Picture of the Week: Venus and Saturn in Conversation

It is archetypally surprising to see young and old, freshness and decay, coupled together in the same image.

This image puts me in mind of Robert Hand’s description of Venus opposition Saturn: youth, lightness and spontaneity juxtaposed with age, graveness and ponderousness. Hand says:

“Loneliness and self-pity sometimes come with this transit. You feel surrounded by bright, positive energies that you simply cannot relate to. You may feel like a gray presence among colorful people. … In general today, relationships will force you to encounter aspects of yourself that you would prefer not to face. However, like all oppositions, this one could heighten your self-perception and give you knowledge that will help you.” (Source, pp. 202-203)

There is a wistful feeling to this photo, as there may be to a Venus-Saturn coupling. It is as if we are within the vibrant, present moment of the young woman at the same time as we are deeply conscious — through the old building and dilapidated structures — of the long perspective of great lengths of time, either forward or past. That long perspective is dogged; we cannot shake it to simply be in the now, laughing and sightseeing and sipping coffee with our compadres. The duality in the Venus-Saturn opposition separates us from others who may be, right now, less sharply attuned to the connections between what is now and what is elsewhen. The stillness of the moment seems to span centuries.

The picture above reminds me of another image — one I’m sure you’ve seen before — that carries a  similar energy. The drawing to the right may be seen as either an old woman or a young woman, depending how you look. Like the decaying building in the photo above, the old woman reminds us of what the young woman will eventually become — indeed, of what we all will eventually become.

These images remind us that — much as we resist the idea — Saturn and Venus are intimately related. They seed one another. Both are physical, feminine energies (yes! Saturn is feminine) that, at their finest, work matter into its true form in each successive moment. For Venus, the process is instinctive, responsive and spontaneous; for Saturn, the process is thoughtful, careful and planned over time.

It is interesting to me that each of these images contains a downward perspective. The woman in the photo above appears to be looking at something below her eye level, over the railing of the bridge. Both the young woman and the old woman in the drawing above appear to be looking down as well. We speak of being in the present moment as “being grounded,” yet in the horoscope chart the ground — the IC, the nadir of the chart — is the place of the past, of ancestors, of deep memory, of the collective unconscious. When we are happy, we look up. When we are wistful or sad, we look down. When we want to connect, we look across.

These images suggest the manifestation of something solidly material around ephemeral feelings, of introspection seeded by memory, of a forming, a becoming, that is watered by the ground of memory, of time, of the long, deep perspective.

Image 1: Cam Switzer
Image 2: Public domain