Venus in Taurus

Venus enters Taurus today!

Taurus is one of two zodiac signs ruled by Venus. (The other is Libra.) When planets are in a sign they rule, their energies are at their strongest. Venus is a “benefic” planet, meaning that we experience her energy easily and positively. So her being strong is a good thing. When Venus is in Taurus or Libra, she can distribute her gifts easily and abundantly. That’s great for your creative and romantic life. If you have Libra or Taurus rising, or Venus in the first house, it’s a particularly wonderful time for you. (If you don’t know what your birth chart looks like and you want to know more about it, just ask me!)

With Venus in one of her rulership signs, the forces of magnetism are at their peak power. People feel a certain heady magic in the spring and in the fall, and this is in part due to Venus being particularly strong at these times. Venus entering Taurus is the true harbinger of spring. She brings the magic!

To understand the zodiac signs, it helps to imagine them as physical and emotional landscapes. Taurus is a lush and verdant paradise. The fantasy “jungle” paintings of 19th-century artist Henri Rousseau represent Taurus energy well. Rousseau’s images burst with abundant plant and animal life. The human life in his paintings is mysterious, primordial, and, significantly for Taurus (which rules the vocal cords), musical — as in my favorite painting of his, The Snake Charmer, above. Taurus is an instinctual place where animals attack. But it’s also seductive. Remember, it’s ruled by Venus, the goddess of love.

Over next few weeks, we’ll watch our early spring landscape transform into a Taurean paradise. These are the gifts that Venus brings (although the Sun entering Taurus in about a week helps warm up that Taurus landscape, too).

Why is it so hard to read cards for yourself?

It’s very difficult to read cards for yourself. I can do it now, in a pinch, but I’ve been reading cards for twenty years, and even so, reading for myself is sailing through choppy waters.

Why do you need someone else to read for you? Well, you need a certain amount of objectivity to give a good psychic reading. It’s hard to be objective about oneself because our egos get in the way. By “ego,” I mean the confused part of us, full of desires and fears.

At the center of Buddhist mandalas, you can see the ego represented as a pig, a bird, and a snake intertwined, symbolizing ignorance, desires, and aversions. These ego feelings are so strong inside us and they go on all the time. They block a lot of other input.

When you’re reading for someone else, the pig, the bird, and snake aren’t so strong. (Notice that, on a symbolic level, the pig, bird, and snake are all simple, “lower” type animals, animals that operate on instinct.) Reading for someone else, those feelings can step aside and allow deeper feelings, psychic feelings to come in.

Yes, you can get into the correct mindset reading for yourself also, but it’s difficult. Experiencing a shock will make the pig, bird, and snake go poof for a little while, during which you can sometimes get a very clear reading about yourself. But they’ll creep right back in and start to run the show, because that’s what they do. They make insight very difficult. This is why it’s good to have help.

Psychic Readings And How They Work

Psychic readings are real. They are real and older than humanity itself. But there’s nothing special about them. Psychic abilities are just feelings. We all have feelings, including psychic feelings. A psychic reading is just someone tuning into their psychic feelings for you.

Imagine yourself among your ancestors, living in a cave or a mud hut in a vast plain, sleeping close around a guttering fire. Tonight you’re all hungry. So hungry you can’t sleep. Tomorrow you need to hunt. If you can’t pick off an antelope or wild pig, you will need to find some other food, mushrooms or berries or grubs. The tribe depends on it. 

Where will you go when morning comes? You know where the antelope live because you know your land, but you also have to rely on your psychic feelings. Where are the berries? Can you find more by the river today or should you look in the opposite direction? Your feelings are your only guide. Your feelings arise spontaneously -- usually as sensations in the body, sometimes as images or words. 

Your elders taught that you can trust these feelings. This was how human beings lived for two hundred thousand years. We lived outdoors, most of the time, with lots of sensory input like calling birds and snapping twigs and rushing rivers and, occasionally, approaching predators. Our lives depended on our senses, including our psychic senses. These senses saved our lives.

Today, our lives are exquisitely comfortable. We have private bedrooms, air conditioning, and refrigerators. But we feel a deep unease. We are separate from other people, from plants and animals, from the weather and the earth. We all know this. There is no obvious solution, not one that will work for everyone on the crowded, polluted earth.

Psychic feelings have fallen into disuse. Modern humans rarely notice psychic feelings or realize what they are. Some fear them because they have heard that psychic readings can be wrong.

Experienced readers know that raw psychic data is almost never wrong. Our interpretations can be incorrect. If you go back to the original spontaneous feeling, image, or word, it will be relevant and helpful to your life. The more experience one has interpreting psychic feelings, the more correct one’s interpretation can be. This is why older readers are revered. Generally, it takes time and practice to learn.

Many modern people still believe in powers greater than themselves. People call these beings gods, spirits, or guides. Sometimes the guides appear as our own ancestors or as parts of our selves. They are all our teachers. Some are fierce. They all demand respect or they will withdraw. If you interact sincerely, they come closer. Through your psychic feelings, you can get in touch with these beings. A good psychic reader can show you how, if you can’t feel your way yourself. In these times, it’s difficult.

It’s unknown whether the gods exist only inside us or if they can also affect the material world, but people who enter deep relationship with them usually come to believe in their objective reality. Psychologist Carl Jung called these beings “archetypes,” a scientific-sounding term that modern people are sometimes more comfortable with than “spirits” or “gods.” Jung believed that, whatever they are, these archetypes evolved along with us and that relationship with them will heal us, help us evolve, and restore our connection to the whole Universe. If we have a chance as a species, it is through these higher intelligences and through using our own neglected ways of knowing.