Elemental Venus
A kaleidoscopic journey through the elemental Zodiac with Venus
How does the liberatory power of Love move through you? How does Love move though time? In the admixture of Love and Strife in any given moment, how is Love showing up? Does she show up as a firebrand, kindling mischief and passion in the name of liberation? Does she pour into your heart as the pure water of forgiveness? Does she send your hands into the earth, seeking sustenance and grounding, or into the air in celebration or ecstatic release?
Let’s follow Venus as she sheds her light into the sublunary realm, descending with the elements, mirroring for us the many faces of Love. (This is a long one, so you may want to click over to the app to read. And make a cup of tea!)
The Moods of Venus
Astrology is not a personality typing system, it is not a cosmic Myers-Briggs test. Astrology describes the quality of the time we are moving through. It symbolically describes the mood, the felt sense of the moment, the events likely to emerge from that mood. So your birth chart is a portrait of a moment. You carry the imprint of that quality of time, you inhaled the mood in the air of your first breath. So when we say “Your Venus is in Aries” what we are actually saying is, at the moment you were born, Venus was in an Aries kind of mood, shedding her light in an Aries way. She1 imprinted that mood and way upon you. Now you either seek it or deny it, it forms an inner voice, aspirational or critical. There is a voice like this within you, or this is a person you are drawn to, or this articulates something subtle about how you approach love, art, and the business of making things beautiful. What mood was Venus in when you were born? What mood is she in now?
Who is Venus
The balance of life is the business of Venus. Harmony, justice, diplomacy, yes, and also homeostasis, the delicate balancing act of sustaining life. Tranquility, rest, ease, calm, and peace are the qualities Venus wants to bring to us. She is the parasympathetic nervous system, the time we spend feeling safe, enjoying and digesting our food, nourishing our fertility, reaching balance after fight or flight. In times of peace, when we are well-rested, well-fed, and well-loved, we have time and resources to make art, to socialize, to learn, to create, and to build wealth. Venus wants all of that for us. She wants us, individually and collectively, to create peaceful environments that foster relational harmony, creative output, beauty, and easeful abundance.
The mood of your Venus hints at how you can best pursue this Venusian utopia in your own life. Venus in the sky today or any day shows us how all of us are craving the Venusian in the moment.
Elemental Venus
The Presocratic philosopher Empedocles proposed the doctrine of elements, the four “roots”2 of everything in the sub-lunary realm being Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. All things under the Moon are subject to the forces of Love and Strife, continually mixing and remixing the four elements in the cosmic cycle of birth and decay, perfection and inevitable corruption. We can see Venus as the force of Love acting through the various elements, organizing them towards harmony and peace. The signs of the Zodiac give varying structures (modes) to the elemental powers, and if we follow Venus on her journey through the Zodiac, we see the force of Love moving through the sub-lunary realm in twelve distinct emanations. Like the Twenty-One Taras of Vajrayana Buddhism, the twelve faces of Venus can appear as either peaceful or wrathful, but always carry the harmonizing and liberatory power of Love.
Fire Venus
If you have a Fire Venus, you are here experience and embody love through passionate devotion to a cause, to a fight, to a guru, to a story, to a god, to an art, and to the authentic heart. Look for inspiration on days when the Moon is in a Fire sign.
Venus in Aries is a warrior in exile. Venus in Aries wears her righteous rage like a beautiful cloak. She smells of soot and leather. She is used to being misunderstood. She has been underestimated. Venus in Aries wants you to study the she-bear. She wants you to understand when it is beautiful and necessary to fight. Venus in Aries is a goldsmith, her ruby-studded medallions protect your heart. Venus in Aries is life-saving surgery, she is elegant scarification. She is your tattoo that you wear like armour. Venus in Aries is hell hath no fury. Venus in Aries is first on the scene, andwhat a scene it is. Venus in Aries wants you to burn with passion, she wants you to make the first move. She is Lysistrata, she is Lella Lombardi. Venus in Aries wants you to excel in a male-dominated profession, she wants you to paint your nails red and do that dangerous trick with the matchbook. She wants you to piss people off, write a placard with your menstrual blood, and go down fighting.
Venus in Leo is the lion-tamer and the lioness herself. Radiant in self-love, a glowing heart impossible to extinguish. Venus in Leo is the nectar-rich centre of the sun-warmed flower, flagrantly calling the bees. She is the perfect bed of coals in the firepit glowing nearly white, warmth and safety through the night. Venus in Leo is the Tarot card Strength, the maiden with her hand in the lion’s mouth. Venus in Leo is the Queen. Venus in Leo can take down a target twice her size. You can shelter in her warmth. She is the scent of warm fur and amber and caramelized red meat. Venus in Leo glows from within.
Venus in Sagittarius is a flaming arrow carrying a loveletter. She is the sacred flame in the inner sanctum, and the priestess who guards it. Venus in Sagittarius gets up at dawn to light the butter lamps. Venus in Sagittarius is a minor accident with fireworks. She’s a redhead who wears red. Venus in Sagittarius is every celebration of the lights, everywhere, throughout time. She wants you to spend a day at the races and win. She’s a lantern or hundreds, floating down-stream. She is the thrill of dropping the sparkler when it starts to burn your fingers. Venus in Sagittarius remembers the highlights of your life story, when you shone bright with devotion and when you went off on the mad adventure. Venus in Sagittarius is a whiff of sulpher in the air.
Air Venus
If you have an Air Venus, you are here experience and embody love through clear vision and expression, inspired words, brilliant mind, elegant solutions, the art of diplomacy, and collective care. Express your brilliance on days when the Moon is in an Air sign.
Venus in Libra is head of a legacy fashion house, obviously. She’s at home in the most elegant corner office in an all-woman law firm. Venus in Libra is an expensive gourmand perfume with a hint of something metallic under the vanilla. She’ll look at your outfit/painting/sauce recipe/livingroom design/screenplay and tell you exactly what’s missing “more acid. less conflict. a little more pink in this corner, lose the scarf”. Venus in Libra is perfect sugarwork and seamless teamwork. She wants you to have a life that is low drama and the height of elegance. Venus in Libra is a successful ceasefire negotiation, she is a sweet smelling salve for your burns.
Venus in Aquarius is a silvery mirage in the polar twilight. She’s a genius. She’s the exhilaration of summiting, she’s the ancient river of the jetstream3, and the pilot who rides it. She’ll look right through you. Venus in Aquarius is the mathemetician who talks about beauty and purity, she’s the witch who can call the wind. Venus in Aquarius is the technology of capturing light, she’s the earliest ghostly photograph and the latest, sharpest digital image. Venus in Aquarius is a starmap, and a beautiful sequence of code. She trails aldehyde notes, she’s a vintage Assuit gown. Venus in Aquarius spots trends and refuses grudges. Venus in Aquarius can hold space for you.
Venus in Gemini won’t shut up about it. Books totter in stacks on her tables and lie open on her unmade bed. She pushes them aside to welcome each new lover. Venus in Gemini is a double entendre, she drums her long fingers on the table and raises her eyebrow at you. Venus in Gemini contains multitudes. She is an early adopter. Venus in Gemini has heterochromia and long eyelashes. She smells like coffee and old books but in a nice way. Venus in Gemini is a double major and an advanced degree. She’s a dropout who is way smarter than you. Venus in Gemini might have gone to circus school, she can definitely juggle. She’s lost in the stacks but also the life of the party. She’s a little tornado caught on film, she’s younger or older than you think. She wants you to be witty and pretty. Venus in Gemini quotes Oscar Wilde. She’s the devil’s advocate. She rides her bike everywhere, she maybe lives in a boat on the canal.
Water Venus
If you have a Water Venus, you are here to experience and embody love through compassion and empathy, art, fertility and flow, tears and tender ministrations, sacred creativity, extreme emotional literacy and depths of understanding. Align with your flow on days when the Moon is in a Water sign.
Venus in Cancer has a vintage kimono collection, pre-war silk. Venus in Cancer saves every card you ever sent her, they are in an embroidered pouch underneath her scarves in the bureau. Venus in Cancer is an incredible cook, if she’s crying or angry you’ll taste the tears or rage. Venus in Cancer is naked sunset swims in phosphorscence, she is water from a sacred spring. She is a long scented bath. Venus in Cancer is the Queen of Cups. She’s the rosary. She’s a MILF. She’s our Lady of Lourdes. She’s the scent of vanilla and figs. Venus in Cancer is did you take your estrogen? Venus in Cancer is cherry blossoms on the brick walkway and all the softest pillows on the couch. She embarrasses you with her displays. Venus in Cancer is the endless ultimate mom bag, open for any comfort, nourishment, healing, distraction, or clean-up you may need or not.
Venus in Scorpio is a gorgeous ruined temple to a chthonic goddess. Venus in Scorpio is the peace of the house at 3am and also the frisson of fear as you walk through it. Venus in Scorpio is the mud and the lotus, that feeling when you reach below the surface of the pond to pluck the lily, then the smell of the lily. Venus in Scorpio is a dilated pupil, the vividness of memories formed in heightened states. Venus in Scorpio is a good revenge story. She’s the touch you can’t forget, and a promise kept. She wants you to take a walk in the night rain and look in through the windows, a chosen exile. She wants you to find your personal line between pleasure and pain and understand what exists there. She’s chiaroscuro. She’s obviously black leather, but surprisingly also golden silk. Venus in Scorpio is a well-stocked private room, an elegant secret code, a seance that really worked. She’s a beautiful star map, and a magic eye in the door.
Venus in Pisces is an exalted poet-mystic, known for her vintage silk gowns, her signature fragrance of water lily and ambergris. She is your strong dancer’s body that moves through the world with grace and confidence. Venus in Pisces sits in her sea green bed and reads you poems. She wants you to float in and out on the tides of your creative dreams. Venus in Pisces is a dancer with big expressive eyes. She wants you to lose yourself in love and art. She wants you to get high and sit on the floor of your painting studio, just dreaming. She wants you to keep a dream journal that’s painted and collaged. She is a seer. She wants you to swing over a chasm in the earth and spill prophecy. She wants you to weep in the rain. She wants you to take a retreat to a beautiful island, or maybe live there forever. She wants you to depend on each other, she wants your art to inspire acts of compassion.
Earth Venus
If you have an Earth Venus, you are here to experience and embody love through senses and structure, mastery of form, understanding of nature, and full emancipation of the senses. Touch and create on days when the Moon is in an Earth sign.
Venus in Capricorn is an accomplished old woman at ease in her leather club chair and vintage Hermes. Venus in Capricorn is the view after free climbing El Capitan. Venus in Capricorn is your beautiful mentor. Venus in Capricorn wants you to buy the investment piece. She wants you to wear your grandmother’s diamond, and have it reset if it’s too fussy. Venus in Capricorn is an afternoon in the museum; Greek sculpture or Rothko. Venus in Capricorn is your good taste, your elegant demeanor, your nose for quality. She sits on the sun-warmed rocks, watching the sunset over the lake. She is generational wealth and the self-made woman. She’s the four-gated city on the mesa and the prosperous renaissance hill town. She’s dry humour and healthy bones, she’s a successful retrospective. Venus in Capricorn is the wet sparkle on the walls of the ritual cave, and all the culture and history that echo through that chamber.
Venus in Taurus is the artist at home. She’s dinner al fresco in spring twilight, with comfort food and a sturdy table and an impromptu bouquet of garden roses in a jar. Her scent is sandalwood and vanilla, amber and rose. She makes her own oils and hydrosols from the flowers in her garden. She probably uses them in money spells, too. Her hug make you feel so safe. She’s hiking through rough brush in the deep forest, intent on finding the source of that beautiful stream. She’s a Pre-Raphelite painting, you know the one. Her hands are covered in earth, or flour, or paint, or clay. Venus in Taurus is hands-on. She’s the artist in residence. She’s the cash cow and the prize bull with the flower crown and she’s Hathor. She’s a real estate investment. She is a biodynamic garden. She wants you to trust your pleasure, she wants you to luxuriate. Venus in Taurus spends long afternoons in bed.
Venus in Virgo is a working girl, she’s an early riser. Venus in Virgo is the gold-dust chaff that swirls in the air of the granary and can even explode. She’s a tidy home apothecary, she’s a fallen priestess. She is up to her elbows in canning right now and can’t talk. She’s the visions of St. Catherine of Sienna. She’s the smell of sunlit linens and fresh herbs, she’s the ultimate project manager. Venus in Virgo is certified. She is licensed but not to drive. She has the multi-page itinerary printed out. She has something for you, she’ll bring it right over, it’s a fresh tincture/meal/report/cheque/handwritten thank you/recipe/ticket/bouquet/box of extra veggies/clean laundry/brief/donation/bottle of organic wine/new self-help book/deed/bit of advice/potion/remedy/kitten/drawing/concern. She’ll just leave it on the porch if you’re busy. Venus in Virgo is a wholesome kink, she’s do you want to see the garden? Venus in Virgo is a practical haircut but silk underwear. She’s serious about her pleasures.
We’ve now travelled though the four elements all the way down to Earth with beautiful Venus, through every sign of the Zodiac. There are so many ways that Love moves through this world. Of course you are curious now: what Venus were you born under? You can find Venus tables here to figure it out, but please remember, planetary transits help us measure the quality of a time, not the quality of your character. So when I say ‘Venus in Scorpio is a ruined temple’ I don’t mean you, with your Scorpio Venus, are a ruined temple. I mean something like, a story of your birth could be that you were born in the ruined temple of a chthonic goddess. That story says something about you, but not in an obvious way. It says something kind of darkly compelling and secretly glamourous, like you, Scorpio.
I hope you enjoyed this fanciful journey through the elemental Zodiac with Venus!
I have a Venus Rose Masterclass coming up on February 16th, 2025, in collaboration with my friend
. We’ll go deep with elemental Venus, and also creatively explore her beautiful unfolding eight year cycle. This Masterclass is free to all of my paid subscribers, so this is a great time to upgrade your membership and join us on Monday.Another way to connect with your birth Venus is in consultation with me. You can book a special Venus Reading this March right here.
I’ll leave you with the Orphic Hymn to Venus, a magical invocation and appreciation of the embodied power of Love in our lives:
Heavenly, smiling Aphrodite, praised in many hymns,
sea-born, revered goddess of generation, you like the nightlong revel
and you couple lovers at night, O scheming mother of Necessity.
Everything comes from you; you have yoked the world,
and you control all three realms. You give birth to all,
to everything in heaven, upon the fruitful earth
and in the depths of the sea...
Come, whether you ride your swan-drawn chariot over the sea’s billows,
joying in the creatures of the deep as they dance in circles,
or you delight in the company of the dark-faced nymphs on land,
(as, light-footed, they frisk over the sandy beaches)...
Come, O beautiful and comely goddess;
I summon you with holy words and pious soul.
-from the Orphic Hymn to Aphrodite, c 500BCE, translated by A. Athanassakis
Venus Rose Masterclass: Retrograde and Renewal in Aries
Monday Feb 17, 2025 from 11:00-12:30 PM Pacific * $35USD or FREE for paid subscribers (look for the code below the paywall)
Astrologer Bronwyn Simons, and April Miller McMurtry, creator of The Moon is My Calendar, join forces for another deep dive into astrology and creativity!
You are invited to join us to explore the rose mandala of the Venus cycle and so much more.
Interactive online workshop includes:
+ meditation to connect with the morning star and evening star through energy centers in the body
+ creative warm-up to visualize the Venus Rose
+ significance of the Aries Star Point personally and collectively
+ elemental Venus exploration through all the signs
+ the underworld journey and the role of the Retrograde in your life and chart
+ inquiries, sharing, and closing
Masterclass will be held on Feb 17th and replay and slideshow will be available if you can't make it live.
Together we will explore the archetypes of Venus in each of her signs and how they relate to the unfolding of the Venus Rose during this Aries retrograde and beyond!
Looking forward to sharing creative practices in community to feel more connected and inspired.
This is a conversation for another time, but briefly, the planetary archetypes don’t fall into gender essentialist binaries. As much as your internal pictures of the roman gods might lead you to believe that they do, they don’t. Firstly, they are archetypes of the collective, and as such they transcend gender. But in their human stories and characteristics, they fall along a spectrum, just like in real life. All that said, Venus is thoroughly, unmistakably femme.
Empedocles, On Nature, Fragment 6
Thanks to my mentor Anne Ortelee for this image of Aquarius as the jet stream.
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