Growing more beauty & love in your life with Venus
Venus is one of the more well-known planets. If not for her astrological significance, then at least for her namesake as the goddess of beauty, love and art.
Venus offers us clues about who and what we love, how we love, what brings us pleasure, what we think is beautiful, how we relate, what we value and appreciate, and what and who we attract to ourselves.
It is said that Venus is to the Earth as the Soul is to the personality. So how do we invoke her wisdom to help us as individuals on the path to greater soul satisfaction? In a world where beauty and love have become so distorted (looking at you Valentine’s Day), it is more important than ever.
Looking at the placement of Venus in our charts will give us information about our own specific way of loving, relating, harmonizing and attracting, and which of area of life (which house) the influence of Venus will be felt more strongly. But an important thing to remember is that any one of us can call in the support of any planet at any time. As one of my earliest teachers liked to say, the skies are a supermarket where we can each reach for what we need in any given moment.
Here’s 5 ways you can dance with the energy of Venus:
Recognise the healing power of beauty
One of my all-time favorite books is Beauty and the Soul by Italian transpersonal psychologist Piero Ferrucci who reminds us that rather than being a pleasant distraction or mere window dressing, beauty is a vital ingredient for a happy, balanced and satisfying life. The positive effects of beauty in its various forms has undergone many a study – from the colours we use to decorate childcare centres, the kind of art adorning the walls of hospitals, wilderness and nature programs as a means to manage stress, or music as a tool to lower restlessness and aggression in Alzheimer’s patients. Ferrucci shares an example of the way books can also heal. The Reader is a UK charity that inspires and supports people to read great literature aloud together. Working with a range people from prisoners, recovering addicts, parents, teachers, dementia patients, and many others, this simple idea helps reduce social isolation, build resilience and in its early days earned it the tagline ‘Prose not Prozac’.
Own your desires
One of the greatest gifts of astrology is to begin to understand and appreciate (a very Venusian word) our own uniqueness. To own your own lens for beauty is one of the imperatives from Venus. Astrologer Caroline Casey says Venus reminds us to honor our individual affinities – those people, colors, tastes, animals, art forms, and interests to which we are born. She also reminds us, “Our attractions are our primary clues as to how we can make a unique contribution to the world.”
Start to really notice what makes your heart skip a beat, what catches your breath, what makes you feel most nourished and uplifted. There is great freedom in being able to own what it is that brings you delight and give yourself permission to enjoy more of it. By noticing what it is we truly value we can turn our attention to growing more of it in our lives.
Soul satisfaction will never be doled out in cookie-cutter fashion so remind yourself too that it’s more than okay if your idea of what is valuable and beautiful doesn’t fit a traditional view. Some of the most inspiring pieces of art have flowed from the unconventional. Think Lin-Manuel Miranda’s use of hip-hop to tell the story of America’s first Treasury Secretary in the hit musical Hamilton or renowned artist Georgia O’Keeffe’s fascination with animal skulls.
Keep a beauty diary
With so much ugliness happening in the world at large today, I would go so far as to say it is almost a sacred responsibility for anyone on the soul-centred path to actively foster more beauty in the world. This doesn’t have to be a huge under-taking. I was lucky enough to interview Piero Ferrucci several years ago and he suggested the idea of keeping a diary of beauty.
“Any aspect of our lives that we pay more attention to will grow within us. So, if we pay a lot of attention to our worries, the worries will grow and they will occupy the field. If we decide to also give attention to even small moments of the appreciation of beauty then they will become more important and even looking at the foliage of the trees, or looking at the sky, or the reflection of the buildings in a puddle or looking at the human face or appreciating ̶ this is very important ̶ appreciating the inner beauty of people, that is beauty of kindness or intelligence, little by little we notice that beauty is all around us,” he said.
“We can read a book while going to work. We can listen to music while going to work. Even an ordinary work day can also be time in which we notice beauty. We have at least a small experience of beauty and then if we want to, keep a diary of beauty. If we want we can write that down, we can write about what happened in us when we noticed that beautiful face or we saw that beautiful movie. And if we do that, that dimension is vitalised and we become more sensitive to beauty. So, we start a virtuous circle.”
Make space for your magnetism
While Mars is about dynamic action and what we pursue, Venus is about what we attract and magnetise. Mars chases. Venus seduces. Mars goes after what it wants. Venus draws it in.
Any practice that helps cultivate a sense of spaciousness in your life will also help cultivate magnetism. It could be making time for yoga or taking up meditation, or getting out in nature for a hike or a picnic (Venus is very closely related to the natural world).
There are plenty of simple ways to slow down and create more spaciousness even in the midst of a busy life – taking three deep breaths and appreciating their deliciousness before you get out of bed (or check your phone) in the morning, finding five minutes at lunch to sit in the sunshine and stare at the sky, running a bath at the end of the day and adding a couple of drops of essential oil, or taking just a couple of moments for a short visualisation like seeing yourself standing on a beach at sunrise and feeling your feet on the sand and the warmth of the sun touching your skin.
Dance. Dance. Dance.
If ever there was a planet inviting us to dance with life, Venus is it. Heck, she’s not just inviting us, she says dancing is an inextricable part of a life well lived.
You don’t need to scurry off to a dance class or be the last one standing on an actual dance floor (although Venus would be proud if you were). You can dance where you’re at… a little shoulder groove in your car, a foot tap under your desk, a shimmy and a shake in front of the mirror while you’re doing your make up, an impromptu cheek-to-cheek slow groove with your significant other while the kettle or the pasta is on the boil.
If you want some all-out inspiration check out LA-based yogi Adriana Rizzolo’s daily dance practice on Instagram – @artofloving.
The essential call from Venus is that whatever you are doing, make it beautiful. It can perhaps best be summed up by a line from the (very Venusian) documentary Bill Cunningham New York:
“It’s as true today as it ever was, those who seek beauty will find it.”
If you want to know more about Venus you can read our previous articles here and here.
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