Today I'm going to take a look at Venus's opposition to Neptune, which is perfecting today.
Transcript:
0:01
Hey everyone, this is Acyuta-bhava from Nightlight Astrology. Happy Monday, everybody. Today we're going to take a look at Venus's opposition to Neptune, which is perfecting today. So I'm going to go ahead and put this up on the real time clock where you can see it. Here we go. And let's take a look at it. Venus is still in Virgo the sign of Venus is fall and moving through the opposition with Neptune in Pisces, between today, August 9 and tomorrow, August 10. So if you move through that opposition by tomorrow, at this time, Tuesday, August 10, you can see Venus is now at 23 degrees. So it's past over the opposition. You take this forward just a little bit further into August 15th and 16th. That's when Venus is going to be making the change back into Libra, where Venus picks up a lot of dignity again. So if Venus stuff whatever Venus might represent in your life right now, we'll go over the significations in a minute but if Venus stuff has been a little dinged up or if you've been experiencing some challenge around Venus related matters, just know that some of that is passing right now is this aspect perfect and then you know about a week from now Venus is going to pick up dignity and probably be in a lot better shape. Remember as Venus is making the opposition with Neptune. Venus is also moving into a trine with Pluto. So you've got both Neptune and Pluto doing a lot of work together right now with Venus. And that's pretty intense when you combine those two planets at the same time. The good news is that the idea of Venus going through a positive transformation right now is implied by the trine to Pluto. The opposition to Neptune can be a little bit more challenging. The trine to Pluto suggests that there's potential for a release of pent up energies and some degree of positive transformation occurring. Anyway we're going to spend more time today talking about Venus opposite Neptune but I figured that's worth mentioning for starters. The other thing to remember is that this Venus opposition is coming right on the heels of the new moon in Leo, which we had yesterday. You can see the moon's just moving into Virgo now. But that new moon in Leo basically being toned by its square to Uranus and the Venus opposition to Neptune. If you haven't yet watched my new moon video from last Friday, my wife Ashley joined and we also talked about some herbs that we recommend. I also did a podcast last week that I promoted in my newsletter and you can find the link of that Friday episode on the new moon. I did a podcast with former student of mine and astrologer named Spencer Michaud and we had a good talk about the new moon as well. So a powerful cycle that we're in right now.
2:57
So what we're doing today is talking about Venus and the opposition to Neptune I brought in a couple of show and tell objects. We're going to be talking about Eros and psyche or Cupid and Psyche. This is one of my favourite like bookshelf statues that I have. And I'm gonna start by reading you from one of my favourite archetypal cookbooks, the Archetypal Universe by Renn Butler, it's one of my favourites, go to desk reference, and give you kind of a fun summary of what he says about Venus Neptune. He has sections these are really cool. He has like all of the planetary combinations and twos and sometimes threes. And he'll say Venus, Neptune principles, characters and theme shadow qualities, nature and the arts archetypes and spirituality dream images and themes. And then he has Venus Neptune in combination with other third planets. So anyway, it's a really great book, I always use it to draw inspiration from especially when I'm feeling a little stuck on what to write about or talk about on any given day. But today, I actually was visiting this one, not because I was feeling stuck, but for a very specific reason because of what he says in the section on character and themes. So if you are meeting Venus in your life today in some area of your life here is what you might encounter:
4:28
"A sweet and sensitive nature, Yin tenderness and devotion, natural kindness and compassion enjoyment in helping others. an exotic and mystical appeal a delicate and seamless beauty, exquisite refinement, ethereal charm, the ideal of beauty for beauty sake, a dreamy openness, mystical sensuality, romantic bliss, feelings of whimsy and reverie. Beautiful dreaming delicious unthinking romance sweet intoxication, contented sighs. God only knows what I'd be without you, Brian Wilson, spiritual ideals in love and friendship platonic relationships the ideal of the soulmate, a higher union of souls oceanic sex, and true love is the soul that envelops the body."
5:24
I love that passage so much. It's one of my favourites that I have bookmarked in Renn Butler's book, I just love the way he weaves language together. Of course, you may notice if you've read Richard Tarnas, at all, that that style of writing, many astrologers have been inspired by that same style of writing, which really, as far as I know, comes from Richard Tarnas. Not that Renn isn't a fantastic writer in his own regard, right? But that that stringing together of beautiful archetypal language, that's really something that Richard Tarnas inspires in the way that he teaches, he writes, and he speaks. So if you've ever checked out Richard Tarnas, if you want to go up the chain, Renn studied with Richard Tarnas. So here's a few things that I wrote down and why so many of those turns of phrase really work well for Venus and Neptune.
6:26
Remember that Venus is the goddess of love. And we may think that we know what that means, because, you know, we can place that sort of in our lives, romance, marriage, we can think of the arts and beauty and anything that's sensual or lovely, we can think of the goddess. So most of us have the ability through like associative images and mythology and just everyday experience to kind of get a sense of what Venus is. But it's important to also understand what Venus was about philosophically, to ancient astrologers. And, and what role Venus played in reality, not just as a goddess, or an archetype, a collection of myths, images and experiences, which are very important, don't get me wrong, but also what role does Venus play philosophically, what is the sort of metaphysical place of Venus in the cosmos. One of the main things that we understand is that desire guides our actions. So desire is toward an object, the object could be a person, or it could be an experience, it could be a state of being or feeling, it could be something physical, it could be something that we can't even describe, it's just a yearning or longing. But action is driven by desire. So, this was common to you know, yoga philosophers and, and you know, Western mysticists alike. Action is driven by what we find attractive, or by what we find repulsive, or what we reject or discard, or what we are averse to, you could even say what we are afraid of. But with Venus, it's a little less what we're afraid of, and a little bit more about what we reject. And so I mentioned this, I think in a video recently, Venus was also Aphrodite, Venus was associated with justice and ethics and morality. Because for ancient thinkers, beauty and truth were correlated with one another, excuse me. So whatever the truth is, it has to be both good and beautiful, as well as true, they all go together simultaneously. And so whatever is ugly, would be in some ways false, untrue, or something like that. Now, there's a difference between sort of ultimate beauty and truth and goodness, and whatever deviates or falls short of that, and you know, every day sort of petty desires and aversions, which are really just relative, and pretty subjective. So Venus can represent both. Venus can represent the everyday desires and aversions that we have, like I want to eat this, but I don't like the way that tastes. But Venus also is a planet that overall signifies our gradual and developmental journey toward the good, the true and the beautiful. It tends to represent the beautiful dimension of our spiritual journey.
10:00
A lot of the times when we think of enlightenment, we think of mental control, controlling ourselves mentally, we think about physical achievement or accomplishment. You know, for example, I think probably a lot of people, you know, believe if I can be looking the right way and feeling the right way, physically and have everything looking a certain way, physically, then, you know, I'm accomplished. But, um, the, the really important thing that we can't leave behind is that, you know, enlightenment, according to ancient mystics is something that should beautify. Meaning, we become more attractive to other people, and not in a sexual way, necessarily, although that could be a part of it, but that we, that we become the luminous. You know, one of the words that was used to describe Venus was phosphorus, phosphorescent. There's something about saintly people, and I've had the chance to know some in my lifetime, thankfully, especially some of the people that I met, when I was an pilgrimages in India, and some of the people who've spent a long, long long periods of their life serving in temples and ashrams. What is the vibration of such a person feel like, and the first thing that would come to my mind is beautiful, peaceful, but beautiful, serene, and beautiful. And not in a way that provokes jealousy, or passionate lust or desire, like, give me that, I want that. So, the main thing I'm trying to say here is that beauty real beauty is one of the byproducts or signposts of our spiritual progress, that we become more beautiful and attractive, inside, and then that radiates outward to other people. That if you're around someone who's enlightened it, you feel more beautiful for having been around them, you just, it just rubs off on you. So that's one thing that I really wanted to focus on today, because Venus opposite Neptune is really in some ways is about the distinction between what constitutes beauty versus what constitutes a temporary fetish, or a temporary know something that can only very temporarily satiate us. Because when Venus opposes Neptune, we're looking for that transcendental oceanic all encompassing divine sense of beauty. And we're also trying to shift our lives, our ethics, our sense of what is virtuous, or moral, or right or good or true, toward a more beautiful, more all encompassing vision. So that's the upside of a Venus Neptune dynamic is that everything in our lives can move toward a truly more divine and beautiful sense of what to do. Because what we do is rooted in what we desire. And if we can reorient our sense of what is beautiful, and good and true, and, and so forth, that reevaluate a transcendental or spiritual aesthetic, then our actions change, what we're doing with our lives change when we get a different vision, a more all encompassing and beautiful vision. So that's the Venus Neptune dynamic, you could be accessing that right now, in the past couple of days.
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At the same time, because Venus is in its fall, one of the ways that we get to a new vision is by looking at what isn't working, or what we might be disappointed in, or even disgusted by. For example, sometimes we live our lives according to desires, images of the good and the beautiful, only to realise that they were not good or beautiful at all. We realise, oh, this is sort of hideous even. And that might be something that's happening just on an internal level. But you know, the easy story is like, you know, if you've ever gone out and you know, when you're younger, maybe you go out and you're partying and you connect with someone after drinking and the next day, they call or whatever, you talk to them, you see them when you go like, Oh my god, what was I doing? I don't have anything in common with this person. I don't even find them that attractive. So sometimes we drink the kool aid of some kind of delusion. And we think it's this great grand thing that'll bring something that we really truly need into our lives only to find out that, you know, we were diluted on some level. That's the Venus Neptune dynamic.
15:01
The need for love or romance to fall in love with something bigger, and to aim our lives towards something bigger. That's a Venus Neptune dynamic. But with Venus in its fall again, you're thinking about the difference between something that you know, there's something that we're doing based on a kind of careful, attentive, listening to the soul to our inner life, discernment, Venus in Virgo can be very discerning. And, you know, if we listen to that, and we shift our priorities and our values, then it's very possible that we'll be headed towards a more beautiful future. Now, on the other hand, one of the reasons I brought up Eros and Psyche just hold it up again. Here's Cupid and Psyche or Eros and psyche. Because there's another dimension to Venus Neptune. That is, you can you can see if you've ever read the myth, or I've ever read the story, and there's a great version of the story that was actually written by CS Lewis called till we have faces I think it was called something like that. But this the Cupid and Eros story is a wonderful story to help us understand a Venus Neptune dynamic, especially with Venus in her fall in Virgo. So in the story, and this is just kind of a super brief summary of some of the highlights. Psyche is cursed by Aphrodite, Venus. Psyche means soul, by the way. And Venus is essentially jealous of psyche on a certain level and curses Psyche to have to marry a monster and sends her son Eros to using an arrow and make her fall in love with like the ugliest, most monstrous looking thing or person. He sees her and some stories say he shoots himself or he accidentally, you know, pricks himself and he ends up falling in love with her. Then there's this whole drawn out story, a lot of it involves jealousy. And a lot of it involves sort of lust and distrust. And at any rate, Psyche ends up in a situation where she has been told that she's going to be cursed to marry a monster. But she's actually married Eros, Cupid who is like the most beautiful being ever. And she can't see him every bed every night in bed. It's dark, she can't see his face. But she she senses and feels because she's in this beautiful mansion that she's not with a monster. She's in this beautiful place. Everything feels so good. And it feels good to be with her husband too who doesn't feel like a monster to her. But then, you know, her sisters come by they're jealous of her new pad. They think Oh, isn't she supposed to be with a monster? Surely you are with a monster. And that's why he won't let you see his face at night. Why don't you just take a lantern out in the middle of the night? Take a look at his face. I bet he's a monster. So she does out of this kind of distrust and fear, is the real thing. Can I trust myself, and you know, finds out that it's some she's actually married to the beautiful Eros, the beautiful Cupid, she accidentally spilled some oil and burns him or something like that, then this whole chain of events is set into motion where she has to she she has to sort of redeem herself for this transgression. The rule was you can't look at, at me in the nighttime, you can't see my face. So she has to go through this series of tests and trials which she eventually, pulls through.
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But one of the lessons of this beautiful story, if you've ever read it, it's one of my favourites. One of the lessons is that the real beauty is something that we often find despite appearances. That's one of the main messages of this story. You know, we find some of the most spectacular beauty in our lives through what something feels like on the inside what its essence is and not what its superficial appearance looks like. And there's so much about Venus in Virgo opposite Neptune and Pisces that has to do with trusting ourselves, trusting what feels good and what what feels true and beautiful. And being careful not to judge too much based on external appearances. Because there can be a way in which we scrutinise or we become overly critical or judgement of something on the surface. And the interior of something is what matters. On the other hand, we may be tempted by something that has no interior, but looks good on the surface. So these kinds of temptations, and in the whole myth of Eros and Psyche is important. Because what is psyche, psyche is the soul and Eros is love. If the soul wants love, it has to look for it in and through faith and trust, and a kind of inner knowing an inner seeing that doesn't get caught up in the literalness, or the physical or the material dimension.
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Interestingly, they end up together in both the physical and the spiritual sense of being together. And so there's finally an alchemy that happens between the two. But most of the time, we need to trust and know and be connected to beauty through faith. And through an inner quality, almost prior to, it's not that we go, in other words from the judgement of the outside, and that that somehow leads us to the inner. So for example, if I lose 100 pounds, because I'm overweight, then I get there, and then my interior, my inside of me will be better. I mean, obviously, people are going to feel better if they lose weight, right. But the idea is that you're you're going to be in a lot better position, if you start to lose weight from the position of starting to trust and know your inner worth, and starting to build an interior life that could then lead to some kind of physical or external change of appearance. But if we put the cart before the horse, a lot of the times we're going to be really deeply disappointed. We lose 100 pounds only to feel still miserable about ourselves. And I see this all the time, in my practice 10 years as a yoga studio owner. People do things all the time, thinking, Well, you know, if I just do this, or I get here, or I accomplish this thing, then I'll feel good, I'll look good, I'll feel beautiful. And for Psyche and Eros, the soul and love. There's something that has to happen in faith in the dark in places that we can't see or judge. There has to be some kind of ridiculous defiance of circumstance and some establishment of inner love and worth that comes prior to the external transformations, that come prior to being able to see one another. In a physical sense, we have to see one another in a spiritual sense.
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So if you've never read the Eros and psyche myth, I highly recommend taking a minute today or tomorrow, going online finding a summary of it or a version of it, there are tonnes of them, all you have to do is go Google search. And just considering this myth that this story is really a story about each of us and about each of our souls looking for love looking for connection to something other than ourselves that it also lives in us simultaneously. And that requires a lot of faith and trust to bring that out and to cultivate that part of our lives. And if we get too caught up on how that inner beauty or love is measured by other people or by ourselves in some externalisation we'll lose it and we'll end up having to go down a torturous path as psyche has to go down in the story. Which makes the store really interesting though, so it's all part of it, isn't it? Anyway, that's what I've got for today. I hope that this was interesting. I hope that you enjoyed hearing a little bit about Venus Neptune. If you have a story about Venus and Neptune that you'd like to share, put hashtag grabbed in the comment section. Feel free to email us grabbed@nightlightastrology.com. How are the planets showing up in your life? How are these stories playing out we'd love to hear from you guys. And we will be doing some of the common misconceptions of Taurus this week as well as a bunch of other stuff. So look forward to more shortly. Okay, take it easy, everyone. Bye
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