The Cosmos casts a vote for love when Venus enters Sagittarius on Monday at 1:54 pm EDT. It will be more than Robert Hand’s observation of how “In its highest manifestation Venus is love.” It will even be more than how Sagittarius, as mutable fire, tempers the practical with the spiritual, and forges the ideal into the real. The “more” that will really cinch the vote is the conjunction Venus will make immediately upon ingress to Sagittarius — with asteroid 16 Psyche.
16 Psyche is one of the 10 most massive objects in the “main belt” of asteroids between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Like most asteroids, its interpretation for astrology can reliably begin with its name.
The word “psyche” gets thrown around a lot, to different purposes, so perhaps it would be a good idea to begin with a dictionary. The most scientific selection in Merriam Webster defines psyche as “the totality of the Id, Ego, and Superego including both conscious and unconscious components.” In other words, what you are on the whole, albeit unseen within animated matter.
That’s a large territory in which mind, heart and even speculative, non-tangible components of being may be considered constituents. Adding even greater depth to interpreting 16 Psyche for astrology is the mythical character of the same name, and her relationship with the mythical character Venus.
Venus is one of the classical planets. That is to say the planets which are visible to the unaided eye, and known to human beings for so long there is no recoverable date of first observation.