The seduction power of Venus
Apr 27, 2011
Venus de Milo, the Louvre
The statue of Venus took my breath away when I first saw her in the Louvre 20 years ago. I still vividly remember how I felt. I was touched by her beauty and the fact that she still seemed to be alive after 2000 years. I marvelled that I could be moved by a marble statue that Alexandros of Antioch was said to have created somewhere between 130 and 100 BCE, around 2000 years earlier.
There was part of me that resonated deeply with the archetypal values of Venus although I had not really had a chance to experience it in my life so far. The archetype of Venus is the Lover – representing passion and selfless devotion to another person. It also extends to the things that make our hearts sing, including art, nature and music. I now realize, almost exactly 20 years after first seeing Venus de Milo, that these feminine values are extremely important to me. I was largely unconscious of this at the tender age of 19, yet that statue breathed her divine essence into my heart and helped me to feel those qualities anyway.
She reflected the sweetness I felt in my heart that was there when I looked at the first evening star in those vulnerable teenage years, wishing to find love with someone wonderful (someone I had not yet met). And while swimming naked in the waves of the Indian Ocean in Western Australia when the sun set over the sea; it was like swimming in liquid gold. And in all those warm Sunday afternoons listening to my Dad’s wonderful records while my sister and friends played in the garden, I also experienced that joyful part of myself which had responded to the beauty of Venus’ curves.
It begs the question then: When you are touched by art, nature or music, what part of you is it that is touched? Take a moment to feel inside yourself and deepen the experience of appreciation of whatever it is that has moved you. You might find the experience enriches you even more when you ask yourself this question.