The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 67, titled:
Kay Taylor on the Outer Planets and Relationships
With Chris Brennan and guest Kay Taylor
Episode originally released on February 28, 2016
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Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com
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Transcribed by Andrea Johnson
Transcription released August 2, 2019
Copyright © 2019 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hi. My name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. We’re recording this episode on Sunday, February 28, 2016, at 9:31 PM, in Denver, Colorado. And this is the 67th episode of the show. For more information about how to subscribe to the podcast, or help support the production of future episodes, please visit theastrologypodcast.com/subscribe.
In this episode, I’m going to be talking with astrologer, Kay Taylor about the outer planets in relationships. So let’s go ahead and jump right into the topic. Kay, welcome to the show.
KAY TAYLOR: Thank you, Chris. I’m really happy to be here.
CB: All right. I am really excited to have you. I met you just a few months ago at the OPA retreat in October, where you gave a really excellent talk on the outer planets in relationships. So I wanted to have you on the show to explore that topic a little bit further, especially since we just did an episode with Austin Coppock and Kelly Surtees a few days ago on the seven traditional, or seven visible planets.
I thought that this would give us a good access point for exploring the significations of the outer planets, because you really seem to have a great grasp on the meaning of those, especially as applied to relationships in that talk. So what was the title of that talk again?
KT: The title of the talk is Sex, Love & Crazy.
CB: Okay. And this is something that you developed based on your consulting practice, and your experience of working with clients with outer planet connections with relationship sectors in the chart? Or, how did you go about developing that talk?
KT: Well exactly, this is how I developed it. I’ve had a private practice for over 30 years as an astrologer. I was originally a psychic channel. I also am a hypnotherapist and a psychosynthesis practitioner. So I have a unique perspective that maybe some astrologers don’t have, in that I have had a lot of the same clients for 20 or 30 years, and I’ve often worked with them regularly, especially through difficult patches in their life. And I have inter-generational groups, maybe three generations of families that I work with.
So from all of these charts and personal stories that I know really well, I started to…’research’ is a pretty specific word, and I’m definitely not a statistical researcher. But I can go into the chart histories that I have and very much see the themes that people are living with and the various aspects. One of the things that I think Richard Idemon said that always stuck with me is that over the course of a lifetime, people will act out all possible manifestations of their chart.
CB: Interesting.
KT: And I love that and it’s really true. And one of the things that I encourage people to think about as we’re going through this talk and people are thinking, “Oh yes, I’ve done that,” or “I resonate with that experience,” is to let go of the judgment. Because a lot of times when you’ve got hard aspects of the transpersonal planets to the personal, and especially Venus, your relationship history can be challenging.
You have gone through a lot of different things. You’ve made some choices that people would say are bad choices. And I feel that the important healing or wisdom in the astrology chart is that we get to see that there’s this possibility, this breadth of operating in kind of an unconscious way with the aspects, or a middle ground, or a way that’s much more evolved and elegant, and it takes some time to figure out how to work with it.
CB: Sure. So there’s kind of like a spectrum of different possible manifestations, and the person might have some control of that and might respond to those same, let’s say, energies differently at different points in their life.
KT: Exactly. And especially when we’re younger, we usually don’t have the tools and the skill, and we’re operating out of conditioning. But as we start to look at the chart in more detail, we see what is actually possible. And I like to help people see what the ideal, or the healed structure might look like, so that they know what they’re working with and don’t feel like they have to be on this repetitive treadmill of choosing one relationship after another that has the same painful result.
CB: Sure. So they have something to aspire towards, or to work towards in terms of the ideal manifestation of certain placements.
KT: Exactly.
CB: Okay. Well yeah, that gives you a really great background. And that must be really amazing for research purposes not just having somebody who’s a one-off client. With that type of client you just get a very brief glimpse into a person’s life, but it’s very much sort of ships passing in the night. I don’t know if that’s the right analogy, but maybe it’s not.
But with your practice, you’ve actually gotten a chance to see people grow and develop and evolve over the course of decades of their lives, so that you’ve really gotten much deeper into some of those issues than somebody else might.
KT: Yes, exactly, like I’ve seen them go through…maybe they came to me when they were in college, and they were in difficult relationships. And then they got married and then they got divorced, then they were dating again, and now, they’re in a really great relationship, and I’ve seen them go through all of that.
I’ve done some of the healing process work with them. I’ve seen them go through different kinds of therapies, and I’ve seen when the ‘light bulb’ moment happened, and they’re like, “Oh, I know what I do,” or “I know what I think,” or “I know why I keep drawing this person in,” and they make that deep inner shift so that it doesn’t happen anymore.
CB: Sure. Excellent. All right. So there’s a few keywords maybe we should clarify before we move on. One of the distinctions that you made already in talking about the outer planets is that you refer to them as the ‘transpersonal planets’.
KT: Yes.
CB: So could you explain a little bit what you mean by that specific phrase?
KT: Yes. The transpersonal planets I consider to be Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, the three outer planets that have really only been discovered in the last few hundred years. And originally, when these planets were discovered many astrologers didn’t think they would be particularly relevant to our personal charts.
And of course, you were talking to astrologers in the last segment about the basic traditional planets. Many astrologers still don’t use these planets, or use them all the time, but I feel that they are very significant. Yes, they also are generational planets and they have a lot to do with the way the world is evolving, but they aspect to personal planets, which of course are the two lights, the Sun and the Moon, and Mercury, Venus, and Mars. Those five are what we call ‘personal planets’.
When these transpersonals are in aspect with them, there are generally very intense challenges that people face. And yet, the transpersonals are all about evolution, transformation, higher spiritual frequencies, waking up, you know, really waking up in a true spiritual way. So the personal challenges that we have in our lives, when the transpersonals are aspecting tell us that this is a part of our life in which the training ground is a personal experience.
And so, Venus, for instance, is the ‘relationship planet’. It’s the relationship planet for romantic types of relationships. It has to do with our ability to attract, our sense of feeling of how we are attractive in life. And when a transpersonal is in aspect to our Venus, the challenging relationships that we experience are very much part of our spiritual path, I would say. And we’re learning, we’re growing, we’re deepening through these experiences.
CB: Sure. So the personal planets and their aspects, especially close aspects, or maybe especially hard aspects with the outer planets become access points for the energy, or the significations of the outer planets to really manifest in a very personal way.
KT: Yes. Absolutely.
CB: Okay. So you would say that especially the outer planets will be relevant to relationships and will manifest very strongly in the sphere of relationships when the outer planets aspect Venus. What other types of considerations do you take into account in terms of the outer planets showing up in the context of relationships?
KT: When the outer planets show up in the 7th house of marriage and partnership, the 5th house of romance/dating, the 8th house, which I consider the house of intimate bonding. So those three very significant relationship houses, even to some extent I would say the 4th house. Even though the 4th house is home and family, the people that we constellate in our lives, in committed relationships, even though maybe they’re not birth family, they tend to be family as well. So to some extent, the 4th house, but mostly 5th, 7th, and 8th.
And there are also other planets. If the transpersonals are affecting Mars, which to some extent is a relationships planet, in that the way we assert ourselves has something to do with sexuality. The Moon, which has more to do with unconditional nurturing, love, and security comes into our relationships as well. So in some ways, the whole chart represents how we operate in relationship, but I’ve chosen to focus on Venus to these three planets for the purpose of this talk because there’s just so much information just in the three planets.
If I were going to add another one, I might also add Saturn, which Saturn and Jupiter I would call ‘social planets’. And Saturn can also have an effect on one’s romantic relationships more in the way of whether we feel we deserve relationship, and whether we feel blocked, or whether we find that we come into relationships with a strong sense of duty. But again, I sort of put that aside for our particular talk right now.
CB: Sure. Yeah, I would also add maybe configurations of the outer planets to the ruler of the 7th house…
KT: Yes.
CB: …or maybe even aspects to the descendant as a potential thing. And then when you mentioned the 4th house, the other thing that made me think of it as well, if outer planets are located there, somehow strongly prominent with respect to the 4th house, that would be relevant potentially due to just the experience of the parents, or the dynamic with the parents as sometimes becoming relevant to the way that people deal with relationships later on in their lives.
KT: Yes, that’s true that the outer planets in the 4th house often indicate pretty challenging experiences in the family of origin. Although I want to say that I have noticed that in working with younger people that there’s more of a likelihood, let’s say, with Pluto in the 4th house.
In the past, if someone came to me with Pluto in the 4th house, there was a very good chance that they had a very challenging home life and very difficult experiences. But now, with younger people and the movement of evolution and transformation in the last 40-50 years, sometimes it means that a person has a father who’s a psychiatrist and a mother who’s a medical doctor, and maybe there were powerful influences in the family that they grow up and be accomplished and do transformational work. But it’s not always the level of abuse that I used to imagine was a possibility.
One of the things I want to mention as we go deeper into this topic is that we’ll be talking about many of the more difficult and challenging experiences that people have, especially with Pluto in aspect to Venus, but also with Uranus and Neptune. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that every single time you can count on this, that people will always have difficult experiences. Sometimes people are able to come in on that middle ground level, or even evolve into the highest levels fairly quickly.
CB: Sure. So the spectrum of experience, even though we’ll be outlining the full range of it, not everybody is necessarily going to experience the extremes, per say.
KT: Exactly. And also back to your point about the 7th house, I often find that the challenging transpersonal planets, and maybe Saturn, Scorpionic planets in the 7th house are specifically connected to the imprinting from the parents’ marriage.
CB: Okay. Sure. Just in terms of carrying over dynamics that the child experienced in terms of whatever the relationship the parents had, and perhaps, carrying over some of the same dynamics later in the native’s life.
KT: Exactly. So if your parents had infidelity problems in their marriage and maybe you see that with Neptune in the 7th house, for example, that will also carry into your life and your choices around fidelity, or your sense of trust in marriage and partnership, even if you didn’t know when you were a child what was going on with your parents.
CB: Sure. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense, especially with things like Saturn. Because then you have a placement there that’s getting activated every seven years when Saturn hits a hard aspect to itself by transit, and then you’re getting a sort of reactivation of the same planet that’s manifesting in different ways, but sometimes, the same sector of the chart, I guess you would say.
KT: Yes. That’s a good example.
CB: All right. Well let’s jump into some of the specific outer planet combinations then. Where would you like to start in terms of getting starting with a specific planet?
KT: I’d like to start with Pluto just because the title is Sex, Love & Crazy, and we’ll jump into sex with Pluto. And as we’re getting into it, the first thing I want to be specific about is that Venus is the part of ourselves, or represents the part of ourselves that seeks beauty, harmony, balance, and love. This is our urge to connect with other people. It’s our desire to mate and to relate. And so, then when we take it into aspect with Pluto, which is all about power and transformation and depth and intimacy.
And often with Pluto we find in life we have a deep wound that we have feelings about even when we’re very young, where there’s some part of us, or some part of life where there is shame, maybe great fear, maybe great rage that’s buried. We’re kind of born with this Plutonian energy somewhere in our chart, and if it is in aspect with Venus, our desire to relate, then we can run into a number of challenging problems.
One of the most intense is some kind of childhood wounding, sexual wounding, either directly or indirect. Trust issues. Issues of manipulation and control in relationships. Sexual addiction, both being drawn to be in relationship with people who have sexual addictive issues, or experiencing it one’s self. So trust and just some of the darker, more intense hidden feelings come about with Venus-Pluto aspects.
And you had mentioned earlier hard aspects, and certainly I talk about the hard aspects, squares and oppositions primarily. But even when Pluto is in a so-called good aspect, a trine or a sextile conjunction, there are still usually definite experiences in the life that represent Venus and Pluto. The difference that I would say though for people is that when they are the softer aspects usually people have an easier time finding the healing and finding the integration than the square and the opposition, which are usually the hardest to find the integration and the healing.
CB: Sure. So it’s a little bit easier maybe for the more constructive manifestations to come about versus running into some of the more challenging or hard to navigate ones.
KT: Yes, exactly. Although the person with the trine will often have a lot of experience. When you think about the trine representing a flow and an ease, there can often be a great deal of abusive experience, or a lot of very challenging relationships. But it all requires healing at some point in life in order to move one’s relationship capacity to the more healed and integrated level.
So with Pluto-Venus, the shadow side is very much the extreme levels of control, sexual addiction, violence, obsession, compulsive feelings about one’s relationship partner. At the middle level, the relationships are often simply passionate and dramatic; one’s relationships are always a really big deal.
And as we find the integration, let’s say this is in your chart, you become very interested in relationship transformation. You’re interested in going deep psychologically, understanding yourself and other people. There can be more of a commitment to spiritual lineage. So with Pluto, we have kind of a shamanic aspect and often a desire to go very, very deep in whatever framework it is, whether it’s psychology or spirituality. So a person can take that obsessive quality and take it into a more spiritual perspective.
Also with Venus-Pluto, we want to find a container for very deep intimacy, for finding a place to be ruthlessly honest in relationship. There could be dishonesty with Pluto-Venus relationships at their shadow level. As we move it to a higher frequency and become empowered with honesty, then we find a great desire for relationships that are filled with integrity.
CB: Okay, so the more positive manifestation is a deep integrity and intensity versus the other side that you described.
KT: Yes, exactly.
CHRIS BRENNAN: All right. So just looking at some of the breakdown of the significations, so you would say the more negative or shadow end of the spectrum would be significations like compulsion, obsession, control, and manipulation within the context of relationships. Whereas, the more positive end of the spectrum would be things like being very passionate, still dramatic, but in a more perhaps positive way, having a depth, intensity, and having transformative experiences within the context of relationships.
KT: Yes, exactly. Sometimes there’s even a money issue. Pluto has its connection to finances and Venus obviously has her connection to money. And sometimes, with Venus-Pluto relationships there’s manipulation and control around money. An example would be a man who keeps his wife, and when he’s been unfaithful, he comes home with big presents and wants to take her on a cruise. He likes to have a mistress on the side and buy her presents, and sort of keeps a certain level of distance by having it in some way related to money.
There can be the connection of using prostitutes with Venus-Pluto, maybe more than Venus-Neptune, or Venus-Uranus signification. And oftentimes, even before I’ve looked at someone’s chart, if someone is coming in to me and saying that they’ve been married for 25 years, and their husband has been cheating this whole time and has a mistress that she knows about, but she’s deciding to stay in the marriage because it’s a financially comfortable life, and she knows this is always going on, I’ll often see the Venus-Pluto in both his chart and her chart.
CB: That’s an interesting sort of point in and of itself that’s worth exploring just in terms of how this comes about sometimes either in synastry, or just people that have a signature in their chart, sometimes attracting, or maybe not as passively but sometimes actively seeking other people who have or share similar signatures in their chart.
KT: Yes. And so, we’ll see that as we work through the other aspects to Venus as well. Although maybe there would be a different aspect, like maybe one person has Venus-Pluto and the other has Venus-Neptune, often I find they share the same aspect. Venus-Pluto people tend to be drawn to Venus-Pluto people.
CB: Interesting. Okay. In other observations, for example, Nick Dagan Best commonly talks about people who are experiencing an outer planet transit to a planet. Like if a person was having a transiting Pluto aspecting their natal Venus, even if they didn’t necessarily have that signature natally, they might encounter somebody in their life, or in their relationships at that time that had that signature strongly in their birth chart…
KT: Yes.
CB: …as another alternate way of experiencing that.
KT: Yes, that’s very, very true. Even if in your natal chart, relationship is fairly tidy and easy to manage, when Pluto comes in a hard aspect to your Venus, you may find yourself suddenly drawn to a person, where you have this quality of relationship that’s very intense and passionate and dramatic.
CB: Sure. A good analogy from literature would be a ‘Romeo and Juliet’ type situation, where you have two people that are willing to go to such extremes in terms of dying if they can’t be with each other…
KT: Yes.
CB: …in terms of the intensity level, or the commitment. Commitment. I’m not finding the correct term, but the sort of over-the-top feelings that sometimes come along with that placement.
KT: Yes. Romeo and Juliet’s a good example really because it also ties into the fact that they’re being kept apart, and there’s the money issue. It’s a family thing and their position in society. And they are completely impulsive about each other to the point that they would kill themselves over not having the relationship.
CB: Right. Yeah, that’s a good one. Okay. Let’s see. So before we move on from Pluto, is there anything else we’re forgetting, or anything else that you wanted to add? I mean it seems like we pretty well got to both of the extreme ends of the spectrum. I’m wondering if there’s anything else that we’re overlooking. Is there anything else that you wanted to mention?
KT: No. I guess there’s some different chart examples I’ll mention at some point. I don’t know if you want me to mention them with each one, or if we want to wait to the end and go through some charts at that time.
CB: No, go ahead. I mean if you have an example sort of restricted to Venus and Pluto stuff then that would be great right now.
KT: Okay. Well one that comes to mind who’s kind of classic, and actually she has various different aspects so we’ll talk about her again and again, is Elizabeth Taylor. And Elizabeth Taylor has Pluto in a pretty tight square to Venus, as well as a lot of Neptune and Piscean stuff. And of course, she’s known for being married so many times. She also lost a love of her life by death, which can be a Venus-Pluto aspect. But she’s certainly in the world known for her relationships more than most people.
CB: Sure. And maybe for some of our younger listeners…
KT: Who’s Elizabeth Taylor?
CB: Right. Like how would you describe her? I guess you’ve already given a pretty good description of her.
KT: Yeah. Elizabeth Taylor was a famous actress who was a childhood actress. I don’t even know when she started, maybe in the ’40s. And I think she was married seven or eight times, twice to Richard Burton, another famous actor. But she believed in marriage and she would always get married and get divorced, and get married and get divorced.
If we want to go to the younger level, I would be very happy to talk about Rihanna for a moment. And Rihanna also has several different features in her chart, but she does have a quincunx between Pluto in Scorpio very, very tight to her Venus. And although normally I might be working with the five Ptolemaic aspects, I find that both quincunxes and quintiles are often very significant in terms of the outer planets coming to Venus. So in terms of being beaten, the violent relationship aspect, she has the Pluto-Venus. We’ll also talk about her though in terms of having Neptune-Venus.
CB: Okay. Right, so I’m just pulling up her chart really quickly. And it looks like she has a pretty tight Neptune-Venus square, but also, yeah, a few other things going on.
KT: Mm-hmm.
CB: Okay. Excellent. Well those are two really great examples actually. In my own client examples, one of the terms that you used at one point made me remember somebody who was dealing with a stalker situation, where they had a very brief relationship with someone and they broke it off. But then this person became very obsessive and harassed and attempt to manipulate the person for a very long time after that point when they were undergoing heavy Pluto transit to what was already natal, I think, Venus-Pluto conjunction, or something like that at the time.
KT: Mm-hmm.
CB: So just in terms of on the more difficult end of the spectrum…
KT: Yes, and that will come up. And as you said when the Pluto transit comes up, it will trigger something. What I would say is if the person natally has a calm Venus, maybe a Plutonian character will come into their life, but they might not be so drawn to the relationship. But if you already have the Pluto-Venus aspect in your chart, you’re just prime, you’re wired for it in my way of thinking. So when you have various transits that trigger that these potential relationship partners come into your life, and it’s like the moth to the flame, so to speak.
CB: Yeah. I mean that’s a really interesting point. Because one of the first significations that even some of the earliest astrologers give for Venus is desire; it’s literally that which the native desires in some sense. And it’s just interesting hearing that point about when an outer planet is closely configured to Venus that Venus would actually desire some of those things that the outer planet has to offer.
And therefore, when someone else comes along that has that placement prominent in their chart that’s something, like you said, that the person can sometimes be kind of drawn to. Sometimes in a positive sense, but sometimes, even if they know that’s not necessarily good for them.
KT: Right. And a lot of times it’s really obvious that it’s not really good for them. It’s clear even from the first date that it’s a very challenging relationship. You know, you’re on a first date with someone and they’re talking about their three ex-marriages and how difficult they were, and someone has a restraining order against them, and on and on and on. And yet, you go like, “Wow this is who I want to be with.” And so there’s like an automatic desire meter that gets turned on very heavily when we have the aspect to the outer planets.
CB: Sure. And in terms of where that comes from, it’s kind of interesting thinking about it on a broader perspective. Because sometimes there are certainly those people who have that sort of dynamic, like maybe one of their parents had it, or that was a dynamic that the parents’ relationship had, and so, that’s one of the reasons why it becomes something that they’re attracted to later on in their life, in addition to having it in their chart.
But then, sometimes there’s just people that are born with certain aspects and it’s not something that was necessarily in the early childhood environment, but it’s just something that they almost seem to come into this life sort of drawn to, or wanting to experience for one reason or another.
KT: Yeah, both. It can be just what you’re wired for, or what you’re drawn to. It can also be in the family of origin.
CB: Sure. All right. Well why don’t we move on then to the next planet, which you said was Neptune?
KT: Yes, I’m going to go to Neptune next because that is about love. So both Venus-Pluto and Venus-Neptune can indicate a certain wiring to challenging relationships, and especially infidelity when you are in a committed monogamous relationship. But there’s a very big difference in that Venus-Neptune people fall in love with the soul. Pluto is usually much more about a deep sexual passionate chemistry. But Neptune’s goal state as a planet is oneness, bliss, transcendent experiences. And so, when you mix Neptune with love, you’re basically mixing love with ‘high love’. And what this does is it gives a person a really fabulous attunement to connect with the souls of other people.
Venus-Neptune people meet someone and feel them, know them, know they love that person without even speaking a word, which is great in some ways. It can be an attunement to being very loving, kind, compassionate, charitable, and great for doing this kind of work where we’re working one-on-one with people, and being compassionate and seeing who they are on a soul level, despite whatever’s going on in their personal lives; it can be very, very healing.
But in the relationship sphere, it can be pretty disastrous because people with Venus-Neptune aspect will tend to fall in love with people who are unavailable. Think about Neptune as the planet that’s very large and amorphous, and will often relate to things dissolving or disappearing. So the Venus-Neptune lover might be someone who isn’t really there. They seem to be there.
CB: Like physically there?
KT: Yeah. Well they may not be physically there. This is the construct of falling in love with the person who lives across the world in some other country, or falling in love with a person who’s married, who has various addictions, who is dishonest, who maybe is delusional, or illusional. So sometimes with Venus-Neptune, people don’t really even know what they feel.
Oftentimes, with Venus-Neptune relationships, the Venus-Neptune person feels this deep love and that this person is their soulmate, but the other person for some reason really isn’t all that engaged.
CB: Oh, right. Because that can flip one way or another where the Venus-Neptune person is sometimes the one that’s way more into it and is idealizing the relationship more than the person on the receiving end, or sometimes vice versa.
KT: Exactly. So there’s something going on where there’s not a sense of reality. And oftentimes, in the childhood story with Venus-Neptune, there may have been parent affairs and the child was pretty psychic, because Neptune’s the psychic planet, and the child feels kind of lost and unseen and aware of what’s going on, and is seeking this grand experience of love and connection.
So on the most shadowy level of Venus-Neptune, we have these unavailable lovers. There’s dependency. There’s kind of a numbed out feeling. Someone will be talking about their boyfriend, but when you really scratch the surface nothing’s really going on. The relationship is very one-sided. The one person is like texting and emailing and calling, but the other person isn’t really putting much energy into it.
There can also be a feeling of sacrifice. There can often be affairs for the reason of falling in love, like ”this is my soulmate.” But meanwhile, let’s say we’ve got two Venus-Neptune people who meet each other, and maybe they’re both married and they’ve got a couple of kids, yet, they just are filled with the sense that this is their ideal person. There’s no sense of the reality of how this is actually going to all play out.
CB: Sure.
KT: On the middle level, we simply have codependency, boundary issues. The psychic connection seems to trump reality, and a lot of forgiveness. Venus-Neptune can forgive almost anything. And yet, what we’re looking for here at the integrated level is what we talk of as the conscious spiritual relationship. A relationship that is the container for opening and expanding one’s ability to love unconditionally, to be spiritually devoted.
We can sometimes siphon some of the Venus-Neptune energy into transcendent artistry and philanthropy, giving away money and services. And this is one of the ways that I work with people to help them heal the relationship issues. So of course, we can talk about what this energy looks like, what it feels like. We can work with energetic processes to try to bring the energies together and ground them.
But it can also help to see where you can take this energy and use it in your life in a high integrated way. And in that way, I find that there’s not so much energy left over to be dreaming one’s life away around the soul mate syndrome. So if someone has a strong Venus-Neptune aspect, finding a way to be involved in transcendent art will take some of that energy, and then the relationship can become a little bit more grounded, a little bit more real.
And transcendent art is art that touches us on a soul level; it touches us emotionally. So Venus represents art. Neptune is that soul state. So film is Neptunian art. Certain kinds of books that really touch us. Watercolor painting, or other forms of artistic expression that are very, very beautiful and speak to our souls, that will be something that the Venus-Neptune person can do to bring about the healing state.
CB: That almost sounds like a modern equivalent of a propitiation ritual, or like a Namburbi ritual, which is almost like a stand-in for something. The idea, at least in ancient Mesopotamian astrology was that the placement has to manifest somehow, but if the person consciously chooses an outlet for it, it won’t necessarily negatively affect this other area of life that they don’t want it to affect somehow.
KT: Yes, exactly.
CB: Okay. Great. So some of the keywords coming up are things like delusions, or illusions on the negative end of the spectrum. And certainly, that theme of illusions seems to be really prominent when Venus is in conjunction, or hard aspect with Neptune, especially this idea of over-idealizing relationships, or thinking that the other person is really great, or is like a really amazing person that doesn’t have any flaws.
KT: Exactly. I mean the stories that one hears with the Venus-Neptune are, really…when you hear them, when it’s not your story, it sounds almost funny that it’s so crazy. But some will be in relationship with someone, and they’ll be talking about how much they love them and that they’re ideal. But when you start to scratch the story surface, it’s like well, yeah, this person that I’m in love with lives on the other side of the coast, and they’re married, and they have these kids, and they never return the phone calls. It’s just an idea. It’s an illusion, and it’s not a real, grounded relationship.
But maybe even both people feel it. Maybe both people feel this deep connection at least when they’re together. But there’s almost no likelihood that it’s going to come together as a relationship.
CB: Sure. I’m just looking through some of my celebrity chart files to see some prominent Venus-Neptune conjunctions. And one that I found was Whitney Houston, which is a really interesting example given her long history with her husband, Bobby Brown, and some of the speculations surrounding their relationship.
But something that interestingly ties that relationship together with another one that’s coming up here is Courtney Love who’s the wife of Kurt Cobain. And it’s an interesting crossover between those two, because one of the other themes that sometimes comes up with Neptune is addiction issues and drug issues in general.
KT: Yes, that’s true. And Kurt Cobain’s chart too, he has Neptune trine to Venus. And I would say he’s got a whole stellium in Pisces that’s opposite Pluto-Uranus. So he’s a person that I use as an example that has all of the aspects really: Venus into Pluto, Uranus, and Neptune. And so, you see the addiction issue as well as the relationship issue, and then she’s in there kind of fitting in like a puzzle piece with her own Venus situation.
CB: Right, that’s really interesting. And then, more broadly, just looking at some other examples, well actually I’ll skip that one. But so, those are some challenging examples. Did you have any examples that you wanted to share in terms of Neptune?
KT: Yeah. One of the ones I wanted to share was Tina Turner. And I know she’s also older, but I’m hoping that the younger listeners know her too, because she was a famous rock singer for a lot of years, and there was the movie that was made about her life. And she was in a very abusive relationship with her husband and music partner, Ike Turner. And she has the Venus-Neptune square, double-checking, yes, the Venus-Neptune square.
And the reason I think she’s a good example to use is, first, her biography was very, very public about what she went through. But also, she became a Buddhist. And how she got out of the relationship turmoil with him was a very deep, spiritual path, and ultimately, ended up in a wonderful relationship with someone. She lives in Europe now and is quite, quite happy.
The other relationship example I’ll use was someone that I knew who was having an affair with a married man, and she found out that he was having an affair with somebody else. He was a public figure, and she found out when his affair with someone else was publicized on TV. And she said to me at the time that she thought she was being safe by having an affair with a married man, because she thought that if he was lying to his wife that he wouldn’t lie to her. And this is the way the Venus-Neptune construct will be, that just the way that you think about things may not actually be very rational.
And one of the things I want to say, because I feel like I’m saying, “Oh, this is other people over here who do these things.” I have Venus in aspect to all three planets in a challenging way in my chart. So I’m not coming at this from any place of judgment or blame. I worked through decades of relationship experience and therapy to be able to heal these constructs within myself. So I just want to say that now. Like I have so much empathy for all of these constructs in people’s charts.
CB: Sure, and sometimes that can give you much better insight into those actual dynamics when you’ve actually gone through it yourself. I always thought this was annoying actually when I first learned astrology because I was pretty young when I was learning it.
But the idea that you can’t really know what certain transits are like, at least in terms of ones that everyone goes through until you’ve actually done it yourself, there’s some part of that which is not necessarily true ’cause certainly you can observe things in other people’s lives, or you can read the books and sort of develop an understanding of something. But there’s certainly a much different sort of wisdom that comes from experiencing something firsthand in the way that you are able to describe or articulate it when you come out the other side of that.
KT: Yes, I think that’s really true. So yeah, you don’t want to take the possibility of being a great astrologer away from people if you haven’t experienced everything. But yes, when you experience a transit yourself, and you feel how it is in your body and what happens to you, it gives you a little bit of a different understanding. But then the other side of it is your experience is not necessarily the same as everybody else’s, so…
CB: Right.
KT: …we always have to listen to each person and understand what they are going through.
CB: Yeah, that can be tough not wanting to project your own experience of something onto a client, or onto other people necessarily.
KT: Exactly.
CB: Sure.
KT: So shall we move to Venus-Uranus?
CB: Yeah, that sounds good. So this is our third and final outer planet, and this is the first in terms of the order of the planets. This is the first outer planet that was discovered and the first one where astrologers really had to try and study it to figure out what it meant. So it’s one that astrologers have had the most time to work on over the past couple of centuries.
KT: Yes, exactly. And so, it was discovered at the time of a lot of revolution in the world. I think of it first and foremost as this revolutionary, radical change, rebellious planet. And I see it’s goal state as awakening, true authenticity, and freedom. And on the childhood level, the imprinting can often be connected to disruptions, unexpected changes that are upsetting, maybe even abandonment, either direct or indirect. Sometimes we feel abandoned even when we haven’t been. And the pitfalls associated with the planet in general is that there can be a certain sense of dissociation, detachment, erratic behavior that are connected with the Uranian experience.
So as we bring this planet to Venus, the relationship experience is often that the relationships are erratic. People fall into love and out of love rapidly. There’s abrupt endings with no warning. And Venus-Uranus people are subject to a kind of inner feeling of wanting to leave before someone leaves them. And so, there will be kind of an inner detachment that you experience without actually really thinking about it.
So it’s not like you say, “Oh, this relationship is going really well, I think I should leave.” It’s an inner, subconscious, lightening quick feeling that you kind of feel something is shifting, or maybe the person isn’t paying that much attention to you in this moment, and it’s just a gut reaction like “I need to get out of here before something happens.”
And so, with Venus-Uranus strong in your chart, you need to learn to slow things down and listen to that, and know that when that happens you’re feeling an attachment rupture. You’re feeling scared that something’s going to happen. And it could be as simple as the person you’re with is just having a bad day, and it doesn’t mean anything drastic is happening.
So at the middle level, Venus-Uranus relationships are fine, but there is this kind of unsettled feel. Maybe the person’s not quite sure about the relationship, or it changes. One day it’s great, next day I’m not sure. It can all be going on more of the mental/emotional level. And when the energy is integrated, you find a relationship where you can be authentically yourself. You have a lot of freedom within the relationship. You can experience relationship as a vehicle for awakening. You learn to transcend, open, be outside of the attachment energy without being dissociated, so you can find love that’s free and connected at the same time.
And one of the ways that you can siphon some of this energy off is, it is said that Venus-Uranus people have a talent for organizing diversity for humanity. We know that there’s that humanitarian Aquarian energy that is connected to Uranus. So being involved in organizations, doing something for the tribe, helping the world be more free is a really good way to work with the energy.
CB: Sure. And you’re talking about having freedom and being outside of attachment without disassociating, and some of those feelings of freedom. Sometimes it seems like people have looser relationships, or sometimes open relationships–and sometimes a Uranus can be prominent due to that desire for freedom–and somehow, are trying to find a way to integrate that desire for freedom that comes from Uranus with the desire for intimacy in a relationship that comes from Venus.
KT: Yes, exactly. I find a lot of people who want to be in polyamorous relationships have a Venus-Uranus aspect, and it can work for them much more than maybe a Venus-Pluto person. But you could also be in a monogamous relationship if that’s your choice with Venus-Uranus, but you need to have a great sense of personal freedom within the relationship. You can’t feel cloistered. You can’t feel held down, or it just really won’t work for you.
CB: Another way that it seems that people sometimes manifest having Uranus-Venus contacts and still have stable relationships that don’t just flare out and then disappear is having what from a societal standpoint might be categorized, or might be seen as a unique relationship, or perhaps a weird relationship in some way…
KT: Mm-hmm.
CB: …or something about the couple that sort of stands out, or is against the norm.
KT: Right. I mean at one point, an interracial relationship was considered Venus-Uranus. Various different gender, sexuality differences, you’ll often see a Venus-Uranus aspect. So I don’t know how it’s going to go in the future, because it seems like a lot of things that at one point were considered unusual, or Uranian are becoming much more mainstream.
But yeah, there could be like a really big age difference in the partners. So just anything where people would look at the people and based on the classic cultural norm would say, “Oh, this is not a normal relationship,” that will come under the Venus-Uranus category.
CB: Sure. Yeah, and this is sort of a separate topic just in and of itself. But it’s interesting because a lot of the mid-20th century, or maybe like 1960’s, 1970’s delineations for Venus-Uranus sometimes would mention same-sex relationships. But the point that you just made was a really good one, which is that at a certain point in time that might have been applicable because of the uniqueness, or being seen as something that was against the norm. But as things like that become more normalized and more commonplace in society, that’s not necessarily a signature that stands out as somebody having a same-sex relationship.
KT: Yeah, I think that’s the direction we’re going. I’m hoping that’s the direction we’re going. That people are going to be able to choose their partners based on love and connection, and we’ll just have less and less interest in what a person’s sexuality, or gender, or whatever is–that we can just be humans with each other.
So at that point in time, I don’t know what would then be defined as a Venus-Uranus relationship. But we’re heading into an Aquarian age, right? The fact that we will have more freedom, hopefully, is part of the path of the next couple of thousand years.
CB: Well I have a long-term bet with a friend. I’m trying to project out what would be considered like a weird relationship in the future for Uranus-Venus–like relationships with artificial intelligence, or something like that.
KT: Yeah.
CB: I could definitely see that coming around both from a symbolic perspective as well as from a societal standpoint. Because some of the same statements would be applied in the same way of people saying that’s not natural, or something like that.
KT: Yeah, something that people are going to say that’s just too much. Like you know, you’re married to 40 people, or you’re married to a computer. It’s like, yes, there will be something that will be very different than anything that we’re thinking about right now, which is always the Aquarian signature, right? We can’t figure it out ahead of time.
CB: Right, it’s always just slightly ahead of the curve.
KT: Exactly.
CB: All right. So let’s see. So we’ve gone through a lot them. One of the ones that comes up, I don’t know, it’s tied a little bit into Venus-Neptune. But I’ve also seen with Uranus, where some of the quick relationships start up suddenly and also have a high burn rate, I’ve seen a lot of people with Venus-Uranus connections who get into online or long distance relationships. And I’m not sure if that’s coming through some of the Uranus associations with technology, or if it’s coming through the distance thing, like it’s an indirect way of importing distance.
You know, people have very successful long-term, online relationships, but then when the two people move close together, or move in together, suddenly things become unstable because it becomes normalized, or they don’t have that distance. And I’ve often wondered which side of that is really coming through.
KT: Yeah, I would say it could be either one. I mean the fact that you’re getting involved with somebody and idealizing and then sort of developing this love relationship at a distance is classically Venus-Neptune.
CB: Right.
KT: But the technological aspect of Uranus, that you’re getting involved with somebody that you haven’t met, and it’s only by computer, that could have the Venus-Uranus signature. The person I wanted to mention as an example here, when I was making up this talk and I was thinking, “Okay who probably in the world could be Venus-Uranus,” Russell Brand came to my mind right away.
CB: Nice.
KT: Of course, he has it in a very tight square. And when he got involved with Katy Perry that was very fast. They met, they got married really fast, and he divorced her by text apparently, right?
CB: All right. That’s good.
KT: And he divorced her because he said she was too controlling, which would be really easy. You know, when you have Venus-Uranus, almost anybody would be too controlling. But everybody should look at her chart because her chart is so amazing. She has Venus-Uranus conjunct. It’s near the South Node in Scorpio. There’s five planets in Scorpio. And it’s all just part of this long, long stellium that starts with Pluto in Scorpio, ends with Mars in Capricorn. I would imagine she is amazingly controlling, and she’s been able to use it for her success. But she has a Venus-Uranus signature right in the middle of that stellium.
CB: Right. Like mid-Sagittarius?
KT: 6 and 11°.
CB: Okay, got it. Let’s see. I’m just looking through some of my examples really quick to see if I have anyone. Do you have any other examples?
KT: Let’s see.
CB: I have Angelina Jolie, which is a little bit interesting in terms of how her relationship with her husband started up, and how it was sort of this sudden thing where they just got together while working on a movie together. And he was already married, but then he left his partner for her, and it was this big whirlwind type thing.
KT: Yeah, and she comes across as a very Venus-Uranian woman too, just the way she shows up, and the rumors of the other relationships she has. And she projects that image of the woman who does exactly what she wants to do and likes to be free.
CB: Sure. Okay. Any other examples?
KT: No, there were no other examples that I had right now.
CB: Okay. Let’s see. So in terms of keywords, it’s difficult because I almost want to say that it’s harder to put Uranus in a negative versus positive end of the spectrum. I mean you can but some of the significations can really go either way. The signification of ‘freedom’ itself could have both a positive or a negative manifestation. But just quickly in terms of summarizing some of the significations, what would you say some of the negative, or challenging ones could be?
KT: Well the negative one of Uranus is people like being so afraid of being abandoned that they leave good relationships without giving it a chance. They’re constantly leaving, or sabotaging, creating distance and not giving the relationship a chance to deepen.
CB: Sure.
KT: So that’s probably where the fear of abandonment shows up as a person acting like they’re free. So it’s not like they’re essentially, truly free. They’re not free in a spiritual way. They’re actually just terrified of being abandoned, and that’s where the healing can occur so the person can be truly free and relate with a romantic partner.
CB: Sure. So not preempting things.
KT: Mm-hmm.
CB: Okay. Let’s see. Other things that I wrote down would be relationships that start up very quickly but also end very quickly and abruptly. Erratic relationships. Unsettled, or very highly-variable relationships. Let’s see, on the more positive side, unique relationships, relationships that have a high degree of freedom, or spontaneity. Relationships that are used as a vehicle for awakening. What were some of the other positive ones?
KT: That was basically it. Relationships that are free and open and honest and clear. There’s sort of an excitement level. There’s opportunity to change. And maybe, there’s a sense of sharing in the relationship, that one has an interest in changing the world and the relationship supports that.
CB: Sure. As we were saying earlier, sometimes people will have natal signatures where this is already a signature in their chart, and then at some point it gets activated by some transit, or some other activation, whereas sometimes it can just be the person doesn’t have a signature for this, but it can come into their life. And I think it’s true for all of the three outer planets, but Uranus is one where it’s often very distinct.
If this isn’t necessarily a natal signature that that person has in their life, if they get hit by a Uranus transit, sometimes it can be very distinct in terms of how something just comes out of nowhere and really transforms the person’s life, but in this very unexpected and sometimes very erratic, or abrupt way.
KT: Yes, exactly. And maybe it’s a kind of person that they thought they would never be with, like someone who’s married and a same-sex person comes along that they thought was going to be a friend. And suddenly they have sexual, or romantic feelings towards the person, when up until that point, they never even considered such a thing. So the Uranian relationship, when it comes in, will upset your world and your sense of who you are as a Venus person, as a relationship person, but you’ll be changed forever by the experience. And yes, it might come in very quickly and end just as quickly as well.
Although again, I want to say to people, it doesn’t necessarily. You can have a Uranian relationship come in and live happily ever after. It doesn’t have to be that it ends quickly, but sometimes that’s what happens.
CB: Right. I mean Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, so far, are a good example of that. Although one of the interesting things that I’ve seen in some instances with people–where that does happen, where it is a quick relationship that comes and goes, and it changes the person’s life in some very positive way–sometimes learning to be okay with that, or achieving some kind of sense of peace about that, not that it has to be a permanent thing that is the person’s entire life.
But in some instances if you have a one-off thing that changes your life–instead of lamenting that it couldn’t have been a permanent thing, where the two of you live together for the next 80 years and die in each other’s arms, or something like that–sometimes the short-term relationships can be very important and can come along at the right time to do a certain thing, or put you in a certain place in your life, or to push you towards something that you might not have done otherwise.
KT: Exactly. And something that I hope people would take away from our talk tonight is that relationship is a fabulous, healing, transformative, awakening process. And we’ve been kind of conditioned in our society to believe that a good relationship is something that starts young, and we commit, and we live forever, and it goes on an on. And that’s just not true.
And I also feel like I don’t necessarily believe in the whole soulmate thing either. I feel like there are lots and lots of souls that we have very deep connection with, and the right soul comes in at the right time when we need that relationship. And if for some reason a particular soul is not available, or not coming forward, we still need a certain relationship at a certain point in time and there will be others that we have history with.
So when we’re looking at these relationships between the transpersonal planets and Venus, I think it’s really important to understand this as our inner wiring, and in just a very rational way, what we’re prone to–both the positive, healed aspects that we can live through, and also where we might find more painful experiences–and that we can see this without fear, or hopelessness.
And we can figure out how we can take this energy and do something for the world with it too, so that it’s not just all being devoted in an obsessive way to romantic relationship. And just remember that everything in the chart has a really important purpose and is important, and all of our relationships are important and purposeful.
CB: Sure, and that there might be useful lessons in many instances, sometimes in really obscure situations that otherwise might seem sort of random, or even tragic in some sense.
KT: Exactly. I feel like we need a lot of distance from life. We have to get really old, or maybe even in-between lives, where we can look back and we can actually see the whole pattern and how it was unfolding, and why each relationship, if it was an evening, or a day, or 30 years, how each relationship was a piece of the puzzle of our own unfolding.
CB: Definitely. All right. Excellent. Well I think we covered a lot of ground in this discussion.
KT: Yeah, I do too.
CB: Was there anything else that you wanted to mention, or were there any final things that we meant to touch upon that we didn’t get a chance to?
KT: No, I can’t think of anything else for right now.
CB: Okay, excellent. Well you’re in the process of writing a book about this topic, right?
KT: Yes, I am. And I have another book called Soul Pathway that I expect to be published in a few months. And that’s really about connecting to one’s soul path through astrology and inner inquiry and process, and then breaking through blockages and manifesting one’s path. So this one, Sex, Love & Crazy is the next book coming down the pike.
CB: Excellent. And people can find out more information about it on your website?
KT: Yes, KayTaylor.com.
CB: Excellent. And you’re actually going to be teaching next month at the OPA retreat that I was just talking to Maurice about, right?
KT: Yes, the OPA retreat is called I, Astrologer, and it’s a mentoring retreat for astrologers, or people who would like to be a professional astrologer. So the first three days of this retreat, which is March 18, 19, 20, we’ll be talking about how to market yourself. My specialization is going to be the counseling skills, and how to draw clients to you and keep clients because of the way that you interact with them.
But there will be people doing photography and website and talking about blogging, and we’ll also be mentoring anybody who comes to that conference. We will help them create a business plan. And there will be four of us who are senior faculty, and we will be mentoring the students in our groups for a year with three webinar calls. So there’s a lot of really great support from successful astrologers to anybody who comes to the conference.
And then the second three days of the OPA retreat is the peer counseling, the peer work where people learn how to become better chart readers.
CB: Excellent, that sounds fantastic. And you actually contributed a chapter, I think, to the OPA book that just came out that I interviewed Maurice about a few days ago.
KT: Yes, I did the chapter on the history of astrology and the benefit of professional organizations. So professional organizations have really only been strong in the world since about the ’30s, and there’s a lot of really great organizations, OPA, of course, being one of them.
And so, the whole chapter is about all the different organizations there are, how they’re all different from each other, and why astrologers, or serious astrology students should belong to organizations. I can say that it totally changed my professional astrological career to get involved with the organizations and meet a lot of great astrologers and learn so much, and also have a lot of fun going to conferences.
CB: Yeah, definitely. That’s always one of my favorite things about the organizations is the conferences that they put on, and being able to meet other interesting people that are doing great work, which is, in point of fact, the genesis of this talk and just meeting you at the OPA conference a few months ago.
So yeah, I definitely recommend people check out your website at KayTaylor.com. And thanks a lot for coming on the show.
KT: Thank you, Chris. I’m really happy that you invited me.
CB: All right. Well thanks everyone for listening, and we’ll see you next time.