This week when looking into the sky, we won’t see Mars, because it’s still buried in the heart of the Sun. But Saturn will be visible, a golden light riding across the southwest among the stars of Aquarius. Jupiter is a much more brilliant light, rising in the East as the Sun sets in the West each evening, taking the lead among the stars of Aries. And though Mercury is also visible right now low in the southwest after sunset, it’s Venus that draws the attention, our beautiful morning star, rising into the dawn’s early light in the company of Spica, the star of abundance.
Though we all have the opportunity to see Venus in the morning sky , there’s a deep mystery attached to truly seeing Venus, which is rooted in the mystery of the human heart. This mystery is that the heart is not just an organ of circulation in the physical body, but is, rather, the outer manifestation of a sense organ that can perceive beyond what meets the eye, as Antoine de Saint Exupéry wrote in his story of “The Little Prince”: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
In other words, while the eyes are the organs for seeing in the physical world, the heart is the organ for seeing spiritually, which requires effort in order to be active. The effort that activates the perceptive capacities of the heart is love, which, as Rudolf Steiner describes, is a light of heaven that shines in the life of an earthly day. To love is to see the star shining in another, to shine with the light of heaven.
This week as Venus shines through the dawn near the star of Spica the message is clear, our greatest task is to love one another, abundantly.
~Mary
Hear this episode on iprnews.org and podcasts everywhere, anytime. Cover image: Venus adorns the morning sky in the company of Spica, the star of abundance, for the remainder of the month, as shown here in this image from Michigan State University’s Abrams Planetarium Sky Calendar.