Planetary Personalities: Venus

In October of 2024, I began working with an incredible illustrator and visual artist, Alex Raguso (@crumb_eater on insta), to transmute my written descriptions of the 7 primary planets into a series of Tarot Card style illustrations. We spent months talking through mythology, etymology, and astrology to find the cultural common threads. We did draft after draft of both the text and the illustrations until these cards were born. I am grateful and proud and hope this collaboration helps contextualize why celestial bodies and their rich cultural histories have always, and will always be celebrated as important to human's understanding of themselves and their power. Below, you will find the fruits of that labor in all their HQ glory. We posted version on social media meant to poison AI, so please refrain from reposting the unpoisoned version in this post anywhere else. I've also included the collage I made after writing each planetary profile at the very end. This week, Venus ♀!

Venus: Rules Taurus and Libra

Venus is the planet of beauty, abundance, and indulgence that is cultivated. It views life romantically because it knows the taste of perfectly ripe fruit and the elegance of a blooming flower. Venus indulges beauty in every form that beauty is expressed and through every sense, both rough and refined. Venus delights in knowing there is beauty in everything and the evidence of that is deeply divine. The matter of how to access that beauty differentiates its two signs from one another. Taurus and Libra represent the primary ways we engage with and access beauty - through physical sensation and cultivation or through the perception of balance and harmony and refinement. Venus is able to appreciate a simple art and a complex one for the grace it takes realize or express. Whether it's classical arts like music and painting or grounded art like cooking and textiles. Venus sees the evidence of beauty in every part of the garden, soil to petal. It represents a spectrum of simple pleasure to crafted delight.

The Taurus archetype, the bull, represents the physical and more simple aspects of the Venusian beauty principle. It recognizes there is beauty in all things so long as you find a way to cultivate it and experience it physically through labor. Beauty becomes a physical principle when expressed through the earth element. Accessing beauty becomes a matter of effort. The Taururs archetype represents the idea that all beautiful things were cultivated and recognizes the time and energy needed to grow as a part of its beauty. It believes that to respect beauty physically is to savor. The Hierophant Tarot card that represents Taurus features a religious institution with a priest inside a temple of ornate architecture and fabrications. This imagery has always supported the meaning and etymology of cultivation, a word deriving from the Latin root colere meaning both to toil and to worship. The Taurus knows beauty can be created through cultivation and treats the effort like a ritualistic practice, one both beautiful and divine. It is a labor of love. The Taurus recognizes beauty is something you foster.

The Libra archetype, the scales, represents balance and harmony as both literal and aesthetic concepts contributing to one’s understanding of beauty. It is a less physical and more abstract understanding of the Venusian beauty principle, but represents refined beauty, which is far more about perspective or taste, subjective rubrics crafted through experience. It believes in everyone's ability to judge against their own scale, and is that not fair? Rather than grounding in the physical sensations of the body and what literally tastes good, the Libra relies on perception through the eye and the mind’s sharp sense of discernment, a more abstract "taste". The Libra archetype understands only we can judge what is beautiful, and utilizes that power to define and experience beauty wherever it chooses. Things that are visually balanced are inherently beautiful to the Libra, but even balance is relative to perspective. Harmonious notes make objectively beautiful sounds, but even sound is perceived by the mind after the ear has experienced it. Libras are interested in beauty as an act of judgment more than a passive experience. It is still an indulgence, but one the mind delights in more than the body. If beauty is in the eye, the Libra is the lens, the perspective through which we understand beauty and how we judge beauty beyond just looking at it.

There is a decadence to portrayals of Venus in art and Mythology. From the Birth of Venus, to Venus of Willendorf, the picture our collective consciousness has of this planet seeks to represent its sensuality and its balance. It does this through nudity, luxuriating poise, comfort, pleasure, and taste. Fruiting/flowering imagery emphasizes the mother in Venus, but it isn’t tied to the home the way Cancer is. It is the mother in the field, unafraid to prune that which overgrows. Although the Sun and the sign Leo are associated with children, Venus is the planet of fertility, understood as the space and conditions for growth, as well as the act of birth. Labor as a part of love. Creating and appreciating anything of value takes both the effort to do and the effort to judge. It is a Venusian trait to make something out of nothing, to see value in something not yet cultivated, to make the call it's worth their time, to refine it, to experience beauty through your own effort or your own eye.

If you made it this far, in true Venus fashion, here is a treat for your ears, a playlist of Venus ass songs.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2CiET7zY0BMKlPLrIoYyYF?si=nRfwafmyQ0GD3d9D5yq_Ag

love u