Venus in Pisces (or a Venus with harsh Neptune aspects)

Pictures: Our Lady of Sorrows

To have a Venus in Pisces (or harshly aspected by Neptune) is to be forever in love with what cannot exist in physical reality.

For these natives, the pain of longing for what cannot be is almost preferable to the ugliness of reality. Loneliness, too, is preferable to the spanning of time with a partner who does not love them. As a result, they often find themselves falling into one sided relationships with unavailable people; people who can never really disappoint them because the love is "doomed" from the start.

Venus in Pisces (or Venus with a strong harsh Neptune aspect) has a hard time knowing what they desire - they feel a deep spiritual yearning for something, but often once they grasp whatever they think that something is, it becomes tainted by reality. Oftentimes people with this placement or aspect don’t even want to or need to have sex with their loved one; in some ways the sex act itself is too real, too profane and too mammalian to be a part of their divine and idealized vision of love. For them, love and romance is a fairytale, a perfect dream that they want to escape into. The only problem is, this dream exists only in their own head - and often does not translate 100% into reality.

And that’s really what it is. Venus in Pisces (or harshly aspected by Neptune) idealizes everything they love - and they do not discriminate. Their loved ones can do no wrong to them in their eyes, and they will put up with endless amounts of abuse, rejection and indignity in the name of love. It’s easy for them to just ignore red flags and warning signs, even when they’re lined up and staring them in the face. The way they see it, these small human failings don’t matter. They pale in significance next to the vastness of love they feel and share for those they care for. It doesn’t matter how bad that person may be for them, or how unavailable. Heartbreak is perhaps Venus in Pisces’ most commonly felt emotion, next to infatuation; and these emotions may often be felt by Venus in Pisces at the same time, for the same person.

I chose the Mater Dolorosa, our Lady of Sorrows, to represent this aspect not only for her qualities in the Catholic tradition, but also for her syncretic analog in Haitian Vodou. There, she is known as Erzulie Freda, the Rada spirit of Love; and while I’m not an expert on Vodou, I can tell you that she is often portrayed as a spoiled, passionate lover who wants everything, but who is unable to achieve her heart’s most fervent wish. As a result, she always leaves a service in tears. In Catholicism, the Mother of Sorrows evokes the suffering of a mother for the death of her child, and the suffering of the Mother of Mankind for the sins and sorrows of the world. Her devotees call on her for healing from sorrow and disappointment, especially in love and motherhood. In our fractured human world, nothing ever works out the way we dream it will - and the currency of Venus in Pisces is idealism, escapism and dreams.

The greatest lesson for them is to learn to accept the reality of what it really means to love someone, as people living in a human world, inhabiting human bodies - they will find that the spark of divinity they seek still exists on Earth. Part of this too is learning to accept love from others, as well as giving it - to allow themselves to be seen, loved, and held the way they are willing to do for others. It’s not easy for them to accept an equal exchange.

This placement know that the type of love they seek is not "real" but they believe in it anyway, and in the better nature of people. They long to be "saved", cherished and beloved, but at their heart they know they will always be at least a little alone. The type of dissolving, merging love they desire only exists in the ideal platonic realm of Forms. Their vision of love mirrored in real life, it becomes ugly, malformed, codependent, twisted by natural human failings, marred by sexual desire and pursuit, perverted away from the perfect union of souls they wish for. This is why I think some of these people eventually find what they seek in mystical religious experiences, closeness to God, the perfection of God's love, and other Neptunian pursuits. Still, there is a part of them that always longs to be subsumed and lost in the human Other.

Some of these sentiments expressed beautifully by Rilke here:

You who never arrived
-Rainer Maria Rilke

You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of the next
moment. All the immense
images in me—the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,
cities, towers, and bridges, and un-
suspected turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods—
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me.
You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house—, and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me. Streets that I chanced upon,—
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled, gave back
my too-sudden image. Who knows? perhaps the same
bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening...

Where is Venus in your chart? Find out here:

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