posted June 30, 2005 10:17 PM            

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PLUTO AND VENUS
VENUS ITSELF
Venus means harmony. If we observe that harmony among colors, shapes, sounds, motions, we call it art. If we experience it between ourselves and someone we hold in our hearts, "love" is the word we use. In ourselves, alone and eyes closed, we call it serenity.
That order of perception, that style of intelligence, that set of human interests, motivations, and needs.….astrologers name it Venus: connection-builder, ease-bringer, heart-softener.

PLUTO-VENUS ASPECTS IN THE NATAL CHART
When the "Goddess of Love" encounters the "God of Hell," the prognosis might seem grim. A pessimist might imagine poor Venus ravaged, betrayed, and abandoned. An optimist, on the other hand, might envision Pluto transformed by love, revealing a pure, trusting heart behind the mask of sulfurous fumes and ravenous ferocity.
Both perspectives are naive for a variety of reasons, but most centrally because such an attitude assumes the necessity of confrontation between these two principles.
Pluto and Venus, in fact, are not enemies at all. They're soul mates. Pluto is always about looking into the dark. And nothing so motivates and compels us to do just that as one-to-one committed human love.
What love that lasts more than six weeks doesn't bring up "issues" for both lovers? Abandonment fears, performance anxiety, body-image concerns, control issues, pathological childhood dynamics — give love a little while, and those tricky places might as well be emblazoned as tattoos on our foreheads. If we've got them inside us, love will reveal them. Love's light is that bright. And to keep a good love in our lives, we've got to wrestle with our own monsters — and dance with the devils in our beloved.
Or the monsters and devils take the love away.
The same words and ideas apply to the best art. Not all great art must be intentionally "heavy," but art with the kind of passion, authenticity and soul that might grant it cultural longevity always invokes deeper longings in us. Who can listen to Bach without feeling, even without putting it into words, the terrible tension of daily life interspersed with ecstatic moments of visionary release? Who can read Shakespeare without grappling with the human propensity for madness, vanity, lust — and the kind of beauty that can melt a heart?

THE NATAL CONJUNCTION
When healthy, a natal Pluto-Venus conjunction indicates a person whose natural lovers, mates, and deep friends are Plutonian souls — that is, they are people who look one right in the eye and tell the truth. Typically, they have done enough deep self-scrutiny to have achieved a degree of liberty from their own wounds.....for example, they are not controlled unconsciously by parental scripts of approval and disapproval. They are willing, early in the relationship, to bring up complex, emotionally charged subjects, to "cross lines of taboo." They are not necessarily dark or psychologically heavy people, but there is a distinct sense of impatience around them regarding shallowness, denial, and compulsive triviality.
When unconscious and unevolved, a Pluto-Venus conjunction can manifest in several ways, but they all have a single fundamental dynamic in their essence: a drive to reproduce earlier wounding scenarios in one's present intimate relationships. The woman whose father left home when she was a child feels compelled to love an irresponsible, betraying man — or constantly to hurt the men in her life by betraying them herself. Someone who was chronically shamed and weakened as a child compulsively attempts intimacy with critical, insatiable power-trippers.....or appoints himself or herself tyrant.
With this Venus-Pluto alignment, the natural flow of life depends radically upon allowing goose-bump intimacy and bone-chilling honesty to work their transformative magic upon the psyche.
Aesthetically, the conjunction often suggests a taste for "Plutonian" art — a little unsettling, uncompromising, and passionate. The words, "merely pretty" become a terrible malediction.

THE NATAL HARD ASPECTS
Squares and oppositions in the birth chart between Pluto and Venus offer real rewards, but only for people who are attempting to live consciously, intentionally, and bravely. Otherwise, they are among the most painful of astrological configurations. Whether that's "bad luck" or "good luck" is a philosophical question I have no business answering for anyone else.
Sexual energy has subtle overtones, but in its essence it is hard to ignore — loud, compelling, and unavoidable. Trying to make sexual energy "go away" is not quite an impossible task, but it can only be accomplished through ascetic practices or the harshest of dark-Plutonian methods: constant shaming, sexual violations, and abuse. Otherwise, sex keeps coming back, as enthusiastic — and about as reflective — as a yearling Labrador Retriever. So: regardless of one's birth chart, the majority of us get involved in relationships. And with Pluto in square or opposition to Venus, we'll very likely trigger the replay of early wounding dramas in our sexual explorations. The only real question is: how long does it take for us to learn the pattern? We can "get it" the first time, and use the event as a springboard toward wisdom and change. Or we can go to the grave feeling like a victim of misfortune.….or more likely, go to the grave numb and hiding, imagining ourselves asexual.
If you possess such a configuration in your chart, the people with whom you get close in this life are intense teachers for you. When the energy is tuned, their lessons arrive in conscious conversation and shared growth. Untuned, the lessons are hurtful encounters with the bleak or catastrophic dimensions of our existences.....or simply with some very damaged, hard-hearted human beings.

THE NATAL SOFT ASPECTS
With a trine or a sextile aspect linking Pluto and Venus in the birth chart, people are drawn into one's life who freely offer opportunities to delve deeply into mysterious or psychologically charged areas of life. Here we find the early encounter with the "good witch." Or we make contact with the minister, priest, or rabbi who possesses more than a mere divinity degree. Or the profoundly reflective friend who was maybe Lao-Tsu or Carl Jung in another life.
As always, with these soft aspects, the challenge lies in waking up to the full potential of the opportunity and seizing it. Otherwise, the chance can be wasted, or frittered away. In a nutshell, the invitation here is to recognize those people who offer to help trigger real inner experience. That's half the work. The rest lies in seizing the brief moments in which such contacts are available.
Briefly, one darker dimension of these "easy" Pluto-Venus contacts exists: seduction. One might be "led down the garden path" by someone who embodies the fascination of the dark for us. Here lies the risk of being drawn by "love" into addiction, bad habits, boorish crowds, and self-destruction. What gets us into such a mess? Ignorance of our own shadow. And how did we wind up with such a critical mass of ignorance? By missing, through sheer laziness, the healing, consciousness-raising possibilities built into the healthier interactions we described in the early paragraphs of this section. As always, the pits are optional.

PLUTO-VENUS EVENTS
When Venus and Pluto interact through a transit or a progression, it is truth-time. What is real must be honored, sometimes at the expense of peace, kindness, or stability.
Two lovers gaze fixedly into each other's eyes. Something in them melts; they hug. It's eternal — and glorious. But look carefully: why do they hug? The simple answer — they love each other — is only part of the truth. Another part isn't usually discussed: long exposure to that kind of total psychic nakedness is extremely uncomfortable. We enjoy a taste, then we ground it out in the primeval, physical comfort of touch.
The dance of love always involves that kind of ambivalence: closeness — and walls against the closeness. We may love each other. But we hurt each other too, and frustrate each other, and annoy each other. The whole stew of forces makes itself felt in the alternating flow of closeness and space that exists even in the healthiest and most satisfying of bonds.
Even in the most benign of circumstances, when Venus and Pluto interact, it is a sign that those distancing devices have grown stale. Deeper layers of one's humanness must be revealed, however traumatic that process may be. Needs must expressed, anxieties and fears explored. And passion regained.
Under such moving aspects we must also be alert to the basic Plutonian paradigm: it may now be time to look at a wounded place connected with one's capacity to love, to trust, or fully to inhabit one's natural sexual vitality. In the most mentally inert version of the tale, we simply reproduce old wounding patterns of childhood or karma. In more conscious versions, we are presented with someone who tempts us with the triggering of the old program — but we see through the illusion and break the chain.
The relatively fleeting transits of Venus through aspects to the natal Pluto carry the significance we've just explored, but in a milder fashion. They are too brief to develop much meaning unless there are other, slower Venus-Pluto developments occurring simultaneously. What mainly deserves our attention here are the transits or solar arcs of Pluto itself through aspects to the natal Venus, or progressions of Venus to aspects of the natal Pluto.
One more image: in Celtic mythology, the doors that offered access to the world of Faerie opened only on certain nights of the year. It's that way in human love, too. There are moments that must be recognized and claimed, or they pass. Some of these special "nights of the year" are signaled by soft contacts of Venus and Pluto. In the case of the brief passages of transiting Venus through an aspect to Pluto, the "night" may be literally that — one night. In the slower, more important moving events, the "special night" might last a couple of years. Still, particular moments of magical intensity during those long cycles can often be recognized through "minor" events such as Venus transiting through a trine to natal Pluto.
THE MOVING PLUTO-VENUS CONJUNCTION
The ideas expressed in the previous few paragraphs apply in an unaltered way in this situation. Truth is revealed, either consciously or indirectly through intimate biographical developments. If anything rings false in one's circle of human connections, it must be restructured and aligned with actual psychospiritual realities. Courage is essential here. Everything must be open to question and investigation, even the future of a long relationship. The inquiries are fierce and frightening: do we still love each other? What secrets did we need when we were younger that we need no longer? Who are you really?
Not everyone is in a committed sexual relationship, but most of us have significant intimacies in our lives — deep blood connections, profound friendships. All these kinds of human linkings are Venusian — and all are subject to Plutonian scrutiny during these transits and progressions.

THE MOVING HARD ASPECTS
When squares or oppositions form between Venus and Pluto, intimate confrontations tend to occur. What drives them can take a variety of forms. It may be our partners who confront us — and that confrontation may be direct and well-intended, or it may take the form of the partner's Shadow-dynamics manifesting in a "colorful" way.
We may, on the other hand, confront our partners in those same ways: consciously and constructively, or through some "acting out" on our own part.
These transiting or progressing aspects are particularly hard on people who have striven to be "good" all their lives. "Goodness" in this context implies not so much true warmhearted compassion as formality, rigid "normalcy," and that common phenomenon, "good child" approval-seeking. Such individuals are often shocked at the intensity of the "taboo" needs and desires that arise under passing Venus-Pluto configurations, and they may break down under the pressure. The behaviors which then arise have little to do with individuality, reflecting more familiar, more tawdry archetypes: the straying mate, the minister caught with the prostitute, the psychologist having sexual contact with his or her client.
The point is that squares and oppositions are compelling. One must respond to them. Something in one's sexual or intimate life has reached a point of criticality. It can no longer be denied. Identifying it consciously takes courage and openness. Integrating it, accommodating it into one's life, is no simple matter. The costs may be great. But the result is worth the price: sanity, integrity, and authenticity in one's life.

THE MOVING SOFT ASPECTS
Maybe you are currently experiencing a sextile or a trine linking Pluto and Venus temporarily in your chart. Maybe you've come straight to this section without reading the previous material. Well, God loves you anyway, but in this case please glance at the three previous paragraphs under the "moving hard aspects" heading.
Spooky, huh? Even at their best and most constructive, those harder Venus-Pluto times are not for people with weak hearts. What you have now, with a passing trine or sextile between Venus and Pluto, is a lot milder. Most of the issues are exactly the same, with one big difference: they are not so compelling. If you want to, you can probably get away with sweeping them under the carpet. In common with trines and sextiles in general, it's not hard to turn them into nonevents. If you go down that road, all that will happen is that you'll meet some interesting, if rather intense, people. They'll turn you on to something a little dark and mysterious, but harmless: Tarot cards, a new murder mystery writer, a night club on the edge of town.….
But you'll also set yourself up for a hellish experience later in life when Pluto and Venus come into a square or opposition. The point is that now is a great time to talk! So simple to say, so hard to do sometimes. You are ready to make a leap into far more honesty and self-awareness regarding your sexuality and intimate style. If you're in a committed relationship, the pattern of intimacy there is set to grow in harmony with those deeper changes in yourself. The opportunity exists. Your partner is as ready and receptive as he or she is ever going to be. Help is available, if you'd like to take advantage of it. Everything is in place, awaiting the trigger. And the trigger is that you must choose to seize the moment.

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posted July 01, 2005 02:24 AM              

You seem to be hitting all the aspects I'm looking for....I have Pluto transitting my Venus now.

How many astrology books do you own? I need a list of them...please

posted July 02, 2005 04:59 AM              

thank you oh so very much!

The Venus - Pluto hard aspects are actually difficult to deal with, there is a fascination with sex but also a deep deep deep understanding and yearning of achieving the perfect ideal of love, in the end the Sun seems to beat on both of these fascinations because they seem either immoral or impractical

But Im glad to know there can be an upside to it! Yes Ive been in some sorry relationships, but some have been beautiful, so memorable that I could live my entire life smiling just remembering them,

before this I had only read interpretations like, "Blatant power struggles in relationships, etc." which is not at all true. I dont have power struggles. I have a tendency to become too submissive and compromising (Libra rising ? Venus in seventh?) and when it goes too far I can get resentful, rude, or angry, but not normally at all, in fact its quite rare and abnormal for that to happen

This makes much more sense, and offers some ray of light. I feel like Im understanding the negative manifestations, and glad to know theres some positive ones too, that could be worked on!

Btw I saw your post in our thread! Will get to it in the morning, im just dead tired

Love
SG