Love is a Battlefield — Venus Opposing Neptune in Aries

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/].

Happy Monday, everyone. We've got a big week of astrology ahead of us-a solar eclipse coming up in the sign of Leo. But today we're going to start the week by looking at Venus's opposition with Neptune, which is perfecting today. We've also got a Mercury-Pluto opposition this week. Lots of big astrology to get to, but today Venus in the sign of Libra opposing Neptune in the sign of Aries. That's how we start our week.

So we're going to explore this today. I've got a list of five things to watch for. And people often ask me, well, how? What? What advice would you have for working with this transit? We use that phrase, working with. So I also have some thoughts from Taoist, Hermetic, and Buddhist perspectives on each of our five things to watch for today. I did this extra research and felt like these wisdom traditions each have something important to offer when it comes to working with Venus opposite Neptune. So I hope you'll enjoy this today. Gives you something good to work with.

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But it's really been nice to hear from all of you and hear how you're enjoying the book. The feedback's been wonderful. I really appreciate it. Okay, so let's turn our attention to Nichepso. Putting the Chepso up on the screen. Here we are, Monday, August 10th, and the transit that we want to point out today, if I can get my epic pen to work, is there's the big arrow.

It came back lately. It's on a like it's on a comeback tour. The band didn't break up. All right, there's Venus opposite Neptune. You can see that dynamic playing out today. If I fast forward this one day, tomorrow the aspect is still in effect in the morning. Let's give it three degrees of separation, and it's really present all the way through the end of this week, Friday, August 14.

It's within three degrees of separating. So, if you were noticing anything we were talking about today over the weekend, that would also be pretty normal because Venus opposite Neptune is something that has been building over the past couple of days as well. So where we stand here on Monday, August 10, the aspect is going to be exact today.

Had a little build up over the weekend, and we'll have some aftermath as the week goes on. So, if you are not familiar with this aspect, hopefully today will be educational. But even if you are familiar, we're going to talk about some things that are pretty standard for Venus Neptune. But then I tried to pair that today with how can you work? What if Wiz? Tradition said about these archetypal dynamics.

So let's get into it. I've got five things to watch for. These are pretty standard for any combination of Venus and Neptune, square conjunction opposition, but even the trine on a certain level. But especially the opposition can bring up these tensions, the tension of opposites. That's always the case with an opposition. Well, what are those opposites, and how do we deal with them?

Number one on my list of things to watch for when Venus opposes Neptune is an impossible longing, an unavailable lover, something from the past that can't be done away with or recovered or made better, but you obsess over it. A perfect vocation. This is the ideal career, an ideal community, an ideal house, an ideal lover. There's something that we long for that right now is not possible, but we can't stop longing for it, despite the fact that we know that it's not possible.

That's hard to live with. That's an ache that lives in the heart. But there are wisdom traditions on planet Earth that tell us how to deal with this. So, if this is coming up for you right now, let's look at what the Taoists say. Taoists tell us in the in my sources are mainly the Tao Te Ching and the I Ching, which Taoist philosophy comes out of.

So, longing is not inherently bad, or just it's not a mistake to have longing. Desire is thought of in Taoism as a natural movement. In other words, it's part of nature. Nature desires; it just arises. It happens. The trouble for Taoists seems to begin when the mind goes from desiring something to thinking that because I desire it, it has to happen, you know.

So there's a concept in Taoism, as I understand it, and I'm probably not going to pronounce it right, but it's called Wu Wei, and basically what it means is not forcing things. That's the way I understand it: is that you participate in what's unfolding. You allow yourself to have a desire, but you participate in what's unfolding, and you don't try to force something that's not naturally unfolding.

And I think this-if you've ever worked with the I Ching, you'll find that many hexagrams, when you're in a position of asking a question based on something you're not getting that you feel you ought to be getting or that you wish you were getting, whatever that is, that you get that kind of woo way instruction. Don't try to force things.

So, and what's interesting is that when we don't, when we're longing for something we can't have, but we just stay in that responsive, unforced position. That that same longing can actually awaken things that were maybe dead or or or what's the word I'm looking for dormant inside. So, poetry, art, courage, tenderness, imagination, artfulness.

A person we want to be with might be unavailable, for example, or a job we want that just can't happen. It can't manifest. It can't not right now, anyway, but there are capacities that can be awakened through that longing that are real, that may have a different outlet or different expression path to follow.

So, in other words, a Taoist wisdom is not about renouncing desire just because it's bad, but it's not. It's also not about trying to force it just because you have it. So what is so this the longing might appear initially as a longing for something or someone, but if we don't try to force it, but we let it exist, usually the nature of that desire will follow its own course towards something else, and it's about allowing that something else to be what we're guided toward.

If that makes sense, I know it's a little it's like jujitsu or something, but the Tao Te Ching frequently says that wisdom is born out of not grasping and allowing the nature of something to take its own course, and so the impossibility opens. Some, it opens something that may have a path towards something else that is just as fruitful, but it may not be the result that's attached to the immediate image of the longing or desire.

That's tricky because we have to be patient and we can't discard or or or try to renounce the desire, but we also can't try to force its literal manifestation. Pretty good, right? Buddhist perspective on the impossible longing. You have a longing, and it can, if you study it, if you let's say study, if you reflect upon it, it can reveal something about the nature of suffering and how suffering arises in us.

You have, you make contact with the object of a desire in thought or feeling or image or fantasy, a pleasant feeling arises. Ooh, I want that. Or a painful feeling arises. Oh, I don't have that. And in Buddhism, the feeling will condition the craving, and then the craving becomes clinging, and then the clinging constructs a world that says it's only in this world where I have this thing that I will be satisfied.

So very similarly, the longing has to be looked at as potentially the source of suffering, which is why presence, and coming back to presence, not it's not that desire is bad, but presence is the antidote to desire that leads to these conditions and clinging and constructs of worlds that only if I achieve will I be happy. Deconstructing all of that means coming back to just presence.

So now the hermetic perspective is also interesting because in the hermetic perspective, basically it's like earthly longings can be transmuted through spiritual practice to divine longings. So, like, let's say you ideal you idealize a lover, or you want to be married or something, and you're not currently dating anyone. It's like, okay, well, I can't fulfill this impossible ideal for marriage to happen overnight right now.

The corpus hermeticum or the hermetica constantly suggests that we almost like transmute desires for worldly things into spiritual things. So one way of thinking about that would be to say that the longing for a lover is really the longing for God or divinity or enlightenment or heaven or something transcendental, and so longing for something impossible can be seen as like a reflection of the longing for something divine, and you can transmute it with reflection.

And again, take it or leave any of these. These are just different wisdom traditions and what they've said. But isn't that fascinating? Number two on my list is the real and the ideal. Now, this is similar to the impossible longing, but Venus Neptune brings up the need that we all have for ideals, because ideals are part of life.

We ideally want to be the kind of person who treats people kindly, who forgives. We ideally want to be someone who is creative and present, we ideally want to be someone who is healthy and conscientious, whatever the case might be. Or we ideally want to be someone who has fun. We ideally want to be someone who has material security, who feels competent, or we ideally want to be masterful at some skill or craft that makes us feel good about ourselves and makes us feel like we're contributing to the world.

So we have ideals, and but we also have a. The ideal is always in contrast to to what is. So if I say I want to be a great astrologer, it's because in the moment I'm not yet a great astrologer, or whatever the case might be.

I want to be in a really happy marriage. You only long for that because you feel that you aren't in a, you know, the ideal marriage. You want to be the ideal parent because right now you don't feel like you're the ideal parent. So, the real and the ideal are always in a in dialog with one another. There, it's like comparative. This is what is. This is what I long for. This is what is. This would be the ideal.

Now, that tension we have to learn to live with because it's constant. Venus Neptune dynamics don't suddenly bring that dynamic about as if it never exists until they're in contact. It heightens our awareness of it as a ever present part of living a life in a real world with ideals. So In Taoism, we don't want our ideals to be rigidly imposed upon life, because once you start noticing that, okay, I I think I have some, I've had some taste or some understanding of what love is, or what justice is, or what harmony looks like, or what a spiritual partnership feels like, or something like that.

That we get a taste for those things, and then all of a sudden they become rigid categories that everything has to live up to, and that's when we lose track of what each living situation may require. Let me give you another example. You grow up in meet for me, you know, in the church, and you have this set of morals: be kind, be forgiving, be compassionate, be humble, whatever.

But because they are applied as this kind of, they can be rigid. The ideals can be rigid. Then, when you're in a situation that requires you to maybe be a little bit more assertive or courageous, you think, well, I always have to be humble because that's the virtue, and then you don't know in that moment that it may actually require that you be a little bit more assertive, and that that doesn't necessarily cancel out humility.

So, Taoism is always warning us that our ideals not become so rigid that they can't be applied in real life flexibly. So Venus and Neptune can be an incredibly inflexible transit with respect to the kinds of ideals that bring up brings up for us and how rigid they become in our imagination when a situation may require a little bit more imagination and a little bit more flexibility relative to an ideal, so the real is always requiring a slightly different adjustment in relationship to an ideal in the moment.

It's not that there isn't a kind of ideal way. You know, I think frequently my kids have something come up and I have to think. Okay, what is the ideal response right now? What is the? But if that ideal is just a rigid category, and Libra can be like this-it's an exaltation of Saturn. Libra can be like there is a calculus, there is a correct answer, but what's the correct answer right now in this real moment where ideals are here, but they have to be applied sensitively to a living situation.

Also, in Buddhism, there's warnings about ideals being like rafts. The metaphor or image of a raft that takes you to the far shore of enlightenment is frequently used in the history of Buddhism, and ideals are like rafts, but they're not-they're not enlightenment itself, right? So we can try to become identified with ideals. I am the ideal person of justice. I am the ideal person of kindness. I am the ideal person of whatever virtue. I'm a compassion, non harm, equanimity.

These are values in Buddhism, but you can get attached to these views to the detriment of actually being present. You, in other words, you can build an a temporary false identity out of getting identified with ideals, especially ones that are like virtuous. And in hermeticism, ideals are ideals are meant to be incarnated. It's very like hermeticism has an interesting relationship with Christology.

And the study of what was Christ as a metaphysical idea, regardless of real, not just like as a religious, symbolic, mythic figure, or literal, either way. What does it mean to be what what does it mean for God to incarnate in all of us as like aspects of God incarnate. It means that there's nothing lacking, you know.

In some ways, the original sin is thinking that there's a problem at all. But we live in a world that has all sorts of apparent problems, and so an ideal always has to be embodied. It's the same idea about an ideal not being an abstract category that we get identified with, but it becomes something. It has to be incarnate, which means it requires moment-to-moment sensitive embodiment.

All right, interdependence is the next one on my list. Well, of course, the Venus in Libra, Neptune in Aries access brings up the classical, you know, Libra Aries dynamic about how can two people live in a shared reality, without either person losing themselves, becoming dependent to a fault, or being independent to a fault, and so there's questions about relationship reciprocity, interdependence, codependence, and healthy independence within relationships and so forth.

So, in Taoism, complementarity is not thought of as the the the the complementarity of opposites doesn't cancel out the independence of each opposite. The idea is about circulation. How does circulation occur? And the only way that circulation can occur in a healthy manner is for each. Let's call it in a relationship with two people that are representing the opposites, that each person has a healthy individual existence relative to the other, is necessary for the circulation of interdependence to occur.

And so, in Buddhism, this is stated when when the Buddhists say that there is no isolated self. You know, in other words, you you are everything by its nature is contingent, relational, dependent, interdependent. It doesn't mean that there aren't boundaries or that there aren't individuals. It means that no self exists independent of co-arising contingent conditions. So reality is relational.

We're we are shaped by each other. That you can't also possess one another, And so the question becomes about care, care for the self, care for the other. And and right now there may be questions about how that how that happens or how how that activity evolves. Now number four on my list is the mystical and the sensual.

Well, the hermetic-I should say-in hermeticism, there's all sorts of metaphors about the choir of creation, which means that we we belong to each other in a cosmic sense, in a big, huge cosmic container, but that doesn't mean that we own or possess one another or are entitled to each other personally. So participation in cosmic creation is a matter of personal and relational responsibility in hermeticism.

All right, the mystical and the sensual. Venus Neptune frequently brings up the feeling that beauty is sort of otherworldly, mystical art is opening up the transcendent. When love or sex or music or sensual, you know, our five senses or color, whatever, any anything that's Venusian sort of opens up the feeling that reality is bigger than we thought it was, or it reminds us that the gods are real, or that spirit is real, that there's an eternal dimension to things, beauty.

Do that. Beauty frequently does that for us. But here's the thing: the Tao Te Ching specifically says that once that you name beauty and sort of fix it into an absolute category, then attachment occurs, and then ugliness has to be manifest alongside of it. Isn't that amazing? Like that's like that's pretty to me. That's pretty mind blowing, and it really makes sense to me.

So Taoists are always treating beauty as the arrival of something more like a weather event. It arrives, it transforms, it passes. There's a someone was saying this. I think it was a guy named Ryan Hunt was saying this in one of our classes. He's an astrologer and came through Nightlight. Really nice guy. Anyway, Ryan was saying in one of our classes, there's a language, and I can't remember what it was.

It might have been-I don't remember. It was some language that he knows, and he was saying that in that language, rather than saying "you are cute, like let's say my daughter's acting cute, and I say "you're cute, which basically assigns to her the fixed value of being cute, like an attribute or a property or something, and then it becomes possessive.

I possess the attribute of cuteness, but in this language, he was saying that the way that you say you are cute is more like I am experiencing cuteness right now, like in in relation to you.

You know, like cuteness is arising in in me as I stand near you. Do you you see what I'm saying? And I might be getting that slightly wrong, but the idea is that the the experience of cuteness is arising, and for Buddhists or or Taoists, it becomes problematic if you try to, if I try to make my daughter possessing the quality, the absolute fixed quality of cuteness, is that you see, because then it produces in her the contrasting quality of ugliness, and then it sets her up to be constantly in a battle between: am I cute or am I ugly?

You can be cute, and it comes up, and then it passes. And what you are is not an attribute; it's a living being. You know what I mean. So Buddhism basically says the real thing. So beauty is real as experience, but empty as possession. That's the idea, and then in hermeticism, as usual, sensible beauty can reveal the higher form of beauty.

So, if I experience my daughter's cuteness, I can reflect and say, "God is cute. Reality is cute because reality cutes. Do you know what I mean? Reality expresses cuteness, so it can point me toward a higher form, in a sense, or some higher attribute of reality itself. All right. Well, the last one is I think it's a little tricky to talk about.

So we're we tend to be really obsessed in the modern era with the idea of soulmates and twin flames-that one person is literally the other half of one's soul. I-I don't know if that's real or not, guys. I don't pretend to know. Okay, so don't take what I'm about to say as confirmation or denial of the existence of such things. I have to leave certain things to mystery and just go. I don't know.

So, aside from whether it's real or not, a lot of people experience the need or desire for a soulmate, or let's call it a twin flame, around this transit, or they that idea comes up really strongly. So, what does what do Taoists say about this? Well, I think Taoism. This is just my interpretation of what I know of Taoism.

I think Taoism recognizes that there are natural affinities that are really unique and powerful, and the timing and the the paths that are flowing together, but resonance is also seasonal, and in the span of eternity, I think to in other words to insist because we flowed together once or even for several lifetimes that that means that we have to remain together forever.

I'm not trying to be a bummer, right? Because maybe you can, maybe you do. I don't know. But I think the the view of attachment is such that it's like, as long as we flow together, we're tweeting. Flames. As long as we flow together, we're soulmates. And also, there might be something necessary for sustaining that flow together that requires non-attachment.

It's like if anything is going to keep you flowing together, it's not going to be well. We we we can't be separated because we're twin flames. You know, it might be something a little bit more like, for at least for Taoists or Buddhists, I think it would probably be something more like, you, however long you flow together, I'm not attached to, but we're flowing together at the moment. You know, you know what I mean.

Now take that or leave that. Okay, I'm just giving you some ideas. The reason I think that's important is because I notice a lot of people get a lot of anxiety around: Do I have a soulmate? When will I find a soulmate? Will we stay together? Will it last? And you know, and and I think when I think about my wife, I do have the feeling that we've we've been together before somehow, you know, and I think a lot of people know what I'm talking about.

Um, but I also I also have this very sweet feeling that I'm not in charge of this, you know, like I have to surrender feeling like I have to try to hold it, possess it, control it. The I have to be careful of the attachment because it's actually it's such a powerful connection, but it doesn't feel like it's mine. I don't I don't know how to explain it.

Anyway, I think the the Buddhist perspective on soulmates is well. It's a little bit interesting because classical Buddhism doesn't posit an eternal, unchanging soul that's been split into two halves. For example, it could. It I think Buddhism certainly recognizes karmic affinities, but permanent union of permanent souls isn't exactly a Buddhist thing, as far as I understand.

The best, the healthiest soulmates, from the Buddhist perspective, as I understand it, would be not someone who completes me, but someone Alongside of, I can diminish greed, hatred, delusion, and generate more compassion and and freedom with. I don't know. That's my own understanding. It was it wasn't easy to find like specific commentary on soulmates because of the whole soul thing.

Anyway, and then in the Hermetic perspective, from the Hermetic perspective, the true counterpart is oneness or union with the divine, and so a soulmate is like an iteration of that. Okay. Well, anyway, again, some of what I try to present is just like a buffet of options. What you put on your little plate is up to you. Some of the insights may be tasty morsels and other things you may not like.

My daughter's tried anchovies, and because my wife likes them on pizza, she's her family's Italian, so that's a whole thing. Anyway, she decided that she liked them, and we were like, "Really? You really like them? Then, a little while later, she was like, "I don't like them. I just said that because I wanted, you know, you guys to think I was cool because you guys like them.

But I promise you, if you don't like anchovies on your cosmic pizza, it's fine. We're all good here. I hope you guys are having a good day. Take it easy. We'll see you again tomorrow. Bye.