Welcome To Taurus Season

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Hello, friends, and welcome to episode four of Darkness and Light. I'm your host, Wendy Rule, and this is a podcast about myth, Magic, and Nature. In this episode we'll continue our journey through the Taurus season as the Waning Moon leads us toward the Taurus Dark on May sixteenth. And with the goddess Aphrodite as our guide, we'll connect with the Magic and beauty of the physical world and explore the complex power of this ancient goddess. Thank you to all my regular listeners who are tuning in once again, and if you are new to this podcast, welcome. I'm so glad that you found your way here, and I'm going to suggest that when you have a moment you head back and listen to Episode One because that outlines the core philosophy of this podcast, which is that darkness and light are both equal and necessary parts of Nature. So let's tune in to the energy of our Lady Moon as she is waning, getting smaller and smaller, her light diminishing as she makes her way toward the Sun, meeting him at exactly the same astrological degree at the moment of the Dark Moon. She's invisible to us here on Earth at that point, and it's like the Sun and the Moon are having a private moment. And this private time, this inward time that the Moon is having reminds us to turn inward too. Every

Waning Moon And Letting Go

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Waning Moon is an opportunity for us to tune in to our inner world. So we still have about a week until then, but that gives us a chance to take stock of what it is that we want to release during this Waning Moon cycle. Just as the Moon is releasing her light, getting smaller and smaller every evening, we can let go of what no longer serves us as well. It's a time for calling in less of what we don't want in our lives. That might be less stress, less conflict, less poverty, less illness, less worry, and then by the time we get to that Dark Moon, it'll become very clear what it is that's still hanging around that really needs addressing so that we can start fresh with the new lunar cycle, and we get that opportunity every month. I love that a fresh, clean start every month. So that's where we are now as this podcast lands just over a week away from the Dark Moon. But if you're listening to this at any other time, that's absolutely fine. These cycles of the Sun and the Moon, they just keep turning and turning and turning. And I'm sure you'll find relevance in this episode no matter when you listen

Taurus And Spirit In Matter

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to it. But right now, as we are in Taurus season, let's get to know this sign a little. So Taurus is one of the three Earth signs, Taurus, Virgo, and Capricorn. And each of these signs has a different way of expressing that element of E arth, and Taurus's way is Fixed Earth - Earth that is content just to be. As an Earth sign, Taurus helps us to connect with the physical world, the beauty of the natural world, and also all the practicalities of life, how we feed ourselves, our finances, how we house ourselves. All the Earth signs really help us to attune and bring balance to these areas of our lives, but that Fixed energy of Taurus Earth has a really particular relationship with the physical world. It delights in the energy of the physical world. It recognizes and helps us to recognize that Spirit is held within matter as well as without it. That Taurus energy reminds us of the immanence of Spirit, that matter is an expression of S pirit, of God, of Goddess, however you like to think of that. So we can connect with the energy of the divine, with the Cosmos, with the Universe, by connecting with the physical - and that includes our bodies as well - that we can find the energy of the divine within ourselves. That we're divine, that we're Spirit as well. And our bodies aren't just containers for that Spirit. They are Spirit. We see Spirit playing out in body, in mountain, in flower, in tree, in animal. It's all Spirit. Historically, most religions really focus on the transcendence of Spirit that we need to remove ourselves, move beyond the body, ignore the gifts of the physical world to tap into that energy of the divine. But this Taurean energy reminds us now we can find the divine right here on Earth, within us and in the world around us.

Venus As Morning And Evening Star

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So the sign of Taurus is ruled by the planet Venus. And Venus is just so gorgeous. At the moment she is the Evening Star. Venus is the brightest object in our skies after the Sun and the Moon. We see her as the Evening Star, we see her as the Morning Star. And whether she's in her Morning Star phase or her Evening Star phase, or has disappeared altogether for a while - which she does, she goes through phases like the Moon - whichever phase she is in, wherever she appears in our sky, she holds the energy of beauty itself. She is beauty. So she's Venus, the goddess to the Romans, but before then she's Aphrodite to the Greeks, and she has an even older heritage which we will be exploring in this episode. So in Greek mythology, Aphrodite, who's represented by this planet by what we call Venus, is the goddess of beauty, love, and sexuality. She is the energy of connection. She draws one thing to another. She's a primal force of creation. When we think of Venus, what might come to mind are images like Botticelli's 'Birth of Venus', where she's there, beautiful naked, her golden red hair wrapped around her, emerging out of the sea. We might think of the statue the Venus de Milo, and these are both gorgeous and they definitely hold that Venusian energy, but they also give a little bit of a distorted view of what that primal energy of Aphrodite, of Venus is. She is that Life force that draws lovers together, but that also connects cultures. That primal force of connection, of blending and sharing and merging is that primal energy of creation. And as we explored in the last episode, that energy of creation, of Life is both life and death. And Aphrodite holds that energy too, especially in her older forms which we'll explore. And her origin story, which is pretty gruesome really, hints

The Violent Birth Of Aphrodite

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at this union of life and death. So in Greek myth, this is how she came about. The Earth, Gaia and the sky, Ouranos are lovers, but Gaia objects to Ouranos laying over her and continually impregnating her. She feels stifled. And so, and this is rather ghastly, she gets her son, Kronos to castrate Ouranos, and when his genitals fall into the sea, out of the sizzling water and the foam that arises when that primal energy of sky falls down into sea, that's how Aphrodite is born. She's born of the sea foam. She's born of the severed genitals of the sky god Ouranos. So it's a very violent way for the goddess of love and beauty to come into the world. It's that connection between sex and death, darkness and light. So then, as we see in Botticelli's beautiful painting of the Birth of Venus, she arrives glorious, floating on her seashell and landing on the shore of the island of Cyprus, Kypros as it's known in Greek. But her journey to Cyprus historically is a long one. She's connected to some very ancient goddesses. We're going to explore them in a minute. But first of all, let's get to know this actual planet, this Venus, and the energy that she holds and what she has to teach us.

The Planet Venus

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Venus is the second planet from the Sun, which means that she is within the Earth's orbit. And that means that from our view here on Earth, as I mentioned, she goes through phases. She comes and goes, appearing and disappearing. She is change and in that way she is life and death, emergence and disappearance. And there's this really amazing thing that happens with those phases as viewed from Earth, this relationship of Venus, Earth and Sun. Her cycle from Morning Star and then getting closer to the Sun, disappearing for a while, then reemerging as Evening Star, and then reversing that closer to the Sun and reemerging as Morning Star, that cycle from Morning Star to Morning Star again takes five hundred and eighty-four Earth days. So every eight Earth years Venus goes through five of these cycles.

Venus Cycles And The Sacred Rose

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And here's this incredible thing. Every time that she re-emerges as Morning Star, it is seventy-two degrees of a circle away from where she last was. So over the course of those five Venus cycles, eight Earth years, there's these five points in the sky, and if you map them out where she emerges as Morning Star, it makes a five pointed star, a pentacle, which is a symbol for magic in modern Paganism, and also is just beautiful. It's amazing geometry. This pattern, this eight year pattern of Venus through the skies is referred to as the Rose of Venus. Isn't that lovely? So the rose family of plants contains so many of the things that we associate with beauty and deliciousness and lusciousness in the physical world. So the rose, fragrant and gorgeous. Also the apple is part of that family, and the apple is strongly associated with Aphrodite, turns up in her myths, especially a golden apple. Also the pomegranate is part of that same rosacea family. They all have the number five connected with them. Five petals on the apple and the pomegranate. When you cut an apple across sideways, you get a beautiful five pointed star and the pomegranate based on five and last episode we explored that sacred energy of the pomegranate in association with the goddess Persephone and her Underworld journey. But the pomegranate is also sacred to Aphrodite because it is that lusciousness that is life and also blood red like death. So within that same family of plants we have apricots and plums and raspberries and strawberries and blackberries. We also have the almond, and the almond as a symbol is connected with Aphrodite as well, because it was seen as representing the sacred yoni, the female genitals, that sacred yoni, the doorway of life. So this five pointed star of the planet Venus, we see it playing out on Earth in all this beauty and loveliness and fragrance.

The Poet Sappho

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In ancient Greece, in the seventh century BCE, there was a poet called Sappho. She was a famous poet and she wrote so beautifully about love. Many fragments of her beautiful poems have survived, and in one of them, the Hymn to Aphrodite, she speaks directly to the Goddess. She has this relationship with Aphrodite, and I love that. I love this fact it's this millennia later that we're witnessing this relationship that this human woman, this extremely brilliant poet, had with the Goddess. And that's how I like to be with the energies of the living world, my connection with Moon, with Venus, that they're living energies that I am building relationship with. And we see this here with Sappho. I'm gonna read a little bit of this Hymn to Aphrodite. Listen how lusciously she describes Aphrodite's temple.

Sappho’s Hymn And Sensual Devotion

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So she's appealing directly to the goddess to Aphrodite, and she says Leave Crete and come here to this holy temple, with your graceful grove of apple trees and altars smoking with frankincense. Icy water babbles through apple branches and roses lay shadow on the ground, and bright shaking leaves pour down profound sleep. Here is a meadow where horses graze amid wild blossoms of the Spring, and soft winds blow the aroma of honey. Aphrodite, take the nectar and delicately pour it into gold wine cups and mingle joy with our celebration. So that's from Sappho, seventh century BCE, writing on the island of Lesbos, which is where we get the word lesbian from because Sappho was a lover of women. How appropriate for our beautiful Aphrodite. And to me this relishing of the beauty, the fragrance, the lusciousness of the physical world, that really exemplifies Taurus.

Inanna - Ancient Mesopotamian Goddess

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Long before Aphrodite placed her beautiful feet on the shores of Cyprus, there were goddesses connected with that same planet that we call Venus. In ancient Mesopotamia, which is modern Iraq, the Goddess Inanna emerged out of the Sumerian culture, and she's a goddess not only of love but also of war. And that Sumerian Goddess Inanna later became known as Ishtar in the Akkadian and Babylonian worlds, and in the Phoenician civilization, in the area that's now Lebanon, a very closely related goddess was known as Astarte. The stories of Inanna are the oldest known written accounts that we have of a goddess. We are going back to hymns that were created in two thousand three hundred BCE, so over four thousand years ago, actual written accounts of this Goddess, this Goddess who is connected with that very same planet, Venus. She's known as the Queen of Heaven, and what's really amazing about these ancient hymns is that we actually know the name of the woman who wrote many of these that have travelled down to us. Her name was Enheduana, a human woman from around two thousand three hundred BCE, a priestess who wrote sacred hymns to the goddess Inanna. They were written in the Sumerian language, carved into clay tablets using the cuneiform alphabet, and in these hymns Enheduana speaks of Inanna as a Goddess of Love, of power, and of transformation. Here's a little snippet of one of those hymns. Lady of all the divine powers, resplendent light, righteous woman clothed in radiance, Mistress of Heaven, you have seized all the divine powers. I am Enheduana. I will pray to you. I will let my tears stream free. The decision is yours. How amazing that we have these words from this woman who actually names herself, the first known named author that we're aware of, directly speaking to the Goddess Inanna, just as Sappho was directly speaking to the Goddess Aphrodite, the same planet that comes and goes, that changes.

Love And War In One Deity

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And we spoke last episode about these ancient goddesses who are life and death. And for Inanna and Ishtar, this is expressed as being goddesses of both love and war. We might think how can these things, how can these energies be held within the one goddess? They seem so different. They seem so opposite, love and war. But these are goddesses of Nature, of life and death. One of the most incredible stories about Inanna, which we will absolutely explore later on in this podcast, I think it really deserves its own episode, is the story of her descent into the Underworld to meet her Underworld sister, Ereshkigal. So Inanna is dressed in all her beauty and then she's called to descend and goes through this process of death and of rebirth. She's both above and below. She's a Goddess of Heaven and of Earth. In one of Inanna's ancient hymns with a modern name of the courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi, Dumuzi being her lover who is a shepherd. There's this gorgeous piece of poetry that is so clear and so celebratory of sexuality, of the body. This ancient hymn from four thousand plus years ago. My honeyman My Honeyman sweetens me always My Lord, the honeyman of the gods, he's the one my womb loves best. His hand is honey, his foot is honey, he sweetens me always. My eager, impetuous caresser of the navel, my caresser of the soft thighs. He is the one my womb loves best. He is lettuce planted by the water. There's this reveling in the physical world, this delight in the body, and there's no shame at all expressed in this. She's the energy of Venus brought down to Earth, embodied in all its beauty.

Aphrodite and Ares - Venus and Mars

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Inanna and Ishtar are fierce goddesses. They are not floating gently on a seashell, naked and lovely, they're fierce and all powerful. As Enheduana says in her hymn, 'you have seized all the divine powers'. And then there's this part of the hymn - The Exaltation of Inanna as it's come to be known- about Inanna's war like aspect: You spew venom on a country like a dragon. Wherever you raise your voice like a tempest, no crop is left standing. You are a deluge bearing that country away. You are the Sovereign of Heaven and Earth. You are their Warrior Goddess. But by the time we get to Aphrodite, wh o really arrives on those shores via the Phoenician culture, and her connection to their goddess Astarte, also connected with the planet Venus, and the Phoenicians were an amazing seafaring civilization. They were that energy of connection. They were merchants, travelling from that coast of what we now call Lebanon, going all the way out to Gibraltar all throughout the Mediterranean. The Phoenicians were sharing and exchanging products across cultures, and of course, that also means stories and gods. So it's very likely that Aphrodite arrived on Cyprus via the Phoenicians. Maybe that's why she arrives by sea, because they're a seafaring culture. So by the time Aphrodite arrives and is born as part of the Greek pantheon, that energy that was held within a single goddess in the Sumerian and Akkadian and Babylonian and Phoenician cultures has been split, and Aphrodite is the Goddess of love and beauty and sexuality, and that war aspect, that death aspect in a way, has been removed from her story. But it's really interesting that she still teams up with the god Ares, who is the God of War, and chooses him as her lover. So Ares and Aphrodite are this pairing that together create a union of love and war, and we see exactly that same pairing in Roman mythology with Venus and Mars. And it's interesting too for those of us who are into astrology, that the planet Venus is the ruling planet of not only Taurus, but also Libra. So we explored that Taurus Scorpio polarity last episode with the Beltane and Samhain festivals. Well that polarity, which we explored as life and death, in modern astrology, Scorpio is ruled by the planet Pluto, who is connected to the Underworld, the energies of the Underworld, so there's that death energy. But before Pluto was discovered in the nineteen thirties, the ancient ruler of Scorpio was the planet Mars or Ares. So there was that union, that polarity of Taurus Scorpio as Venus and Mars. And then the same thing happens with the other sign that Taurus rules with Libra. Libra sits opposite Aries in the zodiac wheel, and Aries is ruled by Mars. So again, we have Venus and Mars united on this one axis, seemingly opposite and yet connected. So you know I kind of feel like these ancient, very complex goddesses - Inanna Ishtar, Astarte - that in their transformation into the goddess that we know as Aphrodite or as Venus, that that energy of death, of war gets split off from Aphrodite, but she's still drawn to it. We see that union in the love affair between Aphrodite and Aries, between Venus and Mars, and we still use those expressions of love and war together, you know, love is a battlefield.

Aphrodite and the Trojan War

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And let's not forget that it was Aphrodite who actually started the Trojan war between the Trojans and the Greeks. There was a competition between herself, the goddess Athena and the goddess Hera, and they asked the young Trojan prince, Paris, to choose which of them was the most beautiful, and he chose Aphrodite and as a prize, Aphrodite offered him the most beautiful woman in the world, who was Helen of Sparta. But the tricky thing is that Helen was already married to King Menelaus of Sparta. So when Paris goes over to Sparta and is welcomed as a guest in Menelaus's palace, he then seduces Helen and they fall in love and they elope, and Menelaus has to protect his honour. And all the great warriors of that period in Greek myth, Agamemnon, Odysseus, Achilles, and many, many more, they had sworn an oath to protect the honour of whoever won Helen's hand in marriage, so they were obliged on their honour to go and get her back, and this is what began the Trojan War, lasted ten years. And I want to make it really clear now. I'm talking about these ancient goddesses that I really do love, especially Inanna, as a goddess of love and war, but I definitely don't love war. Maybe with Aphrodite losing that war aspect and becoming a goddess of peace and love and grace and beauty, maybe the fact that she teams up with Ares is an attempt to settle that warring energy, to externalize it and then bring peace to it. I'm not sure. What I do know now though is that we could do with less war in our world. We could do with more peace and more love and more beauty.

Cyprus, Copper, And Cultural Exchange

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So when Aphrodite arrived in all her glory on the island of Cyprus, which is her centre of worship, her main temple was in an area of Cyprus called Paphos, there's evidence of an ancient fertility god on Cyprus that dates back to at least three and a half thousand years BCE. Many gorgeous statues have been discovered at these ancient temple sites that represent this fertile energy that became associated in later times with Aphrodite. And Aphrodite is an ancient goddess. She's mentioned by Homer and Hesiod, so we're going back at least seven hundred BCE, and that's for the written account. But this connection with fertility, with these fertile goddesses is way older than that. So her temple on Cyprus makes a lot of sense, a beautiful, lush Mediterranean climate that's known for its springtime flowers and orchards of fig and olive and pomegranate. It's very much in keeping with Aphrodite. And there's another really interesting thing about Cyprus that is connected with Aphrodite. Aphrodite's sacred metal is copper. And copper is a natural conductor of energy, you know, of electricity. It's very malleable and soft. It's got this energy of connection, and Cyprus, certainly in the ancient world, had one of the largest reserves of copper in the known world. And also copper is very beautiful. It can be polished until it reflects like a mirror. Aphrodite's symbol which is a circle with a cross beneath it. That's her symbol in astronomy and astrology that has now come to represent women, female. We see it on bathroom doors. But that symbol is also the ancient alchemical symbol for the metal which is copper. And even the Latin name for copper, which is cuprum, that literally means metal of Cyprus, and the modern scientific symbol for copper, which is a C and any small U, that comes from the Latin cuprum, metal of Cyprus, metal of Aphrodite. It's fitting for the copper isle, for Aphrodite's Isle of Cyprus to be a melting pot, a meeting place of cultures. Its location in the southeastern Mediterranean means that it became a melting pot for the Mediterranean cultures, Middle Eastern cultures, the cultures of the Levant, and Northern Africa, including Egypt. And so all these cultures could be exchanging, sharing their stories and their resources.

Bronze Age Shadows Of Venus

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One of the most important uses for copper in the ancient world was in the creation of bronze. So bronze is a mixture of roughly ninety percent copper and ten percent tin. And that union of copper and tin makes bronze, which is a very strong metal, and that metal was turned into weaponry which led to the Bronze Age. This was an age of war, of conflict. There was a tumultuous time on Earth, the Bronze Age, it caused the end of many civilizations, the Great Bronze Age collapse. So beginnings and endings, comings and goings, love and war. So Aphrodite is still connected to that through her sacred metal, and she's strongly connected to metallurgy. Many of her ancient temples are near forges or mines. In Greek mythology it's interesting that she's married to the god Hephaestus, who becomes Vulcan to the Romans where we get the name volcano, and he's the god of the forge, and he's known as an ugly god, but he makes beautiful things. And mining itself is ugly. It tears open the Earth, but out of it comes these gorgeous metals and jewels. And so metalwork and goldsmithing and the creation of beautiful jewelry became associated with Aphrodite and especially in the Roman world with Venus, who was a really major goddess in the Roman world. She became associated with the trappings of luxury, of expensive jewels, of pleasure, of comfort, of excess, of hedonism.

Taurus Shadow: Greed And Hoarding

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And this is where we get to the shadow side of that Taurian love of the physical world. And every Dark Moon does give us an opportunity to explore our own shadow and the shadow associated with the sign that the Sun and Moon are hanging out in. So with that beautiful Taurian love of the physical world can also come an overly strong attachment to the physical world, of needing to possess, of needing to own, of accumulation. And we're living right now in a culture of accumulation, of more is more, of greed, a culture of billionaires of all things. This is a distortion of that lovely Venusian Taurean relationship with the physical world, of needing to have, to own, to accumulate, to hoard. This fear of not enough, of holding on too tightly, of needing more and more and more, of our sense of worth being attached to what we own, of success being judged by wealth and owning is seen as an achievement in itself. To be the richest person in the world, it's toxic. It's an ugly expression of physical form. And the antidote to all this? Generosity. To share, to delight in the physical world, to take pride in our beautiful things, but also to know when enough is enough, to share our resources, to gift. There's a very fitting story, ancient myth that aligns with this theme.

King Midas And The Curse Of More

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It's the myth of King Midas. So in this myth, King Midas expresses kindness to a drunken satyr called Silenus, and it ends up that he is a companion, a priest of the god Dionysus, the god of ecstasy, of wine of excess. So when Dionysus finds out about Midas' kindness, he offers him a reward of a wish. And Midas, foolishly, asks that everything that he touches will turn to gold. Dionysus grants him this wish. And indeed, everything he touches does turn to gold. He picks up a rock from the ground, and lo and behold, it becomes a gleaming lump of pure gold. He touches a beautiful scented rose and is delighted to see its petals turn to gold. But then he picks up food and it too turns to gold. And he realizes he cannot eat. His chalice of wine, again, gold. But it's when he realizes that he cannot touch his beloved daughter, that she too will turn to gold, that he begs Dionysus to reverse this gift. So Dionysus goes and tells him to wash in a sacred river, and the spell is removed. And Midas realizes all that he had was already precious, more precious than gold, it was life. It's a story of excess, the horror of having too much, and also of a lack of discernment, of not knowing what we really want.

Practical Taurus Dark Moon Release

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When we tap into this energy of Aphrodite, she can help us align with what it is that we truly desire, that connects with our deepest soul-selves. That aligns with our values. That isn't just about ownership and more. And I love, too, in this myth, that the antidote to this is to bathe in this river and have it wash away. To be in the flow. To let things come and let things go. It's when we hold on too tightly that our connection with the physical world becomes distorted, becomes toxic. Let's use the energy of this Waning Moon as it wanes toward the Taurus Dark. Let's use this energy to take stock of what we have in our lives, to offer gratitude for the beautiful things that we own, for the delicious food that we eat, for the gifts of our bodies, and to recognize what it's time to let go of. On a practical level, this Dark Moon is a great time to clear our clutter, to let go of what we no longer need, to go through our wardrobe and rehome things that we've outgrown that are no longer our style, and offer them to someone else to enjoy, to clear our homes of excess, to take a run to the thrift store - the op shop - and give away what you no longer need so that someone else can enjoy that lovely item, so that its life can continue. We can r e-home, repurpose, we can share. And on an inner level we can let go of any fear of not enough, any fear of lack, and trust in that bountiful energy of Earth. Trust that there will always be roses and raspberries and peaches and pomegranates, that the Earth is giving and we don't need to hoard, that there's plenty for everyone as long as we share. And on a global level, we can call for greater equality between the haves and have nots, that those who have way too much will finally learn like King Midas, that there is greater joy in recognizing the flow of life, that when everything is gold, we can discover that we actually have nothing.

Venusian Rituals And Body Reverence

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Last episode I suggested a releasing spell where we write down what we no longer wish to have in our lives and we burn that away. Well Taurus as an earth sign, we can bury that little piece of paper that we've written what we no longer want to hold on to, and we can return that to earth like compost. She can transform that energy back into life. We can be liberated by letting go of what we're holding on to. And I'm going to suggest at this beautiful Taurus time, this Taurus season, that we also take some time to honor Aphrodite Venus by tuning into the energy of beauty, by giving time to creating beauty in our lives. Delight your senses with roses and incense and chocolate. Enjoy the art of beautification. Take a long bath with lovely oils. Wear your favorite outfit, and of course this energy of Venus is not restricted to women. This is within all of us, all genders. There's actually some interesting expressions of Aphrodite or Ishtar in the ancient world that have an hermaphrodite quality because she is that energy of connection. She's life and death, love and war, above and below. And this Taurus Dark Moon is the perfect time to release any kind of body shaming towards ourselves or towards anybody else. All bodies are sacred. We are all an expression of Aphrodite, of Venus, of Spirit. All sizes and shapes and colors and genders. We are all Spirit in form. And of course, the easiest way to honor this Taurus energy, this Spirit expressed in form is simply to enjoy the world around you, to notice, to take the time to look at the details. And that cliche is so appropriate for this Taurus season. Stop and smell the roses.

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A Gentle Meditation

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Before we do our tarot reading for this episode, how about we take a moment just to give thanks to our bodies, just as we are right now. We're alive. Our bodies are keeping us alive. Give thanks to your hands, to your feet, to your legs, to your arms, to your belly, to your back, to your unique and precious face, to all your senses, eyes and ears and nose, to touch and taste, to all of our internal organs doing their miraculous work of keeping us alive. Every part of us sacred. Every part of you, every part of me, sacred.

Tarot Pull: Six Of Pentacles

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Alright, I'm gonna shuffle these tarot cards right now, and I'm gonna ask the Universe what we are meant to know right now, what might be helpful for us as we lead towards this Taurus Moon or whenever you're listening to this. What might be helpful? And because it is the Waning Moon, let's think about what energy we need to be aware of in our process of letting go of excess. Alright, here we go. Okay, let's see what's on the top. Oh, this is absolutely perfect. Uncanny, really. It is the Six of Pentacles. So I am reading from the Smith Rider Waite deck, and it has an image of a man standing up dressed in really quite luscious robes. He has the energy of like a medieval merchant or something like that, an elaborate headdress. In one hand he holds a set of scales, and in the other some coins, and at his feet are two people who are begging, one on either side of him, and he looks down at one of them, and he drops some coins into this person's hands. And what's interesting about this, and there are six stars surrounding the the head of this guy, the scales are exactly straight. There's a sense of evenness and equality. So he has more than he needs, and he is giving this away. He's giving away what would create imbalance. He's giving away what he feels will bring. And I'm using he here 'cause there's a picture of a man, but of course could be she, they. They're giving away what they feel is too much. They're sharing. And there's still a sense of imbalance. There's still two people begging and one guy in rich clothes with many coins, but there's a movement towards addressing that imbalance by sharing. It's really honestly quite an amazing card considering what we've just been talking about. I love the way Tarot works like that. So pretty clear message here. Share. Step into generosity. Where can you help someone out? Where can you show kindness by sharing your resources? That doesn't have to be money, that can be time, energy, love. And I really think that this scale that he's holding, this set of scales is a real clue. We don't want to give away more than we feel we're able to. We don't want to feel depleted. It's about releasing what we know we can do without. So you know we think about these horrible billionaires that are in our lives at this point on Earth, these Bezos's and Elon Musk's etc. What are they not getting? They're not getting this. They're not understanding that there's joy in giving, that it brings harmony, and Venus, Aphrodite, is a goddess of peace and harmony, of love as well as all that destructive energy in her older forms. She still is the goddess of love and grace and beauty and peace. So yeah, I think the key, the antidote to a distorted relationship with Earth, with matter, with form, with stuff, is generosity and gratitude, delighting in the physical world, but not being enslaved by it. Knowing how sacred the physical world is, that Spirit is imminent, but knowing that we don't have to cling to that physical world either.

Patreon Thanks And Closing

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And now speaking of generosity, very convenient segue after that card, I would like to express my gratitude for the generosity of my wonderful Patreon community who keep this show afloat. I don't have any advertising, I've chosen not to do that, so that we can stay in the flow, in this mythic flow. But I can only do that because of the support of my Patreon community, and you too can become a Patreon member if you have the means, and if you don't, that's totally fine too. It's a free podcast, and I want it to stay that way. And luckily there are folks out there who are willing to put their money where their heart is and support this work. And you can become a Patreon member for about the cost of a cup of coffee each month. So check that out at patreon.com forward slash Wendy Rule. I will put a link, of course, in the show notes, as well as other helpful things like links to some of the songs that I've written that relate to these Venusian themes. So I'd love you to check those out. But most importantly, thank you so much for turning up, for spending this time with me. I really am grateful, and I'll see you back here in two weeks' time. Blessed Be.