Venus / Aphrodite The principle of attraction itself.

Consider something both fascinating and powerful about Venus: while the ancient origin story of Venus captures the fundamental nature of desire, even this may seem easier to grasp than the concept that our own senses—our very manner of relating—are colored by our Venus. We ourselves manifest sensation. It is not simply a matter of decoding the mechanics of vision and hearing, for each of us truly inhabits a different world. The senses of an Earth sign Venus are entirely distinct from those of Air, Fire, or Water.

Much is made in astrology of how Venus governs our "Love Language," yet its influence extends far beyond the realm of the beloved.

Venus performs the essential function of relation itself. What is the nature of our relating when desire enters? What creates the essential difference? Not all relation breeds desire, but when it does, our Mars function becomes swiftly involved.

According to the great Ned Johnson: Mars creates formless energy, Venus gives shape, separation and sensation, Mercury associates, records, and references.

The Moon represents what we believe we need—the sign of the Moon determines this for us.

As above, so below: consider the Sun, our Sun, as desiring to see itself in the world and thereby know itself through these creatures. This is the impulse of Leo, and this too is the impulse of God.

Art What does astrology reveal about Art?

One consequence of knowing that astrology is real is its illumination of previously mysterious areas of life. We have considered the meaning of life; consider now the function of Art—something studied for centuries and practiced by the earliest humans. Most definitions of Art are sorely lacking. They either ask too much of the viewer or strip too much from the artist, stretching and stammering to make sense in a world without social mooring, emerging at best as personal projection.

Astrology offers at last a clear answer: what is Art? It is our chance to glimpse the elusive Self behind the self. It is the concretization of the creative process we use daily as we translate reality into experience. We are all artists. Venus governs art because Venus rules the essentially creative act of relating. An artwork expresses the self to the beloved Other. This is why Libra associates with Art and artists. The act of balancing, relating, aligning any two things involves arranging them in proportion to existence's forces and facts, seeking some hidden harmony. When Art succeeds—any art, whether love, conversation, painting, or writing—something clicks within us, and we recognize that a deeper truth has been unlocked.

This explains the traditional distinction between Arts and Sciences.

Scientific truths are objectively true—revealed facts following from fundamental agreements between this universe's current inhabitants, known as physical laws. Artistic truths, however, are subjective, depending upon current positions, temperaments, and proclivities of the participating context. While no less true than scientific discoveries, they point the Way differently, touching our sense of "meaning"—a sense we all possess, though some weight it more heavily. Our gut, our intuition, our feeling about any situation, what drives our choices, our non-rational truths—these are Art's facts. These discoveries illuminate spiritual rather than physical laws, the harmony behind existence that elevates us from mundane to miraculous, if we allow it.