late 20s, I was a vegan for a while. And the same thing, I had this like, moral, aesthetic picture of, like, whole beautiful raw foods, and perfectly following it. That I really wanted fish, I just, and I couldn't get it out of like, there was nothing I could do. So finally, I was just like, I need to include fish in my diet, and I couldn't fully be no offense to vegans out there. I know. I love and respect all of you. But so I just recognized that that was an impulse that I needed to follow. And it's, that's sure it's different for everyone. I'm not trying to make any kind of moral commentary on meat eating or not eating meat or whatever. The point is that sometimes you have to sort of, if there's a really strong fantasy that's dominating and repressing other fantasies, in other words, other instincts within us, sometimes you have to take that fantasy that's dominating and like smash it on the ground, you know, I mean, temporarily, you have to, you have to throw your wineglass into the fireplace so that other impulses and desires have a little space.

On the other hand, isn't there such a temptation when a very powerful evocative desire, an image rises up in you to be like, Oh, that's dangerous. And so you smash it? You say, No, that's not that is not holy, that is not sacred. That is dangerous. Well, the thing is, again, what I love about, you know, what Liz Greene also mentioned and what Hillman mentions, is that a soulful life, the soul is like a mediating ground for all of these different archetypal images, fantasies, impulses, instincts, and behaviors. And so a soulful life is one that makes room so that there's a choir of faces and voices and images and desires. And you do have to be careful. Venus can sometimes be destructive. There is a bloodless there is Venus set as the morning star announces bloodshed and warfare, you know what I mean? So there's definitely like, I mean, like Liz Greene was mentioning the blood lust of Hitler, you know, it's not like you have to be careful with Taurus, because the Venusian always with Venus or Taurus for example, because the Venusian can take over. And so, you know, you understand why people have this fear of a Venusian image, impulse desire rising up and then try to smash that painting as quickly as possible.

That's not the answer. I like the Buddhist approach. The animal becomes more human; the human becomes more animal; we're taming the bull, not killing it. And but in order to tame the bull, and just I was watching a movie the other night, and in the movie, there was a man who was really good at taming horses. That was like his thing, wild stallions. And what I noticed, you know, I was appreciating this is that there's a dance between the wildness of the stallion and the slow process of bringing the stallion into a space where the stallion could also be ridden, you know, but put a saddle on it. And he kept saying, the guy said, I'm not gonna, I'm not going to break its spirit. It's not about when I say breaking this animal; I don't mean breaking its spirit. He said that I thought that was really interesting because that's exactly what we're not trying to do with Venus; we might, at times, need to bring Venus under control. But if Venus doesn't remain wild, problems, problems.

So something about smashing the image if one image is dominating so much that other images and instincts aren't available to us. And also, on the other hand, you know, sometimes an image is so strong and overwhelming that it can be destructive. And so we have to smash it in that respect as well. Even if it's dear to us, it's like, well, you know, you might love, you know, a glass of wine. But somehow, when the wine bottle comes out, you drink the whole thing. And it's an every night kind of thing; you may need to throw your wineglass into the fireplace, you know what I mean? So, isn't it beautiful to think about images and instincts and the breaking of them or the adorning of them in our psyche as an ongoing process? It's like, we have a room with all these different beautiful paintings inside of us. And we have to figure out how to arrange and rearrange their orders. Because if we don't, if we're not tending to that space inside of us that I think, then that's when you know, a couple of fantasies may grow really dominant, and then the other fantasies tend to become really distorted, and super powerful because they're being repressed and that's when they become Minotaurs. So anyway, talking around some of the same points.

Number four, the soul is offended by dullness. I want to read you one last passage. This comes from another book by Hillman; I think it's actually just the translation of a lecture that he gave at one point called Aphrodite's Justice. Difficulties between psychology and Aphrodite are presaged long ago in the splendid little story of a Morin psyche, written by Apuleius in his novel Metamorphosis or the Golden Ass in the second century of our era. This Latin novel, The only complete one we have from Roman times, belongs to the literature of Venus; more, it belongs within the mystery literature of psychological transformations of the soul. And so the story of Amour and psyche serves as a kind of guidebook for initiation into the cult of Venus. But as I said, the embedded tale of the two lovers' psyche and amore in Latin and Greek Aries and in English Cupid shows Venus and psyche to be rivals in beauty. That rivalry asserts a profound distinction between them, and it must be our task as we proceed to inquire into the difference between the goddess of love and the beauty and beauty and the human psyche. In the story, the psyche is declared to be exquisitely beautiful. Now psyche means soul.

Because of her beauty, she is idolized by the people and looked upon as a goddess. Although she is merely a serving devotee and Venus's temple. Her beauty and its recognition by the people maligned Venus and insult her position. She alone is the goddess of beauty. All through the story, Venus gives psyche a very hard time. Is this not an archetypal truth? Have not our own psyches been put through miseries by Venus? The strange relation between psyche and Venus opens the extraordinary question of what is psychic beauty. And why does it threaten Venus and this parodic Matic story? One clue to their difference lies in their genesis; Venus is seaborne, arising from the film of the waves. Her father, in principle, is the phallus of the sky god. Psyche is earth-born, says the tale, her germination is from a drop of dew, and each has a masculine spirit. One is phallic, as a sexual drive that self-absorbed unrelenting procreative force. The other is common, unknown, universal, and the natural moisture of the cosmos. Simply a given without a name, like the dew which falls on all alike. Psychological beauty as a common possibility for any and all apart from sensible form.

The beauty of the eternal soul, but this virtue of the common is not directly what draws Venus's ire; rather, it is the popular acclaim, the celebrity, and the common idealization of the psyche as evidence of beauty. For the goddess, This is not beauty which cannot lie in the eye of the beholder; it is beyond human perception and human representation. That is why beauty is a goddess with a place among the immortals on Olympus, from which transcendence comes a radiance and fusing all things as their ground and as their ultimate perfectibility. Embroiled as she is in human affairs, as are all the divinities. The Divinity of beauty always remains, in essence, transcendent so that judgments regarding beauty will always fall short. Psyche, idolized and called beautiful by the people, represents to Venus this fundamental metaphysical fault and understanding the nature of beauty and of the goddess. Her wrath is thus not mere envy and rivalry over popularity. Venus is not acting like the stepmother in the fairytale who says Mirror mirror on the wall. Who is the most beautiful of them all? Another distinction between the protagonist is displayed in their different energies. Psyche seems to have no initiative. She's always ready to collapse, and we shall return to this trait of strength lies and submission. For her, as Heraclitus said, the way up and the way down are one and the same, or in Psyches, case going under and undergoing her path and her method. Aphrodite, however, has a phallic push. Her great lover is Aries, the raging battle God. This phallic push is embodied in her son's arrows, a more Cupid to whom she gives the charge of seducing her rival by striking psyche with one of his arrows so that she is consumed with passion for a monster. Of course, this does not happen. Eros falls in love with psyche himself. But we will break off the tail here, tempting you to find a version of Apollonius and read the Golden Ass through to its marvelous end.

The unhappy relation between psychology and beauty results from a wider problem in the Western mind. Classical and philosophical thinkers, even though studying antiquity, mainly German and British, of course, and Christians, the Romantics being the great exceptions, have simply avoided work on Aphrodite, sometimes regarding her not even a true goddess, certainly not deserving of Olympus and, of course, immoral and unethical. Venus has been trapped in a basic Christian dilemma that divides beauty from goodness and truth, splitting the classical idea of Kalkagathan beauty and goodness held in one term. After splitting them from each other, importance is given to the moral order, which sets up Venus as an immoral disturbance and outlaw. She becomes a Carmen, a destructive temptress.

The long history of Christianized philosophy has driven ethics from aesthetics and justice from beauty so that we customarily believe that you cannot be both good and beautiful, ethical and alluring. Nor can the pleasures of the senses be the path to truth. A piece of art or novel may be recommended for its moral instruction, and its morality lies in its beauty. But never does the Christian divided admit that in its very beauty is its morality since beauty works as a calling to better things, pulling at the heart to love to the mind to imagine more vividly. Moreover, morality without beauty stifles both the heart and mind, boring. Dull, it does not take hold does not prompt the Justice It advocates; in fact, Saul Bellow, Nobel laureate novelist, said dullness is worse than obscenity. A dull book is wicked. It may be as nice as pie and sweet as can be. But if it is banal and boring, it is evil. So we shall be stepping around psychology and philosophy both and turn back to the mythic figures in search of Afroditic* justice. It's a beautiful passage.

I use this phrase the soul is offended by dullness because I think it captures some of what Hillman was saying there. For example, there is a way in which soul beauty psyches, psyches, beauty, which needs Aphrodite beauty. They sort of need each other there. Again, kind of a moon Venus split. On the one hand, it's like saying from the soul's perspective everything is equally beautiful because everything is transcendentally divine. And so comparison is the great evil of soul beauty. Right? It's like, well, you know, everyone gets a participation trophy in the universe because we're all part of the body of the Divinity. And so everything has the sense of being included and beautiful because it's, it's just true, and it just is. But if we live with that version of Beauty alone, Aphrodite tends to get repressed again.

So, for example, I was sort of offended this is I think this is why the soul can't live with that kind of beauty alone. I was sort of offended when we participated in the pumpkin carving contest for Halloween a year or two ago. And she was called the pumpkin carving contest. And the kids have to, like, you know, decorate a pumpkin. And then they said, the judge whose artwork is the most creative and, you know, sort of the best. And I was sort of offended because what basically happened was everyone won. And there were some pumpkins that were way better and had kids who had put a lot more effort into than others. And my kids weren't one of them. So I'm not I wasn't being biased here, either. I mean, I think my kids made a great, you know, they made some cool art. But there were some that were like, wow, these are really, really special. And the point is that comparative beauty is still important. Do you know what I mean? Venus is the one who says I am drawn to this and not to that. How many times per year, I would say at least five or six times per month, have I talked to someone who says something like this. My partner is nice. I get along with my partner; my partner is a good person, they have a good heart and they have a good soul. But and the but could be like, our sex life isn't very good. Or there's the romantic chemistry is missing, or I don't have fun with them or something like that.

Often we think that there is something wrong with our particular tastes or likes and dislikes as though unless we're living in this state of unanimous equanimity, where you know everything is equally beautiful and sacred. It's nice; that's a nice perspective. It's the soul's perspective that it is really not very different from anyone and everything else in the sense of just being an eternal Spark or something like that. But the soul was more than just a unit of consciousness. The soul is a mediating ground also for archetypes. And that's why Venus and psyche, or Aphrodite and Psyche have this dichotomy. Because there is a pumpkin that is profoundly beautiful, and probably more beautiful than the rest, or that stands out in some way. Or that a judge may look upon and say that the beauty is part of how we discern and decide and make decisions and live a happy life. You can't just marry someone, for example, that you don't have some particular attraction to. It can't just be like, well, they're a good person. Well, then they'll, you know, they don't offend me. Or well, they mean well, or that, you know, like I've seen so many times over and over again, that it's just not enough. There have to be things about people that both attract you and repulse you, in combination, because it forms an aesthetic. And an aesthetic is part of how life is made. Not only colorful but moral. There's a sense that you can't live honestly and truthfully in the world unless you're able to recognize, you know, distinctions.

And so what I love about that particular essay by Hillman is just the thought that like it's not enough to have this kind of dull sense of, of universal, you know, universal beauty where nothing stands out more than anything else. Now, often, we are scared of bringing Venus in. And the revolution in our lives that can happen when we bring Venus in is specifically because we admit that I like something more than something else. I like someone more than something else. I like making love in this way more than I like making love in that way, or whatever the case may be. These are things that relationships can and should be able to mediate to work with, isn't it?

How many times I've said to people have you told your partner what you want or what you desire? Well, no, because I don't want to offend them or make them think that I don't love them or they're not special or beautiful, or you know, sacred to me. It's like well, your, your particular attractions, needs, desires loves are also sacred. So we have to make room for Venus in this respect. And there can be profound revolution. It doesn't have to be just destabilizing to admit the specific things we like to say to someone. Well, I don't just say thumbs up, and it's all good to every single kind of food that I'm served. I mean, I understand that the intent of whoever's cooking it for me is, you know, beautiful. I'm so thankful that someone would make me food. For example, if someone's making you food every day, well, I don't know who's in that position. But, like, if you were, you could, but at certain times, you have to be like, I love you, thank you for thinking of me, and this is what I like and don't like.

Number five, beauty goes beyond identity. The other great temptation of this transit is to say I need to evolve somehow. And in order to include, you know, I need to evolve somehow. And in order to evolve, it has to include those impulses, images, instincts, desires, and fantasies that are getting repressed or marginalized somehow, okay, so I'm going to bring them in, I'm going to include them. When you do that? And then you say, let's just say it's the color black, I don't know. Then the next day, you say, well, now I'm a black color kind of person, and you buy your whole wardrobe, you buy the color black, okay? Or let's say you're like, well, these are the things that I'm I'm drawn to. And these are the things that, you know, these are the impulses, images, fantasies that I need to include, but then as a way of trying to ensure that those impulses and fantasies are not repressed or marginalized, again, because it takes a lot of work to free those things up. We say I'm going to nail it down. And this is where people get the tattoo. Now they're like, Oh, well, you know, I've realized that I need to make more room for, you know, like eating fish. In my case, What if I got a fish tattoo on my arm just to ensure that this new identity is never repressed? Again. The thing about this is you just have to be really careful that whatever we're unlocking, whatever impulses are allowing us to evolve, let them flow through. Be careful of needing to get identified with them and be careful of the literalness of the image.

I can't tell you how many times again, people have come in, and they'd been like, I love my partner, but you know, and then there's these particular Venusian instincts or impulses that aren't getting addressed. And the fantasy image that will appear will be maybe the temptation to cheat on a spouse, and it's a particular person you have in mind. It getting the tattoo would be like thinking, at times, that that person is the literal answer to the problem. In fact, often, it's not. Often that person is not even if a person ends up getting divorced. It's, it seems very seldom in my work with 1000s of clients that the fantasy image of the person that they know, maybe they cheated with that perpetuated the end of the marriage, ever lasts. And that I think that's because it's there may be some relationships, you know, under this transit, for example, may need to end because something isn't being addressed, or some need is going unfulfilled, or unsatisfied. But be careful, because often the liberating fantasy is just hugely out of it's like, totally disproportionate, we take it literally, we tattoo it on ourselves, and then it's like, okay, that's, that's a problem. Because you can't undo it very easily, or it can become destructive.

So again, thinking about whatever images and instincts and impulses are coming through as not so literal, but as representing an urge or a desire and working with that and seeing well what can I what, you know, if it's a really extreme one, how can I slowly start feeding that impulse or instinct without maybe going to the extreme, and without getting identified with it? Those are things that we have to be always just watchful for with this transit.

So was trying to hit an hour; we're a little bit over an hour, so I hope that this exploration was useful today a little deep dive into some essays and thoughts about Venus with Uranus opposite or, excuse me, the Moon exalted in Venus's sign with Uranus opposite venus in Scorpio too.

I hope that you will like and subscribe, and share a few comments. If you have anything to share in the line in the way of a story, use the hashtag grabbed, or email grabbed@nightlightastrology.com really appreciate you guys sharing your stories. Don't forget the new class starts on Saturday. I hope to see some of you guys there. Hope you have a great week, and stay tuned for horoscopes on the eclipse tomorrow. Take it easy, everyone. Bye