Venus in Aries: Uncomfortable Strength
I have spilled a lot of ink lately talking about essential dignity. It is a subject I feel passionately about because I have seen the pain that the technique, badly wielded, has caused my clients. That pain is also personal for me.
I have Venus in Aries in my natal chart. It is closely trine my ascendant in Leo, so my relationship with Venus is something that I, literally, wear on my face.
They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but no one knows better that beauty is a social construct than someone who has experienced being not conventionally beautiful.
When I was a teenager, bleached hair, spaghetti strap tank tops, and low-rise, size 0 jeans were the beauty standard, but I have never been confused for a delicate, Victorian flower. I had black hair and dramatic curves that spilled out of low-rise jeans and made spaghetti strap tank tops obscene. This combination drew predators and the taunting of my peers, and I was put in the strange position of simultaneously being seen as inappropriately sexualized and not attractive enough for my gender.
To cope with the cognitive dissonance, I hid my body with oversized band t-shirts and skater jeans. I threw myself into mosh pits at hardcore shows and carried myself like a soldier with a rigid back, eyes glaring straight ahead, radiating dignity and arrogance. Whenever I went out, my mother told me to turn it down because I was scaring off boys. I stubbornly refused to surrender my much needed armor.
Time and age tempered my edge and made me smarter. I learned that it wasn't necessary to display my ability to protect myself so dramatically. A glare and a sharp-edged word was usually enough.
Still, I never lost the sense of being forced to present myself in a way that felt inauthentic just to feel safe.
When I learned that Venus was in detriment in Aries, I was devastated.
It felt like even astrology was saying I was ugly and my gender presentation was broken.
Usually, evolutionary astrology swoops in to save the day when traditional astrology makes me feel crappy, but, with Venus, the evolutionary approach (as it was presented to me) just made me feel more discouraged. It was all about Amazons and warrior women. With Venus in Aries, I was supposed to be perfectly positioned to be a feminist icon, to lean in and be a girl boss. I never felt more misunderstood. Why didn't they understand that my strength was just a shield I used to protect myself? I wished that someone would see through me or, better yet, rescue me from the need to armor up in the first place. I wanted desperately to throw down my punk rags, dress up, and go to the ball like Cinderella, but I look like a little clown on the prairie in pastels and lace.
It wasn't until I listened to Chris Brennan's interview with Charles Obert on The Astrology Podcast that I started to see my Venus in Aries differently. In the interview, Obert says Venus in Aries is like Julie Andrews being assigned to play the lead in Rambo. It was so easy for me to imagine Julie Andrews dressing up in warrior gear, the hollow-eyed stare of a person out of her element only adding to the effectiveness of her presentation. Chris Brennan compared planets in detriment to people in exile, and that felt exactly right.
Later in the interview, they talked about the way that planets without essential dignity can become strengths. Instead of the usual warrior woman take I was used to, they emphasized the discomfort of having a planet in detriment. Venus in Aries could be represented by a nurse working in a war zone, for example. "In that case," Obert said, "that would be an enormously useful service. But a caring, peaceful, and loving nurse is not going to be at home when there’s bombs flying overhead."
It was only when I began to see my Venus in Aries as a part of myself that was useful but in exile that I was able to make peace with it.
A nurse in a war zone doesn't need to pretend to be comfortable. They don't have time to be comfortable. Being comfortable is not what they're there to do. Pretending that they are comfortable does a disservice to them and their service. And yet, the very qualities that make a nurse uncomfortable on a battlefield are the same qualities that make them effective. No one hates disease more than a healer.
Ironically, it was exactly this realization that made it possible for me to embrace both the traditional interpretation of Venus in Aries and the evolutionary one. The acknowledgement that my Venus in Aries wasn't just a defect made me feel safe enough to own that it reflected an experience that was uncomfortable, and seeing that placement as valuable allowed me to own and embrace the strength that living with that discomfort required me to develop. I now walk with my head high because I know I'm strong. I am proud of what I am capable of without needing to fall back on being defensively arrogant... most of the time.
