bibliomancy for a Venus - Pluto Conjunction

"Eros always leads to Psyche..." (Moore)

"how to analogise the dream I've had for the past year? -

I ask myself - what is he like??

He's like Pan;
dirty, dark, smelly and sexy

He's like Jesus;
only he won't die
and he won't be coming back

He's like me;
but with balls and a job and social life

He's too-hot water; a take-away dinner I didn't order and have to pay for; a dress that doesn't fit (something like I would have made for myself when I was learning to sew); he's a stranger grabbing at my belly and asking me if I've got another baby coming; he's a dog, fox, wolf, dingo - other wild things I cannot love that scare me except in symbolic form, in idea, in imagination... he's like Mephistopheles too... asking too much for only bad things in return...

He doesn't exist; he forces me to see how much I create in my mind. He's never the same person twice;he forces me to see how much I change.

He isn't the man I think he is (and I'm not either)

...but for some reason it hurts me so much not to love him and imagine him as every bit as wonderful as I want him to be. It hurts me in my chest; deep ache, burn, stab.

I don't know what to do about it, what am I supposed to do about it? How can I move this out of my body, out of my mind? How can I make space for anyone else while every bit of me is consumed by this weirdness? Its in my blood stream, pumping through all of me. "

(August 18, 2007; paper journal entry)

Finding Aphrodite and Psyche

'african venus; d sinclair '06

"..can we realise that we are each, in soul, children of Aphrodite, that the soul is a therapeutes, as was Psyche, in the temple of Venus - that is where it is in devotion - the soul is born in beauty and feeds on beauty, requires beauty for its life...

...psyche is the life of our aesthetic responses - that sense of taste in relation with things, that thrill or pain, disgust or expansion of breast; these primordial aesthetic reactions of the heart are soul itself speaking." (hillman, thought of the heart, p39)


Actually, I'm not all that sure that Aphrodite or Psyche can be 'found'. Not that its impossible to know them, only that the 'searching' may be fruitless - because they're experiences of the senses and the emotional body, and in as much perhaps only need to be recognised as and when they arise.

When we feel something and the thought 'beautiful' surfaces, where is it is any of it surfacing from, but within? Aphrodite is surely a necessary part of our inner workings, as much as is needed in the outer, physical cosmos.

Thomas Moore writes about Aphrodite 'rising from the sea' as per her creation myth - and this is very apt. Beauty originates from the unknown depths; rises through the body, catches in the throat, takes away breath, and puts a blindfold on one's other faculties.


Oh, I'm just musing - waxing poetic. There's no better subject to do it on.

Yes, Aphrodite is more than Beauty, but as a starting place, we can't do better. If there were a map of the human cosmos, Beauty might be found were land meets water, and the unconscious meets lived experience. Beyond there is Pleasure and then Desire, past mountains where warm breezes blow and earth's fires burn with melted ores spill over into green forests.

I have to believe that until we can get in touch with our inner beauty, our inner Aphrodite, we are closed off to a whole realm of sense and taste - and life. The beach will be closed, so to speak, forget the volcanic springs, the river mouth, the forest.

I took life drawing classes at the School of Art; enrolled in the course without really thinking about it and realised with horror on the first day that life drawing involves drawing naked people. Naked people!

For an ex ballet dancer the idea of physical 'imperfection' (that is, anything less than the ideal ballet dancer's body) is hard to, er, well, stomach.

After a while it became clear to me the 'imperfect' bodies - people - had a beauty of their own that had nothing to do with any ideals of mine. It's as though looking without ego - and nothing is better for stripping away ego than doing something so new, in the presence of a naked person no less - gives a new perspective on form.

Hillman calls for us all to practice that which the classical texts call notitia - seeing and imagining through the heart. Its about looking - really looking - and seeing things, not our ideas of things. Its allowing without describing.

Its like seeing through childs eyes - before Old Mother Bone Maker comes along and names everything, defining and setting in stone the world around us. Before being taught that this is 'self' and this is 'other' - when, without knowing what things are, everything is amazing and interesting, and there's no difference between 'it' and 'me'.

Its an old cliche; beauty is in the eye of the beholder - but its the eyes of soul that are calling it, because like calls unto like. This is a truth that takes practice to realise.