true lovers are sent from hell

to tell their beloved what's burning

Pluto as the planet of erotic love begs the question, what is Venus the planet of?

Mythologically, Venus is not interested in romantic love nor commitments through time. She is magnetized toward pleasure and joy and belongs to no one but herself. In Taurus, she represents the desire to give stability and permanence to what gives her pleasure and affirms her values. Through Libra, she discovers her individual values via relating and the process of discernment. If Venus is not concerned with commitment nor transformation, it stands to reason that holding her archetypal energy responsible for an enduring long-term relationship is cause for trouble. Yet, this is the norm.

Relationship seekers often want to feel good and prioritize people who makes them forget their wounds of emptiness and alienation. When things get ‘bad,’ it’s a rinse repeat cycle with someone new until one is left to eventually wonder why their relationships lack longevity and/or a quality of depth. Or, and arguably worse, folks stay with a person without transforming and compromise authenticity (the shadow side of Libra) and the vitality that a truly erotic relationship creates.

Venus in place of Pluto can be a defensive posturing against erotic love and its tendency to highlight ugly qualities. Where Venus desires what’s most pleasurable, Pluto reflects what’s most hidden and painful—the places we’ve contracted our identity and capacity for intimacy as a result of big and small traumas. The parts of us that haven’t seen the light are ugly, messy and undignified before they are anything else. They send Venus running into her shadow or into the arms of someone who does better at hiding their unconscious material. Rinse repeat or, stay asleep together. Yikes.

In Inner Planets, Liz Greene, Jungian analyst and astrologer says of Venus, “Our ‘choices’ in love are really our unconscious statements about what we value most, which we first perceive outside us and desire accordingly.” If Venus prays, she prays to beauty. If Venus loves, it’s her reflection she is enamored with. She’s curious to find all the ways she’s reflected in others.

In The Myth of Analysis, Hillman says, “Aphrodite is manifestly against the eros-psyche union.” It’s worth quoting—“Aphrodite would keep both Psyche and Eros for herself—by keeping them from each other. She seems not to want love to find soul or soul to find eros. She not only represents the archetypally antispychic component in loving, but also, she would block the transformation of eros by preventing it from connecting with soul.” Venus is not interested in being in love with another person.

She’s interested in feeling good through resources that reflect her tastes and partners who help her see more of her brilliant Venusian qualities. She’s essential in relationships for the very reason she’s not responsible for carrying them through—she enables us to project ourselves onto another. She creates the conditions for us to meet ourselves. She adorns the hook of psychic projection with her own golden truth. Jung says, “The object of your projections must offer a little hook…a suitable hook.” Erotic love requires us to call back those projections and love the person as they are.

Libra naturally rules the 7^th house which is home to the parts of us that are easiest to access through our partners and most difficult to access alone. It’s a house ruled by Venus that promises partnership. It’s true that long-term relationships require harmony, balance, pleasure, and compromise but these are the persona of a relationship and don’t touch on its underlying intimacy.

Pluto as the planet of erotic love can be confusing. Firstly, Hades/Pluto/Eros are often likened to masculine qualities. Even Hillman decides that Eros is an outward facing male energy. He even goes so far as to say that men are more creative than women because of this which is another instance (among many) of a Jungian male analyst flying too close to the sun to the detriment of the reality of psychic consciousness. I digress.

Pluto and Eros, one and the same. And, Pluto is female.

In The Astrology of Fate, Greene says that Hades is a relatively late formulation. Centuries before the Greeks, there were the Sumerian myths. “The primordial chaos from which life emerges and to which it returns belonged in the beginning to the Great Mother, or the goddess Nyx…The earliest images of the goddess are those of a phallic Mother, a self-fertilizing deity who bears the Moirai without male seed. In the end this goddess vanished into her own depths and the phallic power is represented by a male deity: Hades. Although he is a god, he is the dark son, servant and executor of the unseen Mother…” When I first read this, I closed the book and left the house.

BECAUSE, WAIT, WHAT. AND ALSO, BECAUSE, YES.

It explains much including the feminine and masculine nature of Scorpio and the intuitive sense that the underworld/unconscious, Pluto’s domain, is decidedly feminine. A female goddess fertilizes herself with a son and vanishes into her depths as that is where she lives, in the unseen. Hades is erected in her place and truth be told, even he creates invisibility for himself when visiting the topside. His mother’s son, no doubt.

Greene continues, “…it is the great goddess Ereshkigal who rules the realm of the dead. Her name means ‘Lady of the Great Place Below’ and it is her image above all which I feel can help us to amplify the planet Pluto in order to better understand it.…in the astrological Pluto we are confronting something feminine, primordial and matriarchal.”

Eros is female.

Up until this reading, the only feminine planets, in my conscious mind, were Venus and the moon. But Pluto as holder of erotic energy so much so that the ancient goddess was able to create life from her own erotic nature as Eros herself…well, this changes everything we think we know about love and astrology. I wish this information was widespread. It’s hidden in a dense and brilliant and brutal book about fate, or, Pluto.

Back to Venus. Hillman discusses the myth of Psyche and Eros and suggests that because the love of Eros was aimed at her, it is the task of each of us to discern in our own psyches “between those movements of eros which are soul-making and another kind of feminine love which insists that all psychic events are merely servants of Aphrodite’s needs. Psyche does indeed insist that love comes first; she lays her life on the line for love-but this love is Eros and not Aphrodite.” Venus is essentially not self-sacrificial. The stereotypes around Libra’s people-pleasing, for example, are the shadow of this goddess. To be honest, we live in a world where most are led by their unconscious shadow material, a world where the soul of each archetype is so seldom seen in actual people. Liz Greene has a book called Astrology for Lovers that goes through the shadow of each of the signs. When reading it, I was overcome with the insight that the shadow descriptions speak to the norm.

Eros, on the other hand, is Scorpio. Check your natal chart for the house where Pluto sits, the house with Scorpio on the cusp and any aspects Pluto makes to your personal planets and angles (especially conjunctions and oppositions.) Deepen into your erotic memories in the areas of life represented by these houses and you will feel the visceral difference when you attempt to do the same with your Venusian houses.

Example: I have Pluto in Scorpio in the 1^st H conjunct my asc exactly and forming a wider conjunction to my sun-south node conjunction. Saturn and Juno are also in Scorpio there. Pluto rules my 1H. Venus, on the other hand, is in Libra in my 12^th H where she squares my moon.

My most erotic experiences have always been in the way my identity evolves like it doesn’t believe in time off. And, the way I meet the world every morning feeling like whoever met me yesterday no longer knows a single thing about me. In summary, erotics (transformations through love) of identity and relating to important folks and partners (1^st H-7^th H opposition) are where I experience Eros most obviously.

Venus is where I’ve made some very suspect decisions that have led me to rethink the way I go about finding pleasure in the 12^th house. These experiences haven’t been erotic for me. They’ve led me to people who have shown me my unconscious values in their shadowed form. Venus has helped locate hooks for my unconscious projections but it’s always been Pluto that ultimately starts the process of alchemical love. Venus is not one for Calcination, not even in the 12^th and surely not in Libra.

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In Through the Looking Glass, Jungian astrologer Richard Idemon says, “I associate Eros with Scorpio and Pluto, with the watery quality of love, a love which involves suffering…I believe Pluto is the fundamental planet representing Eros…Eros is telling us to honor the fact that love involves pain, that love entails letting go of the self and dying as an ‘I’ through merging one’s soul with something other than the self.” Venus wants nothing to do with any of this uncivilized and disharmonious emotional upheaval, unless she is in Scorpio, Venus’ fall.

So, if Venus is what we are attracted to and she’s in fall in the sign of erotic love, it stands to reason that astrological remediation between Venus and Pluto or Aphrodite and Hades is warranted. The reason why this feels so unnatural to do in the first place is because, as Idemon says, “Western civilization is anti-erotic…I do feel that the Taurus-Scorpio axis is probably the most psychologically potent, dangerous and usually the least integrated area of a chart…Most of us have been taught to deny, repress or reject Venus and Pluto, or to compensate for these energies in some indirect way.” My suggestion to remediate this axis in your own chart, if you desire intimate union, is to start consciously considering a potential partner’s ability to hold space for intimacy and depth and to begin to find folks unattractive when these qualities are absent.

This means doing some shadow tending to find places in you that have been shunned for desiring potent depth and organic emotional bonding. Some questions to engage shadow material consciously: Do you imagine that you have the ability to create the value of intimacy in another when it’s not there? Do you believe that enough Venusian attraction will inspire ongoing passionate emotional involvement? Do you hide your need to be erotically alive and quell your intensity in relationships hoping that they will eventually come around once they’re truly “in”? What would it look like to make conscious your truest intimate values? How would it change the way you are attracted to folks?

Owning Scorpio energy is difficult, and it’s made doubly so by a culture that is interested in the shadow side of Venus’ Libra and Taurus energies above all else. To introduce Hades and Aphrodite, first remember that Venus is in her fall in Scorpio. In order to get Venus on your side when it comes to your deeper erotic desires in relationship, you must value, truly value, intimacy. This, from a Venusian perspective, can be done in gathering pleasure-filled experiences related to emotional intimacy.

You are welcome to first do this in your own art-making, to create a Taurean manifestation of your deepest desire for true intimacy. It can be as simple as painting a canvas red. It can be as complex as mixed media or a painting. This is like sending Venus a petition that says, ‘but look, erotic love is art.’ Even Venus cannot disagree. This is what Eros and Venus have in common—they are both creative and deeply revere art making. You can also gather your discernment skills and create friendships based on truly erotic psychological bonding. Move slowly into trying to discern if a lover is a worthy vessel for eros or if they would crumble with cowardice in the face of the ultimate god of psychic reality. God, that’s boring, isn’t it, dear reader?

Hillman says, “Eros leads the soul to the gods and brings some glimmer and sublime horror of the divine into the soul-for we are at our best and worst in love.” If Venus finds her reflection attractive and enjoys experiencing her values in relating then we must pluck our value for true intimacy from the clutches of our shadow so that we may find this reflection in our beloved. We must evolve. We must transform. Venus may not enjoy such darkness but if she values emotional intimacy enough and is petitioned with its propensity for creativity, she’s less likely to send your Psyche away from its beloved Eros.

Venus in Libra shows us the ultimate skill in finding common ground with the uncommon. She yearns to dignify another and feel dignified in return. It is not impossible for your own Venus to find pleasure in dismissing emotional unavailability and its coping skills of avoidance and shallowness. After all, the Taurean side of Venus is interested in quality and reorienting yourself to imagine folks with a narrow bandwidth for emotional intimacy as poor quality emotional experiences is feasible.

This might sound objectifying but it’s quite literally what we do unconsciously. We decide whether we deem folks of value. This is a private Venusian impulse. The act of making it conscious can feel awkward because it’s new to awareness but there is nothing immoral about opting out of experiences that make you feel alone. Greene says, “[Her] unashamed solar brightness is the creative face of Aphrodite’s vanity and narcissism.” She is the basis for authenticity as she informs us of what we truly find valuable.

Being disconnected from Venus creates the feeling that there’s nothing we truly value. We’ve all been there however some folks have made a home in this place. These are ones who live copies of their friend’s and family’s values and lives. Something feels off. You can sense when you’re around them that they are entitled. After all, they’ve bartered away their identity and shouldn’t they get something in return? Unfortunately, no.

Their deep yearning is obvious though it’s covered in a vague sense that there’s nothing solid about them besides their relentless desire for something they can’t find. This is a depression that blocks connection. In so many words, Venus is essential to being a person. And being a person is essential to believing you are capable of surviving a trip to your underworld to unveil more of your personhood. Even the happiest and most optimistic of us weren’t spared imperfect childhoods. We all have places that hurt and none other than Eros/Pluto lights a candle to our most tender psychic wounds.

After introducing your deepest erotic desires to the light of day long enough to actively value them, the rest of erotic love’s journeying need not fall on Venus’ graceful shoulders. We then move into Pluto’s world and visit Venus to reinvigorate our initial attraction and refresh us anew.

Confusing Venus with Eros creates heartbreak. We do this by finding value in someone’s affection for us only when they distract us from the messiness of healing and becoming our most vital selves. Should they reroute us to our darkness, we imagine them to be the devil. And, well, it’s true. True lovers are sent from hell to tell you what’s burning. Erotic love isn’t for those with a weak stomach. I didn’t make this rule but I will point to it whenever given the opportunity.

Depending on others for an essential sense of self-worth is another Venusian shadow experience. It is a subscription to painful feedback not because one is essentially unworthy but because, in this case, the identity becomes a diffuse yearning looking for someone to not only answer their questions for them, but to ask them. It is painfully obvious to folks when someone doesn’t find themselves interesting enough to commit to their personality and values. It’s also not respected by most hence the feedback.

When we don’t know who we are and we enter relationships to be filled with someone else’s more important(!?) projections, the results are not pretty. No one’s imagination is vast enough to choreograph who you truly are. The only imagination set to be able to experience your totality is yours. If you abandon yourself to be seen in slivers by those who are not able or willing to see more of you, then when they eventually leave, you are left in a particularly bitter moment. One that you mighty quickly try to populate with another person instead of sit with. Find out who and what is in that empty space.

To embody a healthy Venus, ask and answer your own questions and find yourself to be a worthy mirror. Example questions: Who are you when you are alone? Do you enjoy being that person? What do you care about when no one is looking? Do these answers change depending on what words, behaviors and ways of being your current partner rewards you for? What values do you hold besides that of another’s love for you? Of your love for them?

Let’s not forget that we choose those who treat us as we treat ourselves. Venus, in this case, mirrors back to us, through our choices in partners, that we are not yet enjoying being ourselves enough to protect ourselves.

Another common Venusian shadow activity includes hopping from an ending with one person to a beginning with someone else. This creates dependency on a new person’s image of us at the core level of identity they’ve been invited into without even knowing the inflated importance of their presence. We are most vulnerable when we are in grief.

This is a period of deep soul searching and integrating except it’s now also hosting a brand-new stranger who perhaps helps dull the pain and reintroduces us to some measure of enjoyment. Should they sense that we are not our own person, the consequences are even more painful.

The quiet desperation this behavior emits can’t be hidden for long. Venus rules scent and we intuitively sniff out those who don’t find themselves worthwhile. We tend to trust another’s reflection of themselves and if they seem to abandon themselves (as seen by how they treat their grieving process, their family, friends, interests, habits, goals, etc.) we think, ‘If they don’t have any interest in themselves outside of me and they’ve known themselves all their lives, they are probably onto something. Ciao.” I know this sounds harsh but think about those you’ve found most fascinating. The way they treat their lives is usually fascinating and not self-sacrificial/self-abandoning. Lastly, this isn’t gendered.

Liz Greene drops an absolute gem: “Get familiar with the mysterious feeling of what makes you attractive in your own eyes.” There is much medicine in these words. She continues, “If we are not true to our values, we can never achieve a healthy self-esteem or satisfaction in our lives. We lose self-respect. To gain self-esteem, we first have to define our values and what gives us pleasure and we need to act in ways which support our beliefs and longings. Otherwise, we are not accepting who we are, we aren’t showing ourselves love.” Erotic love as one’s only value is an ineffective escape from being a person and often, ironically, it’s what ejects you from having what you most want. There is no replacement for Venusian self-value.

I also caution anyone who loves someone who doesn’t respect nor love themselves. They’ll, often unconsciously, search for those who mirror this to them. Often, not always, but often enough, if they believe they aren’t good enough, no one will ever be good enough for them. If they don’t truly respect or love themselves, it will be almost impossible for them to believe that someone else can. And, they will resent you for doing what they cannot.

If you look deeper into someone than they do, you’re on enemy territory. When someone abandons who they are and you come along to love their biggest transgression against themselves, you are not seen in love. You are cast aside for having bad taste and for daring to claim their self-hatred is unwarranted. It is very hard for people to recognize that the years they spent hating themselves were based on a lie. There seems to be, for some, a greater grief in this than in doubling down on their feelings of unlovability.

Some folks have built entire personalities on feeling unworthy. You vs their identity is a bad bet. Greene says, “Love is an energy which can act as a transforming agent for yourself and for others. The power of love is alchemical.” But as I mentioned, a person needs some grit to survive such fire. A person needs to be in touch with the confidence Venus cultivates.

Hillman says, “The awakening of the sleeping soul through love is such a recurrent theme in myth, folktales, and art forms…that we may be justified in designating it archetypal.” I am a person who has been woken by love, but it took me a long time to understand that I’m very brave, that I’m built for this. Needless to say, before I understood my natal chart, I was very confused and found people to be mostly spineless.

But, not everyone is designed to wake up through love. It’s a wild truth that some prefer a dull but controlled existence of pseudo-erotic activities. It breaks my heart to see folks try to wake up a sleeping soul who prefers to close their eyes. These are the folks with the dark man nightmares for their shadow wakes when they sleep.

If you find yourself loving those who cannot love themselves nor you, I urge you to reconnect with Venusian pleasure as you see it. Find ways to love being yourself as opposed to the more nebulous advice to ‘love yourself.’

Consistently falling in love with project-people is an avoidance of self and your own pain. If the other has it worse than we do, we don’t have to become. We can become their failed healer at best and then blame our heartbreak on their inabilities rather than on our insistence that we must earn love by proving we are lovable to people who refuse to like themselves.

Hillman says, “Eros is the very means of true cognition, conation and affectivity. It is as if love had in its nature a mission to ignite, educate and convert, spreading its mercurial fire in the soul, transferring itself from person to person.” I hope that the spirit of eros is alive and well in this essay. What I want most for you and I is to shed the veils that keep us from truly seeing our vitality and living it. What I also hold sacred is the desire to wake someone up, but I have learned to leave those alone who prefer to die before they’re dead. I hope I’ve inspired you to do the same.

In summary, Venus has been unfortunately tasked with erotic love when Pluto is the alchemical furnace in our natal charts. Giving Venus back her crown of roses and releasing her from the job she doesn’t want, and is not good at, ensures that she is free to do what she does best—help you become your own person. One that values their desire for intimacy. This is needed to move into conscious erotic love.

For a detailed natal chart reading that dives into the how of your own lush erotic life, email me and I will send you the info on Eros, Always. We will deepen into your natal Pluto by sign, house and aspect + the house(s) and placement(s) that Scorpio oversees for you. These placements hide portals to where you can find the most erotic energy for yourself, so that you can be a place Eros lives. This reading is an astrological remediation. Eros, Always includes a phone interview followed by an extensively comprehensive written PDF reading.

I’ll leave you with some words from Hillman. I hope they soothe your memories of peeling someone’s eyes open only for them to snap them shut. It is natural to try to teach our lover when they are ignorant. I have been on the receiving end of this education as a willing student. I believe it’s normal to say again and again, ‘But don’t you see we are in love and for that we are so very lucky? You are not being asked to be less than you are nor more. You are being asked to be yourself, that person you were always meant to be.” And, it is an act of loving self-preservation to leave them alone when they object and cannot tolerate the heat of becoming lest they desecrate your beautiful love that, to them, is a too-loud rebuttal to their religious self-denial.

“For Socrates, all true teaching was possible only through the daimon of eros. The daimon alone determines whether the educative associations between two people is possible or not…If true education comes through love, there is implied a reverse proposition: love proves its true nature when it educates.”

“The awakening of the psyche depends altogether upon the eros daimon.”

“The psyche is educated, led out of its chrysalis, through recollecting its preexistent wings, that is, it’s a priori relationships with the divine archetypal nature of all things.”

All quotes from Hillman are from The Myth of Analysis.

eros, always,
Nairy

p.s. If you purchase from the links in this email, I earn a small commission. Here is a list of books on Eros that I recommend—so far.