Venus is Earth's sister planet, the closest to it in both space and size. Our sibling world has one defining difference: a runaway greenhouse atmosphere. Venus roasts at 867° F, above the melting point of lead, under a thick blanket of carbon dioxide. This crushes down at 92 times Earth's barometric pressure on its surface.

Might this hot heavy gaseous ocean serve as a medium for entities more akin to thought forms than biological creatures? Could such a thick energy rich substrate host shimmering heat waves of desire? Mirage-like patterns of ethereal identity? Is this superheated air-sea of light and shadow a more rarified version of our organic water world of life and death?

Venus' solid surface dimly glows with a brownish red hue under a dismal clouded sky. Torrid darkness prevails, obscuring visibility to 5% of an Earth day's illumination. Indeed, Venus closely resembles traditional depictions of Hell. Do ghostly shades burn away their sins; tenuous wraiths writhe in a blast furnace of punishment and regret? Yet, as it rises, this atmosphere thins out and cools down. Between 30-40 miles up (50-65 km) a sulfuric acid cloudbank veils all of Venus. Above it a zone of sparkling breezes floats at Earthlike temperature and pressure. Sunlight brilliantly reflects off the surface of this airborne brimstone sea. Thus Venus shines as the brightest of all planets.. Could this be Heaven? Do blessed spirits bask in the warmth of God's love; does the tight knot of ego melt in sublime delight? Is Venus wrapped in an erotically charged atmosphere: of supernal pleasure on top and sultry passion at rock bottom?

The planet Venus is not a place of literal demons and angels, fiendish tortures or fantastic joys. It symbolizes these psychic states, which exist within us. The physical nature of Venus parallels those aspects of our psyche. Its location in the zodiac points out how they operate. Its atmospheric zones reveal their range of positive/negative experiences. What is the fatal attraction? Where the true happiness?

Venus moves inside Earth's orbit. It depicts an inner desire body beneath one's conscious self-construct. The struggle for survival, ego wars, chatter of daily life generally obscures its presence. Once death sweeps away their sound and fury perhaps these deeper planes of being emerge in full force. Maybe we then experience them with exquisite sensitivity in a Venusian hothouse of pleasure or pain.

Venus describes a private heaven or hell. Its internal spell shapes one's worldview. Venus does not point to a transcendent soul (Jupiter), impersonal law (Saturn), universal archetypes (Uranus) or collective dreams (Neptune). These outer planets operate on a mythic, heroic, even cosmic level. Venus is the personal version. An individual vision of damnation or delight.

Venus lies midway between a self-igniting Sun and our temperate ocean world. Its compressed, highly energized atmosphere provides a medium balancing fiery power (Sun) with delicate life (Earth).

Venus' special character resides in its atmosphere. Air symbolizes mind, a detached perspective uniting separate qualities. Venus' gaseous phase translates between fiery spiritual will and watery biology. It portrays an exhalation of spirit into the breath of life. Its vitalizing aura relates Sun's initiating impulse to Earth's living embodiment.

Relationship invites comparison, comparison demands choice, choice generates values. Venus' dense hot sky diffracts Sun's spiritual Unity into negotiable units: values that can be spent on life. Venus mints sunshine into gold; converts its monolithic Ecstasy into tangible senses.

Venus' aerial dimension absorbs Sun's higher frequency light, slowing it down and stretching it out into infrared waves of heat. The heat of desire. Here blinding radiance condenses into passionate warmth. Searing solar winds become palpable as hot currents flowing within a viscous atmosphere. These generate sensual vibrations.

At Venus spirit (Sun) precipitates into a spectrum of sensations. Sun's burning intensity, inhospitable to life, softens and billows into surges of feeling. A general solar purpose flowers into specific desires. This flowering then bears fruit on Earth, the plane of organic life. A fruit's seemingly dead, hard seed contains DNA hereditary information, Moon's record of the past and resources for the future. Venus endows that kernel with the sweet thrill of an actual taste: the crunch of an apple, flavor of a banana, tang of a lemon.

Mercury registers wavelengths; Venus sees colors and hears sounds. Mercury discriminates between phenomena. Venus relates them to a standard of evaluation. Mercury lays out all the options. Venus decides among them. Mercury presents stark facts; Venus prioritizes them. Mercurial perceptions become Venusian preferences.

Mercury articulates one's mental stance, intellectual attitude, cognitive bias. Venus orients that abstract mind by tangible desire and manifests its quality through actual decisions. At Venus detached observation commits to participation. Cold calculation melts into warm feeling. Impartial data acquires a weight of worth. Information is ranked according to a principle.

Venus defines a criteria of selection, the central organizing principle of subjective character. It portrays an existential choice. What is my core value? Truth, beauty, power, courage, compassion?

Venus shows what you want. It describes an ideal model that the empirical personality (Moon) makes real. Thus Venus reveals an underlying self-image guiding one's perceptible qualities.

What begins as primal will (Sun), takes definition as a state of mind (Mercury), attains a felt sensual presence on Venus. It manifests as a subtle atmosphere of individuality. Its internalized heat signature generates a unique aura of psychic quality. This endows a spectral identity equation with the emotional glow defining a life.

Venus portrays one's desire nature, or astral body. This inner state underlies the visible identity and its actions. It acquires a personal history and attributes through the experiences of life. Thus perceptions light up with passion, events become emotions.

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