Mars enters Gemini at 6:39 am EDT tomorrow. Venus leaves Gemini for Cancer at 10:13 pm EDT Sunday. After Venus enters Cancer, astrology’s version of Yin and Yang will not share the same sign again until 2015. In the meantime, your part will be to take heart, and take a hand in how Venus and Mars work in your life so that they work together well.
You can tell that Venus and Mars are working together well when there is no waste. Both planets cohabiting Gemini for the next three days will be your chance to think, and talk about that.
“Mars,” in the words of Robert Hand, “is an energy planet.” With nowhere to go and nothing to do, energy of any kind can get out of hand and become destructive.
That form of waste is rather straightforward and easy to recognize. Usually, it takes the form of loss. Mental energy with nowhere to go and nothing to do can result in a loss of sleep, making you feel wasted. Physical energy without purpose and place can lead to injury and physical destruction.
How the Venusian archetype works in your life is more subtle. It is not the opposite of Martian energy, rather it is a complement, in that it completes the other half of the picture. By itself, however, the subtlety of how Venus expresses in your life can be insidious, less easy to detect than Martian energy, and wasteful in a less than obvious way.
“Venus,” as characterized by Robert Hand “is a Yin planet.” Among other things, it represents the elusive qualities variously characterized as attraction, receptivity or passivity. When things come to you, accumulate or proceed with no effort on your part, that is Venus at work.
Venus gets wasteful when momentum or inertia take over. It can lead to excess or habits you would be better off without. It does not result so much in things lost as things missed. Since it is easier to tally up what you have lost than what you have missed, the waste that corresponds to Venus getting out of hand can go on indefinitely. The remedy is energy applied; in other words, Mars.
Venus gives Martian energy something to apply to, for a constructive purpose. Mars, in turn, brings the Venusian inertia around to a constructive direction. When they work together, you know it, because you get intended results instead of unintended waste.
Since Gemini is ruled by astrology’s emblem of thought (Mercury), it is appropriate to think about the nature of any object traversing the territory of the twins. Since the event field of Gemini combines the symbolic clarity of elemental air with the mutable inclination of a sign that hosts the Sun to precede a change of seasons, the next three days will be a good time to think about Venus and Mars — and also to see them at work all around you. Communicate what you see, and make some changes of your own.
Foremost among those changes should be how you see yourself in the grand scheme of things. Astrology is one of the things that only human beings do. Doing it well means being receptive, like Venus, to that legacy. It also means being active, like Mars, and becoming a participant, rather than a spectator. It means taking heart in what you can do, taking a hand in what must be done, and working to rid yourself of all that is wasteful to your precious life.
Offered In Service
Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.
Thank you Len for this article on the path of Mars and Venus, a time to appreciate the good things, to share what we love and necessarily contrary to those seeking to lose weight, but does not tell them
Good evening and excellent week to you 🙂
Anna Star OwlHawk: Please forgive me for missing your comment earlier. Thank you so very much for your kind words and generous blessings.
Chief, Yeti,
My thanks
🙂
Strawberrylaughter: My heart is eased knowing your ego is losing it’s freaking mind, you are on a swift path to sanity and balance. I acknowledge and celebrate your journey, and feel honored that my words support your steps.
wandering_yeti: I’ll second your recommendation for intentional abdominal breathing, as someone who lives with Natal Venus in Gemini, I know first hand the positive benefits. Thank you for offering the practical advice I neglected.
Len: Thank you for providing such rich soil for us to root in as we lean upon and support one another in breathing beneath the sun, moon and stars.
P. Sophia: It is you who are the blessing. It is you who are to be gratefully thanked. My first response to your missive is on its way to you.
Shaun: You are very welcome. Thank you for giving back so generously by sharing your quote.
be: Thank you so much for acknowledging my service as good news. best of work in your layered application of Mars to Venus this weekend. A “swell foop” is nearly always as good as a “fell swoop”.
gumbybug: It is a joy to know my work works for you. Thank you so very much for so generously citing our work together as well.
Strawberry. Many thanks to you for your insights and perspectives from your own work. Best of luck getting past the paperwork to get your grant project going. May you and your project partner break new ground and break through to achievement that exceeds your expectations. It is gratifying to know that my service helped a little.
wandering_yeti: Thank you for the blessings of your authentic wisdom once again. i’m always open to the possibility of being wrong (and admitting it). In the case of your exception taken, i hope i are right as rain. It would be an occasion to celebrate if we were to become consciousness of the fact that the cycles and patterns of the planets, stars and luminaries were being systematically brought down to earth in the practices of other beings. To understand that our legacy of observing the Cosmos and correlating it to our lives is, in fact shared would be beautiful. Either way, as you say, “no blame”, only heartfelt thanks to you for sharing the breath (and breadth) of your exceptional consciousness with us.
Chief Niwots Son: Speaking of wisdom and exceptional consciousness, embodied and expressed, thank you for your take on understanding Venus (and a great deal more) through more than just the intellect. You have guided us away from waste and on to paths too long neglected by many of us.
Mia: You are very, very welcome. Letting me know that my service is practical, useful and well-timed for you is deeply appreciated. All the best on what be your Magnum Opus.
Once again I feel we’re in communion and synch…we’re with the stars. This very much sums up the environment of our recent personal conversations Len and the ‘communication’ I just emailed to you this very morning. I am looking forward to hearing back from you.
“Foremost among those changes should be how you see yourself in the grand scheme of things.” And “It means taking heart in what you can do, taking a hand in what must be done, and working to rid yourself of all that is wasteful to your precious life.”
Thank you Len, as always. I am so appreciative for knowing the blessing of you.
Wow, so you’ve hit on something I needed here, Chief. I am stunned at how threatening that idea is to me. I can absolutely feel the truth of what you’re saying; it lights up my solar plexus and is causing my ego is losing its freaking mind right now. I had no idea this was here. I rely on my gut a lot, but Mercury (conj my ascendant) has alwaysalwaysalways been my trump card.
I’m going to practice directing a little creative fire into this & see what happens. Maybe go for a hike if it stops raining.
Thank you, Chief. I needed that, more than I even know right now.
As a representative of Venus in an air sign I’d like to point out that it’s often difficult for citizens of head oriented empires to get in touch with their gut minds: for humans stuck in their heads remembering to breathe like babies do, with your whole abdomen, tunes the head mind into the gut mind by reducing the attention to the simplicity of paying attention to the breath. Gut brain is like a forest that pretty much only stands, breathes, expands and contracts. Abdominal breathing engages the head brain in tracking the whole system of muscles surrounding the abdominal interior where the gut brain lives. The diaphragm moving through it’s whole range massages the gut brain kind of like petting a cat. The simplicity of this message is this: to get from your head to your gut, pay attention to how you breathe. Gently guide the breath to be slower and longer. No force. No blame.
Thank you for this beautiful article, Len. It is so in keeping with what is happening in my life at the moment, including the need to stay heart centered and not let the energy run away with me. Stressful, yes, but ultimately in a life-affirming way. And perhaps the birth of my most important project will be the end result so it is worth it.
As always, your writing lifts me a little bit off the ground.
Mia
Strawberrylaughter- If I may offer a little tidbit in response to your comment: “I’ve been troubled that I don’t really “get” Venusian energy–it’s like there’s a fog around where it shows up in my life.”
Venus is of the body, not the mind. You can’t “get” Venus, you ARE Venus, and the wisdom of Venus lives in your body, not in your cognition. Access comes through doing with your body, through dancing, yoga, hiking, rolling around on the floor- whatever you love! Venus wisdom comes through the belly brain, the gut reaction, the instinctive knowing. Your body is Venus, and the more you commune with your body the clearer Venus will manifest in your life.
I hope these words are helpful for you. 🙂
Beautiful, well-expressed, and your insights, Len, provided pieces of the Mars and Venus puzzle that I needed. Many thanks & blessings.
Only human? What about the cetatians? It also seems to my senses that forests can track the positions of stars somehow. When all you do is stand and breathe you can notice things invisible and insensible to beings who run around all the time. We might be the only ones with a zodiac, but I sense that there’s other creatures who at least have an astrology of tracking sun/moon cycles, reading the signs of the land to direct their movements. It might not use paper and ink, or computer screens, but it still tracks the relationship of local conditions to extra terrestrial bodies visible through the lens of sky. All sentient beings create their own universes, are the gods of their own perceptions. We just have more detail in our maps than most of the non-humans we’ve so far met. Maybe that’s why we’re such devils toward the non-humans. 😉
I love Planet Waves. Each one of you brings so much to the table, every single time. Individually and as a team, you’re truly an inspiration.
I’ve been troubled that I don’t really “get” Venusian energy–it’s like there’s a fog around where it shows up in my life. So I appreciate your reference to its elusiveness, Len. And the sense that it takes some “applied energy” to bring it to fruition.
And then, because there’s nothing like a little synchronicity to bring the lesson home, all morning I’ve been finalizing the details & paperwork for a new (monetarily tiny but spiritually gorgeous) work project that fell into my lap this spring. A project tutoring a brilliant deaf-born woman in how to better communicate and grow her career potential through writing. A little Mercury-in-Gemini sendoff for me!
The thing is, I was struggling with how to make my needs clear (per Eric’s clarion post this morning), as the morass of paperwork required to work for a granting organization can be stultifying, and then I read this. That Mars’ energy, without conscious application, can waste the gifts Venus is attracting. It can start to feel a lot like getting frustrated over details which, intrinsically, hold nowhere near the amount power we give them. I unintentionally wasted an hour this morning because I let Mars run the show. I’m reminded of a comment you made some time ago, to the effect of Mars being a great servant but a poor master.
This is going onto a post-it on my desk: “Venus gives Martian energy something to apply to, for a constructive purpose. Mars, in turn, brings the Venusian inertia around to a constructive direction. When they work together, you know it, because you get intended results instead of unintended waste.”
As always, Len, your insights are a thing of beauty.
“It means taking heart in what you can do, taking a hand in what must be done, and working to rid yourself of all that is wasteful to your precious life.”
Shaun: Your friend’s Facebook posting reminds me of what my grandfather used to say “Take only what you need and leave something for someone else behind you who might need it.”
Be: Sorry about your cherry tree. Love your “Think-About-it-Later and Check and Verify” cubby holes!
Len: As always, love reading your work as I continue to work and be mindful of your reading back in April. You are a gem and I so appreciate your passion and eloquence.
You come bearing good news Len and I for one am most grateful. Mass quantities of data (physical and non-physical) have been attracted to my home (via natal Venus on the 4th house cusp I suppose), what with trans. Venus’ recent conjunction to trans. Jupiter. Three days of Mars’ energy applied to that acquired data might just get me to the point of being considered organized by society’s standards. At least on the outside, and that’s where I want him to start.
On the inside it will require some kind of Virgo finesse, you know, the right cubby hole for each incoming thought like a Think-About-Later cubby hole, or a Check-and-Verify cubby hole, otherwise it will get purged from my memory file in one fell swoop. Kinda the the way that old cherry tree took leave. Whooosh!
be
Len, This is just beautiful. Thank you. It couldn’t be more timely or comforting. A balanced elegant energy to work with after an eclipse season of epic proportions. Interestingly, it is in my sixth house, and I begin a new work project, which requires exactly that kind of balanced and inspired thought, creativity and action.
This morning, a friend posted this to my Facebook page and it also speaks of balance:
“Don’t take more from the world than you’re willing to give back.”
– Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “Skillful Shelter”