Astrologers sometimes refer to Neptune as being “the higher octave of Venus.” This doesn’t mean that the two planets do the same job. Venus and Neptune are more like funhouse-mirror reflections of each other: similar, yet very different. Examining those similarities (and differences) can be enlightening, and demonstrate the real depth behind Astrology.
This is the first of a three-part series that will be looking at how Neptune reflects the “feminine” values ruled by Venus, yet manages to be quite different. Specifically, I’ll be looking at three big hits from the world of popular entertainment.
First: “Popular entertainment” hasn’t always meant HBO and Netflix. It used to be painting and sculpture. Keeping that in mind, let’s look at a big hit from roughly 25,000 BC: The Venus of Willendorf.
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The lady pictured above is commonly called The Venus Of Willendorf. She’s one of the oldest know sculptures in existence, being well over 20,000 years old. We have no way of knowing for sure what cultural role she may have played in people’s lives at the time, but many consider her to be an object of worship, or a fertility idol. She certainly looks pregnant enough, and her form is an exaggeration of femininity. Maybe she was the Beyoncé of her day.
Venus Figurines are sculptures of women found throughout the time of what is generally known as “cave men times”: The Upper Paleolithic, to be more precise. One thing that almost all of them have is a relative lack of hands, feet, and facial features. I, like many archaeologists, don’t think this is a coincidence. A Venus Figurine is generic and undetailed not because a specific woman’s identity was taken away — they are generic and undetailed because they represent a concept or ideal that is not completely defined or contained by any one woman. Marilyn Monroe was a “sex symbol.” The Venus of Willendorf embodies something too big to be completely expressed by any one human.
This illustrates the difference between The Feminine Principle as expressed by Venus and as expressed by Neptune. Venus rules sweetness and sugar and thank-you notes and affection. Neptune certainly understands those principles, but speaks more in terms of transcendent experience and mysticism and dreams.
Another manifestation of Neptune is “entertainment”: more specifically, “show business.” In the next two blog entries in this series I’m going to be looking at the two TV shows that have really captured my attention of late: two very different shows that nonetheless both (in their own ways) both comment on The Feminine Principle in general but also show what can come about when that Divine Principle bumps up against the (sometimes ugly) realities of Human Nature.
There won’t be any spoilers, but by all means: in the event anything I write here prompts you to actually watch the shows I will be referencing, then my job here is done. They’re both very different, but both well worth the time.
NEXT TIME: Hail Marys, Full Of Neptune and The Young Pope.
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