Venus, the Erotic and the need for Bread & Roses.

I didn’t plan to write a blog post today, but then Venus entered Taurus, and here we are. Life has been kind of rough lately, on a global scale but also personally, which for me means that the part of me that longs to create, is not accessible. As some of you who follow me on Instagram might have noticed, I have not posted a zodiac season ingress or dump in a while. While capitalism has taught me to push through and do it anyway because “producing”, “output”, and “algorithms”, building my relationship with Venus taught me to listen when the whisper of creation, no matter how faint, is present and when it’s not. So today she whispered, and I listened.

Because that’s what the lady does, she aids creation. Building a relationship with Venus means building a relationship with the erotic, with life force itself. Or as Audre Lorde (black, feminist icon who I will quote all day long)  says “The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. (....) The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.”

But we tend to forget that we have this resource because “...We have been taught to suspect this resource, vilified, abused, and devalued within western society....”. (“Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” by Audre Lorde)

I love that she references chaos in the first part, because Chaos in Greek mythology was one of the primordial gods next to Eros before later myths turned Eros into the son of Aphrodite/Venus.

Which brings me to astrology. Venus is said to be a force of creation, attraction, desire, pleasure, creativity, beauty, and social bonding. She’s interested in cooperation, harmony, art, creation, and unions of any kind. She’s our “Heav'nly, illustrious, laughter-loving queen, sea-born, night-loving, of an awful mien; Crafty, from whom necessity first came, producing, nightly, all-connecting dame”  (From the Orphic Hymn to Venus,which really is a wonderful study tool because all of her traits, including Night Sect, and her domiciles are laid out for those of you who like to ask questions like “why? ok, but why?” but don’t like a straightforward answer)

While she is called the Lesser Benefic (Jupiter being the greater one) she isn’t “good” in a moral sense. Venus doesn’t judge, she simply amplifies what you value and want, whether that aligns with society’s idea of “good” or not. And that highly depends on which sign and house your Venus is in and how well she is equipped to do Venusian things.

Enter Venus ingressing into Taurus, one of her domiciles, and where she has dignity and the resources to do Venusian things well. Venus in Taurus is a Venus in her receptive, fixed earth home. In a garden of pleasures and earthly delights. It’s where Venusian things get tangible, nourishing, embodied, sensorial, and slow. Here she teaches us that pleasure and beauty are not a treat, they are essential to our life and survival. Venus in Taurus asks us to slow down and smell the flowers. To let our senses be drenched by what’s blooming. To let our bodies remember how a “yes” to what is real, safe, pleasurable, and nourishing feels like. To be so grounded in that pleasure that you actually have the capacity to receive. To remember that we deserve comfort and beauty.

Venus in Taurus is also Rose Schneidermann’s, 1911 speech: “The woman worker needs bread, but she needs roses too”.

Because safety and security are important and needed, but they are stale without beauty and pleasure. We can not live a life in fight or survival mode. We can also not organize solely from a place of fear. We have to organize from a place that remembers what we’re fighting for, not just what we’re fighting against. We have to let pleasure be part of the vision and beauty be part of the strategy. We have to let the body experience moments of enoughness, even here.

So as Venus travels through Taurus until April 24th, let her bring her grounded sweetness to the part of your chart and life that contains Taurus. Ask yourself, what does pleasure look like here, how does safety and comfort feel, what wants to be created here, not out of necessity but desire. What would it mean to let this part of my life be easier, more resourced, more supported? And what does my body soften toward here, without me having to convince it.

And then eat the bread, and get yourself some roses.

PS: To learn more about the Houses in Astrology and help to understand transits better, sign up to my newsletter and get a free mini guide.