“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” -Howard Zinn
” To the Queen of Heaven, the Goddess of the Universe, The One who walked in terrible Chaos and brought life by the Law of Love; And out of Chaos brought us harmony, and from Chaos Thou has led us by the hand. “– Babylon, Eighteenth to Seventh Century BCE
When the ancients looked to the heavens to see how things down here on earth would go, they paid attention to the ways in which the wandering lights appeared. Sometimes a morning star sometimes an evening star, the planet we now call Venus, told our ancestors if we were in for times of war or times of orgies in the fields.
Seriously.
In modern astrology, Venus is seen as the Goddess of Love. She speaks of beauty, connection, relationship, attraction, graciousness, envy, lust and erotic power. To the ancients the world over the planet had different embodiments. As a morning star this heavenly body represented times of pestilence and blood-shed. As an evening star it was seen as symbolizing a time of fertility, a time when folks would gather where the grain grew and get groovy in their birthday suits. Deities such as Aphrodite, Ishtar, Inanna, Lucifer (the name actually means morning star) and the feathered serpent godQuetzalcoatl are just some of the mythical embodiments associated with this wandering light in its different incarnations.
The planet was thought by many cultures to descend into the underworld when it lost its visibility. Venus does this when it conjoins the sun and is hidden from view during what is known as the inferior conjunction. Right now Venus is still a morning star (to descend into the underworld at the end of the month) and this Friday, the day that Venus rules, it is moving into Virgo until September 29.
In a world filled with distorted images of sex, sexuality, gender, pleasure, promiscuity and divinity, it gets challenging to sort the fruitful seed from the GMOs. In a world that uses rape as warfare, it gets difficult to distinguish between the two faces of Her.
If we take the planet Venus as an embodiment of Goddess, in the ancient sense of the term (meaning pre-patriarchy, aka when sexuality was seen as a vehicle for enlightenment), then we know a couple of things: sex is sacred (Ishtar was the protectress of sex-workers) , beauty is never far from the power to devour and there is no such thing as a “nice girl”. Every Goddess is as terrifying as she is mesmerizing and you want to make damn sure that you keep both aspects of Her in mind when working together.
Nothing is for free. Beauty comes with a cost. Envy is just one of them. Unwanted advances is another. In Virgo, Venus is seen as being in its fall or in a depression. There’s good reason for this. As Venus is responsible for relating and love-making, the sign of Virgo would rather make sure that it gets all the work done than all the plays played. Virgo can be too discerning for love, often stripping away the glorious with the grotesque as a sort of self-defense strategy. Virgo’s energy is pulled in, but Venus wants to connect; whether that be to devour or to dance.
Venus in Virgo can feel unworthy of its beau until it has mastered its skills and completed the real or imagined insurmountable tasks in front of them. Much like Psyche sorting the grain (thank you Lynn Bell for that connection) Venus in Virgo’s tasks seem impossible until we rely on the magic of nature to come to our aid; the magic of our instincts and the magic that happens when we trust our connection to life.
What Virgo is absolutely, unequivocally a master of is critique. Many a new-ager has told me that they just “aren’t political,” that their system is too delicate for it, they can’t handle the negativity. I get it, I’ve been there and we all need periodic time-outs for sure. However, to be alive is to be political because to be alive is to be free or seek our freedom and that flies in the face of every political system we have.
You can’t just gaze at the beautiful face of Goddess because it doesn’t do Her justice. We need to be aware of the contrasts of life. Seeing the entire lets us know when we are benefiting from others’ suffering (#whiteprivilegeforexample).
You can’t be in neutral on a moving train.
Humanity is in a massive crisis. Perhaps it always has been, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have the responsibility to do the work that needs to be done. Virgo works bit by bit and step by step. It’s Pisces, the sign opposite of Virgo, that holds the big picture with even bigger compassion. We need both. We need to take many small steps to a brighter future.
If we want to embody peace and justice then we cannot focus only on the sweet face of the Goddess because we will be devoured by Her twin. We will be devoured by greed, fear and unprocessed, unconscious hate.
America’s racism has never been so visible, so acknowledged and so denied as it is right now. Facebook is the NSA’s right-hand hooligan to be sure, but it has also given us the ability to have an actual public forum where everyone’s voices can be heard. It’s shown us, perhaps, that the work really is ours to do.
When gathered together in an organized way with a grand vision we are a formidable threat.
When we don’t know our history, when we don’t know our politics we are incredibly vulnerable to propaganda. There has never been a better time to study up. It’s never been easier to get information, which should be a human right but could all too quickly be a faded memory that no one is allowed to speak of.
In honor of Virgo, the quote above is from one of the great Virgos of our time, Howard Zinn. He had sun, moon and Mercury in the sweet and searingly succinct mutable earth sign. He never shied away from critiquing power. He never lost sight of compassion. He held both sides of the equation. He fought eloquently. He was one of the many examples of how being political is the most compassionate act we can do.
More than just a Virgo though, he’s a pretty good example of how to use one’s privilege to challenge the system that granted it. He risked his life for justice and held up the histories of others to try to chip away at the skewed stories we had been force fed for too long.
May we all be fortified by our collective people’s history. May we learn the truth and have the courage to act on it in the smallest and most crucial of ways. May we, like every great leader of peace, always think critically and with a great amount of heart.
Always. Our lives depend on it.
Blessings,
Chani