The Greeks said variously that Eros was the child of Nyx (Night) and Chaos who then created the entire world; and also the child of Venus and Mars whose arrows could inflame any heart with love. Audre Lorde wrote that “The erotic is the measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.” Something about Love creates and recreates the entire world. Yet Love also often unnerves and overwhelms us, taking our entire world apart.
In the astrological sky, Venus and Mars – planets belonging to the Night sect – tell part of the story of our relation to the erotic. Often repressed yet also objectified and used by a Day-centered world, when these planets come forward in us they frequently do so with intense need and a sense of urgency and possibility. In this webinar we will explore myths of these two archetypes drawn from the Greco-Roman tradition but also the earlier Egyptian and Mesopotamian stories, to understand each planet on its own terms, and how they subject us (Mars) and seduce us (Venus) away from the order of our Daytime selves into the rich, polymorphous, chaotic space of Night.
This video is taken from a live online webinar given for the Mercury Internet School of Psychological Astrology (MISPA) by Jason Holley in 2022. Duration: 2 hours 29 minutes