I love ritual. In fact, I’ve been a fan of rituals for as long as I can remember. I find the pomp and circumstance of these sacred practices to be absolutely mesmerizing and delicious.
And I love the way rituals can run the spectrum from super simplistic and Spartan to obnoxiously elaborate and ornate. It’s like a Choose Your Own Adventure story when creating rituals. They can be anything we want them to be. The only criteria is that they have meaning for the enactor.
One of my favorite ways to explore ritual is in my work with various mythological representatives of divinity. And one of my favorites of these is the goddess, Venus.
Venus is the Roman goddess of love, beauty, luxury, sensuality, sexuality, victory and material riches. She also goes by other names in other pantheons. She’s Aphrodite in Greece, Freya in Nordic mythology, Lakshmi in the Hindu pantheon, and more.
I started forging my relationship with Venus a couple years ago. I realized that I had been sublimating my natural Venusian energies in an effort to conform to social and familial conditioning. I accentuated the masculine aspects of myself and my personality and downplayed the feminine. I relegated my own sexuality to the Shadows in favor of more intellectual acclaims. (I had been trained to believe the two were mutually exclusive, which I now realize is completely false.) I was living under the rule of scarcity programming and regularly denied myself pleasures and luxuries. When I finally realized all of this, I began to call Venus into my life in the hopes of restoring these imbalanced parts of myself.
It’s been such a powerful practice for me to work with Venus' energy in this way. I set aside time each week to meet Venus in sacred space. I do this via the powerful medium of ritual. Some days, if I’m especially tired or feeling a bit defeated, I keep it really simple. Other days, if I’m feeling a little extra fancy, I’ll tart it up a bit. (Venus is a big fan of tarting things up.)
Just having this recurring ritual set in my calendar keeps me present with these energies and reminds me where I might be falling back into old programming, and where I am excelling at embodying these yummy magicks in my life.
Friday is the day of the week that is sacred to Venus. (The word Friday is a contraction of Freya’s Day, referring to the nordic goddess, Freya. As mentioned, above, Freya is the nordic version of Venus.)
With this in mind, I plan my rituals for every Friday. That way, I am getting a dose of Venusian enchantment every week. It’s consistent, and easy to remember, which works well for me and my oft-scattered schedule.
There are many variations of Venus ritual that I employ. Again, a ritual only requires a personal connection for the enactor in order to be effective, so the options are really infinite.
Here are a few of my favorite SIMPLE rituals for honoring Venus on her special day:
*Wearing clothes that feel especially pretty and/or sensual - especially if they are pink! (One of
Venus’ primary color correspondences is pink.)
*Taking a bubbly bath with salts, essential oils, ambient music and soft lighting
*Sitting down at my Venus altar and having a chat with Venus - sharing my day, my challenges,
my victories
*Eating something really delicious with ALL my senses in full participation
*Sexy dance party for one!
*Before bed, I will sometimes put on a fancy kimono robe, pjs or knickers and will curl up with a
good fiction book or book or poetry
*Head out into town to explore beauty - through art, boutique wares, Nature, people, etc.
*Journal about my dream life full of luxury and abundance
