Just Published!

When Venus is oriental – that is to say, a morning star:  when she rises before the sun in the east – then the desire nature is said to be possessive;  and when Venus is occidental – when she is an evening star, setting after the sun in the west – then the desire nature is said to be dispassionate.    Just as eager mind (oriental) exhibits the Gemini side of Mercury and certain mind (occidental) exhibits the Virgo side of Mercury, so too does possessive desire exhibit the Taurus side of Venus and dispassionate desire exhibit the Libra side of Venus.* 

            Possessive desire seeks a sense of owning and being owned, and is primarily concerned with alliances and matters of community belonging.  Dispassionate desire seeks a sense of personal privilege and prerogative, and is primarily concerned with preserving individual liberty against encroachment.  The tenor of the times for the past several centuries has been a gradual shift away from possessiveness and towards dispassion – at least in the human economy.  For example, the gradual shift from feudalism to democracy in political, social, religious, and cultural institutions throughout the world is a shift from a possessive to a dispassionate perspective on power relationships.  The institution of marriage, which in its broad outlines has been fundamentally possessive in nature, has been undergoing severe dislocations of redefinition in the past century, and has not yet stabilized itself in a recognizable pattern, except that it is evidently becoming more dispassionate.  This has entailed, for example, some diminution of emphasis in the popular mind on marriage for romantic love or pecuniary advantage (which are possessive ideals) and has given more emphasis to the idea of marriage as therapy or a creative collaboration between individuals (dispassionate ideals).  This is not to reject or endorse either possessiveness or dispassion:  the former is manipulative but warm and gay; the latter is just but cool and somber.  However, that half of the population which is dispassionate (those born with Venus placed later in the zodiac than the sun) are more in tune with the times, because the times seem to favor dispassion.   

             The differences between the possessive and dispassionate Venus types show up most clearly in each one’s expectations of marriage.

Possessive types are interested in commitment to relationship as an end in itself, to which all else is subordinate; hence they are less interested in the question of whether or not there is a sharing of philosophies, hobbies, interests, etc.  Possessive types bring to marriage expectations of mutual self-sacrifice – especially by the other person – fidelity, and the expectation that marriage is above all else a task, which should entail a common purpose, as opposed to mere common interests.  The wedding ring is a possessive invention: a pledge of undying constancy; a sign of ownership more humane than a brand.  However, the “loyalty” on which these types pride themselves is not so much to the people themselves as to their images of them; and when the image runs out they can turn on people with a cry of betrayal.  Their warmth can turn in a trice to cold severity.  Other people can sense this, which is why they tend to distrust the motives of possessive types in spite of how noble they believe themselves to be.  Where the dispassionate  natives are afraid of consciously acknowledging hurt, the possessive types use their hurt as a fuel to fire resentment.  Their security lies in their pride, in their fidelity to their own images; thus they anchor their emotional stability to the bedrock of their fantasies – to whether this or that illusion is being actualized in reality.  They unabashedly relate to other people in terms of the service they might render or the use to which they might be put; although they are quite willing to serve others in turn.  When all is said and done they are at least willing to trust other people to some extent. 

(continued …)

* As is the case also with the eager / certain distinction at Mercury’s conjunctions with the sun, there is no hard cusp effect between possessiveness and dispassion at Venus’ conjunctions with the sun.  On the contrary, the conjunctions exhibit an exaggerated form of the preceding quality:  Venus superior conjunction sun can be super-possessive and smothery; Venus inferior conjunction sun (indeed, Venus retrograde, period) can be super-dispassionate and don’t-touch-me.  But this is another story for another day.