Venus Squares Uranus Under A Dark Moon

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

Happy Monday, everyone. Today we're going to take a look at Venus in Virgo, squaring Uranus in Gemini. We're looking at this under a dark moon that's also taking place in the sign of Cancer. I've got some things - I've got something special cooked up for you guys today. We're going to read a poem by Walt Whitman that I think might be one of the most Venus-Uranus combinations in poetry ever written. I don't know if that's true or not, but it's a great Venus-Uranus poem, and we're going to take a look at it today.

We're going to read the poem and use it as a way to enter into the archetypal heart of Venus and Uranus. I'll talk a little bit about the dark moon as well. To start, we'll look at the timeline of the transit, so hopefully we'll kind of cover a few different bases today, make this practical, but also hopefully experiential. I feel like on a Venus Uranus day, having an experience with the two, it felt right to me. So anyway, a little creative angle today, but some practical takeaways as well.

I hope you'll enjoy it. Before we get into it, remember to like and subscribe, share your comments and reflections. It's always good to hear from you guys. Transcripts of any of these daily talks can be found on the website, that's Nightlight astrology.com Couple of promotions today. Head over to the website. Remember, my book is on sale. Go to my books under shop, you can see the Oracle speaks right at the top. This is a book about astrology, but it's not a textbook, it's a collection of stories meant to impart everything I've learned to date, 16 years of professional astrology, encoded into story form.

I hope you'll enjoy it. I also want to point you to the events page, click on monthly webinars, coming up here on the 23rd of July, I'm giving a talk called The Dark Side of Astrology: Malefics, Eclipses, and retrogrades - these are heavy things that we all face, and often are the kinds of transits that get us a little scared in advance. We're going to talk about those transits today, and hopefully offer some perspective on this - excuse me, on this webinar, not today. We're going to talk about these things and give some perspective.

So, if you can't make it live when you register, you get the recording afterward. You get it either way, but just in case you can't make the live webinar, you can sign up and get the recording. Well, on that note, going to the events page, click on community quiet, and note that we have meditation every single day at Nightlight. There's going to be some formatting changes happening on the channel coming up in August for some of our weekend content, as our some of our content creator teams are going out after a year of really lovely service.

I'll be telling you guys more about that soon. That'll be coming up more toward the end of July, that I'll fill you in on that. But people have been asking me about it, so I thought I'd mention it. I'm also happy to announce that Astron, our school has been approved by the APAI, which I'll also be sharing more about as the summer goes on, and our next round of classes come up, but that means that you're now eligible, because the school is an accredited body in through this organization, you're now eligible to receive a certification through them, which is, you know, honestly, I think it's, it's prestigious.

I don't know if that's the right word, but it's a great, it's a great place to have yourself be recognized by as an astrologer if you go through all three years of our curriculum. Anyway, so those are a few announcements at Nightlight. Let's turn over to Nechepso, official software astrology astrology software program. Find the link to get the 20% off code in the comment section or the description of the video. Nice episode is awesome. I'm loving it. The guys are coming out later this summer to talk more about new updates. Great program, really loving it still.

Anyway, let's talk about this transit. Here we are, Monday, july 13. It's my birthday this week. I'm super.. is it just me, or is it like, is this like the one day a year where you still feel like a kid? It's like it's my birthday, it's mine. And then all day on my birthday too, I get like entitled you, I'm not taking the dogs out. It's my birthday, and everyone treats me like a little, a little king in my little imaginary world for 24 hours. Anyway, I'm excited, but it's a new moon coming through right around the time of my birthday this week, and we've got some interesting transits happening right now today.

You can see that Venus is just this is, you know, about noon here on Monday, july 13. Venus is just passing through the square to Uranus. You would have been feeling this yesterday. We did content on Venus, Uranus at the end of last week, so if you missed that, you could always go back and check that content out for a pretty nice deep dive. I looked at a lot of different factors taking place, including the fact that Mercury retrograde at the Cazimi is ruling this square. So, go back to Friday's episode if you want more on all of that, in addition to the context of Pluto going into an opposition with Jupiter, or Jupiter.

Going on up to opposition with Jupiter. Can I talk today? Kind of, but it's also a dark moon, and that dark moon means that the potential for this to be a real deep level of emotional, mental, psychological maturation, letting go, is there. Venus, Uranus brings surprises and disruptions in our relationships, it can bring disruptions to well-established patterns. It can help us loosen up, get more creative. It's a kind of revolution of love, sex, and relating, or creativity in the arts.

I feel like it aligns nicely with feminism and, like, feminist movements. It has the ability to make our tastes and interests a little bit more eclectic and original, but it can also be a little surprising, and the disruptions that come can be a bit, a bit shocking. We do have Mars co-present with Uranus; we're all just riding through the shock waves of that conjunction that took place early July, and this dark moon suggests, along with Mercury at the heart of the sun, that there's an emotional reset, or an emotional maturation, or a deep level of emotional processing that's also taking place at the time of this little Venus Uranus shakeup.

So all of that is there, but what I wanted to do today is very specific, and I think fitting for Venus Uranus is a little weird, and I want to read to you what I think might be the most Venus Uranus poem of all time, and I don't know why, but when I was sitting in meditation this morning thinking about what I wanted to say about Venus Uranus. This poem came to my mind, and I always take things like that as a sign. Hmm, that's interesting. Let's go in that direction. There's a poem that was written by Walt Whitman called I Sing the Body Electric, and we're going to journey into this poem today, and I'm going to show you exactly why I think this might be one of the greatest Venus Uranus poems of all time.

If you love archetypes, I promise you, you're going to love this, but if you're someone who's more interested in the personal takeaway, like, what does this mean for me, stick with this one anyway, because there's a lot of very, very profound archetypal takeaways that we're going to be extracting from this poem that will also be very personally applicable, I think. Also, I think that it's worth mentioning that Walt Whitman himself was born with the sun in the, in the sign of Gemini, and moving into, as it was, as he was born, it was moving into this an opposition with Uranus and Neptune, he's a very Uranian figure, Walt Whitman in my opinion, in terms of being inventive, progressive, and revolutionary, for certain, as an artist and poet, one of my favorite poets of all time, I'm sure some of you like and appreciate his work as well, but anyhow, I've got some some takeaway to me, I sing the body electric is like a Venus Uranus manifesto.

It is a poem that refuses convention, celebrates beauty, it elevates Eros to the level of almost divinity, dissolving shame along the way, it celebrates bodies being equal in dignity, individuality and sexuality become revelations of God or the divine. So, anyway, I'll say more as we go. I've got a bunch of notes here that I'm going to comment on, but I'm not going to interrupt the poem itself. We're going to actually read the poem, so let's get into it. This is "I Sing the Body Electric" by Walt Whitman. I sing "The Body Electric. The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them. They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them, and disrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves? And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead, and if the body does not do fully as much as the soul, and if the body were not the soul, what is the soul? The love of the body of man or woman balks account, body itself balks account, that of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect. The expression of the face balks account, but the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face, it is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists.

It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flecks of his waist and knees. Dress does not hide him. The strong, sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth. To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more. You linger to see his back and the back of his neck and shoulder side, the sprawl and fullness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the contour of their shape downwards, the swimmer naked in the swimming bath, seen as he swims through the transparent green shine, or lies with his face up and rolls silently to and fro in the heave of the water, the bending forward and backward of rowers in row boats, the horsemen in his saddle, girls, mothers, housekeepers in all their performances, the group of laborers seated at noon time with their open dinner kettles, and their wives waiting.

The female soothing a child, the farmer's daughter in the garden or cow yard, the young fellow hoeing corn, the sleigh driver driving his six horses through the crowd. The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice boys, quite grown, lusty, good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sundown after work, the coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance, the upper hold and under hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes, the march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine muscle through clean setting trousers and waist straps, the slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes suddenly again, and the listening on the alert, the natural perfect varied attitudes, the bent head, the curved neck, and the counting, such like I love, I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother's breast with the little child, swim with the swimmers, wrestle with the wrestlers, march in line with the firemen, and pause, listen, count, I knew a man, a common farmer, the father of five sons, and in them the father of sons, and in them the fathers of sons.

This man was of wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person, the shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and beard, the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes, the richness and breadth of his manners. These I used to go and visit him to see. He was wise also. He was six feet tall. He was over 80 years old. His sons were massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome. They, and his daughters, loved him. All who saw him loved him. They did not love him by allowance, they loved him with personal love. He drank water only. The blood showed like scarlet through the clear brown skin of his face. He was a frequent gunner and fisher. He sailed his boat himself.

He had a fine one presented to him by a ship joiner. He had fowling pieces presented to him by men that loved him. When he went with his five sons and many grandsons to hunt or fish. You could pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang. You would wish long and long to be with him. You would wish to sit by him in the boat that you and he might touch each other. I have perceived that to be with those I like is enough to stop in company with the rest at evening, is enough to be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough to pass among them or touch any one or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment.

What is this then? I do not ask any more delight. I swim in it as in a sea. There is something in staying close to men and women, looking on them, and in the contact and odor of them that pleases the soul well. All things please the soul, but these please the soul well. This is the female form a divine nimbus exhales from it, head to foot. It attracts with fierce, undeniable attraction. I am drawn in by its breath, as if I were no more than a helpless vapor. All falls aside but myself and it. Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what was expected of heaven or feared of hell are now consumed, mad filaments ungovernable shoots play out of it.

The response likewise ungovernable hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all diffused, mind too diffused, ebb stung by the flow, and flow stung by the ebb, love flesh swelling and deliciously aching limitless limpid jets of love, hot and enormous, quivering jelly of love, white blow and delirious juice, bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn, undulating into the willing and. Yielding day lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet fleshed day. This is the nucleus after the child is born of woman, man is born of woman. This the bath of birth, this the merge of small and large, and the outlet again.

Be not ashamed, women, your privilege encloses the rest and is the exit of the rest. You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul. The female contains all qualities and tempers them. She is in her place and moves with perfect balance. She is all things duly veiled. She is both passive and active. She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as daughters, as I see my soul reflected in nature, as I see through a mist, one with inexpressible completeness, sanity, beauty. See the bent head and arms folded over the breast.

The female I see, the male is not lost, the soul no more. He too is in his place. He too is all qualities. He is action and power. The flush of the known universe is in him. Scorn becomes him as well, and appetite and defiance become him well. The wildest, largest passions, bliss that is utmost, sorrow that is utmost, become him well. Pride is for him. The full spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul. Knowledge becomes him. He likes it always. He brings everything to the test of himself, whatever the survey, whatever the sea, and the sail, he strikes sounding at last only here.

Where else does he strike soundings except here? The man's body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred, no matter who it is. It is sacred. It is the meanest one in the laborer's gang. Is it the meanest one in the laborers' gang? Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf? Each belongs here or anywhere, just as much as the well-off, just as much as you. Each has his or her place in the procession. All is a procession. The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion. Do you know so much yourself that you call the meanest ignorant? Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight, and he or she has no right to a sight?

Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse float, and the soil is on the surface, and water runs, and vegetation sprouts for you only, and not for him and her. A man's body at auction before the war. I often go to the slave mart and watch the sale. I help the auctioneer. The slogan does not half know his business. Gentlemen, look on this wonder. Whatever the bids of the bidders, they cannot be high enough for it. For it, the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one animal or plant. For it, the revolving cycles truly and steadily rolled in this head. The all-baffling brain in it, and below it, the makings of heroes examine these limbs, red, black, or white. They are cunning in tendon and nerve. They shall be stripped that you may see them.

Exquisite senses, lifelit eyes, pluck volition, flakes of breast muscle, pliant backbone and neck, flesh not flabby, good-sized arms and legs, and wonders within there. Yet within there runs blood, the same blood, the same red running blood. There swells and jests a heart. They're all passions, desires, reachings, aspirations. Do you think they are not there because they are not expressed in parlors and lecture rooms? This is not only one man. This is the father of those who shall be fathers in their turns in him, the start of populous states and rich republics of him, countless immortal lives with countless embodiments and enjoyments.

How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his offspring through the centuries? Who might you find you have come from yourself if you trace back through the centuries a woman's body at auction, she too is not only herself, she is the teeming mother of mothers, she is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the mothers. Have you ever loved the body of a woman? Have you ever loved the body of a man? Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all nations and times all over the earth, if anything is sacred, the human body is sacred, and the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood untainted.

And in the man or woman, a clean, strong, firm-fibred body is more beautiful than the most beautiful face. Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body, or the fool that corrupted her own live body, for they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal themselves. Oh, my body, I dare not desert the likes of you and other men and women, nor the like the likes of the parts of you. I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the soul, and that they are the soul.

I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and that they are my poems: man's, woman's, child's, youths, wife's, husband's, mother's, father's, young man's, young woman's poems, head, neck, hair, ears, drop, entitlement of the ears, eyes, eye fringes, iris of the eyes, eyebrows, and the waking or sleeping of the lids, mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the jaw hinges, nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition, cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck slew, strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind shoulders, and the ample side round of the chest, upper arm, armpit, elbow socket, lower arms, arm sinews, arm bones, wrist and wrist joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefingers, finger joints, fingernails, broad breast front, curling hair of the breast, breastbone, breast side, ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone, hips, hip sockets, hip strength, inward and outward, round man balls, man root, strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above leg fibers, knee, knee pan, upper leg, under leg, ankles, instep football, toe, toe joints, the heel, all attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body or of anyone's body, male or female, the lung sponges, the stomach sack, the bowels sweet and clean, the brain in its fold inside the skull frame, sympathies, heart valves, palate valves, sexuality, maternity, womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes from the woman, the womb, the womb, the teats, nipples, breast milk, tears, laughter, weeping, love looks, love perturbations, and risings, the voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud, food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming, poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing arm, curving and tightening, the continual change of the flex of the mouth and around the eyes, the skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair, the curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked meat of the body, the circling rivers, the breath, and breathing it in and out, the beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward toward the knees, the thin red jellies within you or within me, the bone and the marrow in the bones, the exquisite realization of health.

Oh, I say, these are not parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul. Oh, I say, now these are the soul. Ah, that is a good poem. So, if you've never heard that poem before, Walt Whitman was a Civil War time poet, and someone who's not only a brilliant poet, whose themes and topics range, but is also someone who was, I think, specifically a Venus Uranus poet. You could say that he is a Venus Uranus poet. I mean, some people have speculate. I remember when I was in my undergraduate program, we had to read essays or articles speculating as to whether or not Whitman was, was gay, and I don't, I don't believe there's.. I don't know if that was ever something that was like historically validated or not, but it doesn't matter either way.

He is someone who celebrates intimacy and bodily affection that was outside the norms or the social conventions of his day, and you know that he's someone who widens the circle of belonging and human and sexual dignity, and I, and that's very evocative of Venus Uranus in all of his work. It's, it's like that, but anyway, let's talk a little bit about the poem itself, and if anyone is like has some knowledge of that piece of Whitman's bio, that would be interesting, because I don't know if that's a true thing or not. I think you think it is, but I don't really remember. It's been a long time since I was in grad school.

Anyway, so this poem, you could say, is all about the liberation of Venus. At its worst, the Christian history in the West has really condemned Venus in anything sensual or bodily as merely material rather than seeing it in and of itself as transcendental, transcendent, beautiful, divine, sacred, holy, and this poem is about everybody is beautiful and there is no separation between body and soul, male and female, young and old, worker and aristocrat, a slave. And free, ordinary, and extraordinary, all of the above are beautiful to Whitman, and not just beautiful, but soulful.

That's a Venus-Uranus revolution, when it's not sensual versus spiritual, but sensual is spiritual, embodied is soulful. That's a Venus-Uranus break from established norms around things like sex and identity, when Whitman insists all throughout the poem that the body is sacred, not shameful, and he talks, he lists every body part, and he does it in a way that's just so celebratory, he's reveling in his appreciation for soul beauty and physical form, the body is divine, sexuality is holy, physical existence is worthy of adoration, in reverence.

It can't be subordinated, Venus can't by some kind of abstract puritanical moralizing, right? So Uranus breaks cultural assumptions when it gets together with Venus around things like sex, gender, love, sexuality, and the revolution that Whitman is interested in in this poem is the liberation of sacredness and embodied life. That's why I love this. I've always just loved this poem. You can imagine, I'm.. I was.. I first read it when I was in high school. I was reading Walt Whitman, really thanks to Dead Poets Society.

I don't know if you guys remember that movie, but Walt Whitman was like the star poet of that.. that film, which was very inspiring to me as a kid. And I eventually picked up at Barnes and Noble, picked up Leaves of grass, and ended up, you know, getting into Whitman's poetry, like I'm sure a lot of you have too, and just feeling like, oh, you know, heaven and earth are joining, like my body is sacred, and the body is sacred, and when you're a teenager, and you're dealing with a, you know, you're, you're, you've got a libido all of a sudden, you know, it can be in your, but you're like being raised as a spiritual in a spiritual family in a church community as a preacher's kid.

So it was really, it was really liberating. I remember probably for some of you it has been the same way, but he, he also takes away categories around it, and I know categories are important because they're they're real ways that we experience, but I like that he just, he adores and worships and praises men and women and friends and workers and lovers, and there's just no, and I also think this for the time this was radical, also insofar as he is, he's pointing out the humanity of people being sold at slave auctions, you know, and it's for that moment in time, I think we can celebrate what he was trying to say about the dignity of all living beings.

Erotic freedom is a huge subject of icing the body electric, because it was really controversial at the time. He sell it, he was in this poem, he's celebrating erotic attraction openly, no shame around it. It's, and he's not framing it as scandal or moral defiance or indulgence, or you know, horniness or something, but rather freedom of love and attraction and desire, as beautiful and pure. You can feel it too. It just.. it frees something up inside of us when we hear those words.

Venus, Uranus is like that, an individual uniqueness, you know, magazines, advertising, we think of, we, we measure ourselves in mirrors against ideal images, but Whitman, in this poem, says all bodies, all forms are sort of extraordinary. I mean, that's way ahead of it, that's pretty ahead of its time in a way, for you know, this is civil war time. He refuses to rank people and bodies. Every soul possesses dignity. The soul shines through every form, and so Venus supplies this sense of splendor and beauty and appreciation and attraction and Uranus removes hierarchy around it, isn't that beautiful?

I like that he is always admiring hands and muscles and movement and labor, suggesting that beauty isn't just passive decor, it's not just nice, pleasant-looking things, it can be gritty, it can be found in craftsmanship and ordinary actions found by workers and people walking, and that beautiful body is not just a passive Venusian body, it's an active electric body that can be Venusian, even if it's doing things like baling hay, I. And I also can't help but think that Venus in Virgo square Uranus in Gemini is also great when it comes to appreciating the details and the parts to Mercury ruled signs and he catalogs like all of the body parts, so I thought that was just kind of a neat little element of the symbolism, here's Here's one way of looking at the body, and another, and another, and another, and another.

You know, and he just keeps going. It's as though there's always something fresh and new with the body. It's not a static thing, it's a living electric thing. See, the word electric is Uranian, and it animates the best thing that Venus Uranus does for is it sort of reminds us that we're alive, that we have a pulse, that it's, it's remarkably beautiful and erotic and interesting and creative to be alive in simple things, in mundane things. It doesn't always have to be a spectacular display of wealth or privilege or class or intelligence of upper echelons that defines beauty, it can be ordinary, you know.

I, I know this is going to sound, I don't know, kind of cheesy, or I'm going to make myself sound like a gym stalker, but when I go to the gym, sometimes, you know, in between sets, while I'm catching my breath, I look around and I just appreciate the beauty of human bodies just moving and lifting, and it doesn't matter the age, the sex, just beautiful to see people and see the forms of the bodies. I know not everyone goes to gyms and has that experience, but I do a Uh, Venus in Virgo, especially, can be very perfection-oriented, but when Venus in Virgo hits Uranus in Gemini, it can loosen up, and what I love about this is so much of the kind of critical eye gets loosened up, and imperfections become fascinating, curious places of attraction, wrinkles, scars, age, or like just ordinary shit, and it's rather than kind of constantly editing to get to some final version of beauty. There's a sense that no, it's here if you can just appreciate life.

There's only one other poet that does this for me, although in a very different mood, I guess, which is Mary Oliver. That's really struck me like, like Whitman, when it comes to the appreciation and beauty of the ordinary or the natural world in the natural body. Yeah, those are my thoughts. What I hope you were able to get from this is, first of all, isn't it nice to have someone read you a poem once in a while? I love it. Ashley will read me poems sometimes. I just love it, but if you're not the poet type and you found that corny, then I hope you'll have a better day from here forward, and if you're a student of astrology, someone looking for practical takeaways, I think there's lots of them in this.

If you listen for this moment, maybe some of these thoughts or takeaways are exactly the ones you need right now, or the ones you're feeling, and you can simply see the stars and name it. Remember, the stars are intimately involved in desire. The word desire, I was reminded of this by a colleague of mine, this guy named Mark Flaherty, that I known for a long time, another astrologer, and he said, remember that desire means, from the Latin, means desidere, which means of the stars, and so you know, is it surprising that our desires are reflected in our birth charts, and every transit has a remarkable way of mapping out the desires that are guiding our path.

Venus Uranus is an incredible time to come back to how holy desire can be. Desire doesn't have to just be for fame or for ego success or domination or victory or selfish interest. Desire can be of the stars, it can be appreciation for divinity, the desire of the heart to be with the heart of the universe, that is the prayer of the stars, isn't it? So, anyway, I hope that what you heard today was something of a prayer, and I hope it blesses you, and that you have a good day. All right, bye bye.