Print article - Venus and affectivity

The second personal planet is Venus: also this neighbour to our Sun (Mercury and Venus are two planets that are between the Land and the Sun), it can move away at most by 45°. The Venus function expressly regards the construction of affective factors, the most important part for the Ego, a fundamental stage for children for the structuring of a sense of self-esteem at healthy relationship with themselves and with others (to harmonise and to relate) and an ability of recognising the internal values that will is the individual parameters on which the ability to choose will be based.

All the potential that this planet offers us derives from the simple and magic word "affection" which is what will orientate and run the life before becoming “a choice“. In psychology this word assumes an extraordinary importance since the particular affections experienced as needs, desires and sentiments that press a child to enter into a relationship with something external, providing they satisfy his needs, creates the bases for fulfilment.

The first experience of a “relationship“ happens in a child through this function. The incredible sequence of smiles, hugs, of reduction and assurance that a mother provides its child with will be the extraordinary action that will provide an idea of a relationship as “wanting to participate and to want to exchange” with another human being.

Venus is the planet that lets us be attracted by the outside world and therefore of not remaining focused on ourselves on (together with Mercury it has the primary domicile in a sign of Air, an element that reminds us of the vital need to relate and to exchange): it represents the possibility of breaking of the narcissist shell, an indispensable requirement to turn our sight elsewhere; it is the first interaction and seductive experience that a new-born baby experiences, seeking answers and welcoming that stimulate the desire to be in intimacy with an "object" that is external to him.

It is proven that seductive adult behaviour is built on the pattern of these first approaches. The loving preliminaries are identical to those carried out in the first part of life. In the psycho-analysis Compendium Freud states that: "being responsible for a child, the mother firstly becomes his seducer and she will act as a prototype for all the following loving relationships with both sexes”. Without a grown-up adoring and almost courting it, a child might never try the excitement of giving itself to human relationships and remain in the narcissist phase.

through Venus we instead start trying that profound human contact which will result in the will of communion with other persons.

The Venus symbol is at times exchanged for the lunar symbol: in fact, Venus represents the encounter with pleasure and of the fulfilment a relationship reaches and it will support the structuring of the psychic function that we call “ability of loving and of entering into a relationship”, while the Moon provides support– protection and emotional support – creating a sense of attachment that will lead us to finding the ability to contain emotions within ourselves, of protecting us from destructive situations (internal and external) and of learning to give something in life and to make things grow. The Moon is very much tied to the need of taking root and to the creation of a stable emotional situation in which one is able to be born and grow into something that also gives a sense of continuity to life. Venus is the manner in which we have experienced a relationship and love, but it is also the sense of shared humanity and the wish to exchange with others.

Venus must press us in the adult age to look, a sense of sharing and cooperation in relationships, whatever they are, which are an indispensable initial activity for to the true construction of a social sense that takes others into consideration as human beings with equal opportunity and equal rights, even if they are very different (passage with the Libra to the Aquarius in the seventh house to the eleventh house). Important studies on problematic boys with antisocial behaviours have demonstrated that as children they have undergone a lot of deprivation and never received that warmth, that pleasure, that necessary sense of acceptance and of participation that allows them to become members of the human consortium.

When a child exchanges smiles with the first figures who look after it the child also begins to express its own preferences towards some subjects instead of others; this is the phase in which it concentrates mainly on people rather than on inanimate objects. Through Venus the child is "seduced" by the face of the mother, by her body, by her way of touching it and holding it; later on it will be seduced by sounds, words, ideas, scents, by everything that will let him discover himself and others and satisfy the wish and the need to realise his own aspirations. In fact Venus is not only the great loving seductress: we can consider Venus like (and attractive) everything that we like and that, therefore, we would want to bring into our life. So, through this symbol, as grown-ups we will fall in love not only with people, but also with art, music, philosophy and everything that stimulates our wish for knowledge, provided that this is a reflection of something that is also inside of us and that once conquered will increase our sense of personal value and fulfilment.

Venus is the most important thing for the formation of the I because it is particular for experimentation with interaction based on hugs, smiles, on the reciprocal wish to be together that the I will allow itself to feel exists because it is in a relationship with another. In these initial steps it mistakes that the idea arises out of being a part of a community (Venus in the second house) and, the innumerable sensations that invest the new-born baby in its most important relationship, the idea arises that could be an affective harmony; from here we learn the rudimentary basics of human relationships and approach the idea that we occupy only a part of the world, because the other one is occupied by others and the sense of harmony is created by the possibility that we and others can relate.

I would also like to remind you that in the Myth of Adam and Eve, the perception of the "fall" (leaving the Terrestrial Paradise) resulted in the break-down of the relationship with God. To be in a relationship means to be reflected in someone’s eyes, it means existing.

From birth children start bonding in the memory with phenomena and sentiments and they do it through a very well developed sense of liking that reacts instinctively to the pressures by clearly showing their preference for thing rather than another, the voice of their mother to that of others, the scent of the mother to that of other persons, and a sweet meal rather than a salty one. Our personal taste arises from the “pleasant or unpleasant” sensation which means that a child receives or rejects in an immediate and instinctive way. It is the first and fundamental binary code on which it will set up a series of choices based on attraction: "what I like I want to be brought to me because it obtains well-being sensations for me, while what I do not like I wants to keep away from me because it creates disharmony and indisposition for me”.

One of the most frequent themes at a psychological level is the diffuse sensation of not knowing in a clear way what is wanted, what he/she really likes, and this produces dissatisfaction that feeds the need of compensating for internal emptiness by attracting surrogates to ourselves that will do nothing but increase the sense of devaluation because they do not lead to any fulfilment. Venus is a part of the “pleasure principle” and when we are in line with this archetype we experience fulfilment in what we do, want or love, and this increases our sense of identity. We can say with greater precision that what we like is what we appreciate; what we do not like makes us uninterested because it has no value for us.

The sense of value needs to be developed in the child through gestures, tenderness and care that lets it know it is loved and appreciated; in a word it must be accepted and must have the pleasurable sensation and of being important for the one who is responsible for him/her.

There is no way of forming anything at a psychological level if beforehand we do not try it physically through another person; the reflection that the mother conveys to her child will create that first impression, that first sense of value and of personal esteem that will be the substratum on which the child will learn to value what it has before it and what it considers (to value means literally “to give a value”). Without a relationship that is stable and lasting and physical contact with an important figure, the child will not therefore develop even a good relationship with its body and, at that point, the pleasure of entering into an intimate relationship with another person will be lost at a profound level, just as the relationship with its own body has been lost.

Without having tried the idea of being important and of liking a reference figure, the child will feel himself/herself without value, and after this not only will it not increase in value, but it will not even be able to appreciate others and this will influence his future ability of choosing and of having relations of affective exchange in a negative way. And without having value it will become impossible to structure “the values” which are the parameters that help orientated us in our decisions.

At its main domicile in the seventh house, Venus reminds us that relationships are based on personal tastes, on rational choices and on the ability of appreciating themselves firstly, and then others, derived from the desire to overcome the sense of separation that the I feels, looking for points in common with we like, whom we love and with whom we want to enter into a relationship of reciprocal exchange and sharing. In this Venus is unmistakably different from the Moon that instead always searches for the emotional fusion tried in the mother - child dyad; Venus sets up joint relations and therefore it needs both to have acquired a sense of separation and look for common spaces. Venus represents what we mean by “love“, but this word would not have any sense if it had not been experienced in childhood as hugs, warmth, a wish for exchange and interaction.

Unfortunately however, if in the very first part of life, when the child is beginning to show its tastes, needs and wishes, these have still not been respected or worse, if it has had the sensation that they were " wrong", it will have try to remove them, to distort them and to substitute them with others accepted by the person who is taking care of him/her.

This is one of the reasons therefore, that as grown-ups we can win over and attract persons and situations which we then do not like, in which we do not feel ourselves appreciated and do not manage to exchange anything or find any fulfilment. Each time that we make a "wrong" choice we have a sensation of internal indisposition, almost of emptiness, and it is then what we must reflect upon what are our likes, our values, on in order that we attract what we do not like and what, and that as a result, seems to take value out rather than increase it.

If our likes have been stopped or changed, they will have been substituted by the likes of other persons that we will make ours but, therefore, we will perceive the sensation of untruth and fidelity deep down. The worst thing to be committed, however, id the damage to our sense of identity since we will not know with precision what we want and often we will end up by being orientated to the one who is around us.

To be able to choose we need a personal values hierarchy and rationality; this why Venus is an Air planet since everything that regards it must join as a conscious act: love itself must be based on a choice and an evaluation contrarily to the love that is a drive that derives directly from the unconscious and that drives reproduction (fifth house).

In astrology, analysing the Venus symbol in the sign and in the house in which it is we can get an exact idea of the things that a person can like and that it will have to bring with him/her in his/her life-time to try to increase well-being and self-esteem.

Good Venus aspects in our natal chart refer us to a healthy relationship in which we felt loved, appreciated and accepted and in which it was possible to create a good sense of personal trust and self-esteem: this will be the important initial stage to look for and to create relationships in which we feel good and to exchange what one is and it is; in fact, someone who experiences love through a valid and respectful relationship which respected desires and personal tastes will feel that he/she is loved “as a full person”, and will never be attracted by situations that could diminish the value and lesser situations in which love becomes, because of certain deformations, a synonym of masochism, of victimisation or of strange power struggles.

A very much damaged Venus in the natal chart refers us to a sensation of non-love, non-value and non-acceptance and this manner will become the radar with which we will look for relationships and love and it is therefore what, by repeating similar situations, will be the possibility of redefining one’s own limits, values and the sense of: only this one will be able to lead the real sharing of affective and intimate spaces with another person maintaining one’s own sense of integrity and internal harmony.

Do not forget that the word love does not exist if it does not understand personal freedom, value and integrity: in a word our own individuality and that of others.