Earthly Delights

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Today, seductive Venus, our Goddess of grace and beauty, enters the garden of earthly delights, and for the next few weeks our attention is directed toward pleasure. One thing that is certain, when Venus enters Taurus we on earth enter the aspect of ourself that is creatively productive and we should be prepared for a busy time doing something that gives us much pleasure while sustaining the value of our lives. If the first idea that comes to your mind is earning more money I offer a word of caution not to fall prey to limiting your definition of productive. This morning, I had breakfast with a friend and he was lamenting that in Mexico the first of May heralds five days of non productivity because people take off those days to enjoy their leisure time and nothing gets done. While he has a point, Venus can be lazy and self indulgent, a Venus Taurus is too concerned with physical rejuvenation to allow our time, leisure or otherwise, to be non productive. One definition for productive is, “achieving or producing a significant amount or result”, and showering our body with rest and relaxation is one valid way of producing a significant result enhancing the quality of our lives.

The first century Roman poet and astrologer, Manilius, calls Taurus divas puellis “rich in maidens” because contained within the body of the constellation are the Pleiades or Seven Sisters, and the seven mythological daughters of Atlas and Aethra, the Hyades. It may seem odd that the zodiac sign “rich in maidens” is astrologically represented by a bellicose bull but the roots of our collective unconscious run deep and millenniums past the blood of a sacrificed bull was ritually offered to fertilize the earth’s womb insuring the abundance of new life birthed every spring. The May Day celebrations world wide continue this ancient tradition of honoring the fecund fertility of the earth’s womb, and when under the influence of Taurus we are acutely aware of our creative fertility and our need to give birth to some aspect of ourselves. The Venus dimension in our unconscious is that aspect of ourselves measuring what people, things, experiences are attracting or repelling to us. Value is relative, people, things, and experiences are what they are, but each of us is continually judging what in life has value for us, which is ultimately determined according to what we value in ourselves. Perhaps the best use of the coming weeks is to observe what we value in ourselves and in our life so that we can create more of the life that we want.