Venus and Mars Squaring — A Tale as Old as Time

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

Today we're going to take a look at Venus and Mars squaring one another. Venus in Virgo, Mars in Gemini. This is a really powerful square, a square between two ancient archetypal opposites. Venus and Mars are always paired as opposites because they rule signs that are opposite one another in the zodiac, and they're natural opposites in terms of their sort of gender qualities, but we're going to get into all of that today, and I'm going to give you a list of five things to watch for.

It's especially notable that this square is happening right in the midst of one of the most powerful full moons of the year, which we'll be looking at tomorrow. That full moon will be conjuncting Pluto, as Jupiter is also Cazimi, and the full moon is opposing the Sun Jupiter Cazimi, while closely configured to Pluto, it's a really powerful little passage that we're moving through here, a narrow window of dynamic astrology, and so the Venus Mars configuration is especially loud and powerful given the context that we're finding it in right now, so I hope that you'll have some good takeaways from this that you might learn a little bit more about these planets and their pairing, and be able to apply it to your own life today.

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Okay, here we are. So, what we're looking at today in the sky is Venus and Mars squaring one another at about 20 degrees of Virgo and 20 degrees of Gemini. They are hosted in turn by Mercury, who's just recently turned direct after its retrograde, and so they may be sorting out some of the ramifications of Mercury's revisions. We could look at it that way. That's kind of an interesting take, I think. But let's take it forward just a little bit so we can see how this plays out. The two planets will be square exactly between tomorrow, the 28th and 29th of July, and then going forward, they stay together on the same degree, July 30th. Then they start to separate fully by July 31st.

Now, in the midst of all of this, tomorrow, as they are perfectly square to one another, we also have Jupiter Cazimi, meaning Jupiter and the sun are resetting the synodic cycle. Jupiter is empowered at the heart of the sun, and opposite we have the full moon in Aquarius, and that full moon in Aquarius conjoined loosely with Pluto and exactly opposed as of every full moon is the sun, but in this case the Jupiter Cazimi. So it's a very potent full moon that we're going through here, and we are likely to be feeling and noticing that. We're going to talk more about that tomorrow, but today I want to focus on the meaning of Venus and Mars in a square.

Now in this case Mars is in the superior position, which means Mars is sort of establishing the agenda and Venus is receiving it. That can shift things a little bit, but I want to actually kind of put them in a vacuum today and talk about what tends to come up when these two planets get into any kind of hard aspect, square opposition, even the conjunction on a certain level where the two qualities are blended together because these planets are archetypal opposites. For example, Aries and Libra are polar opposite signs. Taurus and Scorpio, Mars and Venus rule signs opposite to one another. These were a dyad for ancient astrologers of planetary principles.

You have peace and war. You have harmony and conflict. You have aggression and you have harmonization. You have one that's more dependent, one that's more independent. You have something that's more aesthetic. You have something that can be a little bit more coarse and vulgar. That's the way ancient astrologers looked at it. You can have one that's more action oriented and goes centrifugally outward from the center to do things. You can have one that's more centripetal in Venus that attracts things from the center and pulls them inward. Either way, these two are. If you go down the gender path of masculine and feminine, there are so many different ways of conceptualizing their relationship on an archetypal level, what I want to do today is present you with five ways that you may be able to perceive them in your experience right now.

Let's start off with this one. Call this one loosely "Beauty and the Beast." I actually titled the talk today "A Tale as Old as Time" because I was thinking about that Disney movie, and I was thinking about how true that is-that the dance between the beauty and the beast, insofar as it is representing Mars and Venus, really is a tale as old as time, because Venus archetypally represents things like sweetness and beauty, refinement and pleasure, the instinct to attract and to appeal to the senses, and on the other hand, Mars represents things that are hot and rough, appetite, competition, and the instinct to pursue or hunt, and so their square is a little bit like the image that came to my mind was like silk for Venus and sandpaper for Mars.

The tension that comes between these two as Beauty and the Beast can go in a lot of different directions, but the desire to be polite versus the desire to be direct and assertive, preserving harmony versus confrontation, there might be attraction to things or people that are rougher or wilder or untamed or more dangerous or riskier than the preference for total safety and peace. That can happen when these two planets get together. There can be an attempt to civilize desire, the moment when desire disrupts or overrides civilized appearance. And this is everyone knows a funny moment like this, where I don't know. Let's say you're eating dessert with someone. I think about this with my kids. Actually, this is what's coming to my mind.

And when we go okay, we're all going to share a dessert, and we all get a little spoon, and we put the dessert in the center of the table. In the first couple of bites, everyone's being like, okay, your turn, my turn, and then you know it devolves within about a minute, to just smashing our faces, you know what? You know what I mean. And it's like, ooh, all of a sudden things got Marsy, and so that moment when desire sort of disrupts the Venusian mode. You could also say that any kind of beauty that invites, invokes, or brings in an edge. When I think about the moment where in the heat of love or passionate making out, you tear off your lover's clothes. I know it's a little provocative, but that moment where passion and love becomes a little fierce. But I also think about in music, for example, distortion pedals on the guitar, but playing distorted music that's undeniably beautiful.

Or I think when I was in New York City, there was a lot of very provocative fashion that just walking around. It's one of the things I love most about New York City. Was just like, look at these peacocks. Like, look at human beings just peacocking around with all sorts of interesting, beautiful, provocative kind of edgy accessories or clothing, and so that provocative sense of art or fashion or design, elegance with a hint of violence, you know. It's not always comfortable when these two planets blend, but there can also be, I think for example, my daughter who has Mars in the first house who just refuses to eat with a fork. Like it's so tough to get her, you know. And I was reminded of the fact that it really depends on where you are because when I was in India for several weeks, it was just everyone just ate with their hands, and that was what I did.

And so, but in another part of the world, it's like if it's not civilized if you don't eat with a fork, you know. So there can be conflict over your manners or your taste or your aesthetic or anything where there's like socially defined ways that you're supposed to act or behave to be courteous or polite or harmonious. It's important to remember that I mean, aside from the fact that the beast kidnaps, that's disturbing. He kidnaps Belle, and then Belle falls in love with her tormentor. Like she needs a therapist. She doesn't need a marriage to him. She needs a fucking therapist. No, I'm kidding. But the point is that in an archetypal sense, it's true. Like a deeper, at least the Disney version of it. He has some baggage. You know he's mad, and he has some reasons to be mad. But that's no excuse to kidnap a woman. So inappropriate.

The beast is not necessarily bad, and beauty is not necessarily just innocent. In an archetypal sense, we're talking about Venus and Mars. It's easy to be like Mars is bad, Venus is innocent, but Venus can manipulate through charm, and Mars can often reveal or confront or directly talk about things that everyone is politely avoiding to their own detriment. Sometimes Mars protects, and sometimes Venus destroys. And it's important to understand that about planets, so that we're not naive in the way that we see them. Most of us would probably prefer a Venusian transit to a Marsy transit. That's why there's one called a malefic and one called a benefic, but it's not black and white. Now, so can we allow Mars to be beautiful without sort of taming it and taking away something that's truly wild? That's the question.

Whereas, can Venus include an edge without losing her grace? So these are elements of the transit you may be noticing right now. Number two is the tango. So I was thinking about the movie Moulin Rouge when I was writing my talk this morning, and I was thinking about the tango in that movie, which is really the first time I ever saw the tango in a way that I don't know. It made sense to me. It wasn't just like ballroom dancing and some form of dance that seemed just alien to my experience. No, now it was something that I don't know the way it was conveyed in the art of that film. That film really had my full imaginative attention, and so if you ever seen that, you know what I'm talking about, but it's I looked it up. Merriam-Webster says that tango is characterized by long pauses and stylized body positions, an interaction marked by a lack of straightforwardness, and that's what I like about Venus and Mars.

Beauty attraction is there's a coordinated effort and resistance and acceptance and surrender that goes back and forth in the tango. That's how I would describe it in my little brain, because I'm not a dancer. God bless all of you people who are listening, being like, "Nice try, Minnesota white guy," but that's how I would describe it. So, anyway, I like that there's these kind of gliding long steps followed by like sharp stops, and then there's this drawing closer and pulling apart. Anyway, I learned this. Tango emerged as a partner dance in the working class port cultures around the Rio de la Plata, and was initially regarded by many outsiders. It's always some outsider as overtly sexual and socially improper, and yet the dance is really an imaginative way of embodying the tension in the chemistry of Venus and Mars of these sacred opposites that are energetic, and you know, long before they're ever just gender, right? They're just ways that we have of experiencing forces that act upon us, and that as we act upon others.

And I like that in the tango resistance doesn't resistance is part of the play of the opposites, and there's a responsiveness, and there's almost like a tug of war in leadership. At least it looks that way to me, and so that erotic charge, that creative erotic charge, is happening through the tension, the push and pull of retreat and refusal and denial and struggle and resistance and pushing and pulling like that. So there's a kind of competitiveness that's very beautiful and very sort of sexually erotically charged and creatively potent. All right, you get the idea. So the chemistry of this aspect is always asking: Are you fighting right now, or are you flirting? You know, are you creating something, or are you about to have a conflict? And this tension can feel like both. All right.

Well, of course, there's gender dynamics. Now, I want to mention this loosely as gender dynamics existing outside of any need for them to be literal. For many people, they're experienced literally, you know. But I think it's important to note that even ancient astrologers saw that gender could be fluid in human experience, and I certainly noticed that in myself all of the different ranges of gender expression that are present at different times and in different places and circumstances. So let's take it out of needing to be about literal sex and gender, and let's talk about them as archetypes. I think that's important also, because the more that we get literally identified with archetypes, usually the more problematic things become. So, we'll keep it at that.

So, Venus is generally saying, like, what do I desire? What do I value as beautiful or attractive? And then, how do I receive, relate, reconcile, cooperate, harmonize for others' desires, and so desire is a cooperative thing. Often, more often for Venus than it is for Mars. Mars is a bit more like, what do I want? What am I pursuing? What am I hunting? How do I get it for me? It's a little bit more separative and individual and assertive and attacking or defending in its pursuit of what it wants. So the square between these planets can make us aware of imbalances in either direction. For example, I'm being too conciliatory and concerned with peace and harmony, but to the detriment of just being a little bit more assertive, right? Or a little bit more aggressive, or just recognizing that I'm an individual, not just a cooperative cog in some kind of machine that I have to adhere to, or I risk rejection.

On the other hand, Mars can be just coarse and selfish. You know, there's like, hey, there's other people here, and harmonizing is an art you have to learn, even if your desires are to be pursued in an individual manner, right? So they're always informing each other, and the reason that I really wanted to mention this is because of how consistently it shows up in our relationships. Venus Mars squares in the sky tend to signify times where the question of the balance of these energetic qualities in your relationships will be present. It doesn't matter to me. It doesn't have to be a quote unquote male female thing either. It can just be how are they showing up overall. So all right, that's one to mention. Notice the classic Venus Mars dynamics in relationships.

Now the next one I already kind of spoke to, but let's visit it again. Mars is like this is what I want. Venus says, well, how do we harmonize our desires and wants? This can show up when these two planets square, especially in relationships over things like money or responsibilities or duties, who gets what, who wants what, who does what, and how are those things harmonized? What meaningful conflicts have to be had right now, and can you do them gracefully? One person wanting to go in their own way, the other person really considering the relationship, there can be resentment that comes up because of having done too much compromising. You keep doing things because you want to be liked, and then you reach a moment where you have to not care, but it creates some conflict.

Sometimes that conflict comes more out of the fact that you're overcompensating because of a long history of being overcompromising, and so that's tough. You're trying to get yourself out of a pattern, but to get out of the pattern, you sort of don't know where to start, and you can get a little extreme. And there's I would just say there's a tendency to keep score. You know, like who is given more, who wants more? Who apologizes first? You know, it's all of that kind of stuff. I want to say that Mars isn't just selfish. Mars can be about healthy individuality, and Venus is not inherently selfless either. Venus can sort of agree outwardly while holding things or manipulating things a little bit, Venus can be very cunning in the way that she gets what she wants while still looking pleasing or amicable. So anyway, think about selfish versus cooperative energies.

And then number five, I think this one's the most fascinating because in myth, Aphrodite was married to Hephaestus, and he's like a metal smith or something. But she has an affair with Ares, so that's Mars. So in the Odyssey, Hephaestus discovers them, traps the lovers together in a net that he makes, and exposes them to the gods because they're illicit lovers, and that's something to consider. How many movies are like, why is she attracted to the jerk? You know, and also, why is the jerk always attracted to like the sweetest girl? And you're like, oh God, you're going to trample the flowers, like, you can. There's James Hillman wrote a book that comes to my mind right now, and I've read from it before for all of you who've been here a long time. It's called The Terrible Love of War, and he talks about Venus and Mars as these illicit lovers that represent things that we're sort of ashamed to admit that we love.

For example, the World Cup that just happened. Here are people from all over the world thrilled to wear their team's colors. It's beautiful. It's like pageantry, and to sing these songs, right? And there's a lot of Venus there: songs, colors, camaraderie, friendship, you know, celebration, music, trophies, glittering, right? But it's in the arena. Pushing each other around, everyone's falling on the ground every two minutes, like they've broken their leg, you know. And then they get back up. That's one of my favorite parts. Like, oh no! The first couple times I watched soccer, I was like, he's really hurt. Then I'm like, oh, I get it. But that's theater. It's theater. There's Venus, like I'm acting. You know, I'm trying to gain sympathy, but it's actually competitive in nature. You get the idea.

In this book, Hillman described how Venus and Mars are like illicit lovers. We always need a place to bring these things together, and it's usually there's a kind of secretive component to it. Everyone's like, I'm not competitive, I'm a peacemaker. You know, it's like yeah, until your World Cup team is playing Spain, and then you're like, those Spaniards, damn them. I've never liked them, so we all need outlets for rage and anger and competition. But we always are trying to bring it into a space where it can still be beautiful and sacred and somewhat tamer. And their illicit love affair, Hillman talks about at length as representing the fact that it's never easy to bring them together because there's something about admitting that one needs the other that feels like a compromise to each.

And so, let me just say, I will be the first to say that as much as I, for example, what don't I like about I don't know just like modern pop astrology? I don't like that it sometimes feels like nothing more than a celestial gossip column, meaning it's just like oh my god, what's going to happen? What's going to happen? And it's just a never-ending hamster wheel of self-interest and what's going to happen, but I would be a hypocrite if I didn't recognize that there is a part of me that also loves drama, and if I can cloak my drama in something that feels sanctioned, right? Like it's pretty sacred to be invested in my drama, but through the holy stars, you know, and so I'm no better than anybody else insofar as I also have holy sanctioned ways of being completely committed to drama. You know what I'm saying? My interest in sports is just that, so that's why occasionally I bitch about stuff like this. But then I have to be careful of doing it too much because I would be a hypocrite.

All of us love drama. It's the tango. You know, if we don't have some tangos going on in our life, the push and pull of peace and conflict in love with one another. I think we're being hypocritical, and so I gotta watch my damn mouth. But anyway, this has been fun today and spicy, and I hope you're having a good day and that this was interesting. Hey, as we're living life, aren't we lucky, truly, that life is dramatic enough? And isn't it truly a blessing that we have something sacred that can help us hold it and feel like it's a little bit safer and a little bit more harmonious than the kind of drama that feels like it's trying to infiltrate our lives all the time. We need sacred containers so that we can bring these energies together in a meaningful way. And I'm blessed to have this in my life. I'm sure you feel the same way. Hope you're having a good one. We'll see you again tomorrow. Bye.