Venus in Sagittarius: An Analysis
Venus has now entered Sagittarius, leaving behind her exile and venenum in Scorpio, a word whose root lies in her own name. Venenum once meant a love potion before it came to signify poison, revealing the ambivalence of attraction and peril that belongs to her nature. She rises from the eighth house, the realm of shadow and symbolic death, into the ninth, Domus Dei, the first of the transcendent houses upon the upper arc of the zodiacal wheel, pointing to the Godhead.
But Venus in Sagittarius is peregrine, possessing no dignity by triplicity or sign. She entered it five days after her Morning Setting, ending her cycle as Phosphorus and becoming invisible beneath the solar beams. The process of combustion has begun and will intensify until the Capricornian cazimi of January. During this passage, the planet of love and desire undergoes purification by fire.
This is the living representation of Arcanum XIV, Temperance, associated with Sagittarius on the Tree of Life, where the forms become conscious will. After her symbolic death in the fixed water of Scorpio, it now follows the restoration of harmony, the refashioning of love as a lucid intelligence rather than a possessive passion of the depths.
Among the four cardinal virtues, Temperance is the one that governs desire through reason, preserving the middle point where passion becomes measure and harmony replaces excess. In the Tarot it becomes an alchemical act, where opposites are reconciled and impulse is refined into lucidity. It is the instant when love rises from its subterranean depths and awakens as the intelligence of the heart.
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