October 21, 2015
As I went to bed last night I was thinking about my conversations with beings from Jupiter last winter. Then out of nowhere Jupiter told me to expect a visit from another planetary force soon. Well, “soon” turned out to be within just a few hours as I opened my eyes at 4 a.m. this morning and saw a light come into focus through the branches of the trees on the hills east of our house. I immediately knew this was Venus come to pay me a visit.
Jupiter (as a collective planetary voice) said, “Relax, lie there focusing on this beautiful light of Venus manifesting before your eyes. See and, more importantly, feel the energy of this alignment of stars and planets, of Leo’s beautiful frame, of Regulus.”
So I watched as Venus slowly rose higher into the eastern sky, light waves flashing as she passed behind the tree branches, expanding in her brilliant illumination.
And then Venus herself began speaking. “It is not at all accidental that you found yourself making several reference to me in your classes yesterday and in your readings. This is all part of an important, consciously orchestrated series of synchronicities on your planet at this time. You and many others have been profoundly, if not always consciously, affected by this particular alignment of planets and stars from your Earthly perspective. This is a critical time of transition for your planet, and as you can see and feel, I play a key role in this alliance of waves and rays and energies.”
Venus’s reference to my teaching involved my growing awareness of an unexpected “coincidence” of references to Venus in both of my classes yesterday at Ohio University. In my first class, Multicultural Critical Theory, we were studying a chapter by Patricia Hill Collins on Black Female Sexuality. In her overview of various modes of oppression, Collins spent some time discussing the Hottentot Venus phenomenon as a primary moment in the development of racialized sexual domination in the West. Her primary thesis is that the domination of Back women’s bodies serves as the Matrix of Domination in Western culture, the crucible out of which other forms of domination—racial, class, gender—grow or are articulated. What struck me most in the chapter, however, was Collins’s claim that “[A]ll systems of oppression rely on harnessing the power of the erotic.”
The erotic, of course, is one area under the purview of Venus. And while in this chapter Collins explores the negative side of this work of the erotic, she closes the chapter with the suggestion that while “harnessing the power of the erotic is important for domination, reclaiming and self-defining that same eroticism may constitute one path toward Black women’s empowerment.”
So this got me to thinking about the role of the erotic when harnessed in such systems of domination and liberation. The Rebel Flag of the Confederacy, for instance, gains much of its power precisely from harnessing the power of the erotic. This symbol of racial domination serves to stimulate and organize the flows of erotic drive into a relatively coherent yet often only dimly conscious expression of racialized sexual domination, a power struggle over who’s on top—a power play especially appealing to poor White men who are often dominated in other various ways in our collective Matrix of Domination.
And all of this led me to wonder how we might more productively harness these erotic drives for a platform of liberation. How might the energies we draw from Venus lead us to a higher social constellation than we can currently imagine?
In my later class, a Senior Seminar organized around the theme “Exraterrestrials, Angels, and Elves,” we were finishing up our discussion of the American poet H.D.’s book-length poem Trilogy. While there is much to say about this stunning book, I will here only point to the central role of Venus as one aspect of the liberating powers of imagination that H.D. stages in her coordination of various goddess figures of the erotic: Isis, Astarte, Aphrodite, Venus, and—through a wonderful transfiguration brought about in the poem—Mary Magdalene. Through this particular constellation of goddesses of the erotic, H.D. offers us a glimpse of what a liberating reclamation of the powers of Imagination might offer.
So I was quite stunned and yet not at all surprised to hear Venus mention these moments as part of a larger process of Venus-Earth realization.
When I asked her what I might do at this point, she suggested that I do more research on this moment of planetary alignments spanning Leo and Virgo during this Fall of 2015. But more importantly, I and others should tune into the energies emanating from this eastern portal each early morning during this season. We can do so in our meditations and communicative journeys. She suggested further that these powers will influence us in one way or another, so it is our best interests right now to tune in very consciously as we experience these transformative powers. The VENUS-JUPITER-MARS conjunction energy following the transition from Leo into Virgo is intense! (I’m referring, of course, to the planetary alignments with the constellations, not the Zodiacal time of year.) This is a powerful time for personal and global transformations, but we need to focus our intentions or be swept away on the tide. In other words, the shift is partly under our control—just learn to surf this wave!
Venus engaged me in an extended discussion concerning my own life as lover and father. I was overcome by the beauty and warmth she expressed in her assurance that we can tune into these higher energies right now and allow ourselves greater comprehension and control over our extended erotic faculties, which include our roles not simply as lovers but as parents, children family members, friends, and members of the planetary family at large (which is not at all limited to the planet’s human inhabitants).
Moreover, she suggested that I do some research on certain esoteric expressions of our relationship to Venus in order to gain greater clarity concerning what all this means on personal and collective levels. I have only begin in this work, but I already found a most stimulating passage that could serve as a postscript for this entry:
“Perhaps some idea may be gained if we remember that, in an occult sense, Venus is to the Earth what the higher Self is to man.” Alice Bailey and Djwal Khul, A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
