When I was a kid, my parents didn’t give me an allowance, but my father allowed me to keep all the spare change he brought home at the end of the day. I started saving my coins, and every so often, he’d take me to the bank to convert them into dollar bills. Talk about delayed gratification! Nevertheless, it taught me the value of patience, discipline, and organization, as I kept my coins separated according to their denomination.
So on what did I spend my ‘hard saved’ money? Candy, toys, comic books? No.
I spent my money on books. I loved browsing the book catalog our school gave us and placing my orders. Fast forward a couple of years to when my mother and I returned to Brazil, and I had an entire suitcase of just books, which surprised the customs agents at the airport. My pleasure and joy in spending my money went to learning, and to this day, I’m a bonafide bookaholic and a lifelong learner.
Do you remember what you liked to spend your money (or other resources) on as a child?
How we manage our resources, money, and assets is deeply linked to what we value and our sense of self-worth. From a planetary archetype perspective, it’s deeply tied to Venus and, in your birth chart, to the Second House. The Second House also reflects that which supports our lives and gives it substance and embodiment.
“The astrological houses are metaphoric of our inhabitations. Astrologically, the twelve houses are the symbolic places we inhabit, our in-habits or inner patterns, so to speak. They represent both the outer surface of our lives as well as its inner places.” – Brian Clark
Changes afoot
Collectively we’re living through a time of rising inflation, supply chain interruptions, an inflated real estate market, and a volatile stock market, to name a few. Meanwhile, folks are reimagining their work and quitting en masse; on the same token, corporations are also letting go of a large number of their employees.
Taurus, ruled by Venus, is a realm that teaches us about our relationship with our resources, values, and assets. Astrologically, we have the Lunar Nodes traveling through the complementary signs of Taurus & Scorpio, with Uranus still prodding the Bull. With both the North Node and Uranus traveling through its landscape, our collective experience of assets, resources, and putting our money where our values are is being highlighted and transformed.
Money, Money, Money!
I’ve been exploring the topic of PURPOSE & LIVELIHOOD, and it’s easy to see that our collective understanding of how we earn a living needs a lot of healing. Our attitude and emotional connection to the topic of money have a complex power over us. There are so many examples of rampant greed and avarice that it becomes hard to reconcile the relationship between earning ability with personal value. It’s as if our culture has taken the gifts of Taurus, a sign related to our embodied experience of ownership and resources, and wholly corrupted it to such a degree that now we’ve forgotten its gifts of rhythm, physicality, connection to the earth, and sensuality.
As I read about the Great Resignation or the Great Rethink and see so many starting their own business or turning their side hustle or hobby into a legit enterprise, I feel some hope that perhaps this is the healing we need in our collective imagination around earning, resources and our overall economic system. Because each new solopreneur/entrepreneur that launches their business is an opportunity for healing our dysfunctional relationship with the realm of the Second House and Taurus.
Beyond your bank account
While financial considerations are not to be dismissed, they can’t always be at the driver’s seat when we are trying to reimagine or realign with our life purpose, sense of meaning, and livelihood. Our collective psychosis around money blinds us from seeing opportunities, creative ways through this journey, and the ability to trust and create the container for what we want to manifest. We’re too quick to slash our dreams because the ‘how’ hasn’t revealed itself – yet.
Often our Ego will get itself in a twist because it wants/needs to control the situation when its actual role is as an intermediary between our inner world, its desire/vision, and our outer world with its practical demands. This doesn’t mean that all will be hunky-dory if we dismiss the practicalities of life, but we need to remember the deeper levels that sustain our outer lives. Our Ego’s job is to find creative ways to bridge our inner and outer worlds.
Money & the Goddess
A few years ago, while in Washington D.C., we visited the National Museum of American History’s The Value of Money exhibition. What astounded me in the show was how many ancient coins had images of the goddesses: Aphrodite, Persephone, and Athena, among others.
The very origin of the word MONEY comes from Latin MONETA, which was a title given to two separate goddesses: Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory and the mother of the Muses, and Juno (Hera to the Greeks.) MONETA also had other meanings: to remind, warn and instruct. Another epithet given to Juno also had the definitions of ‘alone’ and ‘unique.’
To the Romans, the cult of JUNO MONETA as a protectress of funds/money and ‘financial advisor’ warning of the market and economic instability lasted for four hundred years. She was often depicted on the coins, holding the scales in one hand and the cornucopia in the other, reminding us how we must weigh and balance abundance.
The link to the goddess of memory and mother of the Muses Mnemosyne gives us a hint that when it comes to our relationship with money, we have to tap into our earlier memories both as individuals and as a collective. Money is to be a servant of creativity (remember the Muses!), not the master.
Astrologically, money is also aligned with VENUS and her powers of attraction, pleasure, and transformation through relationships. Venus teaches us about our unique plumage, how to honor our affinities, and how to be in a relationship with that we want to attract.
The Second House – I’m worth it
When examining your work in the world and the gifts you want to bring forth, it’s inescapable that one takes a focused examination of their astrological second house of assets and resources.
-
What are one’s innate talents, strengths, and resources (material, emotional, mental, etc.)?
-
What does one like to do and how is that linked to what they value?
-
How does one need to feel valued?
When we explore the theme of life purpose, we’re inherently touching on the topic of fate and destiny. And our sense of worth is deeply tied to our understanding of what is our fate and destiny, along with the twists and turns of the wheels of fortune. Remember that the word fortune (and the concept of luck) comes from the goddess FORTUNA, often represented with her cornucopia of abundance.
As much as we want to be ‘rational,’ left-brain thinking individuals, we can’t escape the emotional complexity of examining our relationship with money, resources, and assets. Ultimately, what we value and how all of these color our experience of our self-worth.
Our cultural viewpoint on our earning capacity, skills, and talents has left us in a wasteland in terms of its lack of (re)imagining what we each carry as something worthy of sharing with the world. Our ideas of success and fame, and fortune have further reduced the possibilities to a narrow view of what is possible, bypassing the foundational core of all this to our souls.
What wants to be birthed through you
Often, one may pick a career or a job because it’s a wise financial decision, but it drains them of a connection to their soul with time. No wonder the heroic and spiritual journey of aligning your life’s purpose with your livelihood is beckoning many in these chaotically creative times. But standing at the threshold of this heroic journey is the need to reimagine and rethink how we see the link between one’s earning power and assets.
While money and how we make our livelihood are essential aspects of being embodied in this world, it’s not wise to bypass the larger picture of our place on this Earth.
The culture’s emphasis on the self-made individual erases an integral part of the equation for our work in the world: that something wants to be birthed through us, and this something has a simpatico relationship with us. Be a creative endeavor, a business, or a career is attracted to us as much as we’re attracted to it. It chooses us because of our unique plumage.
Our assets, talents, and values are clues to the individual vessel we are for this something else to be birthed through us. However, it’s not as easy as building it, and all will come easily. There’s a polishing of our immaturities and a wrestling with Ego limitations, fears, and the need to control.
Money is linked with goddesses. Juno/Hera speaks to our sovereignty, as she was the Queen of Heavens. Aphrodite/Venus speaks to our power, our striking plumage. Fortuna reminds us of the wheels are always turning flowing in the rhythm of the ebb and flow of our luck.
Healing our relationship with how we make a living
For many, at this moment in time, with the collective upheaval in the financial and resource sectors, it’s time to take a deeper look at what to do with one’s precious life. Assessing what one truly values is a way to discern between the fool’s gold of external ideas of success and our Ego’s fear-based decisions on what it wants, with the real gold of our Soul and the hidden opportunities when we say yes to its call.
The Second House was also called the Gates of Hell to the ancients. Inherent in this image is the idea that one must undergo an Underworld journey to find the true treasure of their life. But the Lord of the Underworld is also the Lord of Wealth. For anyone navigating the anxieties and challenges of dealing with money and earning their livelihood, the image of the Underworld journey is apropos. When we dare to face our relationship with the physical world and its resources, especially money, we are facing our issues and embarking on a healing journey that will ripple through our family lineage and our community.
So for each person that has or is embarking on giving birth to a business or reimagining their career, don’t forget that this is a spiritual journey and soul-making pilgrimage. It’s never just about the money. Money is just the doorway into your Underworld journey.
Photo Credits:
Main image: Thought Catalog
Subsequent images: Andre Taissin, Sharon Mccutcheon, David Clode and Maxime Horlaville
Via Unsplash
