posted May 21, 2005 01:32 AM              

quote:

---

Ok, if that's the case, then I guess I'm very leo/aries like

---

posted September 12, 2006 05:04 PM              

semisextile sun
quintile mars
sextile jupiter
biquintile saturn
sextile uranus
conjunct neptune
sextile pluto
trine chiron
conjunct ascendant
square mc

Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto each have 7 aspects, also.

My least aspected are the Sun and Mercury with 3 aspects each:

Sun:
semisextile venus
opposite saturn ( i hate this one )
semisextile ascendant

posted September 12, 2006 05:30 PM            

Moon square Sun
Moon conjunction Mars
Moon Square Pluto
Moon trine Uranus
Moon sextile Venus
Moon conjunction Jupiter
Moon conjunction Ascendant

posted September 12, 2006 05:32 PM            

My venus is only aspected to Chiron through a trine. Does that make Venus technically aspected? I hear that a planet can only be aspected if it makes an aspect to a planet, not an asteroid, point or chiron? True?

Anyway, Venus is my least aspected.

My most aspected would be something like Jupiter:
Trine Chiron
Trine Asc
Opp Pluto
Opp Moon
Trine Neptune
Sextile Mars
Squ MC/IC

posted September 12, 2006 06:45 PM            

My Uranus is unaspected. No planets aspect Uranus in longitude nor declinations.

posted September 12, 2006 07:37 PM            

Most Aspected:

Mercury (11)
Neptune (11)

Least Aspected:

Jupiter (6)

With no asteroids:

Mercury (7)
Uranus (7)

Least Aspected:

Jupiter (4)

posted November 23, 2006 03:07 AM              

Yup. Definitely see myself as a Plutonian! Esp after reading Cunningham's book ~ wow --- relate to more of that than Id like to admit.
Interesting topic, hadnt thought of it like that.

posted December 11, 2010 04:55 AM            

My least aspected planet according to astrowin is Uranus and my most aspected planet is Mercury.
My ascendant is in Gemini and my MC is in Aquarius 9th house.Mercury is conjunct my Sun and Mars...Uranus is conjunct my Vertex and North Node.

I'm an extremely nervous and tense person...I have anxiety and possibly A.D.D... I hate it. On the positive side I seem to have a knack with words and writing.
I don't know how Uranus being least aspected effects me. It must have some influence because I keep getting called wierd and I have trouble finding my niche. :-)

posted December 11, 2010 04:59 AM            

Transcendental Mercury

Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
–William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

Mercurius is the Logos become world ... [He] truly consists of the most extreme opposites; on the one hand he is undoubtedly akin to the godhead, on the other he is found in sewers.
–Carl Jung, The Spirit Mercurius.

Core meaning:

Mercury’s seemingly up-front, matter-of-fact, and even banal qualities and correspondences represent only the surface appearance of an energetic force that is far more complex than is generally recognized. Through the cognitive network symbolized by Mercury, the other planetary principles partake in a mutually recognizable form of com­munication with one another, especially within the crucible of human consciousness. This plexus of interconnecting pathways of communication facilitates and unites the planetary forces in the microcosm of the human psyche.
In its evolution through various planetary symbols, the Transcendental energy is chan­neled through experiences of identity-separation (yang) and -unification (yin). In a similar fashion, in alchemical symbolism, the final stage of rapport between the yin and yang princi­ples is called the coniunctio: a process that proceeds through various stages of “chemical” separatio and unio, culminating in a union of differentiated qualities within the alchemical vessel, i.e., the psyche.
Just as the alchemists were well versed in astrological lore and borrowed freely from astrological principles to enhance their philosophical-allegorical understanding of pro­cesses of spiritual transformation, alchemical symbolism has, in turn, influenced and enhanced our understanding of the astrological symbols of transformation. In our present study, this transformation of energy is symbolically imagined as one assisted by the mediating force of Mercury.
In alchemical literature, which preserved and refined astrological thought and tradition, Mercury is sometimes referred to by his Greek appellation, “Hermes,” or by the Latin “Mercurius.”1 The alchemical retort was referred to as the vas Hermeti­*** or vessel of Hermes-Mercury. In the Mercurial Fountain illustrated in the Rosarium philosophorum (1550), the basin of the fountain is adorned with six stars, signifying the other celestial spheres (including Sun and Moon) that were visible to astronomers during the Middle Ages. The planetary principles are “contained in Mercurius,” whose personification symbolizes “the unity of the seven planets.”2 This alludes to the unify­ing function of the hermaphroditic Mercury, who symbolized the gathering, sorting, and ordering function in the alchemical process of the separation and unification of psy­chic elements.

_________________________________

The Mercurial fountain (fons mercurialis) from the Rosarium philosophorum (1550),
as reproduced in Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy.

_________________________________

In alchemy, these are usually represented as metals which, when sepa­rated from their corrupt amalgams or base forms, are transformed into symbolic “gold.” This is a philosophical or spiritual gold, representing an enlight­ened, spiritualized, or individuated consciousness. (Hence, Gerhard Dorn, a philosophi­cally oriented alchemist of the sixteenth century, would write: “The gold we seek is not the common gold.”) Therefore, in the ratio­nal, cognitive qualities symbolized by Hermes-Mercury, the various levels of Logos (spirit) / Eros (soul) dualism are unified. The “golden germ” (the potential for higher consciousness) is sealed within the vas Hermeticum and “heated.”
As the living vessel of Hermes-Mercurius, a human being has the potential for vitalizing (heating) and elevating (sublimatio) consciousness. It is explicitly the vessel of Hermes that serves as the agent of unification and that is a mediator of the various opposing principles (or metals) that are eventually brought into harmony or rapport.

The union of antagonistic elements is referred to with a terminology that is explicitly astrological. Throughout the alchemical literature, Mercury plays a central role in combining opposing principles of solar and lunar consciousness. Just as we have four key elements (originally: moist, dry, hot and cold; these correspond to water, air, fire and earth) and seven astro­nomical bodies (the seven that were known to antiquity) at the basis of all astrological thought, Jung writes that the “synthesis of the four [moist, dry, cold, warm] was one of the main preoccupations of alchemy, as was ... the synthesis of the seven.” In one alchemical text, Hermes-Mercury speaks to the Sun: “I cause to come out to thee the spirits of thy brethren [the planets], O Sun, and I make them for thee a crown the like of which was never seen; and I cause thee and them to be within me, and I will make thy kingdom vigorous.”3 Jung goes on to explain that the above “refers to the synthesis of the planets or metals with the sun.”
Here, Mercury performs the active (yang) role of causing planetary spirits to “come out” to the Sun (i.e., to appear to and to unite with consciousness). In addition, their unifi­cation is metaphorically portrayed as a crown: a symbol of soulful union (yin) and of dis­criminating spiritual consciousness (yang). The various planetary qualities are united through the intercession of Mercury, and this union results in a genera­tion of special powers, which are symbolized by a crown. Therefore, the individuated seeker attains an elevated form of consciousness, i.e., this is an internal, spiritual, and soulful result, rather than a merely material one, as Mercury-Hermes states: “I cause thee and them to be within me.” Finally, Mercury enables the “kingdom” (the unique realm of transformed consciousness) to be made “vigorous,” i.e., full of life. As with all authentic individuation processes, the result is an immediate one, directly experienced in everyday life.
Elsewhere in alchemical literature, we find other examples of the Mer­cury-Hermes role being described as a special process of union. “The ‘centre’ unites the four [elements] and the seven [planets] into one. The unifying agent is the spirit Mercurius.” Jung adds that the “idea of Mercury as a peacemaker, the mediator between the warring elements and producer of unity, probably goes back to Ephesians 2:13ff”:

Mercurius is conceived as “spiritual blood,” on the analogy of the blood of Christ. In Ephesians those who are separated “are brought near in the blood of Christ.” He makes the two one and has broken down the dividing wall “in his flesh.” Caro (flesh) is a synonym for the prima materia [the elemental material which is destined for alchemical transformation] and hence for Mercurius. The “one” is a “new man.” He reconciles the two “in one body,” an idea which is figuratively represented in alchemy as the two-headed hermaphro­dite. The two have one spirit, in alchemy they have one soul.

The “spiritual blood” unites “those who are separated.” This notion of sep­aration alludes to a one-sided and extreme form of (yang) consciousness: the experience of life as alienating; the experience of the social collective as an aggregate of distinct, separate, unrelated beings (i.e., the nihilistic point of view). The Savior attempts to alter this condition with his blood. He can make “the two one,” because he has “broken down the dividing wall ‘in his flesh’.” In other words, he has unified the opposites internally: he is individuated. He is whole.
Like the Savior, Mercurius personifies a cosmic duality. And like Christ, he is con­ceived of as “spiritual / blood” [yang / yin]. The cold, dry, immaterial spirit (yang) is united with a hot moist matter (yin), the latter symbolized by blood, which is typically associated with human feeling, warmth, and even love (i.e., blood is the fluid of the heart).4
Most importantly, Mercury is imagined as a central con­tainer within which the opposing planetary forces are brought together. As hermaphrodite, Mercury personifies a conjunction of spirit and soul; of animus and anima; of Sol and Luna. Jung writes that the “circle and the Hermetic vessel are one and the same, with the result that the mandala [a sacred or “magic” circle] ... corresponds to the vessel of transformation.” Therefore, Mercury plays a special role in synthesizing planetary forces within the astrological vessel of humanity, i.e., the circle of the zodiac and its idio­syncratic expression as a horoscope or “birth chart.” Mercurius is the “true hermaphroditic Adam and Microcosm,”5 for, in receiving and transmitting the alternating male and female planetary qualities, Mercury partakes of a dualistic flow of energy. In the words of the alchemical philosopher, Gerhard Dorn:

Our Mercurius is therefore that same [Microcosm], who contains within him the perfections, virtues, and powers of Sol [in the dual sense of sun and gold], and who goes through the streets [vicos] and houses of all the planets, and in his regeneration has obtained the power of Above and Below, wherefore he is to be likened to their marriage, as is evident from the white [yin/soul] and the red [yang/ spirit; my brackets] that are conjoined in him. The sages have affirmed in their wisdom that all creatures are to be brought to one united sub­stance.6

Mercurius effects and personifies the union of opposites on a microcosmic human level. The oppositional tensions of the planets are resolved and integrated through a mediation of Mercurial discrimination, analysis, and comprehension: the cru­cial elements of consciousness that are astrologically symbolized by this planet.
Therefore, it should be clear that the alchemical Mercury possesses qualities that are synonymous with the astrological Mercury. This is especially so concerning symbols that reflect an evolution of consciousness. As the symbol of cognition and rational comprehension, Mercury provides a means of bridging the tension of psycho­logical and emotional polarities, all of which are personified by the various planetary forms. Through Mercurius, the spiritual (or solar) consciousness can rationally communicate with the lunar (or soulful) dimension of consciousness. Mercurius is imagined (i.e., symbol­ized) as an agent of unification, because through Mercury the needs of one side of exist­ence (e.g., Logos-spirit-yang) are made comprehensible to the other side of existence (e.g., Eros-soul-yin). Mercury piques our curiosity, forms the question: Why?7 and then searches for a way of balancing the dualism inherent in consciousness.
Mercury symbolizes the fundamental pathways and elements of communication (e.g., the nervous system; psychic functions promoting cognition, communication, and comprehension). Alchemically, this is symbolized by Mercury’s role as a unifying agent of chemical properties: a force that allows various “met­als” or “chemicals” to enter into rapport with one another. Mercurius is envisioned as standing between Sol and Luna–the fundamental forms of Logos and Eros–and provid­ing, through receptive awareness and active transmission of thought, a mediating function that leads to continual philosophic and spiritual (i.e., psychic) growth. For the more literally inclined alchemists, this was imagined as a mere chemical interaction; for the alchemical philosophers, the “heavenly marriage”8 was an internal, philosophical process, yet one that simultaneously attempted to transform “metals” or chemicals through ritualistic enactments (i.e., repeated chemical “experiments”).
The special alchemical relationship between Sun and Mercury is of significance for our own purely astrological purposes, as our rational functions and faculties (Mercury) are directly related to the ego’s ability (Sun) to process information and to build and organize an effective ego-complex structure. In an apt metaphor expressed through astronomical fact, Mercury is “the planet closest to the Sun.”9 Gather­ing, sorting, processing; seeking, receiving, and transmitting information, Mercury directs a singular focus upon each detail–one at a time–whether in the process of transmitting that information (e.g., giving a lecture) or receiving it (e.g., listening raptly to a speaker). Without this essential Mercurial function, it would be difficult for the ego (Sun) to comprehend or express itself. Without a properly functioning Mercury, the ego-complex would be overwhelmed by details that it could neither sort through nor process effec­tively. Without Mercury’s discriminating ability to analyze and present data, ego-expression is subject to a void of Mercury: a babbling incoherence; a “scat­ter”-brained inconsistency.
Mercurius provokes the first stage of union between the yin and yang planetary principles (i.e., Sun and Moon). In alchemy, this is expressed as the marriage of Sol (spirit) and Luna (soul). “As the little star near the sun, he [Mercurius] is the child of sun and moon,”10 i.e., the consciousness born of their union. Mercury assists in creating addi­tional unions between the other yang / yin planetary couples, i.e., the lat­ter ontological stages of Mars-Venus; Saturn-Jupiter; and (in modern times) Pluto-Neptune. The alchemists conceived of Mercurius as the “spiritus vegetativus, a living spirit, whose nature it is to run through all the houses of the planets, i.e., the entire Zodiac.” According to Jung, “We could just as well say through the entire horoscope” or “through all the characterological components of the personality.” In the archetypal “Journey through the Planetary Houses,”11 Mercury corresponds to the cognitive function that attempts a comprehensive synthesis of planetary symbolism. Mercury’s rapid transit of the natal chart–comprising a restless seeking and questioning–further portrays its continual and dynamic influence.
Mercury’s role in uniting the masculine and feminine ener­gies reflects a character trait of the alchemical Mercurius: a hermaphrodite who is “fittingly called ‘duplex’, both active and passive. The ‘ascending’, active part of him is called Sol, and it is only through this that the passive part can be perceived. (The passive part therefore bears the name of Luna, because she borrows her light from the sun.” Mercury’s solar consciousness is intimately linked to a lunar consciousness, as “it is only through this that the passive part can be perceived” or made conscious.12 “Luna secretes the dew or sap of life. ‘This Luna is the sap of the water of life, which is hidden in Mercurius’.”13 Thus, within the unifying mediator of Mercurius–a hermaphrodite who contains Sol and Luna (the red and the white)–there is a deep-seated bilateral capacity to grasp, comprehend, and experience the seemingly oppo­sitional psychic forces. Through their marriage in the Mercurial waters (of receptive awareness and active analytical comprehension), a new consciousness is born: the alchemical unio mentalis. Mercurius is “masculine and feminine and at the same time the child born of their union.”14
Mercurius as quicksilver represents an adaptable and changeable energy: one with a peculiar ability to shift into a variety of plan­etary forms, “mimicking,” “animating,” and “quickening” the celestial spheres as it travels through their realms. This process is symbolized by the peregrinus microcosmus or “wandering microcosm”: Mercury represented in a voyage or “odyssey in search of wholeness.”15 (Astrologically, it is symbolized by Mercury’s Tran­scendental “couplings” with the other planets; by natal aspects; or by dynamic, transiting aspects.)

Through Mercury’s search for an essential ingredient in spiritual truth (yang); union based on empathic under­standing (yin); and understanding enhanced by the “unifying / force of language” (yin-Eros / yang-Logos). An animating force that “quickens” the planetary ener­gies by means of its relentless absorption and transmission of truth, Mercury stimu­lates the flow of psychic energy and directs information gleaned from each celestial realm (or form of consciousness). Again, through its “freewheel­ing” interaction between each astrological stage of yin and yang, Mer­cury partakes of an energetic dualism that is expressed in its hermaphroditic nature. The felt awareness (Eros-soul) and rational grasp (Logos-spirit) of the various planetary principles (especially as experienced in the microcosm of human consciousness) is the immediate result of Mercury’s quest to obtain a truth partaking of multiple realities by adapting to each of them: absorbing, reflecting, and qualifying their natures; and creating the formal means of expressing such realities through sign, symbol, language, schemata, diagram, blueprint etc.
Mercury and its “higher octave,” Uranus, signify two different yet closely related psychic functions. Mercury represents a dynamic search for the elements that compose the multiple facets of consciousness (i.e., “thought forms”), while the unexpected reversals and shocking reformations expressed through Uranus signify a search for a higher order: a more sophisticated synthesis and expression of consciousness (i.e., the reformation of thought). The restlessness of Mercury (seeking to comprehend itself) and the Ura­nian tendency to restructure energy forms (a self-regulation of psychic energy, expressed through the dynamic reversals of its extreme forms of expression) exemplify the transhuman ori­gins and qualities of these energy complexes. A “thought” which suddenly appears “out of the blue” (Mercury’s color) partakes of a transpersonal or archetypal pattern and origin. Likewise, Uranian intuitions that appear “out of nowhere” (the immaterial nature of Uranian energy) are expressions of a suprarational, transpersonal con­sciousness. In this sense, Uranus and Mercury (whose astrological symbols or “glyphs” are shaped like antennae) are planetary “receptors” of higher states of consciousness: receptors capable of transmitting the subtlest expressions of spirit and soul.
In accord with ancient astrological and occult traditions, the alchemists invoked the spirit Mercurius as a mediating agent in their quest to render form to such philosophic inquiry. Jung writes that the “union of alchemical opposites formed a ‘correspondence’ to the unio mentalis that took place simultaneously in the mind of man, and not only in man but in God.”16 Mercury’s special mental role is sug­gested here. In the mental union simultaneously experienced by God and man, Mercury is linked to the Divine realm (human cog­nition based on a transpersonal, archetypal, divine pattern; Mercury as a receptor that “steps down” the energy of higher planetary forms of consciousness). Here Jung is again referring to the writings of Gerhard Dorn, who states: “We conclude that meditative philosophy consists in the overcoming of the body [the base instincts and unconscious nature] by mental union [unio mentalis] ... [and] that He may be one in All.”17 According to Jung, “The goal of the [alchemical] procedure is the unio mentalis, the attainment of full knowledge of the heights and depths of one’s own charac­ter.”18 Jung further theorized that the “unio mentalis, the interior oneness which today we call individuation, he [Dorn] conceived as a psychic equilibrium of opposites ‘in the over­coming of the body’, a state of equanimity transcending the body’s affectivity and instinc­tuality. The spirit (animus), which is to unite with the soul, he called a “spiracle” [spiraculum] of eternal life’, a sort of ‘window into eternity’ (Leibniz), whereas the soul is an organ of the spirit and the body an instrument of the soul.”19
This final occult goal–the union of opposites upon a newfound (or higher) level of awareness–is a process realized in a special manner through an intercession of the hermaphroditic, unifying form of Mercury. Therefore, Mercurius is conceived as “many-sided, change­able”; “the ‘twin’, made of ‘two natures’, or ‘two substances’”; “the ‘giant of twofold sub­stance’”; the “winged and wingless” dragon; the “spirit and soul of the bodies”; composed of elements that are “dry and earthy” and “moist and viscous”; “passive” and “active”; and even “good and evil.” Through the “united double nature”20 of the hermaph­rodite, “Mercurius duplex” presages the final goal: the union of psychic oppo­sites, the mysterium coniunctionis.
As a force that both unites opposing principles and symbolizes their presence in the dualistic tendencies of consciousness, Mercury–by standing in between and uniting–forms a triune structural dynamic and is often symbolized as such. Hermes-Mer­curius is referred to as “All and Thrice One” (omnia solus et ter unus); “triple in name, one in essence” (triplex in nomine, unus in esse); the “three-headed Mercurius” or “three-headed Hermes” (Hermes tricephalus); the “union of three” (triunus); the triune “Mercu­rial Fountain” (fons Mercurialis); “a three-headed snake” (serpens Mercurialis); and “tri­ple natured–masculine, feminine, and divine.”21 This triune form alludes to Mercury’s role in processes of separation (into complementary plane­tary pairs, such as Mars and Venus) and unification (the psychic integration of the Mars and Venus principles). Interpreted psychologically, Mercury represents a function that integrates rational and nonrational aspects of consciousness.

Improper manifestation of the energy:

Alchemical lore warns of a “darker” aspect of Mercury. Besides its role as spir­itual unifier, Mercurius duplex is conceived as duplicitous; shifty; wily; poisonous (“a spreading poison that has brought death to many”); “a child of chaos”; 22 “many sided, changeable, and deceitful”; “inconstant”; “good and evil”; “dark and light”; “visible and invisible”; “coarse and fine”; and related (through Saturn) to the devil. Since Mercury takes on the qualities of the planets that it serves to link, in its close proximity to the various planetary principles, Mercury may be contaminated or inflated with either the yin or the yang planetary elements. The “darkness” or “coarseness” of one side of the duality indicates that one of the Mercurial functions has now become obscured and is operating unconsciously.
This is reflected in the horoscope when Mercury is portrayed as a hyperac­tive planet. For example, in its contact with Saturn, Mercury may “serve” Saturn by encouraging emotional constraint and the fear of change. “Understanding” may suddenly shift into “excluding” other viewpoints, perspectives, or emotional realities that would lend greater expansiveness or wholeness to the soul (especially the soulful qualities corresponding to Saturn’s complimentary yin form, Jupiter). In its rigid adherence to Saturnian principles (structure, order, discipline, the “laws of limitation,” and the utilization of those laws in effecting achievements), Mercury excludes other realities by force­fully proclaiming its belief in the already analyzed and categorized details that constitute an established Saturnian point of view. The complimentary Jupiterian impulse to expand beyond established borders of reality (and to expand the collective frontiers of the soul) is here usurped by a fixed belief in the limits of the “already known”: the logically deducible realm of material reality. In defending this rigid, Saturnian posi­tion, the Mercurial “light of reason” is transformed into a dark, obscuring cloud: one of opaque absolutism.
Conversely, by adhering to or becoming contaminated with the Jupiterian impulse, the wandering curiosity of Mercury will expand beyond its ability to maintain focus, following an endlessly widening, tangential trail through a morass of ideas and concepts that all seem linked in some maddeningly inflated and endless fashion. This will lead to a fixation on Jupiterian “facts,” especially those pertaining to philosophical, religious, ethical, or other forms of the “codified wisdom of the ages”–yet one lacking a truly soulful awareness of such matters.23
In merg­ing with Mars, Mercury will give voice to such forceful, opinionated and heated exchanges that the “separation and differentiation of identity” principle symbolized by Mars will be excessively extolled, with the result that it backfires and causes alienation, separa­tion, and misunderstandings with others.
Overactive, one-sided contacts with yin planets such as Venus may lead to com­pulsive communications concerning romantic obsessions or opinionated exchanges regarding aesthetic beliefs. Instead of an intimate, soulful experience, a fixed notion concerning the nature of love (e.g., romance viewed in a hyperrational manner) will block anything other than a superficial exchange of intimacy.
In Mercury’s contamination by Neptune, ideas and opinions concerning a mystic dimension of the soul will inhibit a deeper, authentic spiritual experience. Here Mercury will insist upon communicating something about the vague, obscure, or indefinite nature of the Neptunian experience, yet an overriding focus upon the significance of the word (or in some other graphic notation, such as the symbol) will eclipse an essential Neptunian soulfulness: the merging with and dissolution into the anima mundi or world soul.
With Pluto, the attempt to comprehend the essential nature of something and to use that knowledge to reshape or transform that essen­tial nature lends the Mercury-Pluto contamination a particularly terrifying power. In applying a willful analysis to a person or a thing (e.g., a myopic view of how something should be transformed and a concern over the “dictatorial control” one will have upon the transformed person, place or thing), the Mercury-Pluto contaminated native is obstructing his own depth transformation potential.
In every one-sided Mercury-planet contamination, the word or rational form obscures the truth it attempts to shape or articulate. In the effort to express its triune structural nature, Mercury has grasped too tightly upon one planetary principle to the detriment of the opposing principle. The latter then falls into an unconscious darkness (the unrealized, unvitalized part of life) and will later emerge only under special circumstances. (Only an enlightened consciousness can redeem it.) In all the Mercury-planet contaminations, the philosophical Mercury (mercurius philosophicus) or spiritual Mercury (mercurius non vulgaris) is bogged down by the common or crude Mercury (mercurius vulgaris; mercurius crudus). Instead of lending fluency of expression to the ineffable experiences of spirit and soul, Mercury is overly attached (earthbound or “concretized”) to some aspect of the form of communication itself. This is reflected in the manner of expression (e.g., Plutonian willfulness; Jupiterian expansiveness; Venusian sensuality; Martian force) or in the words, symbols, or language systems that are overvalued and that serve as a substitute for the realities they are meant to convey. Rather than the word serving to clarify and enhance our experience of the mystery of life, the word usurps the place of the mystery itself.
When Mercury is psychologically unintegrated, the traditional astrological literature warns of a scatter-brained, unfocused native; one who cannot ratio­nally ascertain his place in the larger scheme of things. Such a person may have difficulty in making decisions; forming critical judgments; communicating clearly and objectively; comprehending elabo­rate concepts; retaining details, facts, and figures; or making simple logical deductions. For such a native, two essential elements are lacking:
Existential conditions, such as a lack of educational opportunities, may have dampened the native’s interest in such Mercurial pursuits. This, in turn, may interfere with the urge to absorb, reflect, comprehend, communicate, or plan in an orderly, rational manner. This impasse will force Mercury to operate primarily on an unconscious level. Mercurius “duplex” then becomes duplicitous or diabolical. This is the trickster aspect of Mercury, which will reveal itself through an inner shiftiness and an underhanded unconsciousness. This means that one “hand” of Mercury is overgrasping or is overidentified with one of the (yin or yang) planetary principles, to the detriment of the complementary principle. Instead of functioning as a mediator and forming, on a higher level, a transcendent union (as reflected in his hermaphroditic nature), here Mercury is overidentified with one form of con­sciousness at the expense of another.
If, for example, the native is overidentified with the yin side of the equation, the yang-oriented impulses (symbolized by Sun, Mars, Saturn, or Pluto) are then trapped and operate primarily unconsciously. The need to redeem this one-sided (or partially uncon­scious) Mercury is expressed in the alchemical notion of the “Freeing of Mer­cury,”24 illustrated in the Grimm fairy tale, “The Spirit in a Bottle”: a story of Mercurius hermetically sealed in a glass bottle. If Mercury is not capable of func­tioning as a mediator between planetary energies, the native will experience difficulty in finding his “Logos”: a formal means of communicating with clarity. Yang thought-forms will become blocked and will emerge only through dreams, unex­pressed longings, the “subtext” (or subliminal meaning) behind “surface” communications, or the acting out of the unconscious self (e.g., hysterical expressions). The yang consciousness will only be expressed symptomatically, through snide remarks; double entendres; aggressive or awkward body “language” etc. Essentially, the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing. In between stands Mercury, who says one thing but is secretly thinking another. He may pursue his unconscious agendas by expressing himself in “half-thought” imag­inings and in “unthinking” remarks (e.g., insults). For the native who is unaware of his “duplex,” situations seem to “figure themselves out” or to reach “untoward con­clusions” (i.e., an inability to consciously plan for and reach a proper conclusion).
When Mercury’s powers of comprehension and rational deduction have fallen this far into the realm of diabolic unconsciousness,25 a further problem arises in the native’s ability to believe in the self-regulating nature of the Mercury energy. For a native so far removed from the ability to tune in to his own thoughts, the fear is that the “wheel will have to be reinvented”: that a thinking process must be created from scratch. The thought process is, however, largely autonomous; we receive thoughts (generated as they are from within the overall psyche) just as much as we can be said to create them. Yet instead of teasing out or channeling thought in this intuitive manner, the native may despair that he must work through every word, every detail, every aspect of communication in order to effectively utilize the Mercury complex. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth, as “channeling Mercury” into the conscious realm is far different from controlling each of his frenetic movements. Indeed, for every human function (i.e., for each planetary principle) the conscious mind must work with a largely autonomous, instinctive, and intuitive process that proceeds along by itself, directed here and there by conscious­ness yet certainly not invented by the ego or created from scratch. We may seek to formulate a thought and, in the process of properly “listening” (being mentally receptive), a thought coalesces in a manner that is largely involuntary and instinctive: generated from within the psyche and reformulated within consciousness.
The same holds true no matter which planet is “unintegrated.” The native must engender a belief in the autonomous reality of the psychic function involved (e.g., the reality of love [Venus]; the reality of the “expansive philosophical mind” [Jupiter] etc.). One must cultivate receptivity to the presence of the energy in question. (And this requires an appropriately introverted atti­tude.) Besides instilling a belief in such energetic potentials, one must develop a positive point of view regarding the use of such energies. Since unintegrated energy is largely blocked from conscious expression, this means it has been experienced mostly in a negative form. Once psychic energy has been redeemed, its beneficial effects are enormous, yet this is often difficult for the native to imagine, since things pushed into the unconscious are often viewed only negatively.

Transcendental potential:

Relocation to the Transcendental Mercury line offers the native opportuni­ties in which this function finds a formal means of expression. This will occur through encoun­ters with those who have evolved a Mercury principle within themselves to such an extent that the “unattractive” or “unconscious” aspects of Mercury (the “dark,” “coarse,” and “poisonous” dimensions) are transformed into a more positive, creative form of expression. For instance, someone with an unintegrated Mercury who is not verbally oriented may, under this location, expe­rience language as a tool that can be tailored to suit his needs in fur­thering relationships with others, rather than as something that leads to experiences of intellectual intimidation, alienation, or separation. In relocations in a foreign country, the attempt to learn a new language26 will stimulate such underutilized mental functions. This, in turn, will stimulate other functions, such as comprehending ideas and formulating concepts.
Under this location, the ability to rely on the autonomous expression of Mercury is enhanced. This may be coupled with a positive external experience, such as encounters with those who personify creative aspects of Mercury (e.g., personally meaningful and relaxed communication instead of impersonal, irrelevant, intimidating discourse). Mercury as mercurius philosophicus may be personified as the curious seeker who, by receiv­ing and transmitting knowledge, furthers the evolution of others by teaching eternal truths and ideas. Here Mercury is functioning as a mediating agent between the Eros-yin and Logos-yang principles, communi­cating to each their mutual needs and articulating their realities in a manner further­ing growth and enhancing comprehension. When functioning properly, Mercury lends form to the unknown and helps to shape the otherwise elusive language of human cogni­tion and consciousness.
The possibility of actualizing creative, philosophical aspects of Mercury in a Transcendental locale is exemplified by the prolific and visionary writings of Jules Verne [with Secondary Transcendental Uranus]; the acclaimed literary achievements of William Butler Yeats; the direct, simple clarity of the novelist Jack London; and the “prodigal genius” who gave intellectual form to an eclectic variety of ideas, Nikola Tesla. In each of these examples, Mercury found a significant formal expression in the world-at-large. Under the Transcendental location, instead of haphazard or disjointed expressions of mental energy, Mercury coa­lesces into forms that communicate knowledge, enhance comprehension, and further the quest for greater understanding.

Personalities with Primary Transcendental Mercury:

Catherine the Great ([with equally underaspected Uranus] Empress of Russia remembered for her “educational” reforms, “eclectic intellectual prowess,” and “notable intelligence, curiosity, and wit,” who “frequently corresponded” with leading French “intellectuals” and established “literary reviews” in Russia); Claudette Colbert (born in Paris under the line of her Primary Mercury, remembered for her “charismatic / voice” [Second­ary Neptune / Primary Mercury] and for acting in “smart” roles in which she easily “matched wits” with Hollywood’s leading men); Peggy Fleming ([with equally underaspected Venus] ice figure-skater acknowledged for her “skillful / grace” [Mercury / Venus] and for the personification of “beauty / in motion,” who won her first gold medal in France, directly under her Primary Mercury line); Grace Kelly ([with equally underaspected Jupiter/Uranus] actress who traveled to the European locale of her Mercury line (over the principality of Monaco), where she assumed her final role as Princess of Monaco); Jack London (prolific author of numerous Klondike tales, such as Call of the Wild and White Fang, whose Primary Mer­cury passes precisely over the Klondike in its vertical, Transcendental Midheaven position); Jackie Robinson ([with Secondary Transcendental Mars] athlete who relocated to his Primary Mer­cury line early in life, where he “attended school” and “learned the skills” necessary to participate in a “variety” of athletic sports, who later “educated” baseball fans about racism by becoming the first African American to play in the major leagues); Bertrand Russell (Welsh “intellectual” known for his “eclectic and prolific writings” and his “advanced analytical skills”); Nikola Tesla (renowned “intellectual” who once suffered a nervous breakdown in an attempt to read the complete works of Voltaire; known as the foremost “intellectual / of electricity” [Primary Mercury / Secondary Uranus], who immigrated to the U.S. and constructed a lab­oratory in New York City, in close proximity to his Primary Mercury); Jules Verne (whose prolific “writing” is filled with prophetic insights [with Secondary Uranus] that anticipate in “literary form” the scientific discoveries of the future); Queen Victoria (whose “overly detailed concern” with the “efficient handling” of the daily business of the monarchy was said to interfere with the theatrical displays of royalty required of her; whose “careful scrutiny of facts and details” led critics to say she had “drill eyes” and that she “insisted on consultation even over trivial details”; who from 1832 to 1901 faithfully kept a dairy comprising 122 notebook volumes; and whose prolific “correspon­dence” is contained in over a dozen published volumes); Kaiser Wilhelm II (the last emperor of Germany, born in Potsdam, Germany, near his Primary Mercury, who was remembered for his imperialistic “speeches”); William Butler Yeats (Nobel-prize-winning “writer” born in Sandymount, Ireland, almost directly under his Primary Mer­cury line).

* * *

Keynote phrases for Mercury:

•The animating energy behind forms of communication.
•Traditionally, Mercury is hermaphroditic and contains qualities that derive from active (yang) and receptive (yin) energies. Mercury unites these opposing tendencies, especially in the role of transmitting (yang) and receiving (yin) information.
•Cognitive functions that determine communication and more advanced intellectual abilities.
•Intellectual (rather than philosophic [Jupiter] or divinely intuited [Uranus]) communica­tion.
•The ability to learn and refine skills.
•Education, especially elementary education.
•The “automatic pilot” aspect of cognitive experience, especially concerning the performance of tasks that rely on the smooth functioning of previously learned motor skills.
•Physiological structures in the brain and nervous system that facilitate communication.
•In Indian astrology, Mercury corresponds to “matters pertaining to learning.”27
•The yin and yang functions of reception, comprehension, and expression of information.
•Everything that facilitates communication and that leads to an understanding of the self- and soul experience.

posted December 11, 2010 05:00 AM            

Transcendental Jupiter

Energy is Eternal Delight.
One thought fills immensity.
You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
–William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

Core meaning:

Jupiter corresponds to the diastole: the dilation of cosmic energy, resulting in the expanding universe and the spread and replication of life forms, as opposed to the systole of Saturn: the constriction of energy, resulting in the con­traction of the universe. In their extreme cosmogonic expressions, Jupiter symbolizes the dominance of the life force over matter, while Saturn corresponds to the domi­nance of matter over life. When the two are working together, however, it is through Saturn that Jupiter’s cosmic consciousness will assume a material form and structure, while it is through Jupiter that Saturn’s “matter” is ennobled with the presence of a “higher mind.” Psychologically, Saturn symbolizes yang energy rigidly fixed and cling­ing to stabilized, conservative, predicable expressions of consciousness, while Jupiter seeks to enlarge the intrapsychic scope, perspective, and horizon so that a wider range of yin consciousness may prevail.
In its most evolved form, Jupiter expands the emotional range of the soul, moving beyond the interpersonal soul (Venus) to an expansion of philosophical, moral, religious, or visionary insights.1 When astrologers speak of the “higher mind” of Jupiter, they are referring to a higher yin consciousness that unfolds from the merely personal (Moon) or interpersonal exchange of intimacy (Venus) to a broader feeling of connectedness to collective soul expressions handed down through the ages (Jupiter). As we shall see, culture, art, spiritual doctrines, philanthropy, ethical awareness, and philosophical systems all play a key role in the Jupiter symbolism.
Through Jupiter, we embody a soulful social role. This involves carrying out a function that dispenses from some vast storehouse of cultural resources, such as judge (dispenser of moral or ethical knowledge), professor (dis­penser of cultural knowledge), priest (dispenser of codified religious insight), or holy man (dispenser of inner spiritual wisdom). By participating in such yin-oriented social roles, the personal soul is expanded through its encounter with the “codi­fied wisdom of the ages.”2
In this enriching soul-expanding process, we are linked to broader collective values: moral wisdom, feelings of collective justice, and empathy for the larger social order. Through the indi­vidual who works for the advancement of this larger order–particularly in his call for “justice” or in his promotion of a social value in need of further development–the collective cultural soul is itself expanded. Ultimately, such experiences are codified into the traditions and laws that define the norms of expected behavior within a social group (Saturn). (An example: Abraham Lincoln, with Primary Jupiter, whose belief in eradicating slavery represented an “ethical vision” (Jupiter) that was eventually absorbed into the “enforced social code” [Saturn] of the day.)3 As we have seen, the experience of linking one’s ethical beliefs to a broader cultural tradition is a keynote of the Jupiter effect. The transformation of such positive beliefs into codified norms foreshadows the next stage of yang development, symbolized by neighboring Saturn. In this manner, Jupiter precedes Saturn in the sym­bolic solar system, as Jupiter’s “visions” eventually become incorporated into Sat­urn’s laws and governmental institutions.

Improper manifestation of the energy:

Jupiter rules “overgrowth” and “overexpansiveness.”4 In biology, the cancerous proliferation of cells that widen their “sphere of influence” without regard for the final consequence of such growth corresponds to the negative manifestation of an overactive Jupiter. Jupiter also rules the principle of psychological inflation or hubris. The latter will manifest as brash, inelegant, showy displays of wealth, resources, or social connections, all of which highlights one’s ever-widening sphere of power and influence, rather than serving to broaden one’s social consciousness or enhancing self-actualization through the integration of higher levels of yin awareness.
When someone is inflated by the principle of “growth and expansion,” relationships will be viewed as “acquisitions” or as a means of using others as sounding boards off which one resonates one’s “booming” Jupiterian presence. By “ego-identifying” with Jupiter and by hubristically acting out such pat­terns, the human experience of Jupiter–as a function that enables us to expand the breadth of the soul (and the breadth of our social role and knowl­edge)–is replaced by mere overindulgence and excess. A classic example of this is the boastful, self-indulgent epicurean, who is rich in some material way, enjoying every conceivable sensual extrava­gance, and yet who is utterly impoverished internally.
Those who have not actualized Jupiter in a conscious manner will find themselves projectively enmeshed in unconscious attractions to those who embody such Jupiterian principles and symbols. An unintegrated Jupiter may result in a subliminal yearning to expand a region of the soul where the native senses a developmental gap in insight or awareness. When such yearning is psychologically projected, this may involve attachments to those who seem to have already integrated such classic Jupiter qualities (i.e., uninhibited growth; “dilating” soul experience; the broadening of soul by per­forming a role that mirrors an essential social value). But the unintegrated Jupiter native can fall prey to becoming a mere “acquisition” of the Jupiter-identified person, who hooks the bait by at first seeming to freely dispense with some of Jupiter’s largesse only to eventually claim possession over a person’s soul, because they are now “indebted” to the dispenser of material wealth (e.g., the patron who displays a patronizing attitude); the provider of spiritual knowledge (e.g., the cult leader who infantilizes his followers); or the promoter of feel-good experi­ences that the native feels incapable of providing for himself.
Another improper Jupiter expression is exhibited in the personal identification with the puer aeternus or “eternal youth”: a Peter Pan who shuns all limitation and who seeks to express the limitless, ever-widening poten­tial for unrestrained experience (in particular, the expression of joyful, soulful expansiveness). This figure is diametrically opposed to the archetypal senex: an authoritarian figure who espouses laws of social restraint, disci­pline, and measure, and the imposition of duty and responsibility–especially as a counter­measure to this impulsive expression of unrestrained freedom of soul. (This was aptly symbolized by Blake’s “horses of instruction” (Saturn), which was opposed to his (Jupiterian) notion of the “tygers of wrath.”) By fearing the Saturnian “reality” principle, the Jupiterian puer aeternus suffers the fate of losing touch with Saturn’s earth-bound wisdom, which, when properly understood and expressed, provides us with greater free­dom of movement through the material realm.
If he is overidentified with Jupiter’s urge for an unrestrained expression of the soul, the puer will eventually be crushed by Saturn’s demand to face the material realm and its limits. This will be enacted through an unconscious attraction to senex figures (those sober “horses of instruc­tion”): upholders of the “law,” such as police or other disciplinary forces, who formally “arrest” the puer (who is already imprisoned by his “arrested development”). Another likely scenario for the puer (especially in the more introverted subject who seeks “wisdom” rather than material largesse) is manifested in his tendency to ignore the demands of the body (the acquisition of food, shelter, clothing etc.) until a point of a hazardous “awakening” is reached. Until this happens, however, the puer may be viewed as a charming, delightful figure: one who possesses the ability to evoke an unlimited cornucopia of soulful experience.
While the unintegrated Jupiter native may become possessed by an inner puer figure, it is also possible that he will personify the senex in a puer’s life, providing him with food, shelter, lodgings, and the surrogate acting out of those duties and responsibilities that represent the essential components of human life. Instead of fall­ing into the trap of becoming a surrogate senex for an irresponsible puer, those with an unintegrated Jupiter complex need to rekindle an awareness of the positive aspect of the puer archetype: in its positive expression, the puer is the newly reborn soul (hence, his youthful appearance, his symbols of expansiveness and growth, and his focus on experi­ence that is soulfully enriching).
The puer is in danger of overidentify­ing with (or unwittingly personifying) collective soul issues to the detriment of his per­sonal soul development. By promulgating philosophic, artistic, or religious doctrines (Jupiter), the puer is often avoiding his personal issues of emotional well-being (Moon) or his potential for mature interpersonal feelings of intimacy (Venus). In this manner, he is overstepping early devel­opmental yin stages (Moon and Venus) in favor of a later stage of yin development (Jupi­ter). Without a secure emotional foundation (Moon), or an appropriate means of expressing feelings to others (Venus), issues concerning the larger collec­tive soul (Jupiter) cannot be properly addressed or experienced in an appropriate manner.
The puer is therefore imagined as a winged figure who can fly, as in the “Peter Pan” story (i.e., his insights are not grounded in real human experience; he is not “down to earth”). In psychological literature, we see that puers often dream of flying or of hovering dangerously high above the ground. Lacking an emotional connection (Moon) or a means of expressing feeling-toned intimacy (Venus) with others, the pathetic figure of the puer has no other recourse than to personalize (Moon) and romanticize (Venus) his relationship to the artistic, philosophical, or cultural heritage of mankind (Jupiter). Such an inflated consciousness has no real place on the human plane: therefore, it floats up, into the ether of a groundless “philosophy,” where the puer may feel comfort­able in preaching to all and sundry–in his wonderfully detached and expansive manner–until the time comes when this detachment from the more personal drama will exact a very personal price.

Transcendental potential:

Jupiter is said to rule opportunity and good luck because, once activated, its “mind-expanding” function allows us to perceive a wealth of opportunities that may have previously gone unnoticed. By remaining open to such soul-enriching possibilities, we are more likely to engender such experience in our lives. The Jupiter com­plex helps us to create a worldly role in which the personal soul enacts a wider social or collective significance, especially through pursuing meaningful duties that expand the values of the overall culture.
This is the key to understanding Jupiter’s relationship to figures in the world-at-large who redefine and promulgate what is socially and culturally valuable or who dispense resources from “higher positions” of authority and responsibility. By personify­ing Jupiter through a “soulful interaction with the world-at-large,” they ennoble the personal soul by broadening its power of expression.
Jupiter’s expansion of soulful values is based on a shared sense of cultural values within the overall society. It is experienced by the social group as “soul issues that unite a common people” (values that unite us and that connect us on a deeper spiritual level). This is expressed by the psychological-anthropological term, kinship libido. When our “libido” or psychic energy is in union or kinship with a broader cultural, social group,5 or when cul­tural institutions preserve and promulgate such values, then we may speak of the effects of the Jupiter complex, which unites as it expands awareness and meaning within the culture-at-large.6

Personalities with Primary Transcendental Jupiter:

Elizabeth B. Browning (poet who portrayed “expansive emotional and spiritual states of consciousness,” who relocated to Florence, near her Primary Jupiter); Richard E. Byrd (polar explorer who “expanded” mankind’s awareness of terrestrial outer limits); George Harrison (whose equally underaspected Mars-Jupiter frames the center of India in a narrowly focused Transcendental Midpoint-Field, reflecting Harrison’s “ardent, determined pursuit / of higher forms of consciousness” [Mars / Jupiter]; Grace Kelly ([with equally underaspected Mercury-Uranus] whose Primary Jupiter forms a Tran­scendental Midpoint-Field with Primary Mercury, extending from her ancestral homeland
in Ireland [Jupiter] to the principality of Monaco [Mercury]); Abraham Lincoln (Ameri­can president who promoted the need for a more “expansive ethical and philosophical vision in society” and who helped to preserve the “expanding” Union rather than permit its Saturnian contraction); Friedrich Nietzsche (influential “philoso­pher” whose “higher-mind” formulations “expanded the terrain of modern philosophical thought”); Auguste Rodin (born near Primary Jupiter in Paris; who gained the “support of a patron” in the person of the influential Turquet, the undersecretary of fine arts, who “granted” him a studio in Paris, where he worked for the remainder of his life).

* * *

Keynote phrases for Jupiter:

•Wisdom gained through “increased access to soulful resources.”
•The enactment of a meaningful role that expands the cultural and spiritual values of society.
•Linking personal or interpersonal values to broader ethical and spiritual wisdom, to feelings of collective justice, or to a concern for the larger social order.
•The progression of yin from the interpersonal values of Venus to the shared sense of cultural values within the social aggregate (“soul issues that unite a common people”). Psychologically, this is expressed by the psychological-anthropological term, kinship libido.
•The growth potential in all living and nonliving things.
•The further evolution of yin consciousness in the symbolic solar sys­tem.
•In Indian astrology, Jupiter corresponds to the teacher or ‘”guru”: “one who transmits knowledge.”7
•Yin energy expressed as the collective soul.

posted December 11, 2010 05:01 AM            

The poet … gains consciousness only that he may better obey the movements of the unknown waves which cradle him, and that he may widen, through consciousness itself, the limits of the unconscious.
–Elie Faure, History of Art: Modern Art.

To see a World in a grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a wild flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
–William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence.”

Core meaning:

As the planets located at the farthest reaches of the solar system, Neptune and Pluto–both invisible to the naked eye when viewed from the earth–seem ideally suited as symbols for the archetypal realm of the collective unconscious. In astrology, they symbolize profound yet hidden processes of psychic transformation. While Pluto has a shatter­ing effect (yang) upon consciousness (breaking apart outworn personality traits; transforming the ego and enabling it to sustain substantially “heavier charges,” e.g., traumatic life experience), Neptune exerts a “dissolving” effect (yin) on the foundations of consciousness. Through Neptune, consciousness is no longer sharply focused through the singular point of the ego. Instead, we experience a “diffused” state of awareness. Empathy toward others; dream states; clairvoyance; meditation; creative imagination: all fall under the category of such “nonego” states. The thread running through all such phenomena is an in-depth, transpersonal imagination: the image-generating power of the collective uncon­scious.
In its negative function, Neptune prevents the ego from fully forming or maturing or leaves an aspect of the ego-complex permanently “out of focus.” Uncertainty of purpose (e.g., regarding career or identity) will result. While Pluto depletes the ego of its strength through a “shattering” manifestation of the Divine Will or through the revelation of a difficult-to-digest truth, in its negative form, Neptune, the god of the sea, submerges the ego: dissolving its foundation; blurring its perceptions; inhibiting its ability to discern and discriminate; and leaving it prey to the “denizens of the deep”: the destructive forces of the archetypal unconscious.
In its positive expression, the Neptunian “dissolving and diffusing” process results in extending the perimeters of soul. One of the ego’s functions is to limit the range of sense perception by narrowing the focal point of conscious­ness.1 This prevents us from being overwhelmed by what surrounds us; it allows us to focus upon one thing at a time. Through the medium of imagination, Neptune relaxes this pinpoint concentration and helps us to interact with broader aspects of the supramaterial realm.4
Neptune symbolizes a direct experience of the Sacred Absolute. Indeed, much of the language used to describe this ineffable process is borrowed from mystical liter­ature and spiritual tradition, which honors the nonrational experiences that move us and which are impossible to express in a literal, direct manner.
We should bear in mind, however, that all the planets (even Saturn!) describe aspects of the sacred. While Pluto transforms and regenerates the ego, Neptune relieves us of ego constraints in direct proportion to our capacity to grow more yielding, recep­tive, and open to things that take us “beyond ourselves” (and to miraculously return from such nonego states with our ego intact, healthy, and rebounding). Through Neptune, we realize the potential elasticity of consciousness: its ability to stretch beyond ordinary boundaries and to seemingly transcend itself. Therefore, Neptune increases the permeability of the ego-complex. If we can overcome a fear of “dissolving,” the ego is expanded beyond its everyday limits.
Empathy and compassion are typical phenomena that develop as a result of the Neptune effect. While Pluto rules “objective truth and in-depth comprehension of a Divine Self,” Neptune rules empathy with other sen­tient creatures, particularly in the spiritual context of empathizing with the world soul. Through Neptune, we feel the divine nature in ourselves or experience a sense of merging with the soul of a person, place, or thing. Neptune’s transcendence of ego-boundaries leads to ecstasy, grace, rapture, or bliss: states that are difficult to describe with words and that are transpersonal, extratemporal, or divine in nature.
Such extraordinary states of consciousness are typically expressed with symbols (much like those experienced in dreams). Traditionally, Neptune is associated with the image-generating aspect of the psyche. It also rules the constantly evolving imagery found within the universe itself (and the image-less phenomena of gravity and of interstellar space). In the phenomenal world, every object we perceive–rock, bird, plant, sky–is also an “image”: an “imagined” means of perception. Though we cannot perceive the subatomic world, we “imagine” we perceive matter in its objectively real state. Yet, such images communicate a metaphoric essence: they “imaginatively” describe the nature of the object we perceive.
As the ruler of imagination, Neptune describes how we perceive and, therefore, conceive of the immaterial world, i.e., what we imagine reality to be. (The Latin root of the word perceive means “to grasp thoroughly.”)2

Improper manifestation of the energy:

•The attempt to dissolve the focal point of consciousness in another person.
•Personal identification (or inflation) with the Neptune principle, e.g., “generating illusions” for personal gain.
•Inappropriate “blurring” of the ego-boundary and -structure (e.g., through the use of drugs or alco­hol), resulting in the destruction of consciousness rather than in its transcendence.
•A “dissipation” of soul.

Improper expressions of Neptune usually take one of two forms. In its extroverted form, when someone improperly identifies with the energy, he will exert manipulative powers of deception over others. The goal is to deceive through the image-spin­ning or illusion-generating propensity of the Neptune complex. By creating a series of images that are perceived as “glamorous,” “otherworldly,” “entrancing,” or “divine,” the image is mistaken for the thing itself.
The lesson to be learned is that, certainly, not all that glitters is gold. Victims of such fantasy-rigging devices are often those who lack experi­ence with the transpersonal nature of such “outer-planet” energies (Uranus, Neptune, Pluto). This is the key to understanding victims who fall prey to the machinations of those who identify with transpersonal energies and who misuse them for personal gain.
Those who fall into an identification with a planetary principle have, in effect, fallen into the timelessness of the archetypal world itself. By identifying with and misusing a transper­sonal energy, their horrible fate is to overstep the entire personal experience of human nature. Side-stepping the personal and interpersonal dimensions of life, their peculiar role is to deliver the force of such outer-planet energies into the lives of unsuspecting mortals. The latter are often those who are overly concerned with the more personal expressions of the energies symbolized by the inner planets (Moon, Sun, Mercury, Venus, and Mars). By suppressing or fearing the Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto principles, such natives are inadvertently creating an intrapsychic vacuum that attracts outer-planet forces. Instead of encountering the energies in rela­tionships based on psychological projections (with “shady” (unconscious) Uranian, Neptunian, or Pluto­nian characters), they would be better advised to work on consciously integrating such energies in a manner that is less fearful and less projective. Invariably, the Neptune principle, which symbolizes profound receptivity and empathy toward others, is seeking a more conscious, sophisticated level of expression as an accessible energetic function, rather than being dramatized in projected, vicarious experience.
Another typically destructive encounter with Neptune assumes a more introverted expression. On the mundane level, the abuse of certain drugs (e.g., alcohol, tranquilizers, barbiturates, marijuana, hashish, opium) results in the ego’s dissolution (or its escape) into marginal, fantastic (as in “fan­tasy-based”) realms. The continued corruption or destruction of con­sciousness (or any constant “leakage” of psychic energy) describes this malefic aspect of Neptune: a cosmic vampire suck­ing away an essential life force.
Neptune’s function of consciousness expansion (achieved through the paradoxical method of momentarily dissolving conscious­ness) is safely experienced only when the physical and psychic nature is emotionally healthy, philosophically tempered, and spiritually prepared. Otherwise, the energy will be abused and the physical (body) and spiritual (soul) containers will be depleted.
When Neptune is unintegrated, the spiritual dimension of the soul will be ignored or will be conceived of in a merely conventional terms. Likewise, the relationship between the personal- and transpersonal soul will not be properly considered. This represents a basic misunderstanding of the functions of empathy, compassion, and the expression of the religious instinct.
Unintegrated planetary energies always produce an unconscious condition of yearning: a search for the qualities ruled by the planetary principle in question. In Neptune’s case, a longing for spiritual meaning will haunt the native throughout life. The need to feel “cosmically connected” will manifest in a desire to feel psychically “dissolved” in another person, place, or belief system. Empathy and compas­sion will be expressed in strangely sentimental or subjective manners, yet the posi­tive aspects of such feelings will remain unconscious, no matter the degree of one’s longing to “connect.” The image-spinning propensity of the in-depth imagination (a means of imagining other worlds and of creatively manifesting them, e.g., artistically, in the corporeal world) is at work here but only on a dimly per­ceived, unconscious, or fantasy-based level.
The imagery fabricated by Neptune is, in essence, symbolic, con­taining core emotions and insights. When Neptune is unintegrated, one will feel plagued by a host of barely understood emotions and subliminal fantasies that tran­scend one’s ordinary notion of the “real world” (and that provide a means of “letting-go” of ego constraints and of experiencing extrapersonal dimensions of being). But an inability to comprehend the Neptune principle as an alternative yet legitimate reality will result in projections or concretizations of the Neptune function. For example: by developing an obsession with narcotics or with the acting out of other ego-denying, masochistic fanta­sies (e.g., the pursuit of glamorous yet emotionally shallow experience). This occurs when the authentic spiritual experience is not consciously believed in; then it has no recourse but to break into consciousness through a host of primitive (e.g., crypto-religious) behaviors that are patterned on destructive acts or on tasteless displays that deny the sacred forms of expression that define the true Nep­tune experience.

Transcendental potential:

In its positive form, Neptune triggers a more sophisticated expression of soul. This includes an appreciation of its propensity to create images that, although dis­tinct from the objects they describe, communicate a root metaphor of a spiritual or otherworldly nature. The word epiphany describes this evocative Neptune experience. By yielding to Neptune’s propensity to spin images past the defenses of the ego, we permit it a chance to reshape our “imagined” concepts and perceptions. This includes a perception of our self-“image”: of the soul’s shape-shifting human guise.
A relocation to the Transcendental Neptune region will result in encounters with those who guide us toward a greater receptivity to creative aspects of this energy. On the mundane level, such experiences typically include employment in creative vocations; work that involves the professional expression of empathy (social work; supportive counseling); or professions involved with the creation of social fads, “crazes,” trends, and fashions (the professional “spinning” of collective fantasies in the form of international “styles” and global “images,” e.g., haute couture).
Such phenomena illus­trate how Neptune foreshadows the symbols of its neighboring planet, Pluto. Social and political mass movements (Pluto) often take root and grow as a result of such mass movements in fashion and lifestyle. An example: the counterculture movement of the 1960s was solidly rooted in fashions such as long hair for men and in specific dress codes that communicated highly charged symbols that led to “widespread social and political transforma­tion” (Pluto).
Whatever its mundane manifestation, when experienced as a Transcendental energy Neptune inspires the imagination and serves as a vehicle for communion with the world soul. Just as the “world of the sea” is scientifically recognized as the primal matrix of life, Neptune’s role as the “Lord of the Depths”3 is to facilitate a process of spiritual growth, extending the reach of the emo­tions, the creative imagination, and the empathic capacity of the transpersonal soul through its mysterious ability to emerge from the “oceanic depths” of one level of yin con­sciousness to the next.

Personalities with Primary Transcendental Neptune:

Alexander Graham Bell (whose “compassionate urge to help those in need” led to his invention of the telephone); Madame Helena Blavatsky (whose travels through Tibet in search of “occult wisdom” occurred directly under her Primary Neptune); Robert Burton (vicar, astrologer, and author of Anatomy of Melancholy, who devoted a section of his influential book to the phenomenon of “religious” melan­choly); Victor Hugo (one of the most “imaginative” writers of France, whose childhood travels to Elba and Naples occurred in the vicinity of his Primary Neptune); Iris Mur­doch (whose novels are peopled with “great mystics” and centered round “religious and mystical themes” and whose first novel, Under the Net, explored the “falsehoods and illu­sions” generated by emotional “entanglements and misunderstandings”); Alfred Lord Tennyson (most well known poet of the Victorian era, whose “highly imagina­tive” Poems expressed a yearning for a “sustaining power of belief” in an age of increas­ingly overt materialism).

* * *

Keynote phrases for Neptune:

•Wisdom gained through the surrender of consciousness to nonego or transpersonal states, often assisted by a “drift” of the imagination or a “spinning” of fantasy.
•The experience of the personal soul (Moon) merging with the transpersonal or world soul, the anima mundi.
•Profound spiritual experience, especially that of a “blissful” nature.
•The further evolution of Jupiter’s yin energy, which has now “expanded” (Jupiter) into a state of “diffuse awareness” or “dissolution of consciousness” (Neptune).
•The final form of yin consciousness in the symbolic solar system.
•Yin experienced as a “mystical union” or as a “cosmic relationship” with the transpersonal soul.

1. See Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception, pp. 22-23. In his famous personal account on the effects of mescaline, Huxley eloquently describes the ego as a function that limits and constricts the portals of consciousness:

Reflecting on my experience, I find myself agreeing with the emi­nent Cambridge philosopher, Dr. C. D. Broad, “that we should do well to consider much more seriously than we have hitherto been inclined to do the type of theory which Bergson put forward in con­nection with memory and sense perception. The suggestion is that the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be prac­tically useful.”

2. “Our idea is of esse in anima. This principle recognizes the objectivity of a world out­side ourselves, but it holds that of this world we can never perceive anything but the image that is formed in our minds. We can never see an object as such, but we see an image which we project out upon the object. We positively know that this image is only imper­fectly similar to things as they are. […] The esse in anima admits the subjective nature of our world perception, at the same time maintaining the assumption emphatically that the subjective image is the indispensable link between the individual entity, or entity of con­sciousness, and the unknown strange object. I even hold that this case of the subjective image is the very first manifestation of a sort of transcendent function that derives from the tension between the entity of consciousness and the strange object.” Carl Jung, Analyt­ical Psychology: Notes on the Seminar Given in 1925, pp. 135-135.
3. See Patricia Morimando, The Neptune Effect, p. 17.

Additional Neptune quotes:

The harmony past knowing sounds
more deeply than the known.

The sea is both pure / and tainted, healthy / and good haven to the fish, / to men impotable and deadly.

The soul is undiscovered, / though explored forever / to a depth beyond report.
(Heraclitus.)

posted December 11, 2010 05:01 AM            

Even a soul submerged in sleep
is hard at work, and helps
make something of the world.
–Heraclitus.

The ‘mild’ light of the moon ... merges things together rather than separates them. It does not show up objects in all their pitiless discreteness and separateness, like the harsh, glar­ing light of day, but blends in a deceptive shimmer the near and the far, magically trans­forming little things into big things, high into low, softening all color into a bluish haze, and blending the nocturnal landscape into an unsuspected unity.
–Carl Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis.

Core meaning:

In the Chinese Book of Changes or I Ching, yin energy is characterized as “dark, yielding, receptive,” and is expressed through the image of the earth. It is the “perfect complement of the creative–the complement, not the opposite, for the Receptive does not combat the Creative but completes it. It represents nature in contrast to spirit, earth in contrast to heaven, space as against time, the female-maternal as against the male-paternal.” Like the astrological Moon, yin symbolizes the maternal, nourishing, life-bearing qualities of nature, especially its personification as Mother Nature. In addition, “the Receptive must be activated and led by the Creative.” In creation myths, yin corresponds to the primal darkness that is “acted upon” by the yang energy and thereby fructified. (The astronomical moon shares this receptive quality in its reflective mirroring of solar light and energy.) Just as biological processes require a complementary balance between an active vitalizing force (yang) and a receptive, nourishing one (yin, which houses and feeds; contains and envelops), the Creative and Receptive find proper accord through complementary rather than antagonistic relationship.
Considered a “luminary” (along with the Sun), the silvery light of Luna also symbolizes the illumination of consciousness, yet it is a form of consciousness, yet it describes a state of affairs that is quite different from the solar consciousness of everyday life. As the illumi­nation of night, the “moonlight” triggers an awareness that is diffuse, “connecting” (in its tendency to blur distinctions), and that shines upon the nocturnal mysteries (i.e., “dimly lit” unconscious processes). The “most personal” of the inner-orbiting or “per­sonal planets,” the Moon symbolizes our most intimate emotional processes and how these are generated into feelings that direct and nourish the soul. Luna also symbolizes the often difficult-to-remember (“dimly lit”) preconscious events of early childhood. Just as the Moon reflects solar light, as children we are recep­tive to the solar directives of the adult world, which shape our psyche in ways that we can never fully recall by the time we reach adulthood.
Although our inner world of soul is imprinted and programmed by these influences, the lunar consciousness also possesses its own unique elements, and it reflects back a qual­itatively different kind of light. Through the waxing and waning of the emotional undercurrents symbolized by the Moon, the solar consciousness is altered and its harsh and unforgiving brightness is diffused and softened in tone. Such processes describe the animating of the personal identity (Sun) with soul (Moon). They describe the shifting nature of the relationship between the solar consciousness, which hyper-illumi­nates objective reality, and the lunar consciousness, which links things into a subjective whole. The soul cannot be perceived under such a bright solar light: a light that provides a mere surface discrimination and that exaggerates the separa­tion between things. Instead, it is best perceived through experiences that enhance the muted glow of Luna or that are nurtured within the sheltering “darkness”: the latter epitomized by the waning Moon or the so-called dark side of the Moon. (Astronomically speaking, this side of the Moon is not any darker than the side that faces us).
As a personal planet, the Moon serves to “step down” the energy of the outer planets. The latter represent a higher or more evolved state of energy. Because the outer-orbiting planets represent transhuman (transpersonal and archetypal) energies, they find a unique expression when brought into the personal, human dimension. For example, the impregnation of a human being by a god, and the child that results from this union, is a form of mythic expression illustrating the human incarnation of transpersonal forces. The transpersonal soul–the anima mundi or the world soul (Neptune)–is particu­larized when it assumes a human form, and this particular human expression of the soul is the basic principle represented by the Moon, i.e., the lived intimate experience of soul. In the sphere of human relationship, the lunar energy is expressed as emotionally supportive relationship with others. Through the proper expression of such feelings, we experience the “residue” (or memory residing within the collective unconscious) of a union with the transpersonal world soul (Neptune).

If one falls into an unconscious identification with the Moon principle, interpersonal relationships will become unconsciously “sanctified” or “sacralized” in an unhealthy manner. The sacred instinct for unifying the personal soul with a transpersonal or religious force in the cosmos (Neptune) is replaced by the merely “human, all too human”: symp­toms of emotional clinging, unhealthy merging, and the security-seeking and quasi-hysterical need to affirm one’s inner soul-worth through the emotional affirmation of others. This is often expressed in an extroverted manner through the tendency to overprotect, overin­dulge, pamper, coddle, and nurse to the point of psychic suffocation and -death. This is usually the result of acting out one’s own needs: of psychologically projecting an internal desire to be “suffocated with love”–and concretizing this need by imposing it upon another person. This tendency describes the yin energy when it no longer functions in a balanced and complementary relationship to the yang principle.
When properly channeled, however, the lunar energy corresponds to two important psychic functions:
The so-called bright side of the Moon describes the manner in which our emotional foundation has been toned during the intrauterine and early childhood period. Whatever the nature of this emotional toning (affected by the parental behavior and the parental soul-expression: how they express their feelings toward the child), we carry it within us throughout life. This affects the personal manner in which we shine: our “moonlight”; the outward effusion of an inner emotional state. In turn, this will serve to “draw” or “magnetize” other feeling-toned experiences (in which our inner nature will be dramatized, through psychological projection and transformation, on the human stage).
The “dark side of the Moon” represents the second psychic function symbolized by the Moon. This face of the Moon, which remains fixed in its orbit around the earth, points away, toward the outer reaches of the galaxy. This wonderful symbol for the ultimately “unknowable aspect of the soul” portrays the lunar connection with the other soul-expressing planets: Venus, Jupiter,1 and Neptune. While we are usually familiar with the “personal face” or “human expression” of the soul (experienced, for example, in emotionally supportive and emo­tionally expressive relationship), this other side of the Moon symbolizes the darker, more mysterious emotions that are more difficult to define; to explain; or to illuminate with solar understanding. Yet, it is through the orbit of the “personal­izing” Moon–our primary experience of emotional life–that these higher yin octaves are able to express themselves. The nature of our emotional toning–either discordant or har­monious and affected by childhood experiences of lunar consciousness–will determine much about the soul in its particular, personal incarnation.

Improper manifestation of the energy:

•Suffocating another person through overburdening attention.
•Maternal overprotection (expressed through either a father or a mother).
•Tendency to overmerge, resulting in a loss of emotional borders.
•Tendency to overconnect, resulting in conspiratorial fears and paranoid expressions of emotion.
•Becoming emotionally overwhelmed in personal relationships, resulting in a loss of identity.

While on the one hand the Moon symbolizes the nurturing, protecting, and life-affirming aspect of yin consciousness, on the other hand, through her alluring lunar gaze and shifting, deepening darkness, she symbolizes the dangers that threaten the nascent, bud­ding ego-consciousness (the latter represented by the “sunrise” or solar development of the mind). The lunar imagery is rife with a symbols that illustrate the swallowing of the solar principle; its psychic regression to a state of unformed primal darkness; and the reemergence of the yin principle in its dominating, destructive aspect: as the Terrible Mother.
This pattern finds a symbolic correspondence in the tendency of objects to strain and fall under the force of gravity and of the ego-structure to fall prey to the inertia of ele­mental, archetypal energies that reside within the collective unconscious. The phenome­non of lunar gravity (e.g., the pull the Moon exerts upon the tides) symbolically refers to the state of psychic inertia (i.e., “inner gravity”) that tends to lure the ego back to its origi­nal state of unconsciousness.2 (The metaphoric connection between the human body, which is composed of about 60% water, and the Moon’s effect upon fluids is symbolically rele­vant here.) In addition, the archetypal symbol of water as a form of feminine life-bearing yin energy finds its specific appearance in dream images of the lake (or the smaller body of water) as signifying the personal unconscious, while the sea or ocean is an archetypal symbol of the collective unconscious, the latter filled with the denizens of the deep (the archetypes) and representing the collective origin of all life forms.
Yin consciousness is symbolized in dualistic forms that appear in various cultures and that typically represent the “Good” and “Terrible” aspects of the Great Mother archetype. Often, this symbolism represents the union of a sin­gle individual with a mythic eternal feminine force.
In the positive symbols of the Great Mother, the lunar light signifies an energy that nourishes the soul. In a similar fashion, the Moon symbolizes the actual biological mother, who provides physical nourishment and who sustains the life of the developing child within her psychological and emotional field (experienced by the child as the mother’s caring, concern, and sheltering, maternal love).
From a transcendental perspective, the radiant maternal “moonlight” symbolizes the radi­ance of soul: its life-sustaining force and its ability to engender emotional development. This proceeds through various ontological stages, progressing from the personal soul (Moon), to the intimate soul (e.g., romantic love, ruled by Venus), to the emotional expan­sion triggered by the “cultural soul” (Jupiter), to the final merging of the personal soul with the Universal or world-soul, the anima mundi (Neptune). The last stage symbolizes the global, transgenerational, or transpersonal evolution of feminine or yin principles. In this sense, the moonlight, besides symbolizing the emotional radiance of the personal soul, symbolizes an archetypal emanation of transpersonal yin energies, which promote psychic by activating sophisticated levels of feeling-toned experience. Solar consciousness, with its tendency to emphasize individual separateness, is thereby balanced by the con­necting, embracing, unifying aspect of lunar consciousness.
Again, as emphasized in the I Ching, the complementary relationship of yin and yang is the sin qua non of health. When solar consciousness is properly developed (e.g., a healthy functioning of the ego-structure), then the lunar consciousness finds a sound and complementary balance with the yang, solar force. The danger of psychic disintegration (symbolized by the Terrible Mother) is the result of an improper functioning of the com­plementary solar ego-structure, as this leads to an imbalance of the primal energetic (yin and yang) forces. The Sun (ego) is then swallowed by an overwhelming force of yin energy. In the words of the I Ching: “in this unnatural contest both primal powers suffer injury.”3 Neither the yin nor the yang force will find its proper expression in the human being. The maternal feminine energy is now experienced as destructive, because the solar ego-structure cannot properly repel it and effect the necessary tension for maintaining a balance of opposites. The feminine is then experienced as poisonous and intoxicating instead of nourishing; clasping, ensnaring, and imprisoning instead of embracing and shel­tering; and devouring, dissolving, and annihilating instead of emotionally transformative, because this is precisely how the yin energy is experienced intrapsychically. Instead of “bearing and releasing”4 and “gently pushing” the soul toward its next phase of transformation, (i.e., Venus), the Great Mother or negative Moon principle now has no other recourse but to channel its transformative energy destructively, through “the func­tion of holding fast, fixating, and ensnaring.”5
If this developmental phase continues in its negative (i.e., unconscious) form, and if the transformative energy allocated to assist the personal soul in reaching its next stage of yin development (the interpersonal extension of the soul through soul union with another, i.e., Venus) is continually blocked and effectively retarded, then the Great Mother, in her Terri­ble aspect, effects a negative transformation. In extreme cases of yin insanity, instead of the positive growth of Venusian allure and enchantment toward another,6 the Great Mother now reverses the direction of transformational energy, with the result of provoking an infatuation with negative transformation processes, such as dissolution, decay, and death.
An experience of the “dark emotions of life” will be the immediate result,7 and these will be rendered in symbolic images of the gaping, sucking, devouring womb; of the endless pit of nothingness; of the horrifying, grue­some maw of the hungry and enveloping tomb. Naturally, the force of archetypal attraction toward the Great Mother is a profound one, symbolizing as she does the fecund original state of life and the potential for growth in her more positive form as the Good Mother. In her negative aspect as the Terri­ble Devouring Mother, she will now exert a sort of masochistic allure on the solar force of consciousness, which seemingly delights in the experience of being devoured, dismem­bered, or decapitated by the Great Mother, much as one might speak of an intoxication with death, dissolution, or decay.
In the final phase of development, the negative yin energy usurps the role of the now corrupted ego complex, as the lunar consciousness absorbs the qualities and pro­cesses that properly belong to the solar consciousness. The Great Mother is now symbolized by the negative image of the phallic mother, such as the vagina dentata (often, bearing notably phallic teeth) of certain American Indians tribes; the pointed, protruding, and phallic tongue of Kali in her annihilating, blood dripping, and skull-festooned form; the fiercely extended “erect” phallic breasts of the Bali goddess Rati; or the hostile, devouring beasts that accompany the Great Mother in a variety of mythic forms, such as the Grecian Gorgon, personified by snake-haired Artemis-Hecate; the Peruvian Chimu “crab-Gorgon”; the Hellhounds of the Scylla; the Aztec serpent-skirted Coatlicue; or the Egyptian Ta-urt, a monstrous amalgam of terror composed of hippopotamus, croco­dile, lioness, and woman.8 Here, the primal masculine and feminine forms have been improperly intermingled (rather than achieving a transcendent union). Intrapsychi­cally, such symbols warn that instead of effecting a balance, the opposites are now blurred and improperly merged. They may become concretized in some physical form (e.g., transsexualism) rather than achieving more sophisticated spiritual expression. This leads to the improper dominance of one opposite over the other, as the yin consciousness now overpowers the entire transformation process, resulting, in the words of the I Ching, in “opposition to and struggle against the Creative, which is productive of evil to both.”9
From the preceding discussion, it is obvious that the Moon, although it is not tradi­tionally conceived as such, is, in fact, a triggering or energizing power within the symbolic solar system. Yet it is one that, in her more positive manifestation, stimulates, nourishes, and actualizes the yin consciousness or feminine energy (just as much as the Sun or Mars–the traditional “energy triggers”–ignite the solar consciousness). As mentioned above, the pull of lunar gravity and the luring, illuminating gaze of the Moon symbolically correspond to emotional realities and qualities that are unique to yin consciousness.
As an energetic trigger of awareness, the Moon operates through the personal soul, the personal unconscious, and the most intimate emotional states (often subtle in nature) that seek to engender emo­tional stability and security. Ultimately, solar-based words such as emotion, union, feminine energy, Moon principle etc., never do justice to the mysterious radiance of “moonlight”: a fundamental and elusive energy that nourishes the foundations of the soul.
The energizing function of the Moon is largely ignored in astrology, probably because the Moon’s transits (the orbiting Moon’s relationship of celestial degree to our natal planets) occur so frequently in comparison to the other planets. Yet as we have seen, the Moon provides an essential emotional foundation. The cycle of the Moon symbolizes that daily cycle of emotional charge and recharge that assists us in our dealings with the rigors and stress of everyday life. Astrologically speak­ing, the rapid movement of the Moon through the horoscope “stimulates” the natal planets on a regular basis, ensuring an emotional revitalization, stabilization, and life-nourishing meaning that is so necessary for achieving a sense of well-being.
A yearning for emotional security; for a method of effectively releasing emotional blockages; and for relationships that nurture and strengthen one’s emotional well-being may haunt the native who suffers from a psychologically underdeveloped Moon. An underdeveloped Moon principle signifies a “gap in the soul experience”–an inability to experience the security (or even the reality) of the personal soul. This may manifest through an impulsive need to “cling” to others (yin and yang no longer in complementary balance) or to surround oneself with others for the purpose of absorbing their emotive res­onance. Such behavior signifies that the Moon energy is not properly related, either to oneself or to others: that the inability to feel emotional balance and security results in an inability to properly register and respond to the feelings of others. Instead, the receptive yin energy is concretized in its negative form: as absorbing the life essence of others. An emotional vampirism–sucking away at another person’s emotional vital­ity–is the result.
Therefore, in mythology the Terrible Mother is represented as a vampire; a vulture; a “flesh-eating sarcophagus voraciously licking up the blood and seed of men and beasts.”10 In unconsciously identifying with the transpersonal aspect of the Terrible Mother energy, the dysfunctional Moon native is, ironically, robbing himself of an essential human experience: of properly reflected warmth, union, and relatedness extended toward others and/or within oneself. This is why, in the myth, the vampire can­not return to the human realm: personal consciousness is overwhelmed by the alluring transpersonal energy of eternal, archetypal forces: forces that effectively obliterate the personal container of the emotions (the soul) and damage the unique expression of the solar force (the ego-complex). The inability to feel emotionally appeased or the inability to humanly feel are other common expressions of underdeveloped Moon energy. These are also symbolized by the vampire myth (which has recently reappeared with such force in our own emotionally underdeveloped culture). Other forms of improperly channeled Moon energy include primitive emotional expressions, such as hysterical fits, moodiness, or even quasi-psychotic brooding.

Transcendental potential:

In astrocartography, the Transcendental location often triggers an instinctive awareness of the planetary energy in question. This is because the immediate experience of the energy forcefully dispels any uncertainty regarding its proper functioning. Hence, the Transcendental Moon location may help us to understand that an emo­tional center that we label “soul” is based upon an energy (“emotion”) that is fundamentally autonomous and, to a large extent, self-directed: emotions possess an innate awareness of “knowing” where to flow. Blockages in the soul are effectively released by letting go of the need to direct or dominate one’s soul experience. This is achieved, in part, through an experience of the lunar energy as Transcendental: as no longer patterned solely upon earlier behavior patterns and previous personal experiences but, instead, as now “resensitizing” our ability to be psychically “imprinted” and emotionally “reprogrammed.” Under this location, we may reencounter the Moon principle as a positive and supportive aspect of daily life. This may be experienced in a direct and existential manner (instead of merely through a parental focus).
A reassessment of one’s earlier life may reveal that one’s emotional potential was not lacking so much as it was blocked due the native’s fear of embodying an aspect of the Moon symbolism. (The term emotional blockage expresses the watery nature of the Moon and of the emotions, which seek to flow along a natural level of expression.) This may be experienced as an inability to remain receptive to one’s emotions or to the emotional fields emanating from others. A miscomprehension of the Moon’s proper function (or a devaluing of its worth as an energy to be nurtured and expressed) is at work here. The inability to properly express or value emotional receptivity may be negatively enhanced due to prevailing cultural trends in society, which increasingly value solar aggression, direct action, forceful presence, dramatic verbalization, assertiveness, physical force, and every conceivable lack of subtlety, tasteful indirectness, or quiet inner strength over the more yielding and receptive lunar values.
The Transcendental Moon location presents the native with experiences that clearly illustrate the value of this archetypal energy. Encounters with those who embody positive expressions of the Moon’s energy will enhance the integration and develop­ment of such qualities within the native, as well. Realizing that the emotional realm is a source of meaning, power, and creative fecundity–rather than merely a realm of unfulfilled yearnings that are better left repressed, undervalued, blocked, stifled, or expressed only through shifting dark moods or through a paranoid conspiratorial sensibility–has the effect of complementing the solar ego-drive, which can now assert itself in a more emotionally empowered and balanced fashion. Actions that were previously pursued with a sense of emotional meaninglessness will now be reexamined so that the “purpose” of emotive res­onance, receptivity, and growth “fuels” the solar-directed action (i.e., provides it with purpose and meaning). In addition, instead of relying on others to affirm one’s emotional reality and worth, one will learn to view one’s internal experience as authentic. Under this location, the native’s ability to arrive at his own terms of inner worth will provide the necessary clarity with which to pursue relationships that promote emo­tional receptivity and respect.
In keeping with the Moon’s yielding and receptive symbolism, the Transcendental Moon line will highlight locations that promote sensitivity to one’s surroundings. An example of this is found in the biography of Helen Keller; working under her Tran­scendental Moon line, she developed an extraordinary receptivity to sensory impressions, resulting in her reeducation and reconditioning (for example, by learning Braille and other techniques, all of which allowed her to escape the isolation of her silent and imageless world and that allowed her to “unite” with others. The psychic sensitivity of the Transcendental Moon is exemplified in the biography of the mystic poet William Blake, whose birth under a Transcendental Moon line resulted in an uncanny impressionability and an enduring receptivity to childlike emotions and sensibilities, which he portrayed in works of poetry such as Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience.

Personalities with Primary Transcendental Moon:

William Blake (whose “uncanny impressionability and emotional sensitivity” combined with his Secondary Mercury to produce some of the most memorable poems, prose, and allegories of the proto-Romantic era); Queen Elizabeth I (born in the vicinity of her Pri­mary Moon, in England; her decision to “nurture and protect the still fledgling and vulner­able” nation by refusing to engage England in war led to increased “domestic prosperity” and wealth); Helen Keller (renowned for her “remarkable ability to reprogram early child­hood patterning by developing an extraordinary sensitivity to external stimuli”); Sissy Spacek (actress whose “stirring” portrayals of adolescent “emotions” occurred directly under her Transcendental Moon line in Hollywood, California).

* * *

Keynote phrases for the Moon:

•The personal soul.
•The mother archetype; the ability to nurture oneself and to nurture others.
•Receptivity to one’s “soul needs” and to the “soul needs” of others.
•Indicates areas in the natal chart where one goes to seek shelter, comfort, and psychic sus­tenance. On the mundane level, the home as the physical embodiment of these same prin­ciples.
•The ability to relate emotionally or to “tune-in” to the feelings or emotional needs of oth­ers. Public-“relation” ability. The experience of being stirred by or of absorbing the emo­tions of others. Having a “personal pull”; the effect of one’s emotions on others.
•The emotional tone of the personal unconscious. Preconscious imprinting that determines behavior. The emotional core of the unconscious complexes; autonomous psy­chic functions in the personal unconscious. Habitual psychological dispositions.
•The ability to communicate feelings; the extension of the soul experience to others.
•The ability to experience and to express emotional well-being.
•The planet ruling women and the matriarchal consciousness.
•A “connecting” energy that blurs the distinctions that separate sentient creatures. The energy that serves to create unions. Like Venus, a symbol of the Eros principle (but in its maternal rather than erotic or romantic form).
•The primary manifestation of yin or receptive consciousness in the symbolic solar sys­tem.
•In Indian astrology, the Moon rules tenderness and mental tranquility.11
•Yin energy expressed as personal relations and the personal soul.

1. “Together, the Moon, Venus, and Jupiter represent successive stages in the evolution of consciousness ...”; “Neptune completes the sequence of the Moon, Venus, and Jupiter ...” Marcia Moore; Mark Douglas, Astrology, The Divine Science, pp. 40-43.

2. Erich Neumann, The Great Mother, p. 26.
3. I Ching (Wilhelm / Baynes edition), “The Receptive” (“Six at the top”), p. 15.
4. Neumann, The Great Mother, p. 65.
5. Ibid.
6. In the interpersonal encounter with another soul, the personal-soul is enriched through the experience of romantic love (Venus).
7. Neumann, The Great Mother, p. 149.
8. Ibid., p. 151.
9. I Ching, “The Receptive,” p. 11.
10. Neumann, The Great Mother, p. 149.
11. Ronnie Gale Dreyer, Indian Astrology, p. 88.

Additional Moon quotes:

Well begun is half done.
(Proverb.)

If you find your childhood dreams, you become a child again.
(Joseph Roth, Report from a Parisian Paradise, trans. Michael Hofmann.)

According to the ancient view, the moon stands on the borderline between the eternal, aethereal things and the ephemeral phenomena of the earthly, sublunar realm. Macrobius says: "The realm of the perishable begins with the moon and goes downwards. Souls coming into this region begin to be subject to the numbering of days and to time.... There is no doubt that the moon is the author and contriver of mortal bodies.” […] The moon, as the star nearest to the earth, partakes of the earth and it’s sufferings…. She partakes not only of the earth’s sufferings but of its daemonic darkness as well.
(Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis.)

posted December 11, 2010 05:02 AM            

Love is a nail driven into the spirit animus (fixus animus clavo cupidinis).
–Titus Maccius Plautus (245-184 B.C.), as cited in R.B. Onians, The Origins of Euro­pean Thought.

The heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the hands & feet Proportion.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
–William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

Love and harmony combine,
And around our souls intwine.
–Blake, Poetical Sketches.

Beauty as we see it is something indescribable: What it is or what it means can never be said.
–George Santayana.

Core meaning:

In continuing the development of the receptive yin consciousness, Venus acts on the personal soul (Moon) and deepens and refines its capacity for feeling-toned experience. With Venus, we have the personification of the soul, either as the beloved who captures our heart in the outer world1 or as the internal soul-image, the anima, who serves as a guide to the collective unconscious, thereby humanizing an otherwise cold, inhuman, and even ter­rifying experience of the archetypal mystery. This maturation of the soul through its personification marks a crucial developmental stage, surpassing the merely personal soul experience (Moon) and anticipating the social-collective soul (Jupiter) and the transpersonal soul (symbolized by the ultimate yin planet, Neptune: the world soul or anima mundi).
As discussed in the essay “Transcendental Moon,” while the Moon and Venus are not traditionally thought of as energizing catalysts in astrology (as are the Sun and Mars), in fact, they do trigger various aspects of yin consciousness and energy: in particu­lar, the ability to harmonize, to balance, to value. Through her personification, Venus lures the emotions into deeper and more sophisticated levels, often by dra­matization of the soul as “lover.”
One of the primary functions of Venus is the creation of meaningful intimate relationship. While the Moon symbolizes a feeling of connectedness to the “Primal Round,” the “Great Mother,” and the soul’s “absorption” of her lunar reflection (generating feelings of security, stability, and interior depth), Venus further refines the soul through intimate interpersonal relationship. Through Venus, soul union is extended through romance or through creative exteriorizations of the soul in artistic craftsmanship and the expression of aesthetic balance, harmony, beauty etc.2
While Sun and Moon correspond respectively to the “individual spirit” and “individ­ual soul,” with Mars and Venus (the next stage of yang / yin development) we have the spirit forcefully interacting with others (Mars) and the soul intimately uniting with others (Venus). (Again, intimacy has its own quality of energetic force: one often ignored in descriptions of the “passive” qualities associ­ated with Venus.) While the Moon’s energy or “moonlight” is diffuse and repre­sentative of a general emanation of emotion into the environment, with Venus we have an additional focus, as Venus challenges the soul to enact its destiny on the interpersonal stage through the vehicle of romantic love. By this we do not mean the unrealistic fantasy of projecting one’s internal qualities outwardly, onto another person, but rather the maturation of the soul through realistic expressions of union. While Mars actualizes the self by counterpointing it against the sur­rounding physical and psychological environment (in order to realize, through separation and discrimination, one’s distinctive self-borders), Venus is expressed through actions that engender interpersonal harmony.
Symbols of romance that express love, respect, and devotion are all included in the Venusian rulership. Through love, a sense of meaningless separation (produced as a result of “separating from the primal oneness” and “creating a self-identity” [Sun / Mars]) is replaced by the experience of the self as a complementary unit of balance with the “other.”
Just as Mars symbolizes an aggressive interaction with the immediate environment, with Venus, the romanticized soul will create unions of pre­viously separate elements (not only in romance but, for example, in creative or artistic expressions of harmony). Unlike Uranus, which, through invention, unites seemingly disparate ele­ments in order to achieve a new order or avant-garde dynamic, with Venus the creation of outer harmony resonates internally with core aspects of the psyche. An example: an artist who communicates his experience through harmonious arrangements of elements (soulful unions), which, in turn, evoke an inner harmony in the viewer (through the medium of color, form, and spatial and contextual harmonies).
For a variety of historical reasons, Venus has traditionally been associated with women’s psychology or manner of experience while Mars has been associated with men. But the Mars / Venus energies are consciously experienced by both sexes in varying degrees. Although the determinants of gender-based behavior probably lie some­where in between the forces of biology and culture, astrologically speaking, Mars and Venus operate in each of us.
To the extent that the Venus principle is consciously integrated in either a man or a woman (e.g., the ability to be emotionally receptive to others; to express intimacy; to express oneself creatively), there will be less of a need for Venus to find cryptic expression through psychological projection or through the (unconscious) acting out of dramatic situations. Indeed, as the “goddess of love,” Venus may appear in a variety of guises. She may be projected upon a woman to whom the native feels unaccountably drawn, par­ticularly a woman who seems to reflect soulful qualities (qualities that may or may not exist within such a “woman of mystery”). When someone embodies a characteristic that evokes such a classic Venusian trait–personifying divine beauty or the alluring and mysterious object of desire (the soul) and triggering, through her presence, inspiration (the femme inspiratrice) or feelings of romantic intimacy–then we may speak of someone who personifies the anima or soul, i.e., Venus as the so-called goddess, seemingly embodied in human, incarnate form.
Through all such projective expressions, the Venus energy is attempting to lure the soul to broader levels of receptivity and (yin) awareness. The soul is harmonized through its encounter with the “beauty of the forms”; it is sacralized through “love”; it is further refined through an expression of “artistic cre­ation”; it attains its final goal when, through the “personification and incarnation of the feminine,” it is delivered to the next level of yin development: sagacity or higher wisdom, symbolized by Jupiter.
It was in this sense that Goethe spoke of the eternal feminine leading us “forever onward, forever upward.” Venus as anima incar­nates in forms such as Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom; Shakti, the Indian goddess; the Shulamite in the Song of Solomon;3 or in a form composed of purely per­sonal symbolism (e.g., a feminine dream figure). These symbols have at their core an eternal archetype: one generating a highly refined soulful energy. Just as the persona (social mask) provides us with a means of interacting with the world-at-large, the anima as personified soul image assists the solar consciousness in navigating the inner realm (e.g., Beatrice leading Dante through the soulful depths of The Divine Comedy.)
In whatever cul­tural guise she assumes, through her intervention we emerge from the primal yin darkness, as the personified soul lures the “lover” onto the next stage of development: encountering the “collective soul wisdom of the ages” (Jupiter: the col­lectively codified body of philosophy, religious doctrine, art, ethics, myth, and culture, preserved through social and philanthropic institutions).

Improper manifestation of the energy:

The possibility of meaningful interpersonal union will be problematic in unintegrated Venus natives. Relationships may be based merely on utilitarian expressions of Venus, especially in her rather base and primitive forms (e.g., “commercial” beauty or the “beauty queen,” instead of the more individually tailored expression of the soul). In her negative manifestation, Venus will appear as threatening or monstrous, because instead of being understood (integrated) she is feared. Therefore, the essence of the soul remains incomprehensible and is “darkly” (unconsciously) imagined. For example, Venus may be personified as the séductrice or femme fatale, threatening the solar ego with tempting offers of sensuality–enticements that bear such a dark intensity that they may overwhelm and destroy the light of consciousness. Here, the native’s inability to integrate Venus will lead to fears that she will drain the solar form of consciousness (e.g., a fear of losing the energetic “edge” embodied in the Mar­tian principle of separateness; a fear of the solar ego being eclipsed because of the attention craved by the “significant other”). Or, an encounter with the beauty of Venus may prove to be too powerful an enticement to integrate safely or properly. An example of this is found in Homer’s Odyssey, when Odysseus orders his men to bind him to the mast of his ship so that he may listen to the entrancing song of the Sirens without being endangered by their overwhelming–and ultimately debilitating–beauty of form.3
Often, Venus incarnates in the form of a romantic partner who mirrors one’s own level of emotional development. Rather than learning to nurture one’s feelings and to refine one’s inadequately developed emotions, these inadequacies of soul may be per­ceived only in a projected form–as the perceived inadequacies of the romantic partner. This may lead to leveling criticism against the soul mate or to emotional or physical abuse. Instead of serving Venus by developing one’s feelings, an attempt is made to punish, discipline, imprison, or entrap the emotions: to contain the “irrational” sphere of life and, thereby, remove its “threat” (e.g., the threat of forcing a funda­mental transformation in the solar ego). Threatening to “fix” or “kill” the soul mate is simply a symbolic way of saying that one’s potential for development is destroyed. As a result, Venus remains personified only in her “darker” form: the experience of “abysmal” emotions and tragic relationships. Such phenomena are typical of the depressed anima. The suppression of the creative soul and a subsequent personal depression occur, instead of the soul elevation signified by properly expressed yin consciousness.
When one is overidentified or inflated with Venus, this results in excessive yin behavior that denies expres­sion to the other planetary forms. The personified soul (the keynote Venus equation) may take the form of a person who has a tendency to allure or magnetize others into their field and to entice them to serve and worship the so-called goddess, who is now impersonated rather than appropriately personified (e.g., an anima woman; a “female impersonator”). Here the native is possessed by the goddess image, rather than working to consciously integrate her. Such improper soul expressions may also take the form of epicurean pleasures that trigger a false sense of interpersonal intimacy and harmony. The “orgy” of physical pleasures is a classic form of such hyperidentified Venusian behavior. This foreshadows the next stage of inflated or hyperidentified yin behavior: that of the Jupiter-identified native. A personal identification with the Jupiter principle may result in the abuse of larger social roles (e.g., a judge who is identified with his role of personifying the ethical soul of a soci­ety). Such abuse usually involves issues of personal gain and egoistic gratification.

Transcendental potential:

When enhanced through relocation, Venus promotes a union between the inner and outer expressions of harmony, whether such harmonies are expressed through interactions with others or through the harmonious play of elements within the immediate environment (e.g., aesthetic interaction in the “landscape” of one’s surroundings). For example, the need to live in aesthetically pleasing surroundings is something that makes no “rational” sense, yet it is a fundamental yin reality that affects everyone in a direct, imme­diate manner. Surroundings perceived as “ugly” may provoke emotional discomfort or discord, while an aesthetically harmonious environment will enhance the expansion of soul.
For many artists, the presence of soul is indeed palpable. It may be experi­enced through an internal muse whose cooperation will either guarantee or forbid inspiration in the formal expression of artistic values. Her abiding and willful manner (a decidedly yin will, expressed through an autonomous and magnetic lure) is experienced as a relentless need to lend creative form to an invisible, intangible, nearly inexpressible dimension of soul.
The expansion of this higher yin awareness into a realm of transpersonal imagery finds its final expression in the Neptune complex, which symbolizes the union of the personal soul (anima) with the anima mundi or world soul. The lure of this final union (one often experienced by artistic personalities) spans the entire yin spectrum of symbolism, progressing from Venusian “soul harmony” through Jupiterian “soul expansion” to Neptunian “soul diffusion.”
Admittedly, such a full spectrum of yin consciousness is not available to everyone. Unless one has experienced the soul as a creative force that lures the ego to a higher expansion (Jupiter) and a final dissolution (Neptune; a dissolution of constricting socially-condoned beliefs and values (Saturn) that stress interpersonal aggression and separateness [Mars]), the anima-less or soulless universe is experienced as a terrifying, nameless (i.e., not personified) void through which no soul orientation or -perspective may be felt.5 Examples of this include Existentialism or the ultimate nihilistic condition (e.g., Sartre’s nausea.)
A positive Venus experience is crucial for those with a poorly integrated Venus, as the foundation for soul-personification and -incarnation (espe­cially concerning the exchange of intimacy) may be lacking. The inability to express one’s personal feelings (Moon) in a more intimate fashion (Venus) will lead to dangerous levels of alienation and to an inner stagnation and dissocia­tion.
Relocation to the Transcendental Venus region may enhance the keynote Venus effects, such as soulful intimacy with others; environmental harmony triggering and reflecting internal psychic har­mony; and the personified soul “leading” or “luring” the solar consciousness to deeper levels of feeling. Venus awakens the soul through encounters with those who personify her most positive aspects, especially her potential for interpersonal meaning and union. She pro­vides a means of extending the soul into the fabric of the surrounding environ­ment, ultimately blurring distinctions of inner and outer through the unifying power of love. Such things are the sin qua non of soul development; without them, the soul cannot fully incarnate or consciously realize itself. Oddly enough, even a basic belief in the reality of soul has been lost on many of those living in the modern era. Relocating to the Transcendental Venus region may help to engender such an understanding and to trigger vitalizing, soul-enriching experi­ences.

Personalities with Primary Transcendental Venus:

Joan Baez (“pacifist” and “creative” performer who worked for “world peace” and estab­lished the Institute for “Nonviolence”); Marlon Brando (talented “artist” and “charismatic” actor whose work displayed a “sophisticated level of craftsmanship” and a mastery of “feeling-toned expression”; relocated to Tahiti under his Primary Venus / Sec­ondary Mercury Transcendental Midpoint-Field); Sir Richard Burton (with John Speke, the first European to discover Lake Tanganyika, which lies directly under Burton’s Pri­mary Venus line; renowned for his attempts to introduce ancient Eastern “erotic arts” to the West, even risking arrest and imprisonment for his translation and printing of the Kama Sutra); T. S. Eliot (poet whose “artistry” was expressed through “creative” writing [with Secondary Transcendental Mercury]); Peggy Fleming ([with Mercury]; winner of an Olympic gold medal for ice figure-skating; widely acclaimed for her “skillful / grace” and “personification of beauty / in motion” [Venus / Mercury]); Ernest Hemingway (renowned for the “craftsmanship” in his “creative” writing); Robert F. Kennedy (“hand­some and charismatic” politician who used his “charm” as a political asset); Herman Melville (“creative” writer whose South Seas adventures–fictionalized in books such as Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life; Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas; and Moby Dick–occurred directly under his Primary Venus / Secondary Mercury Transcendental Midpoint-Field, in the Pacific South Seas); Michelangelo (master of the “beaux arts,” born near his Primary Venus line); Ringo Starr (musician whose “grace, charm, and diplomacy” proved an asset in his lifelong “creative” profession).

* * *

Keynote phrases for Venus:

•The “feminine” or yin energy expressed in human form, especially through intimate, interpersonal union.
•The anima, personified as soul mate, lover, inspiratrice.
•Romance and the interpersonal aspect of the Romantic Movement in art.
•The goddess as symbolizing love, art, balance, charm, charisma, proportion, perspective, and feeling-toned evaluation.
•Maintaining symmetry, balance, and grace with the intimate “other.”
•The divine as experienced through beauty. Artistic beauty: belles lettres; beaux arts etc.
•Aesthetic Epiphany.
•Sophisticated craftsmanship; knowledge of the symmetry of forms.
•Personification of the feminine principle, e.g., the goddess. Woman experienced as a divine form, in a divine light.
•The Eros principle in its refined human form.
•The further evolution of the Moon’s emotive realm. The development of sophisticated levels of feeling. The harmonious play of emotion in romantic expressions of love.
•Feeling as a mode of evaluation. Judgments arrived at through the careful weighing of feeling.
•The secondary manifestation of yin consciousness (following the Moon) in the symbolic solar system.
•In Indian astrology, Venus corresponds to “one’s capacity for giving and receiving love.”6
•Yin expressed as intimate union and the romantic soul.

1. Just as Mars propels the yang consciousness through its forceful interaction and interplay with others, the yin consciousness is enhanced by Venus through inti­mate interaction with others. But here the goal is interpersonal harmony and union, rather than an interactive Martian experience of separately focused energies working in relative isolation from each other.
2. “Venus is the daughter of the Moon and is symbolic of the many forms which issue forth from the Great Mother.” “Just as Venus ... represents the active female life, Mars, as son of the Sun, is the active male force.” Oken, As Above, So Below, p. 273.
3. Marie-Louise von Franz, “The Process of Individuation,” in Jung (ed.), Man and His Symbols, pp. 185-188.
4. The “dark” or destructive aspect of the yin energy is qualitatively different from the shattering, explosive quality of the yang force. Yet the overwhelmingly blissful allure of the eternal–the mysterium fascinans–may just as thoroughly destroy through a delightful yet dangerous sense of merging (Moon); harmonizing (Venus); expanding (Jupiter); and dissolving (Neptune) the ego-complex past the point of no return.
5. “Absence of anima opens one to the soul’s immeasurable depths ... revealing those depths as an abyss. Not only is the guide and the bridge gone, but so too is the possibility of a personal connection through personified representations ... Without her the depths become a void, as the existentialist von Gebsattel says. This happens because the anima who ‘personifies the collective unconscious’ [Jung] ... is not there to mediate the depths in personified images with personal intentions.” James Hillman, Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion, p. 109. See also my essay, “Jungian Social Neglect,” in Spring: A Journal of Archetype and Culture, 1988.
6. Dreyer, Indian Astrology, p. 93.

Additional Venus quotes:

The cosmos works
by harmony of tensions,
like the lyre and bow.
(Heraclitus.)

Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.
(Aristotle.)