Venus — goddess of love, beauty, eroticism and the arts — has just recently reappeared in the sky, after a nearly two-month tour through the Underworld. Starting August 14, she was invisible-to-us as she traveled between Earth and Sun.
Adam Sommer, in a great post on this current Venus cycle (Venus as the Evening Star) describes Venus’s time in the Underworld as “a shamanic death…, where everything that serves us no longer is stripped away and destroyed, so that we can move forward, without fear, awaiting the next blessings to arrive into our lives.”
Venus now reemerges as the Evening Star — Hesperus or Vesper — the archetypal Crone, Wise Woman, Dark Mother. A new Venus cycle started in November 2010, and it’s worth looking back to what was happening in your life last fall, what has died since then, and what now wants to be reborn.
The Sun, Mercury, Venus and Saturn are all congregating in Venus-ruled Libra, and today, Friday — the day of the week associated with Venus (called Freya in Norse) — Venus forms a harmonious trine with Neptune, god/goddess of the ocean.
Neptune — planet of consciousness, spirituality and oneness — is the “higher octave” of Venus. Venus is love, Neptune is unconditional love. Venus is pleasure, Neptune is bliss. When these two planets are cooperating, we have the opportunity to access higher states of consciousness through Venusian avenues — relationship, sensual and sexual pleasure, art and beauty.
Welcome to Reviving Venus
At this auspicious cosmic moment, I’m pleased to welcome you to my new blog, dedicated to excavating, exploring and engaging with the astrological, mythological, cultural and historical Venus — the archetypal sacred feminine.
What is the sacred feminine? As we evolve out of the Age of Pisces, as the Mayan Calendar comes to an end, as the old, outgrown systems and structures of patriarchy and industrial civilization self-destruct, there’s a lot of talk about the return of the goddess and the reemergence of the divine feminine. But what exactly does that mean? What does that look like in our everyday lives? And how can we participate in her return?
Marion Woodman has said, “The feminine is so difficult… to talk about… because so few people have experienced it” (Conscious Femininity).
The astrological Venus is my starting point for delving into this question. Over time and across cultures she has appeared as Aphrodite (Greek), Inanna (Sumerian), Isis (Egyptian), Ishtar (Babylonian), Freya (Norse), Anahita (Persian), and Astarte (Hebrew and Phoenician). Archetypally, she is the Sacred Prostitute, the Temple Priestess, the Lover, the Seductress, the Muse, and the Virgin (meaning sovereign — she who is whole unto herself).
This blog was born from my grief and outrage at all the ways that the feminine is abused, denied, discounted, repressed and distorted in the dominant culture.
Let me count the ways:
- sexual abuse
- violence against women and children
- the abuse and torture of animals
- the torture of our fellow humans
- the desecration and exploitation of the Earth
- a lack of vitality and pleasure in daily life (aka depression)
- an economy based on extracting resources and expanding markets
- the dishonoring of the body in general and sexuality in particular
- the distortion of natural rhythms and cycles and enforcement of clock time
- standards of external “beauty” that most women can never achieve
- art as the property of an elite few rather than an essential part of everyday life
- hyper-consumption of land and natural resources
- the uglification of culture and our home planet
- an epidemic of female infertility and other reproductive health issues
- the prioritizing of profit uber alles
- a “power over” model of leadership — “might makes right.”
And so on.
Knowing that what I see “out there” must be reflecting what’s “in here” (the whole “out there/in here” separation proven false by physics), this blog is also born from my desire to heal, reanimate and reconnect with my own inner Venus, to restore my own conscious femininity.
The absence of the conscious masculine is no less destructive, and worthy of its own blog. Just to be clear — when I’m talking about masculine and feminine, I’m not referring to men and women, but to the fundamental, complementary, and equally essential energies of yin and yang — Venus and Mars.
This polarity can be expressed as: matter and spirit; body and mind; being and doing; immanence and transcendence; darkness and light; lunar and solar. It’s up to each of us to make conscious our own expression of feminine and masculine, and to integrate and balance this polarity within ourselves.
As Venus reappears in the night sky, reborn and renewed, she invites us to reconnect with our own expression of the feminine. How does the sacred feminine manifest in your own life, in your everyday experience? What can you do to call in more beauty, more love, more pleasure?
If you are intrigued by the topic, please consider subscribing – I plan to publish a new post every Friday. I’ll also continue writing weekly posts for my astro-blog, VirgoMagic.
– Emily Trinkaus
So glad to see this and read your wise words Emily. Happy blog-launching!
Thank you for the blog blessing, dear Rhea!!
YAY!!! Perfect. Love it.
LOVE this. : )
Bravo, Emily. Your words carry a lot of power. I’m glad you’re saying what needs to be said.
It’s happening!
I’m very excited about your new blog!!! I’m sure it will be a great blessing to many.
Namaste’
brilliantly written and produced …. i see 2012 as the time when we embrace and honor venus in our mother earth and within our selves… honoring the feminine worldwide as was just done in the nobel peace prize honoring the work of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee both of Libeya and Yemen activist Tawakkul Karman… these courageous very feminine woman are paving the way one person at a time activating the venusian energy world wide. thank you so much emily for starting a blog to build and create awareness of all that venus is. looking forward to reading your posts and passing them on to others. xoxoo
thank you for putting mystery into words, love this blog!