BELTANE (The Great Rite)

Venus Conjunct Neptune in Ares.

As the sun enters the second decan of Taurus many of us are celebrating the season of Beltane. At this “spoke” in the wheel of the year we celebrate fertility in all of its forms for the pure animal JOY of making. Whether we are making plans, art, love or even war, we are seeking not only the product but also reveling, even wallowing in the PROCESS of the “great rite”.

On this May Day, Venus has just entered Ares. She is said to be in “detriment” in this aggressive martial sign. Yet there are other conditions that might grant her special potency and a unique opportunity to direct the war like potential in Ares into something a bit more satisfying. If there is anything the Ram likes more than combat it is, errrr, congress. The Ram’s horns are a weapon used to compete for mates. This shows the problematic but undeniable connection between sex and violence. Sexual frustration and aggression are powerfully linked. This is one of the ruder facts of life. Yet it is, in many ways, the engine of our greatest art and artifice. The desire to draw near to beauty, to Venus in all her generative power, drives the artist as well as the warrior. Hours of practice and bloody fingers, sleepless nights spent finding just the right words, the toil of learning any craft is also an homage to fair Aphrodite. She wants a sacrifice, something precious and rare. NOTHING is FREE”! Anything worth having requires a sacrifice. Mothers, martyrs, poets and warriors all must bleed for love.

But let us return to the astrology of the moment. Venus entered Ares on April 30 at 1:16 pm EST. having spent the past two weeks slowly emerging from her recent retrograde. This time was spent in the latter degrees of Pisces. Although she is exalted there, she was also in a prolonged conjunction with Saturn. This was a trying season for Venus. Exalted, she was free to weave a beautiful web of dreams in watery Pisces. But in retrograde, she may have been inclined to reconsider her standards of beauty. Immediately after this period of re-evaluation, she paired up with Saturn, planet of endings, limitations, and mature, clear-eyed assessment of the facts.

Here on Earth, some of us may have had a change of heart about who or what is beautiful, valuable and worthy of the sacrifice we make to bring it near. Others may have “changed their look” in order to attract something or someone new or different. We don’t always consider how much of knowing what we really want consists in knowing what we definitely do not. Saturn/Venus conjunct may have reminded us of this in the form of a rude awakening from the dreamy waters of Pisces.

But now she is in Ares, although she is in detriment, she now knows what she wants. By whole sign house she leaves one conjunction to enter another. Conjunct Saturn in Pisces she learned what she no longer wants, now conjunct Neptune in Ares she is free to dream anew of who and what she does. She bids us to do the same.

Neptune is known as a planet of dreams, sometimes grandiose or outright delusional, he dares us to dream boldly. As one of the outer or “generational” planets, Neptune entered Ares on March 30^th of this year and will spend the next 14 years of its 165 year trip through the zodiac in this sign. The Vernal Equinox occurs when The Sun reaches 0° Ares, making this the first sign of the Zodiac. This conjunction with Venus is only the second that Neptune has experienced since his ingress (the other being with Mercury). All of this suggests that we are in a critical moment in which what we consider most beautiful, valuable and worthy of our sacrifice for the next 165 years could easily turn on this Venus/Neptune conjunction.

Gods don’t take sides. Mars doesn’t care why we fight, but favors those who do so most fiercely, courageously and honorably. Venus doesn’t care who or what we love, but demands we prove our love by sacrifice. According to Myth, Venus (Aphrodite) loves Mars (Ares) more than any other immortal. Love favors those who will fight hardest to win her favor. But the form of this love and the sacrifice we make to win her is, as all things in the mortal world, the product of our mortal dreams and struggle. Our dreams of beauty and what we are willing to do to make these dreams come true could determine a great deal about the look of love for generations to come.

SO, on this Beltane, the great rites we perform, the fires over which we leap, may have an outsized influence. The great right is a form of sex magik. What is wrought in this ecstatic dream my be born unto us for years to come. Have fun! But remember, after the ecstasy, the laundry.