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Here is an excerpt from my Eros Reports on the aspects between Eros and Venus in the natal chart. Do also read the Eros pages on my website for more information:
www.falconastrology.comEnjoy!
Eros in Aspect to Venus
Deathless Aphrodite - Daughter of Zeus and maker of snares
On your florid throne, hear me!
My lady, do not subdue my heart by anguish and pain
But come to me as when before
You heard my distant cry, and listened…
Come to me now to end this consuming pain
Bringing what my heart desires to be brought:
Be yourself my ally in this fight. --Sappho
The traditional view of Venus in the astrological chart portrays her as a symbol for the powers of attraction. She rules love, affection and beauty, and also what we value esthetically and artistically. Where Venus resides is where we can attract, cajole and charm others, where we can win them over to our side. It also depicts a desire for relatedness, not so much for the sake of merging but for the determination of deeper values. Through one-to-one relationship, personal values are identified, refined and adopted.
By traditional definitions, Venus can easily be misinterpreted as the primary planet of love. She seems to reflect what we long for, in objects and in others. However, Richard Idemon assigns the role of primary love to the Moon. He said the kind of love that gives us a sense of safety, nourishment, comfort and unconditional understanding is lunar. Venus/Aphrodite has few of these attributes except perhaps comfort and nourishment according to what feels good sensually.
As a goddess, Aphrodite was whimsical, demanding, licentious and immoral. She inflicted mortals with outrageous lusts and yearnings, often very species inappropriate. Her brand of love was epithemia; a touch me, taste me, tickle me love, and the more exotic, the better.
Her adventures revolved around the art of seduction, revenge and conquest, though not the conquest of the mind but of the heart. She wore a magic girdle that had the power to enrapture the emotions of anyone, mortal and god alike. She used her girdle not unlike the darts of Eros, although she was known to loan it out, something Eros never did with his quiver and bow.
The beauty of Aphrodite was supreme, although not unchallenged. In accounts such as Psyche and Eros, the Choice of Paris and her rivalry with Persephone for Adonis, she fights for her title through shrewd guile and cunning revenge. Her brief adventures on the battlefield of the Trojan war, however, are ludicrous. Like Eros, her strength was not in combat of that kind.
Many of the attributes of Aphrodite coincide with Eros’, her son and companion. They incite strong passions in gods and mortals alike with their enchantments of desire. They both have lustful adventures, stirring up trouble wherever they go. In many ways, they act as a team, Eros often taking the role of messenger to his mother not unlike Hermes was messenger to his father Zeus.
The significance of the mother/son relationship is explored under aspects to the Moon, yet here a new light falls on the relationship between Eros and Aphrodite. In combination, the two can bring together the epithemia of Venus and the erotic of Eros. When in aspect, especially the conjunction, one would expect to encounter both in unison. At a minimum, it indicates very powerful desires.
Erotic relationships do not necessarily involve sexual attraction, yet with this combination, they most often will. In myth, both Eros and Aphrodite ignited each other’s passions, though seemingly inadvertently.
Eros and Aphrodite
When Aphrodite was playing with her young son, she unwittingly pricked herself with one of his arrows causing her to swoon helplessly in love with the youth Adonis. Later, it was Aphrodite who sent Eros to dispose of the mortal Psyche, and in doing so he accidentally pricked himself on his arrow, beginning their turbulent romance.
Also like Eros, the parentage of Aphrodite is duplicate. Hesiod has her born from the severed phallus of Uranus when Cronus lopped them off and flung them into the sea. The drops of blood hitting the earth sprouted the Erynies and Aphrodite was born out of the foaming surf. This genealogy links her, like Eros, to the Erynies or goddesses of vengeance. Fittingly, much of the mythology of Aphrodite/Venus revolves around her wrath and revenge.
Homer, on the other hand, portrays Aphrodite as the daughter of the minor goddess Dione and therefore belonging to the younger generation of gods. This is commensurate with the two genealogies of Eros, one as an original deity born of Chaos and the other the son of Aphrodite.
The discrepancy between the two versions gave rise to one of the most important philosophical discussions of myth in classical literature: the speech of Pausanias in Plato's Symposium. Pausanias compares the original, motherless Aphrodite as 'Ourania' (literally 'heavenly') and the younger, 'Pandemos' or 'vulgar', 'of the people'. He also likens the elder Eros to a spiritual love and the son of Aphrodite to raw, and often uncontrollable, passions.
Aphrodite certainly didn’t put much effort into containing her feelings and desires. Although Venus in the chart is often portrayed as were we want to harmonize, socialize and keep everything nice it is also important to understand her raw desires and the extent she will go to obtain them. When Venus is in aspect to Eros, nothing is added in terms of limits, containment or control. Where the Sun, Saturn or even Mercury might offer rational or practical restraint, Venus drops the green flag! She is fuel to the fires of Eros.
Zeus did attempt to check the amorous nature of Aphrodite by marrying her off to Hephaestus. It didn’t really change things though. It simply, like the king of the god’s own marriage to Hera, gave her some one to cheat on.
Hephaestus was the god of the forge, gifted in his ability to create intricately beautiful works of art and service, although they were not modeled after his own likeness. Hephaestus was hard wording, industrious, humorless, homely and crippled. The antithesis to Aphrodite, she wasted no time staying faithful to him, much to his pain and humiliation. Aphrodite was not opposed to causing a fair amount of suffering.
The goddess of love, for all her affairs and social gaiety, was ruthless in the arts of retribution. She caused horrific passions to befall those whom betrayed her or even those who claimed others surpassed her beauty.
Once the king of Cyprus, Cinyras, had a daughter so beautiful he boasted that she outshone the goddess of love. Aphrodite, enraged at such a boast, caused the young daughter to fall in love with her own father. The lustful daughter, Myrrha, tricked her father into sleeping with her and the child Adonis was born from the incestuous union. King Cinyras was horrified by this and tried to kill the child but Aphrodite hid the baby Adonis in a chest giving him to Persephone in the underworld to mind. Later the two goddesses argued bitterly over who should have the gorgeous youth. Eventually Zeus had to intervene.
The wrath of Aphrodite fills tomes. When the women of Lemnos would not honor Aphrodite she “… visited them with a noisome smell; therefore their spouses took captive women from the neighboring country of Thrace and bedded with them.” This ended in the massacre of the men of Lemnos by their wives.
It is said that Erymanthus, son of Apollo, was blinded because he saw Aphrodite bathing. It is not clear if the corresponding gift of inner sight was conferred as well. Obviously Aphrodite desires acknowledgement and homage, yet also to view her uninvited can bring mutilation or death.
Venus in aspect to Eros may add some of these qualities of retribution and wrath to an already intense and possessive Eros. It is important to note that when Eros felt betrayed, he simply went home to his mother’s palace to sulk. Venus connected to Eros will do no such thing. It is clear that a betrayed Venus in aspect to Eros awakens, like her sisters and his aunties the Eryines, a fury that may stop at nothing to enact vengeance.
It seems Eros linked by aspect to Venus, especially by conjunction, will also do nothing to check or contain the passionate nature. On the contrary, an augmenting of the desires can occur. Whatever Venus already finds beautiful, lushes, and appealing, with Eros to hand, she will want it even more. The two archetypes thrive together and the results can be extremely magnetic.
