- The Lover, Archetypes, and the Origin of Valentine’s Day -

Happy Valentine’s Day! Because this day is about lovers and affection, each year on this day we examine the archetype of The Lover, how our Venusian projections bring us what we mirror, and remember the heroic sacrifice of St. Valentine, the Patron Saint of lovers (and beekeepers!)

We began this journey Monday and continued it yesterday, so if you haven’t read those pieces, please take the time before jumping into this one, or if you would rather do it the retrograde way, go ahead and read it after you read this. Those two articles covered a wide range of topics, including why we attract who we attract, why we stay with or reject people and experiences, karma and relationships, symptoms of seduction and why it never leads to healthy relationships, the difference between courtship and seduction, and recognizing and building healthy relationships.

I expand on all of this material and more in my book The Magic of Venus: Friendships, Soul Mates, and Twin Flames. In it we explore all the factors in who we attract and why from astrological angles, spiritual angles, and psychological angles. There are chapters on the role karma plays in who we attract, the art and science of shaping who and what we like into fulfilling relationships, each sign’s archetypal mate qualities, and how our Venus position predisposes us to like some things and people and not others.

I discuss evolving emotional cycles across time, how to recognize and let go of hurtful attractions and seductions, and hundreds of other astrological and psychological gems to help readers get clear about attracting better friendships. By consciously cultivating healthy relationships, we naturally attract people who will be good to us and for us, who we might have as friends for the rest of our life. There’s an entire section devoted to Soul Mates, how to recognize them, and the important parts they play in our personal and interpersonal evolution. The book gives the reader the power to re-shape their likes in order to live a more fulfilling life in more joyous relationships.

And now, it’s time to celebrate Valentine’s Day, so let’s take a stroll down the Path of the Lover Archetype!

Valentines’ Day is the one day of the year dedicated to lovers, which is a truly wonderful thing to celebrate. We all have “the urge to merge,” which is how we express our inner Lover archetype. Each of us has six different fundamental archetypes within us, some stronger and others not so strong. I call them Grand Masques, because we have various “faces” of personality which we show our world. The Lover is one of the six, and is the part of us which seeks relationship, whether with others, our Higher Self, or our Soul.

In Astrology, we have 12 signs which are 6 axes of dual signs. These 6 pairs of signs show us 6 Great Archetypes within each of us. The Axis of Aries/Libra is the Lover, which can also be called the Relator, since those signs are associated with the Axis of the “I-Thou” relational dance in our charts. I touch on the other 5 archetypes in The Magic of Venus: Friendships, Soul Mates, and Twin Flames, which are The Warrior/Guardian, the Magician/Questor/Explorer, The Innocent/Primal, The King/Queen/Orphan, and The Priest(ess)/Healer/Shaman/Guide.

None of us is born perfectly expressing any of our inner archetypes. We learn various expressions of these parts of us from our elders, our peers, and the random interactions we encounter as we grow. Each time we find something to emulate, it affects how we express various archetypes within us.

As I explained in previous articles in this series, our subconscious mind shapes a lot of our expression via images we took on at prior times in our lives. For example, if “the rulers” of our life as a child were fair, generous, and kind, we will naturally express those traits of The King/Queen, but if the ruling forces in our childhood were selfish, unfair, and unkind, then we will learn the unhealthy expression of that archetype. When someone’s Magician is unhealthy, they inevitably choose to refuse responsibility and/or run away when confronted with the results of their behavior. When that archetype within is healthy, then we have a good curiosity, a reasonable approach to new knowledge, and an open mind as we grow into greater truths and views.

All of life is about interactions, so our inner Lover is fully operational from a very young age. The various versions of that Grand Masque (and the Grand Masques of the other Archetypes) evolve through our interactions with others, because we are also challenged to know boundaries via our Warrior, challenged to know how to be guided into healing and guide others into healing via our Guide, and so on with every archetype within us.

All the roles we play, all the parts of our personality are influenced by all our interactions, whether with self or others. As we grow from infancy to adolescence into adulthood we learn to imitate our image of these Archetypes according to what we’ve learned and what appeals to our Anima, or subconscious mind. As we evolve, our imagery of how we want to express an archetype also evolves.

As we learn to imitate various aspects of archetypes, they become fixed as images in our emotional body. We are aware of the ones we consciously choose, while we are usually unaware of the images in the subconscious mind. That’s why often we don’t know we’re being a certain way or acting out a certain unconscious role, until a) someone points out what we’re doing, or b) we have an electric moment when our Higher Self holds up the invisible mirror to our personality and it awakens to what it never saw before that moment.

Why We Like What We Believe We Like

We have a subconscious mind, a self-conscious mind, and a superconscious mind. The first operates below the conscious mind based on images it fixed in the past. Self-conscious mind is only aware of what it’s aware of, and superconscious, or Higher Mind, is constantly in touch with the source of inspiration. Most of us think we know what moves us to like what we like, but often the motivator is in the subconscious mind, wanting certain things to be fulfilled or actualized according to its image.

So the subconscious mind projects what it wants and believes it likes into the world. It also projects what it does not want and does not like, regardless of how reasonable or unreasonable those desires and feelings may be. This is where our childhood images, values, and expectations matter, because as children we weren’t taught how to evaluate our desires with an eye to our spiritual growth. Most of us “liked” something because we were taught to like it. Very few of us are taught to question what we like and why we like it, and so we cling to those projected desires until we awaken to our need to choose a different set of likes and attractions.

As we discussed yesterday, the subconscious mind likes to be seduced into chasing desires whether they are good or bad. That’s why becoming more aware of the part of us which always want more and more of what it believes it “likes” helps us break childhood desires we were conditioned to want. We then have the power to choose new desires which are more fulfilling to our adult self, breaking the attraction to unhealthy desires left over from prior times.

However, as we are not islands unto ourselves, our eternal Lover always seeks interactive dances with others we meet along the road of life. These mirror our Venus, which is often swayed to like what others like, since our subconscious desire mind likes being seduced by what it believes others like, whether these are good for us or not. Venus is constantly mirroring likes and dislikes, comparing and contrasting what it has liked with things it’s not sure whether to like or not.

It is part of being human to be the recipient of the projected likes and dislikes of others which we in turn project onto our world. It begins with our parents’ verbal and nonverbal cues, where we learn that some things bring smiles and praise, while other behaviors, likes, and attitudes bring frowns and disapproval. These are powerful cues that influence our choices, both those that bring pleasure and those that bring pain.

Our path to spiritual maturity naturally leads us to be more conscious of our likes and dislikes and how these relate to the growth of our personality. As we learn to spot unhealthy desires, we are able to know when we are swayed by the desires of another. Once we become conscious of what moves our desires, we become increasingly aware of our conscious and unconscious projections. Over time, we find we have the power in each moment to choose to turn our actions, feelings, and speech to a better interaction, freed of projections, expectations, and attachments to perceptions.

Time is the means by which we measure our movement through experiences. With time and experience, our understanding of the material, emotional, mental, and spiritual planes of life evolves. As we evolve, we discover at each turn of life’s wheel that we continue to like some of what we used to like, do not like some of what we used to like, and have awakened to new things and people to like.

As we evolve consciously, we grow to see how not to be seduced by anything or anyone, and learn to make conscious choices that lead us to ever-greater states of happiness, joy, fulfillment, and occasionally true bliss. We no longer yield to the seductions of our lower self and others which used to pull us into discontent once our lower nature has embraced the courtship with our Higher Self. All our interactions, within and without, help us awaken to the greater Love we ARE. Everything in our lives points us toward ways to become the greater Love we seek with each dance step we take.

Ultimately, as offered earlier, the Lover is about the dance of courtship between the lower self and the Higher Self, and we play out this dance through relationships that mirror both of these parts of our inner nature. As we embrace the courtship of the Higher Self to bring our personality into more perfect expression, we find our relationships are evolving and express the love we want to know. Then we no longer seek to love and be loved, as we have become the Love we are.

So How Did Valentine’s Day Come To Be?

And now, the final act in our Valentine’s Day play! We now pay honor to the man who brought us this day dedicated to lovers (and beekeepers!) Given the barbarism of the past few thousand years, it’s great that someone actually decided to celebrate lovers, sweethearts, and the bond between two people who love each other.

Because Valentine is a saint, it's a holiday of recent invention, originating in Rome. February 14 originally honored Juno, the Queen (who also happens to have an asteroid named after her, but that's another article for another time.) February 14 was the day before the Feast of Lupercalia, where children were allowed to pair up for the festival, and longer if they chose.

In a nutshell, Claudius II, the tyrant of the third century, needed soldiers, not lovers, so he cancelled marriages and engagements in Rome. Saint Valentine continued to marry people in secret, so Claudius chopped off his head on February 14. After that the church co-opted the Feast of Lupercalia, re-naming it Valentine's Day. And there you have it.

Last year my colleague Larry Ely found some data about the execution of St. Valentine. The history books give two dates a day or so apart, but the planets let us know the actual date. This was a public killing, so it was not done at night, but in as broadest daylight as events and the organizers would allow. He got the GMT (UT) from the rectified MC and the longitude of birth.

Date: February 14, 270 AD (Gregorian, New Style).
UT (GMT) 12:00:29 pm
LMT (if it had been used then; this is the time your software will ask for): 12:08:50 pm (rectified by Larry 13 Feb 2024)
Place: Rome, taken as 41n54 and 12e29 as exact.
MC: 23 Aq 45
AS: 19 Ge 43
Planets check: Sun 25 Aq 51
Moon: 15 Ta 14

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So for today and the next while, please take some time to review those in your life who offered you good friendships and healthy affections, and those you offered these to as well. Remember all you have liked and loved, and everyone and everything that inspired you to give and receive healthy affections and a higher Love.

These were the times you were wearing the Grand Masque of the Lover, doing a timeless dance with a form of the beloved, and therefore yourself. We all like that which is beautiful to us, since it mirrors our own beauty. And exploring beauty is a very good thing. Happy Valentine's Day, you beautiful lovers who read this. You ARE the love you seek!

On a final note, please consider getting your copy of The Magic of Venus: Friendships, Soul Mates, and Twin Flames since it covers all we’ve discussed these past 3 days and more! It’s a journey (as one of my readers put it) “combining astrology, psychology, eastern philosophy, spirituality, metaphysics and life experience.” No matter what you think about Venus now, this book will change how you look at people in the future as you move into ever-more fulfilling relationships!

Reprinted on crystalwind.ca with written permission from Robert Wilkinson. Copying this article to other blogs is strictly prohibited. It is copyright protected. 

© Copyright 2024 Robert Wilkinson

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