Three in the Bed: Venus, Mars and…

On Monday, the Sun enters Libra, whose ruling planet, Venus, was brought to wide public awareness as a psychological principle in 1993 by John Gray’s book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Like Gray, astrology often pairs Venus with Mars — ruler of Libra’s opposite sign, Aries. Both symbolize the instinctive ways we seduce, pair up with, oppose and work productively with other people. But they do it in completely different ways.

Venus tends to draw the other in with magnetism and charm, creating an atmosphere that will naturally unfold in the desired way. Opposition is met with negotiation and compromise.

Mars, on the other hand, is more direct. It identifies the goal and sets about achieving it. Obstacles get removed, not negotiated.

I hope you noticed that I didn’t use gender pronouns in the preceding two paragraphs. Yes, women and men have been socialized in the obvious directions, but I think it’s unfortunate that Gray chose to pigeonhole each gender into one archetype alone. The truth is, we all have both types of energy at our disposal (never mind the fact that not every relationship is made up of one man and one woman). Understanding and owning both energies, and being able to choose which to employ from moment to moment, would be enormously helpful, and even empowering, no matter who you’re in bed with.

Okay. I know this post seems about 15 years too late, but I wasn’t yet blogging in 1993, and besides, I want to talk about the third one in the bed. Because when Venus and Mars get jealous, defensive and angry — as they’re likely to in the coming weeks, being in each other’s signs and all –that’s when shadow material comes out in unconscious and destructive ways. If these planets are hitting any sensitive points in your own chart, you could be in for some serious conflict learning moments.

In psychology and astrology, we like to say, “You marry your shadow.” But Venus wasn’t married to Mars in ancient myth. She was married to Vulcan. And he’s been in the bed ever since.

Venus was born of the churning sea foam but chose to be a goddess of the sky instead of the water — a horizontal energy reflected in her rulership of Libra and the 7th house. Vulcan, on the other hand, was born on Mount Olympus to Juno, who found him so ugly and deformed that she threw him off a cliff into the sea: a deep and vertical energy if there ever was one. One came out of the sea at birth; the other went in.

So already, the couple’s birth stories have them going in different directions: Opposites attracting, or at least being compelled into couplehood. Venus went on to play out much of her divine drama with earthly humans — a beautiful, social, sought-after goddess — whereas Vulcan made his life solitary and underground, shunning the other gods, harboring anger about being rejected.

But, because they were human(ish), both of them longed for love.

Venus was empowered from the start: Did she want water or sky? Feeling worthy of respect and deserving of choice, she found that love came easily. Men and gods flocked to her feet. But when they didn’t, her jealousy arose quickly: Perhaps she relied too much on beauty and charm. Perhaps there was a bit of uncertainty below the surface. Did she really deserve love? Or was it just her beauty they were after?

For Vulcan, there was no such uncertainty. He knew he was unworthy, and grew resentful and angry toward everyone as a result (with a special hatred for the goddess who had birthed him, then rejected him). Vulcan holed up in a cave, silent and removed, working his forge but having little contact with gods or humans. Even his marriage to the goddess of love and beauty, Venus herself, was not enough to convince him: It was arranged by Jupiter, after all, and his new wife continued unabated her habit of coupling with a wide variety of men and gods. One of those gods was Mars.

Strong, athletic, handsome and confident, Mars was everything Vulcan was not. Once, fed up with the affair, Vulcan caught Venus and Mars in bed together and trapped them with a golden net he had made in his forge. He called the other gods to come and laugh at them:

“Father Jove,” he cried, “and all you other blessed gods … come here and see the ridiculous and disgraceful sight that I will show you. Jove’s daughter Venus is always dishonouring me because I am lame. She is in love with Mars, who is handsome and clean built, whereas I am a cripple … Come and see the pair together asleep on my bed. It makes me furious to look at them. They are very fond of one another, but I do not think they will lie there longer than they can help, nor do I think that they will sleep much; there, however, they shall stay till her father has repaid me the sum I gave him for his baggage of a daughter, who is fair but not honest.” (Source)

The gods did come and laugh, and Mars eventually compensated Vulcan for the transgression (please, don’t get me started on that).

Though Mars is often cast as Venus’s opposite, in a way they were very alike in their self-possession, sensuality and extraversion. And though I believe that Venus and Vulcan are quite opposite in some respects, both seem to draw their sense of self-worth from their association with beauty. Venus is lucky in this regard while Vulcan is not.

In a way, Venus and Vulcan are the original Beauty and the Beast, the archetype of projection itself. Venus can’t own or abide ugliness in herself or the world, yet she is compelled to marry it. She has to contend with its existence in the world. Even the goddess of beauty cannot live on beauty alone.

For his part, Vulcan can’t stand the beautiful, because he doesn’t see it reflected in the mirror, but he persists in making it, capturing it and controlling it. If he cannot be it, he will have it. But because he cannot own his own beauty, his encounter with it in the world only deepens his self-hatred.

Each one resents and despises the other for the things they cannot own in themselves.

Owning your own beauty and your own ugliness is essential to the balance for which Libra is renowned. Reclaiming your projections — your sense that beauty is out there, not within — from beauty magazines, from people you envy, from your own sense of inadequacy — is the hard work of Libra.

Owning your own ugliness is no small feat, either. When relationship conflicts occur, we tend to claim beauty for ourselves and shove ugly off onto the other. Our defensiveness or resistance to compromise won’t allow us to admit our wrongdoing. We stay trapped in Vulcan’s net until some debt is paid off.

What’s the debt? Admitting you were wrong sometimes. Acknowledging your jealousy, or your impatience, or that you really hate being reminded to fold the laundry when you were planning on doing it anyway. Honesty: Yes, sometimes honesty in the manner of Mars can be ugly. But it tends to feel a lot better than the brewing resentment of Vulcan.

If we can stand in our own ugliness and our own beauty, if we can acknowledge that we all carry both beauty and beast within ourselves, then maybe we can forge a new way of relating. We can admit to being dismayed not only with the other but with ourselves as well. And when it’s time to make up, we can let go of guilt and take enormous pleasure in the beauty of both the other and the self.

And that’s what ultimately disarms the most genuine of suitors.

Thanks to my 2007 self, who originally explored these themes here, and to Kathleen Burt for her exploration of Vulcan in her book Archetypes of the Zodiac.