Venus Squares Neptune while Earthiness Abounds

Hey everyone, this is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology. Today, we are going to take a look at Venus's square to Neptune, which is happening this week, and we're going to take a look at it considering all of the earthiness, but we're going to take a slightly different approach to talking about earthiness within the context of Venus is square to Neptune and I think you'll enjoy it.

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So, on that note, I am excited to take a look at Venus and Neptune again; we started off this week by taking a look at all of the major transits of the week. One of them is Venus, the square to Neptune, and we're going to take a look at this coming through coming through Friday as everything is, but here you can see it. Friday into Saturday, there's Venus Square to Neptune.

It's Friday, and the square comes through Venus and Sagittarius Neptune in Pisces. There are many things that I have said over the years about Venus and Neptune, and I'm always trying to find new ways of talking about the transit, and one occurred to me as I was taking a walk just this past weekend, and I was listening to the audiobook version of one of my favorite James Hillman books, which is called the Souls Code and there's a section in that book. It's very famous if you've ever read James Hillman, and most people have read the Souls Code if they've read anything by him.

There's a section that's quite famous called Growing Downward, and I'm going to actually utilize that section of his book or the main idea of that section. I'm not going to read anything from him today. But I'm going to use that as a way of illustrating what it might mean that there is so much earthiness happening while Venus is square to Neptune, which is really a very ethereal transit. So what does it mean that there's something very ethereal happening next too look at four planets and keep three planets in Taurus? Yikes, that's a ton of Earth.

So anyway, that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna take a look at Venus Neptune today from a few different standpoints, especially trying to contextualize what it might mean that there's so much Earth present and a very different way I think of talking about Earth. So, what do Venus and Neptune do when they get together? What happens? One of the things you have to remember is that Neptune points us toward the urge for transcendence, especially romantic, dreamy, sensual, mystical union. Neptune has often been discussed by psychological and archetypal astrologers as the impulse toward Eden, like returning to the garden; you think about that? Joni Mitchell's song, We Are Stardust, We Are Golden. We've got to get ourselves back to the garden.

That's Neptune. Neptune longs, Neptune yearns. Neptune wishes and dreams and aspires and hopes for things that are subtle and beautiful and sensual and romantic. Imagination is the realm of Neptune in so many ways. However, one of the things that's really important is understanding the shadows of Neptune and what Neptune tends to do when it gets in touch with all of the other planets. When Neptune gets in touch with Venus, one of the things that happens is it tends to spiritualize Venus, and when you hear me say spiritualizes, don't think that I mean that it makes it better.

Because if the word spiritual to you means better, then we're in trouble, at least in this context today. What do we mean by Spirit? There was a distinction that archetypal psychologists going back to Jung, and then people like James Hillman and Liz Greene and modern psychological and archetypal astrologers have made between Spirit and soul.

Let's put it like this Spirit is that part of us that needs to go up to the retreat center at the top of the mountain and get as close as we can to the stars to that which is up there. Up high, something we're trying to touch or grasp that is beyond. That is the impulse toward mystical union toward Moksha enlightenment to cross the far shore and to go beyond this body or this world to somehow leave it behind.

Now, the spiritual impulse is a part of life; it's archetypal. Right? So there's nothing wrong with it. It is the impulse that leads us to search or yearn for ideals on any level, and Neptune is so connected to that. It's important to think about our lives and the way in which imagination enters our lives at times; not the only function imagination has, but one of its functions is to provide us with images, fantasies, desires, wishes, and longings that we can aim our life toward and it makes life romantic. It makes the experience of life worth living.

It's like there's that quote, and Dead Poets Society when there, he says, you know, like, he's talking about Dead Poets Society, teacher; Robin Williams is talking about, you know, these, these are all the things that you these are all the things that you that you do to sustain life, being a banker, or a lawyer or a doctor or whatever. But what do you live for? Right? And then he talks about love and beauty, right? That's Neptune.

Neptune is so connected to that urge within us to connect with things that we live for, not that just sustain earthly life, but that it takes the material of this life and makes something rich and meaningful. Through imagination, we live meaningful lives; we live more than just the mundane. So when Neptune comes in contact with Venus, it spiritualizes it insofar as it captures what we're doing and sort of aims towards something higher in Venusian things, in particular, love relationships, sex, beauty, art, women, sisters, that whole Venusian tapestry of images and themes gets pointed upward. It's divine love between Krishna and Radha; it's a, you know, it's sort of like the Shiva Shakti type of relationship.

There's a way in which we're now talking about love as something eternal and divine and as the goal of spiritual life or as something that can take us out of the pain of the world. This is a love that moves us from the valley of life up to the mountaintop, so that's something to think about for sure.

My dog had to go out, and I suddenly had to pause the recording because Hilda was like I need to go out, okay? That actually serves the point. Venus Neptune combinations want to point us toward a higher love, like take me to the mountaintop, the province that's what Spirit loves. Spirit is an upward function, even if it's you know it when it's romantic and creative and sensual, and by all accounts, it seems like it's pointing toward very embodied things when Venus tends to be very embodied.

But when it Neptunizes, it's like it's pointing it toward some kind of mystical spa on the top of the mountain, very close to enlightenment, right? The problem is that the soul lives in the valley. The soul lives in the Earth. The soul lives in the constant interruptions of life, like the dog needs to go out that interrupts this beautiful broadcast with the need to pee and poop.

So soul is like the rich manure of life in the world in the valley. It's offensive to the soul to say, let's go up to the mountain and ditch this world and try to reach, you know, a level 10. Or even everything that aspires to be high and beautiful culturally, like there's Venus exalted in Pisces, can be a bit like this, or, you know, even Saturn's exaltation and Libra, let's go to this high-minded, beautiful place, you know, there's something offensive about it. It's like, what, are you too good for the streets of the world? Do you know what I mean?

There's something offensive about the ivory tower of academia because it's a tower. It goes up, and we request that you kindly come out, you know, into the living room of life. So, the soul abides in life and needs its problems.

This is where we run into a problem with Venus and Neptune because Venus will spiritualize as it contacts Neptune, which means it will point us toward the top of a mountain. There's nothing wrong with that. First of all, that archetypal impulse is wonderful. For many of us, we need that.

We need more of that, not less of that, because the problems of life are a lot, and there's something therapeutic about going to a sound bath and just getting launched out of your brain into another galaxy with beauty. You know we need it, right? So, however, one of the big shadows, especially when you see Venus, Neptune contacting, and Jupiter ruling signs fire and water, Ooh, that's the ethereal, and then you have this huge stellium of earthy planets in Capricorn and Taurus; it leads to point number two of what Venus and Neptune do. It sets us up to grow down.

Let me give you a story that I have seen at least 100 times in my client practice over the years, and I'm not kidding when I say that at least 100 times, someone has transited Neptune, contacting their natal Venus. Very common, right? It's a pretty common transit; you probably only get a big square opposition or conjunction once in your life. But you get one, and here's what happens.

Let's just do the most typical one, right? Love, so it comes into your marriage house or hits Venus somewhere in your chart, and it's the same thing always. I am bored, tired, and yearning for more in my relationship. Maybe you're in one already, and then this exact scenario plays out.

Someone comes into your life that provides you with a spiritualized vision of Venus, and by that, I mean a mountaintop spa, magical, mystical, otherworldly, pretty close to the far shore, and this is just captivating. Because your current relationship is dead. You don't share anything spiritual. It's not the mystical spa on the top of the mountain. You're in the muck of the valley. There's a lot of soul in your relationship, meaning there is pain, and there is the mess and chaos of life, and maybe you've been through hard times together and good times together. There's soul history together. But it's been a while since you've been to that mountaintop spa, that romantic, otherworldly Eden with your loved one, and so, of course, you're ripe for a fantasy, and in walks someone, and then what happens, this is what I've seen over 100 times in my counseling practice, you go off into a relationship with that someone, maybe it serves to break up your marriage, maybe it serves as a moment of a healing crisis in your marriage or your relationship or your whoever you're dating or whatever. Maybe not.

But here's where you land, after you have that blissful day at the spa, right with whatever, you know, whatever, Don Juan walks in, you know what I mean? Then what happens is, you soon find yourself ushered back down into the valley, into the manure, into the soul of life, where the complexities of pain and the implications of, you know, what it means for your primary relationship, you know, like that; all unfold, and suddenly the magic, the mysticism, the mountaintop spa of the new lover is gone. Can't get it back.

Somehow, when you're with them, the heaviness and the reality, the juxtaposed reality of dealing with the ramifications of your choice. Maybe you're even calling yourself an escapist at this point, right? It all sets in, and then you go okay. Well, you know, it wasn't all that I thought it was. But is that a bad thing? Right? No.

Here's my opinion. Most of the time, in those situations, what I have seen is that you get taken up, in a sense, only so you can come crashing down. But when you come back down, the journey up and the return is profoundly healing. It's kind of like that; we'll say that the person who has an affair feels that their relationship is dead, right? It hasn't been to the spa at the top of the mountain, and in so long, they come back down, and it will again it will serve as a healing crisis for the relationship, and the relationship will suddenly find itself ready to be healed, and it will have the ability to bring; the person will bring somehow bring some of the water from the spa at the top of the mountain back down to the valley with them and it is now something that can be used or can be present in the valley of life in your relationship.

On the other hand, sometimes coming back down and seeing what you saw and realizing, Okay, well, I guess I couldn't sustain it with this person. However, it made me feel alive. It gave me new dreams, desires, and wishes. It gave me a better, clearer picture of what I want and what I desire, and so I came back down and got out of the relationship. There's a healing crisis, but we part ways, and do they ever find that mountain top in a human being that you have to spend substantial time within the valley of life? Probably not. But that next relationship can be much closer.

Again, you can have some pitchers of water brought back that are now ready to be incorporated. A lot of life is about going down and going up, going up and going down with Spirit and soul. I think most of us are coming up in New Age spirituality. We think all of our metaphors are in terms of going up; I'm getting better, I'm growing, I'm developing, I'm getting nicer. I'm getting kinder, I'm getting more masterful, and it's always about the ascent, and if there's any value in the valley of the world, it's only insofar as it can give me the raw materials I need to climb up the mountain, you know.

But there's something insistent about the world; there's something insistent about the Earth. That says, the Earth and the valley in the soul are valuable, not just so that they can provide you its traumas and its difficulties, its complexities, its pain, not just there to provide you the raw material so that you can ascend. It's also here as a way of helping you normalize and feel more comfortable and at home in what is a multi-dimensional reality.

A reality that goes both up and down at the same time, a reality that has transcendental ideals, romantic yearnings, and longings, and that is just fine the way that it is. There's something demanding about the Earth that when Venus and Neptune get together, it says, Okay, let me find a way to house and store and create space and room for that beautiful image that you saw at the top of the mountain, let me build something resembling it here on Earth.

But on the other hand, it also takes that idealism, and it sort of clips its wings and says, look, you're just going to keep creating pain for yourself until you can accept things as they are and actually sink into the mud, and just kind of kind of learn to be an earthly citizen, with problems and complexities. Don't stop trying to make yourself better all the time. You know, stop trying to improve things all the time. Even stop trying to grow if, by growth, we mean growth in a positive upward direction in some kind of imagined hierarchy, right? It's like, just chill. So there's something about the juxtaposition with the Earth and the Venus Neptune that sort of like saying, Look, you know, when you start to feel really good, when you feel soulful, and how do you feel soulful?

It's when you have the right mix of those spiritual aspirations, alongside of the utter futility and failures that come along with them and the insistence of the Earth, that's grown within you to say, just be here, like just, you know, be a fuckup with the rest of us, you know.

So anyway, Venus and Neptune provide us with spiritual fantasies and ideals that we cannot possibly reach. But it's that impossibility that helps us find ourselves in the beauty of just what we are here on Earth. It's very beautiful the way that works, and then, finally, Venus and Neptune will demand that we rebuild.

I'll never forget a client that I had who came to me with a dream, and in the dream, this was during a Neptune-Venus transit. In the dream, they were in this dilapidated house, and there was this beautiful woman that they were with, and this was a man, and they were with this beautiful woman outside of this dilapidated house, and they had to go into the dilapidated house because they had family duties, but there was like water was leaking through the roof, and it was, you know, ugly, and they said, like, I have to go in there.

It's, you know, I'm obligated to go in there, and in the dream, they were heartbroken that the woman would not follow them into the dilapidated house, and what we ended up discovering in the process of talking during this person's Neptune Venus transit was Neptune transiting Neptune to Natal Venus was that they were avoiding remaking their work-life balance because they felt like it was too. It was selfish of them to be thinking about enjoyment or pleasure, and so they were repressing this very strong need for more freedom, exploration, play, creativity, love, and friendship. All of the most joyful Venusian things be, and they were just going back into a structure of work and duty and obligation; it was becoming more and more repressive and heavy, and it was also a structure that was starting to fall apart because they were experiencing exhaustion and depression and disillusionment and I said, Isn't it interesting that the woman who's very much like Venus won't go in there? She's like, nope.

So the nice thing about Venus and Neptune is that if there's no pleasure, Venus and Neptune will take us to the mountaintop because it's like, life is not worth living if there are not beautiful visions, spiritualized visions of Venus informing what it looks like to live a beautiful and enjoyable life here in the valley.

So anyway, some good things to think about today. I hope this was a useful meditation for all of you, as Venus squares Neptune this week with an abundance of Earth. Good things to think about. I hope you're having a good one. We'll see you again tomorrow. Bye.