Author: Dean Valentić
The first associations that come to mind when Venus is mentioned are: the goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, prosperity, luxury, splendor, glamour, adorned with gold and surrounded by money and beautiful happy people in the bloom of youth who enjoy the peak of earthly pleasures and celebrate beauty without regard for sadness, disappointment, anger, envy, and other emotions that are an inseparable part of this world. Venus is pure and complete pleasure, ecstasy, and the orgasmic peak of satisfaction, and nothing else.
The Romans called her Venus, and the Greeks Aphrodite. In every mythology, there is a female deity that governs beauty and love. The Egyptian counterpart is Hathor, the Etruscan Turan, the Norse Freyja, and the Aztec Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli. In Hindu tradition, Venus is named Ushana (or Usha), later called Shukracharya, the teacher of the Asuras. She is often associated with Lakshmi, the embodiment of the feminine nature of material energy. Laypeople know that her position in the natal chart brings favorable results and happiness in the areas where she is located; where Venus is, there is beauty and pleasure. Artists depict her as a nude beauty, a metaphor for fertility, enchanting female beauty, and sexuality. In any case, the symbol of Venus evokes pleasure, happiness, and satisfaction.
In the spiritual knowledge alphabet, the Bhagavad-gita, Ushana is mentioned. Krishna says: “[…] among the great thinkers, I am Ushana.” Thus, Shukracharya is a representative of Krishna, endowed with intelligence, diplomatic skills, and vision. Shukracharya is a Kavi, or one who is successful in literary creation, a person who can express their views and thoughts in an eloquent and understandable way, a kind of poet. One of Shukra’s names is Kavya, or one who is born into a family of Kavis or scholars and poets. In the Srimad Bhagavatam, Sri Krishna gives explanations to Uddhava, describing his various wealths, and says, “[…] among scholars, I am Shukracharya, the knower of spiritual knowledge.”
Shukra in Sanskrit means ‘pure’, ‘white’, or ‘radiant’. Shukra, who later became the Acharya or guru of the Asuras (materialistically inclined beings), was born from fire and is radiant like a flame. Shukra is a Brahmana (intellectual and teacher), possessing a feminine nature, born on a Friday in the Parthiva year, on the eighth day after the new moon in the month of Shravana, in the Swati nakshatra.
Shukra is a guru, scholar, and knower of Vedic knowledge, but at the same time, he is inclined towards the Asuras or beings who seek ways to enjoy this world, to use the resources of the material world for their pleasure, comfort, and luxury. Venus has always been a symbol of any kind of pleasure and satisfaction gained in any way. Shukra plays an ungrateful role, difficult for a Brahmana or teacher who is always devoted to truth and righteousness, but Shukra’s inclination towards the Asuras speaks to the fact that in this world there are always two legitimate sides that follow principles of righteousness or dharma but have opposing goals and interests. Shukra is the one who tries to find a bridge between the material and the spiritual, he tries to elevate those beings who lack spiritual awareness to follow principles that are a springboard for spirituality. For this, he needs all the diplomatic power that exists in this world, the power to merge contradictory themes and find compromises to satisfy materialists who seek only pleasure without asking for the price or consequences, while at the same time keeping them on the path of righteousness and truthfulness.
Shukra is the ruler of the zodiac signs of Taurus and Libra. As the ruler of Taurus, he represents the desire for stability, health, and beauty, and ultimately hedonism. As the ruler of Libra, Shukra is the ultimate diplomat, trader, negotiator, mediator, and advocate. Shukra is in the Raja-guna because he desires pleasure without responsibility for consequences. Along with Budha and Shani, Shukra indicates infertility, not due to sexual neutrality like Budha and Shani, but precisely because of the pleasure in which all resources needed for maintaining what is created or born are consumed. Shukra desires pleasure and only pleasure.
The living being, person, or spiritual soul is born and dies, transitioning from body to body; when one body ages and becomes powerless, the spiritual particle changes the body just as we change clothes with the change of seasons or replace an old and worn-out car with a new one. This vicious cycle is called Samsara, or the cycle of birth and death. Through lives, we learn and gain experiences, progressing in spiritual evolution; souls that have been born and died many times have experience and wisdom acquired through many lives. Throughout lives, we seek pleasure, everyone wants to be happy, this is common to every person on Earth. We all seek love, or perfect love, a love that has no mistakes or flaws. Because if love is true, then it is perfect, in true love we do not see faults. In this world, Venus is a symbol of just that; our desire for happiness and love. But in this world, no one is perfect, so the ecstasy of infatuation sooner or later fades.
In its purest form, Venus or Shukra is pure love. It is love on the spiritual dimension, in the material world we all have flaws or at least notice flaws. Pure love is love without any motivation or interest, love for love’s sake, just love.
Love is like pure white light, it illuminates everything and brings knowledge about everything, clarity, and grounding in truth. When pure light passes through a prism, or when love passes through the filter of our mind and body, it is divided into parts, into different colors of the spectrum. This way, we can perceive colors and understand differences. The filter of the mind and body makes us perceive good and bad and all other dualities of the world we live in. Due to duality, we sometimes love and sometimes do not love, even hate.
If only we could elevate our consciousness and realize that we are spiritual particles, eternal, without beginning and end, blissful always and everywhere, and full of all knowledge that is available to us at every moment! Everything is exactly as it should be, God provides everything we need, there is no longing and struggle, but only the simplest being in the moment and marvelling at the beautiful and incredibly interesting world. There is no plan or expectation, striving for achievement or confirmation, pure love is simply a feeling that is. So everything we do in such pure spiritual consciousness is a spiritual activity, glory and thanks, every bite is an offering to the Lord, and every activity is a service to the whole of which we are a part. If we serve the whole, we serve ourselves, if we love God, then we love every part of Him, and treat every being as a brother or sister, a part of God whom we love. Spiritual consciousness is the cure for nationalism, racism, chauvinism, sexism, and all other -isms. Until we realize this and live it at every moment, we have Shukra, the guru, to teach us how to love purely and how to live in this world with satisfied desires, while at the same time remaining righteous and honest.
Although we regularly witness the degradation of humanity, expecting pure love to awaken in the hearts of people is not an unattainable utopia. The world is on a track leading to inevitable results, we all know well that the activities of humanity bring consequences and that everything we have done in the past few decades will bear fruit. We exploit nature and care little about sustainability, capital and market laws dictate what will be built and how, while common sense is somewhere far in the background and no one pays any attention to it, common sense plays no role in the market. The same can be said for morality, or the sense of the value of human life, the sense of purpose and meaning, or dharma, what human life actually serves. Sometimes it may seem to us that it serves immediate satisfaction and prosperity regardless of the consequences. And that is Venus teaching us how to use this world for pleasure and satisfaction. If there is no component of love and purity, the whole world will be exploited by those who seek their benefit and interest. Therefore, awakening the pure love that Venus represents is a necessity.
It is illusory to expect that the world will be converted and that some holy prophet will bring salvation to the world, what we can do is work on ourselves and change ourselves. Let us try to develop spiritual consciousness because it is the remedy for the problems of the material world.
Pure love will touch some hearts, not all, but some. And if only one heart in this world is changed and saved, then you can consider your mission successful; you have saved one soul.
© Dean Valentić – All rights reserved
More about Dean’s work: Dean Valentić – Vedic Astrology (vedska-astrologija.com)
You can contact Dean Valentić by email: valenticdean@gmail.com or phone: +385 99 3457910.