Venus Moon Heart Chakra Gateway

Art By Julia Brinkfrau

When I  thought about all of the possibilities, the directions I could venture for this month’s gate, I thought I would definitely land on a proper self-love-sermon. Preaching that the Heart Chakra opens in an environment of compassion. That if you do not embrace your darkness, and your flaws, you will always have trouble truly loving yourself. I wanted to tell you that giving your humanity full permission and approval lays a firm foundation for self love work to begin. It makes the ground so fertile. And once you get to a high approval rating with your own humanity, that’s when you can really come into a satisfying union with another. How wounding and projection get in the way of deep relational love.

But when I felt into the message from Venus, who is currently in Virgo, she gave what I can only describe as an anti-message. In Virgo, Venus is said to be in her “fall”, or in other words, it’s thought to be a less favorable placement for her. (I wrote a very short piece on the Virgo Woman and my thoughts on the Fall placement here) I sense in some cheeky, rebellious way, She has given me the direction to illuminate the antithesis of that. And so this is my sermon, or rather as I would call it, Her Moon Venus Mystery School Message. It’s also very personal for me. This is an area that SHE has worked me relentlessly and it is entirely relevant to the Heart Chakra Gateway. The Venus Moon Gateway opened August 11th at 6:14 am at 24 degrees Virgo. For the next month we have the opportunity to work on all themes that pertain to the Heart Chakra and track their impact in our lives.

Sister Ingar by Edvard Munch

I want to begin by telling a personal story. Summer’s in my house are usually pretty unstructured. I don’t like to overcommit my kids at any time, but that came through especially strong this year. My mother and I have already had touches around this topic. She thinks activities are necessary. “Doing”, staying busy is her jam. But my intuition told me that they needed a long period of decompression after the year we’ve had. 

About three weeks ago my mother came by roughly an hour after we returned from the pool. On the way home from the pool we stopped at our favorite little boutique pizza shop and picked up a margarita pie. Thin crust, whole pieces of basil, cooked in a stone oven. This isn’t just any pizza, it's special. So the whole house had this atmosphere of sun drenched slowness, topped off with satiated bellies. Bronze skinned children lazed on couches while swimsuits and towels were strewn about. I get how highly uncomfortable this environment was for my Midwestern Mother to walk into. 

To begin with, she always needs a reason to stop by. She doesn’t come around just for connection. She creates uses for herself, and then seeks to dominate and stake a claim around that area of usefulness. This isn’t a problem, because I know she does this, and she takes direction if she crosses a boundary. On this particular visit she was there to discuss library books and reading progress as she made a summer reading program agreement with the kids. Visits with her follow a particular template, all goes well until she finishes her “business”, then she sighs, looks around, and must make some awkward comment. This is her quick attempt at connection before she leaves. It’s always my favorite part of the visit because it's the most authentic, it’s where I get to really feel her. But it’s also the area most apt to get bumpy. And I can always sense a small amount of terror when the planned part of the visit is over, and she has to finish off script. I’ll also admit that it is highly entertaining. She gets squirmy, worried that something like what is about to unfold will happen. 

Anxiety By Edvard Munch

On this particular day she made the comment to my daughter, while ensuring that I was in earshot. “You are so lucky, you always get to eat pizza, I wish I could have some”. 

I heard the sound of the proverbial record scratch. SCREEECH...This really got me. I promise she was not angling to be offered a piece. She knew she could have one. No, what she was saying to my daughter was that even though she knew she could have one, that she wasn’t going to allow herself to have it. She didn’t want the calories, cholesterol, or baked in guilt of letting herself have something that she really craved. 

Her comments usually don’t bother me, but running this program of scarcity, self-deprivation, and intentional disconnection from desire, in front of my daughter because it is literally a VALUE of hers made me hot inside. So I challenged her. “You know Mom, you could have a piece if you really wanted one.” To which she gave me her laundry list of reasons why she can’t. None of which were real. I wanted her to lay out her values in front of my daughter so that I could expose the program. If I give nothing else to my daughter, I want to give her a strong, responsible connection to her desire. 

Here in the Midwest, we have an odd cultural program that we run. For some reason it’s a point of connection to show each other how little we can survive on. Oh you like my dress? “I bought it on clearance for seven dollars”. Someone wants to treat you to a gourmet coffee, you order the cheapest thing on the menu. You buy the car that has the best value, almost never new, because you know later you will be asked about the price, and you don’t want to be caught out not having gotten a good bargain. Everyone wants a house that they can fix up slowly, that they can tell their friends they got a good deal on, because talking about how much we paid for something is our form of cultural campfire stories. We love to show modesty. 

People who buy luxurious things are “bragging”, they are showoffs, they have too much hubris, and those people almost always have to mingle with their own kind. They aren’t welcomed down here with us everyday folks. We resent them. There is a clear segregation of haves and have-nots. It is my sense that segregation stems from the have nots just as much as it does from the haves.

But it also comes through in small insidious ways, like not having a rich dessert, or delicious piece of pizza, or high calorie meal. We go into areas of extreme self-regulation that gives us the feeling of being in control. It comes in how we accept gifts, “that’s too much, you shouldn’t have”. Not taking vacations, or buying name brands. Showing others how we need the smallest amount possible to get by is a key to belonging. I have long suspected some of these values were baked in recent times, just two generations or so ago. A result of the great depression followed by a great war. A population traumatized, and born from that trauma a new context to connect around.

Women in Blue Edvard Munch

Another value based program run alongside this one is finding ways to be useful. Keeping busy. Not slowing down for any reason. Couch surfing of any kind will get you called lazy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my mom just watching TV. She always has a project in her hands at the same time. People who luxuriate in baths and indulge in self-care are selfish. Modesty and busyness through service. That’s the key to holding worth in my mother’s eyes. And oh, I am anything but modest and busy on the outside. I have my inner rebellious teenager to thank for that one.

But on the inside, that programming had seeped in. It’s a really weird paradox to get the feeling of belonging based on how little you can get by on. And I’ve spent years unwinding it. Trying to expand my ability to “have”. To hold a greater capacity for havingness. To let myself receive what I desire. Or to even admit I had a desire in the first place. Accepting help, or gifts is a highly sensational thing for me, even still. But I am getting better at it. 

Somewhere along the way I realized this capacity to “have” mirrored my capacity to accept love. 

Let me say that again for the people in my region. My capacity to “have” what I truly desired, the whole bit, to have BIGLY, mirrored my capacity to accept love, and to love myself. 

Long Time Alone Edvard Munch

I’m a mythologist, and an archetypal astrologer. I’ve spent years not only studying archetypes but also embodying them. And when that astronomical lesson about “having” opened up, my next hit was, OF COURSE!!!, that’s why the Goddesses of Love are also associated with luxury and juicy, gooey, sensory experiences. Lakshmi, Aphrodite, Venus, Inanna were all masters at havingness. They didn’t just give love, they had the ability to accept it fully. To allow it to fully penetrate them. This was a huge fucking revelation for me. 

The next logical step for me, was to challenge myself to be open to being beheld, adored, accepting devotion from my partner, allowing my body to be worshipped, being a wide open YES to flowers and gifts from him. 

There are a myriad of ways we have shut down our ability to receive love. Trauma does much the same as my midwestern cultural upbringing. Stories about worth, or issues with trust, just to name a few. You don’t have to identify with my story, to find yourself within the mechanism of the shut down. And when in fact it happens, you feel yourself shrinking in the face of love, you can begin to track the impetus. Get curious about your story. Your reasons. And pose the same challenge to yourself. 

On the Veranda

Why this is relevant right now is because Venus is currently in Virgo. Virgo is the sign of the Priestess, and embodies the Archetype of the Sovereign Queen. Someone who is whole and complete to herself. A distortion or shadow aspect of this archetype that is super prevalent in the collective right now is the woman who doesn’t “NEED” anyone. Hyper-Vigilant, convinced she will make it entirely on her own.

My whole life I have been getting the message that I don’t want to get caught needing a man. That one of the worst things that could happen to me is to get stuck in a relationship and not be able to leave. The subtle message there is one of extreme self-sufficiency. That needing someone to lean on, meant that I was weak and that I had failed my gender. Every single woman I have worked with over the years is running this program to some degree or another. 

Our mother’s had finally been able to fully enter the workforce, and they were not going to be forced back into the kitchen. They thought they were giving their daughters a gift by instilling independence in them. But when does a good lesson go rotten? Where does independence get out of balance?

Another weird quirk in here is how codependency actually functions. On one side of the dynamic is the one who benefits, the one who is being enabled. And then we have the person who is the enabler. Doing more than their fair share, taking on the brunt of the responsibility both physically and emotionally. As women started entering the workforce, not only were they contributing a full time wage, they were often also doing the job as full time wife and mother. Household labor frequently wasn’t being divided equally. Which is actually how I believe my mother began to embody the archetype of the martyr. Always doing, depriving herself of love and desire. She became dry and brittle. A desert woman. And the sad thing is, for large swathes of the population, we still value all of these things. Women who are always cool, calm, and collected, strong and independent. 

Another shadow aspect of Venus in Virgo is the highly structured, highly disciplined woman. Someone who is watching her caloric intake, well groomed, restricting herself where necessary, in order to meet an idea of outward image of perfection. Rather than opening to the inherent perfection of life when we are in coherence with it, she is constantly trying to harness it, to capture or pin it down in some way. This is another area where we are at risk of becoming too rigid, too controlled, thereby shutting out aspects of our desire and longing, the precursors to love. 

Picture Print from Wayfair

So how do we water what once was a desert? Melt the ice and armor around our heart? Well I believe we look at the direct connection between the heart and the womb, or the Sacral, and Heart Chakras. How they work in tandem. The ancients have long known that there is a heart/womb connection. They both have a strong relationship to blood, our life force. They both function from an opening and a closing energetic perspective. Emotional stress, undigested experiences and a restless mind can affect reproductive health through the Womb-Heart relationship. They both long for things. We often say that we are getting what our “heart” desires, but we desire, crave, or long for sexual connection as well. 

I want to propose some medicine. In Clarissa Pinkola Estes' book “Women Who Run With The Wolves”, she has a chapter on the Dirty Goddess. The function of these Goddess’ were to bring in the Sacred Obscene. Not obscene in the way it’s used today, but these archetypes were the Sexual Jester’s. The loud, raunchy, joke tellers. The ones that could break the spell of depression or the hypnotic trance of dryness with eruptive belly laughter. The kind that begins in the bones and the belly then reverberates throughout the body. Estes tells the story of Buabo, the headless goddess, who could see from her Breasts and talk from her Vulva. Buabo is the one who broke the Rage- filled Trance of Demeter and allowed life to flourish once again. That’s an extremely powerful motif. Estes wrote “This is truly the kind of story I think Buabo told. Her repertoire includes anything that makes women laugh like that. Unrestrained, not caring about showing your tonsils, letting your belly hang out, letting your breasts shake. There is something about a sexual laugh that is different from a laugh about more tame things. A sexual laugh seems to reach both far and deep into the psyche, shaking all manner of things loose.” Estes goes on to write about the importance of sending the men away so the women can get together and have the deep intimacy required to create these laughs. 

Image of Baubo from Vice Magazine

Even if you aren’t able to create an environment to have sexual belly laughs with other women. Laughter truly is good medicine. It instantly heats and warms the body. It gets the blood going and leaves you refreshed and full of vitality. Closer to feeling the threads of deep desire and love. Sometimes when the news is all too much, or my husband is on my last nerve (love you honey) and I can’t get together for a deep session of obscene laughs, I find a really raunchy comedy to watch. They are available everywhere. On Netflix alone there are several. Give yourself the gift of laughter. Start there. Notice when you are in shut down, and then find a way to bring laughter into the body. I know it sounds like a ridiculous suggestion. Way too easy from a psychological perspective. I get it. We are used to transformation, and embodiment being hard. This month I am going with the prescription of Heart Chakra Openings based on Sacred Obscene Laughter.

Scared Obscene Art by Mike Bell

Deepening tools for the heart chakra

Patron Goddesses

Aphrodite (Greek) goddess of love and sexuality

Juno (Roman) Goddess of Love and Marriage

Frigga (Norse) was the wife of the all-powerful Odin, and was considered a goddess of fertility and marriage

Hathor (Egyptian) As the wife of the Sun God, Ra, Hathor is known in Egyptian legend as the patroness of wives and mothers, love, luxury and music

Lakshmi (Indian) Goddess of Love, Abundance, Luxury, Wealth, & Expansion

Quan Yin (Buddhist) Goddess of Compassion, Mercy, Love

Heart CHakra Practices

STONES TO SUPPORT AND OPEN THE HEART CHAKRA

Rose Quartz

Emerald

Green Aventurine

Rhodonite

Amazonite

Green Jade

Malachite

Moss Agate

Peridot

Practices and support for the heart Chakra

-Do a Loving Kindness Meditation

-Find ways to bring in more laughter. Gather with friends, or watch something you know will evoke rolling belly laughs.

-Begin to track in a journal the felt sense of your heart opening and closing. Like in moments of tenderness. What do you do immediately following that? Do you want to eat, or employ a distraction type coping skill, or are you able to savor the heart opening experience. If you are tempted to close immediately, challenge yourself to stay open by gently sitting with yourself the way a mother sits with a child.

-Practice empathy by asking “What if?”- We are in turbulent times, and it is all to easy to be critical of people with differing ideas who are acting out. Ask yourself what if a person is acting from a place of trauma, or wounding and projecting that on to you?

-Cultivate a greater sense of approval and permission for your own humanity. When you hear the voice of the critical self come in with judgement, answer back that you are allowed to not have it all together, that you are allowed to make mistakes. Have deep compassion for yourself.

-Watch a movie or listen to music that evokes an embodied response of tenderness in your heart.

-Chant the seed mantra YAM 108 times.