Queen of Hearts

This is the fifth part of my essay series “Inner Work with the Planets”. If you haven’t read the earlier parts yet, I suggest you start with part 1 to get the most out of this essay.

We’ve spent the past two week’s in Mercury’s sphere, and boy, what a dizzying ride it was!

Everything flew by in Mercurial speed, and there was a constant bombardment of words, of new ideas, of new perspectives. And while navigating Mercury’s sphere is an interesting and stimulating experience, it can also be pretty exhausting, can’t it?

To be honest, much as I love Mercury, his quick wit and sharp tongue, his ideas and his flexibility, he can also be a bit intense sometimes.

Of course, this isn’t a big surprise after what we covered last time. Mercury really seems to have made it his goal to teach us about the two sides of each planetary coin, and how they can’t be separated.

(As an aside, I hope you had the time to ponder this concept a bit, and also to apply it to your everyday life as often as possible. If you shouldn’t have done so, it really is worth doing – things can look very different from this outlook!)

Anyway, a break would be welcome right now, wouldn’t it? Just some relaxed time, to take a deep breath or two, and simply enjoy life for a short while.

It turns out we’re in luck, then. ‘Cause now, as we enter the sphere of Venus… now the scenery changes completely.

Suddenly, things are relaxed. Beautiful. Life is there to be enjoyed.

Where Mercury spent an evening with you quick-wittedly discussing this, that and every other topic on earth, from different angles, Venus just smiles and asks you over for a laid-back dinner with some friends.

Harmonious music is playing softly in the background. The table is beautifully arranged and covered in rose petals. Glasses are clinking, people are laughing and sharing enjoyable stories. The feast is delicious and plentiful.

The atmosphere at this Venusian banquet is so different from what you experienced in Mercury’s sphere that the change almost gives you whiplash. But not quite, though – whiplash and sudden changes are such a Mercurial thing, and of course you’re no longer in his sphere.

Instead, you smile inwardly at the joke – and then put any thought of rapid change or of challenges firmly aside, raise your glass, and turn towards the attractive person next to you…

At the beginning, it’s hard to imagine how anything coming from Venus could be a vice.

She’s all beauty and joy, abundance and love, all harmony. How could anything so harmonious have a negative side?

But as the days progress, you begin to understand…

Day after day, there are banquets. Music and art to be admired, or to be created. Feasts, and abundance in all other ways. There are no disputes, no quarrels and no brawling (oh the horror!). Instead, life flows easily and pleasantly, in a laid-back way.

All is wonderful – until, after a few months, you realize with a start that you are well and thoroughly sick of all the harmony, the beauty, the affluence, exuberance and abundance.

You long for something imperfect. For a struggle or challenge. And (it almost pains you to think it to yourself!) you also long for at least a serious dispute and clash of opinions, if not for an outright quarrel.

And as some more months go by, slowly but surely, you find yourself itching to just hit something – or somebody. A good, old-fashioned physical brawl would be great. Or riding out into the sunset, on a dangerous quest for adventure. Heck, you’d even make do with a heated philosophical debate – or with a proper hangover! But instead, you have to spend your time eating, creating art and making love. Over and over again…

Venus reeled you in at first, didn’t she? 😉

I mean, the Venusian traits and virtues are very pleasant, there’s no doubt about that!

It’s just that they aren’t all there is to be. And while the downsides of Venus might be harder to spot than those of, say, Mars, they are just as real, and can be just as much of a burden. The Venusian vices, while much better hidden than some others, are vices nonetheless.

Of course, a quick glance at the sky could have clued you in to that even before you entered her sphere… 😉

Up there, Venus is the shining star. If people can identify only one object in the sky (besides the Sun and Moon, of course), it’s usually Venus.

(Although sometimes poor Jupiter is mislabelled as Venus, but that’s a story for another day.)

With her beautiful, bright shine, she stands out against everything else on the night sky. And while Venus is still fairly close to the Sun, and thus not visible in the middle of the night, her position is a lot less limited than Mercury’s – Venus can be seen for much longer, and far higher up.

She’s also much brighter than Mercury. Or rather, much brighter than all the other planets, with the exception of Jupiter who can sometimes surpass her. Thus Venus is the first to appear, with the early inklings of twilight in the evening, and the last to disappear when the new day gets brighter and brighter.

In short: Venus is not just a star, she is the star!

Or rather, she is two stars at once: the Morning Star and the Evening Star.

In fact, for kids (and I’d wager for some adults, too) it can be hard to accept that the Morning Star and the Evening Star are actually the same – that both are Venus, donning a different robe.

(If you make it a habit of looking up at Venus every now and then, and just letting her energies soak into you for a bit, you might even notice how she feels just a tad different as Morning Star and as Evening Star. Not much, it’s subtle, but…)

And there, right there, would have been our clue on entering the sphere of Venus.

After all, a planet which shows us so blatantly that she has two very different natures… In her very laid-back, beautiful and harmonious way, Venus rubs our noses into the fact that she, too, has two sides to her!

(Well, to be honest, it’s not really Venus’ style to rub your nose into anything. She’s more the type to smile very graciously, and then continue to repeat the lesson you refuse to learn, with much affection, until it finally sinks in.

That’s not to say Venus won’t or can’t kick your behind if you refuse to learn her lessons, though, quite the contrary: She can, and she will. Abundance extends to everything, and this includes an abundance of learning experiences if we need them. 😉 )

Thus, of course, we could have been warned about the dual nature of Venus, about her coins having two sides, too. But being only human, the temptation of an easy and enjoyable life without hardships was too much for us at first.

It’s only when we dwell in Venus’ sphere for a bit longer, when we turn a very sharp eye towards the coins she so lavishly showers us with, that we start to notice they, too, have a backside.

Venus’ dual nature hints at even more, though, and we’ll get to some of what she tries to tell us a bit further down. But first, let’s take a more systematic look at her vices and her virtues, some of which you already met a bit further up:

For example, Venus is the planet of creation, of creative power. While this is a very important trait for humans, it does have its pitfalls, too. I’m sure most of you know a person who is great at creating. In fact, they’re so great at it, they do nothing else.

Whether that’s the artist who never gets around to selling their work because this would take initiative, drive and courage, or the would-be-entrepreneur who keeps coming up with new business ideas, but never implements any of them. They have both fallen for what Venus has to offer, without considering the flip side of her coin.

Her relaxed and laid-back nature is also a very valuable virtue, though. Seriously, it is!

We can’t always be high-strung. Constantly freaking out, worrying, or getting angry about everything and everyone would very quickly drain us completely. Instead, kicking back, leaving others be, letting things slide, just relaxing and ignoring the pressures, this is just what we need sometimes to stay balanced and healthy.

But the other side of the coin is all too obvious: Continue to kick back for the rest of your life, and you won’t get out of your armchair ever again.

And Venus makes this all the more tempting, as she is also a planet of abundance and riches. Both are nice, of course.

We all wish we had abundance and riches all the time, don’t we?

But just between you and me, if we’re brutally honest with each other… I’m sure there are things you know you should change in your life and in yourself, aren’t there?

Well, would you ever get around to changing them if all your material needs were met, in abundance, and forever? Or would you get stuck in enjoying the party, and never change for the better?

And if you never had to fight for anything, never had to exert any effort – would you really be able to enjoy what you have if it’s no achievement at all?

The same is true for joy and happiness, two very Venusian coins. Without them, we’d have a very miserable life (and probably not a very long one). But if there’d only ever be joy and happiness… would we even still feel them at all? And what, if anything, would be our incentive to grow and to change?

(Btw, given this tempting list of her “virtues”, it will probably not surprise you to learn that in classic astrology, Venus is considered to be a benefic planet. Or, more specifically, the “Lesser Benefic”.

And if you should now be wondering who, then, is taken to be the “Greater Benefic”, well, we’ll cover him in due time… 😉 )

By now, you might have noticed an overarching theme in these virtues of Venues: In various different ways, she represents creation and fertility.

Not surprisingly then, as counterpart of Mars, Venus also embodies a form of the prototypical female principle: receptive, passive, and whatnot else.

(You can list the clichés as well as I could, but remember they aren’t only gender clichés! These are archetypal principles which play an important role in every human’s life – just as the male archetypical principles do.

It should also be noted that Venus isn’t the only planet to represent aspects of the prototypical female principle. You might want to leaf back a bit to the essay about the Moon, and consider some of her traits from this angle. Bonus points if you also contemplate the differences between the Moon and Venus!)

Anyway, back to the topic at hand! 🙂 We’ve already covered some of the traits of Venus which are related to her female nature, and this is running rather long as it is, so let’s just dive right into the core of the matter:

For the archetypal female principle, the flip side of the coin is not the archetypal male principle (that would be Mars, and we’ll get to him in a later essay). The flip side is not enough of the female principle.

Think about it: If you want to create new life, but don’t have a female (receptive) facility, it doesn’t matter how many male (impregnating) facilities you bring to the game, does it?

And if you want to create anything else in life, whether this be art, a business, a house, a group of people, or anything else, you will not get there without the necessary receptive facilities either.

Thus the flipside of this coin is to neglect the archetypal female side of yourself. Or, of course, to get so caught up in Venus’ other coins that you never get around to creating, because you’re so busy enjoying life… 😉

Since fertility is an aspect of Venus, it won’t surprise you much that relationships are also under her patronage. Intimate relationships in particular, of course, but also friendships, and genial company in general. And while we all need relationships, as without meaningful relationships we’d wither and die, they, too, are a vice as well as a virtue.

And nope, I’m not just talking about the obvious “too much of something good”, about being forced to socialize even when you’d rather be alone tonight! This can certainly be a burden, at least for the folks among us who are on the more introverted end of this spectrum. 😉

But the corresponding vice is a bit less obvoius. You see, relationships are one more of the treacherous shiny objects which Venus dangles so tantalizingly before us.

Because for all the value and importance of relationships, it can be way too easy to lose ourselves in them. To give up our own personality or preferences just to be together with the partner of our dreams. To stick with toxic friends just for fear of being alone.

Or, and this is the easiest to miss, to drown ourselves in relationships to other people just to avoid the quiet – a quiet which would ultimately teach us who we really are.

Finally, Venus’ penchant for love, beauty, and harmony are three more of her vices-virtues. Although with all the strife and disagreement around us (not to mention the amount of incredibly bad music and tasteless art), love, beauty, and harmony may sound like a dream come true!

(Btw, I have the nagging suspicion that the guys who wrote the lyrics to a certain famous song somehow got their stars mixed up and located Venus in Aquarius… 😉 )

But temping as they are, life (at least life in material incarnation) isn’t all sunshine and roses. There is death, for one thing, and things like illnesses and aging which lead towards it.

As unpleasant as these things are, they give our life perspective and reason. Without an end to life, and without the possibility of suffering, whatever we do would be meaningless, and so would be our choices – if we had all eternity, we could simply decide anew later, do things differently later.

Thus, while a life full of love, beauty, and harmony sounds great in our dreams, it’s another one of these Venusian carrots, dangled right in front of our noses, tempting us to just kick back and enjoy things are they are – or, even worse, to pursue them on the surface, and in doing so lose sight of the real stuff.

Maybe you’ve encountered people who are driven by their desire or lust. Or rather, who let their desire and lust drive them. Desire doesn’t necessarily have to manifest as sexual desire, btw. It can take on many forms: cravings, lust, longings… for chocolate, food, sex, drugs, the partner of your romantic dreams, for the easy way out.

What all of them have in common is that the temptation of love, beauty and harmony, the temptation of the easy and pleasurable life, is too great, that we fall for the allure of Venus and forget about the darker side of her coins.

So… we’ve talked a lot about the negative sides of Venus’ various coins, about her vices. So much so that by now, you might be convinced Venus is one of the more malicious of the planets – which of course she isn’t. Remember that Venus is traditionally called the “Lesser Benefic” because she brings so many good, desirable things into our lives!

It simply bears keeping in mind that these beneficient things, too, are coins with two sides. And since some of what Venus offers is especially tempting to us in our human lives, I’ve deliberately stressed the other side a bit more, to keep things balanced… 😉

(There are other planets like, say, Mars, where we’ll have to do it the other way round to do them justice!)

At this point, we’re almost done for today (phew! 😉 ), with just one more thing to cover:

Some of you might have winced a bit at the thought that “love”, “harmony” or “beauty” could be negative in any sense. And in some way, you’re right, of course.

In Hermeticism, as in certain other philosophical and religious traditions, Love, Beauty and Harmony are aspects of the Divine. Of course, we’re talking about absolute Beauty, absolute Harmony, and absolute Love here, i.e. about something which is way beyond our grasp.

But the beauty, harmony and love we experience here on earth are the reflections of these absolute principles in Creation, and are as such reflections of the Divine.

Thus we as humans with a half-divine nature are attuned to them in a way we can’t even put into words. We know what love is. We know whether something is beautiful. We know whether a piece of music or a building is harmonious.

And this is exactly what the dual nature of Venus is trying to tell us. By showing us her own dual nature, she reminds us of ours – of the fact that as humans, we’re both part of the Creation and of the Divine.

You might remember that we quickly touched on this point at the end of the last essay. But while Mercury dumps on us in passing the realization that we do have two natures in the first place, Venus, as is her nature, is more subtle and more gentle:

By her own dual nature she encourages us to take a closer look at her vices and virtues. In doing so, we discover, much to our surprise, that some of them are very much a reflection of the Divine and its perfect aspects.

But at the same time, they are equally so a reflection of material life in incarnation, of Creation in all her (imperfect) glory.

In Hermetic thought, the same is true for us humans. Through our ascend from the Divine into Creation, we have taken on a dual form. We’re both divine and material at the same time.

Yes, this is a weakness of sorts: It weakens our divine side as we descend through the planetary spheres and become subject to the rulership of the planets, and to fate and karma.

(If you should be wondering what fate and karma have to do with all this, don’t worry, we’ll get into these topics in detail in later essays!)

Our dual nature is also a strength, though. It allows us to experience Creation in all her glory and in all her imperfection – and it allows us to change and to grow.

The Divine, in itself, just is. It is all things (or rather: the creative potential for all things) at all time, and all at the same time.

(Don’t worry if this is twisting your brain into a knot. This stuff is way beyond whatever we can grasp with our human brains – and way beyond what we can express in our human words and thoughts.

Which, ironically, shows us exactly the same principle again: The absolute Divine can only be reflected by imperfect means down here on earth… 🙂 )

By descending into matter, we weaken this divine aspect of ourselves, and suddenly change and development are not only possible – they are necessary for us to make the ascend back to the Divine again.

Venus hints at this, teasingly and playfully as is her nature, by showing us the good and the bad side of beauty, harmony and love – the divine side and the material side.

The divine human in us recognizes them in their perfect form, longs for them, and knows them instinctively. And the material human in us knows that here in material incarnation, we can only see a dim reflection of their absolute, true nature.

And this reflection, as everything in Creation, as we ourselves are, is some steps removed from The Source, and has thus been tainted and diluted – but because of this, it offers us the unique chance to change and grow on our way back to the Divine.

Thus our being on earth as dual-natured humans, much as it might be difficult sometimes, is a very special opportunity which we would not have if we had safely stuck “up there”, in our divine nature.

Of course, this raises the question what the Hermetica have to say about the sometimes brutal difficulties of human life on earth…

Well, we’ll get to this in the next essay – while also moving one sphere further up to reach the Sun.

Until then, I’d encourage you to not just ponder and contemplate these ideas and concepts, but to find ways to incorporate them into your daily life. And, as usual, I’m looking forward to your comments.

See you in two weeks! 🙂

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Image: Alexander Grey on Unsplash