Venus Magic and the Art of Receiving | The Seven, Episode 7
In Episode 7 of The Seven: Living with the Planets, Lucy Baldwin explores Venus magic as a path of desire, beauty, pleasure, embodiment, fertility, attraction, and receiving.
Venus is often described as feminine, but this episode makes a key distinction: Venus is not about gender. Venus is an archetypal current. She is the receptive, magnetic, embodied force that makes life beautiful and allows what is planted to grow.
Where Mars chases, Venus magnetizes.
Where Mars pushes, Venus receives.
Where Mars acts, Venus becomes fertile soil.
This episode is especially powerful for anyone who feels caught in striving, productivity culture, force, pressure, and over-effort. Venus magic offers another way of creating: through pleasure, nourishment, connection, and the embodied truth of desire.
Watch or listen to Episode 7 of The Seven here:
Key Takeaways
In this episode, Lucy explores:
Venus magic as the magic of receiving, attraction, beauty, and desire
why Venus is not about gender, but archetypal receptivity
the difference between Mars-style forcing and Venus-style magnetizing
how pleasure brings us into the body and reveals desire
why Venus magic is a more embodied alternative to law of attraction
the shadow side of Venus: comfort, validation, illusion, and fantasy
fertility as a spiritual principle, not only a biological one
relationship, reciprocity, and human connection as Venusian magic
a simple ritual using soil, offerings, and symbolic planting
Venus Magic Is the Magic of Receiving
Venus teaches a way of creating that is very different from force.
This is not the part of magic that pushes, hunts, dominates, or breaks through.
This is the part of magic that receives.
Attracts.
Beautifies.
Nourishes.
Allows.
Venus is the chalice. The soil. The body. The magnetic field.
For people who are very martial, driven, disciplined, and action-oriented, Venus can feel almost uncomfortable at first. Receiving may feel harder than doing. Resting may feel harder than striving. Allowing may feel harder than forcing.
That is exactly why Venus magic can be medicine.
It restores a mode of creation that many people have forgotten.
Venus Is Not About Gender
Venus is often associated with the feminine, but Lucy is careful to clarify that this does not mean “women” or “girly.”
Venus is feminine in the archetypal sense.
The receptive current.
The embodied current.
The fertile current.
The magnetic current.
Every person has access to Venus. Every person has a relationship with receiving, beauty, pleasure, nourishment, desire, love, and embodiment.
Some people naturally move through Venusian energy. Others are much more comfortable with Mars energy: doing, acting, pursuing, pushing, penetrating, achieving.
Neither is wrong.
But if your life has become all action and no receiving, Venus has something important to teach you.
Venus and the Body
Venus is physical.
She is not an escape from the body.
She is a return to it.
This matters because so much spirituality has been shaped by the desire to transcend the human experience. To rise above the body. To get out of desire. To become pure mind, pure spirit, pure light.
Venus says something else:
You are here in a body.
Your body is part of the magic.
Your pleasure is part of the magic.
Your sensuality, beauty, hunger, and desire are not mistakes.
They are doorways.
Venus magic brings spiritual practice back into flesh, form, sensation, and actual lived life.
Venus as Embodied Manifestation
In the episode, Lucy describes Venus magic as what law of attraction has often been trying to be.
Law of attraction can become very mental.
Think the right thought.
Imagine the right thing.
Convince yourself hard enough.
But real manifestation cannot be forced through the mind if the body does not believe it.
Venus magic asks for something more grounded:
Can this desire become true in your body?
Can you feel it?
Can you receive it?
Can you become the kind of soil where this thing could actually grow?
Venus does not manifest by pretending.
Venus manifests through embodiment.
Pleasure Is a Spiritual Signal
Pleasure is not shallow.
Pleasure is information.
It shows you where desire lives.
It draws you into the body.
It reveals what nourishes you.
Many people are secretly afraid of pleasure because pleasure requires presence. It asks you to receive what feels good without immediately turning away, apologizing, controlling, numbing, or moving on to the next task.
Venus teaches that pleasure is not the enemy of spiritual life.
Pleasure can be wisdom.
Pleasure can be guidance.
Pleasure can be the body telling the truth.
The Shadow of Venus
Venus has a shadow, like every planetary current.
The shadow of Venus can include:
becoming over-attached to comfort
seeking external validation
confusing beauty with truth
getting swept into illusion, fantasy, or facade
choosing short-term pleasure over deeper alignment
wanting everything to look beautiful without asking whether it is real
Venus is not asking us to worship surfaces.
There is a difference between aesthetic beauty and numinous beauty.
Something can look good without being good.
Something can be attractive without being true.
The way through the shadow of Venus is not to reject beauty, pleasure, or desire.
It is to become more embodied, so your body can help you discern what is actually alive.
Fertile Soil as Spiritual Practice
One of the central metaphors of the episode is Venus as soil.
Not water, like the Moon.
Soil.
Rich, fertile, living ground.
This is an important distinction.
With Venus, the question is not only:
What do I want to create?
It is:
Am I becoming the kind of ground where this can grow?
Fertility here does not only mean pregnancy or biological fertility. It means the capacity to grow anything.
A project.
A relationship.
A new identity.
A magical practice.
A different life.
If you are exhausted, isolated, disembodied, undernourished, and constantly braced, your ideas may have nowhere to root.
Venus magic begins by making yourself into better soil.
Venus and Human Connection
Venus is also relationship.
Love.
Reciprocity.
Social connection.
The human network.
Lucy points out that we are not meant to be isolated islands. We are relational beings. We survive, create, and grow through networks of care, exchange, love, and mutual support.
Receiving from others can be hard because humans naturally track reciprocity. We want to know that we are contributing. We want to feel that we are giving back.
But Venus does not ask us to become dependent or helpless.
She asks us to remember that receiving is human.
Connection is human.
Needing each other is not a failure.
It is part of the web.
A Simple Venus Ritual for Receiving
Lucy offers a simple Venus ritual built around soil, beauty, and symbolic planting.
You can use:
a small container of soil
a candle
a small beautiful object, seed, crystal, gem, fruit seed, or symbolic item
an optional offering such as chocolate, strawberries, tea, hot chocolate, flowers, or perfume
Light the candle.
If you like, read a hymn, poem, or prayer to Venus.
Place your offering near the candle.
Hold the object you are going to plant.
Speak to Venus in your own words.
You might say:
“Venus, show me what wants to grow.”
Or:
“Venus, help me become fertile soil for my ideas.”
Or:
“Venus, guide me in receiving the love, support, beauty, and connection that are meant for me.”
Then plant the object in the soil and cover it gently.
You can leave it for three days, since three is traditionally associated with Venus.
Afterward, you can keep it, bury it outside, or complete the ritual in whatever way feels right.
You are not going to mess it up.
The point is the act of planting.
The act of receiving.
The act of becoming soil.
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Lucy Baldwin (00:01.208)
Hello, I am Lucy Baldwin. Welcome to another episode of The Seven, Living with the Planets. This podcast is all about magic and doing planetary magic as a path of self-growth, spirituality, and getting what we want. Speaking of getting what we want, today's episode is all about Venus magic. And if you know anything about Venus, Venus is very much related to desire.
and pleasure and worldly earthly pleasures and desires. And we're going to get into it today. as I think, you know, one of the easiest ways to sort of explain Venus is Venus is the feminine. And I don't mean feminine like girly. I mean feminine like the divine feminine, the receiving way of being.
The one who gets pregnant, the one who births worlds is the female. So the male sort of plants seeds, the male way is to go out and do and to create through doing. And the feminine way is to receive, to make beautiful, to attract.
And there's a big piece here that I'm going to talk about with fertility and creating that nutrient dense soil for seeds to sprout and grow roots in. And I just want to mention right from the gate, this has nothing to do with like men and women and gender.
This is about the energies of the masculine and the feminine. So the receiving and the penetrating, right? So the feminine is penetrated and the masculine penetrates. So that's what we're talking about. We're talking about energies, we're talking about archetypes. And I am actually a very martial sort of masculine...
Lucy Baldwin (02:25.336)
person in lot of ways, I really orient towards doing and actually have a hard time receiving. So Venus magic is medicine for me and it has nothing to do with gender. So I just want to make that really clear. I'm not talking about gender. I'm talking about these energies. so the feminine side of this and Venus in particular,
is very much about nourishment. It's very sensual. It's very creatively oriented. I I think that all of the planets are centered around creation. I think that everything is in service to creation. I think that that's what we do. That's what we are. We are creative beings. But Venus is about the beauty in creation. Venus is beautiful. Venus is form.
Venus is love and relationships and attraction and being attractive and seduction and being seductive. also Venus is very embodied. So the masculine is often associated with like with the mind, you know, it's mental. And the feminine is the embodiment, it's physical. And so
we are talking about the real physical world and making beauty in that world. And Venus is associated with a color green. And you can really think of that, like that's because plants are green, life is green. It's very much about life and being alive. And...
Yeah. so Venus, like where Mars chases, Venus magnetizes. So Venus is drawing you to her. She's receiving you. She's, you know, this is the chalice, right? And so with Venus magic, we're not forcing things. We're seducing them. We are, we're not like pushing for things. We're just allowing them.
Lucy Baldwin (04:48.192)
So it's a very different energy from going out and doing. And so if you're somebody who struggles to kind of relax and receive and allow the magic to happen, allow things to unfold, and you feel like you're always grinding and trying to like force things, then Venus magic is going to be so powerful for you. If you're already like a more Venus oriented person, you know, that would look like
struggling, maybe having a harder time like going out and doing things that would look like being really receptive and open and kind of yeah, just like being very social and allowing your network to support you. Our society, know, probably you know this, really seems to
It really sort of pushes us in the direction of being more Mars, being more masculine. Our society tends to kind of favor that Mars way of being, which is not to say that you can't be successful in a much more Venusian way of being because you absolutely can, just that we sort of celebrate, you know, we have this like productivity culture. We have this like go, go, go caffeine culture.
And so it's really easy to get swept up in that. And if you find that you are swept up in that, then Venus magic will be incredibly helpful for you. And especially if you feel like you're prioritizing, like doing things over relationships that mean a lot to you or connecting with people. Venus is very much about connecting and it's about love, of course, because, you know, that is...
That is what Venus wants. She's a lover. She's the beautiful love goddess. And I was thinking about this, how Venus magic kind of is what the law of attraction has always been trying to be. Venus is that receiving, is that attracting force. And so doing Venus magic is...
Lucy Baldwin (07:09.536)
like working with the law of attraction, but in a totally different framework that I think is more grounded, more holistic and where we are like going into our bodies more. think law of attraction can be, is very like in the head. And so we want to do it from the body. And yeah, like we're using desire to attract what we want. And of course, I'll always talk about how important it is to
not repress or turn things away and not use like shame and not run away from our fears or our angst or our discomfort or things that we don't want. have to face those things. And I think this is just since I'm addressing law of attraction, this is where law of attraction fails. This is why people are like, thought about millions of dollars every day and I never got it. because there's more than just that, you know, it's first of all, true manifestation comes from
embodying your truth. You it has to be true for you to attract it. can't, you can't like convince yourself of a truth that doesn't exist in your body and use that to magnetize things. It has to be in the body. It has to be because that's where matter is. We're trying to bring things from the like spirit mind into physical matter. And Venus, that's what Venus does, right? That's what the female does. She takes the sperm.
and grows it into a human. The sperm is like an idea that's been planted and she births it as a fully formed human. So this is what Venus does. She is the ultimate manifestor. But we can't ignore the truth and we can always find the truth in our body. Of course we can find it in our mind too.
You know, this is that back and forth between mind and body It's in both places But with Venus we're looking for it in the body because Venus is the body Venus makes life makes embodied life So yeah, and with Venus we're talking about pleasure and pleasure is a form of You know pleasure is tells us so much and I think that
Lucy Baldwin (09:29.024)
another thing that our society kind of trains us to be afraid of or to be better than, let's say, is pleasure. know, pleasure is, it shows us what we want. It shows us where our desire is. It also brings us into the body. Being with pleasure in our body, so many of us avoid that. We're terrified of it. It's actually uncomfortable. Pleasure can be extremely uncomfortable.
when we're not used to feeling it. so being in your body in pleasure and really allowing yourself to feel pleasure and honor your pleasure and follow your pleasure is an incredible, like that's the wisdom of Venus. So, and then I would say like the shadow of that is to be, you know, obviously not
so pleasure, short-term pleasure oriented, right? We want to be careful with that. And also thinking about desire. So we don't want to be like over attached to comfort. And we don't want to be like, this is a big one. Seeking external validation. So, and also we don't want to be thinking that beauty is truth or that beauty is meaning. And by beauty, there's different
I talk about beauty actually all the time. So there's like true beauty, like heart centered beauty, like numinous beauty, like God beauty. That is, there is truth in that kind of beauty. What I mean is like aesthetic, treating like aesthetic, you know, don't judge a book by its cover, right? It's like we...
Just because things look good doesn't mean that they are good. And so not getting swept up in illusions and fantasies and facades. So that's something that we're cautious of. And the way that we avoid that is by being in the body, right? The way that we kind of can check ourselves and know and feel into those things and avoid that sort of trap that I'm talking about is by being in the body.
Lucy Baldwin (11:47.04)
And that's the finding the balance and finding your truth. You can find that with Venus in your own like feelings in your body and your intuition, of course. So, yeah, mean, Venus is like the body as the altar body at, know, especially the female body as the altar, right? And the female body as being able to create life.
And I'm just going to take that whole part out. So, you know, a lot of like, a lot of spirituality that I think is born out of this kind of obsession with the mind and thinking and doing, you know, it's teaching us to escape, it's showing us it's talking, it's sort of all about escaping, it's like transcending the human experience.
and transcending your body with your mind. it often leads to just like detaching from the body. And I mean, I've experienced this in my own sort of spiritual journey, spiritual seeking. For many years, I was like kind of blasted out of my body, having these like far out spiritual experiences that were incredibly intense and deep and wonderful and powerful and also so disembodied and so disembodying.
And so I want to caution, I want to talk about, know, like, we're not trying to trans, I mean, maybe you are, but I don't think that I incarnated here as a person, as a human in a body to transcend my humanity. I think I'm here to embrace my humanity. And I do think that that's what Venus is reminding us to do is to be in our body and follow our pleasure.
and listen to our bodies and what it's telling us. And this is a big part of intuition, of cultivating intuition, is to be embodied and to connect with the feelings that you're feeling. I was thinking about, you know, because I did an episode recently about the moon and the moon is another feminine deity, feminine archetype.
Lucy Baldwin (14:15.466)
And, but it feels really different. the moon, when I think of the moon, you know, always with the feminine or not always, but a lot of times when I think of manifesting with these feminine deities and a lot of common sort of symbol for doing magic to like manifest things is to, you know, sort of plant a seed. And when I think of that with the moon, I think of a bowl of water. Like I'm always thinking of bowls of water when I'm doing magic with the moon, of course, because the moon is
watery and emotional. And so I imagined like planting a seed in water and you can plant seeds in water. But with Venus, it's really, the difference with this feminine is soil. We're planting the seed in soil and Venus sort of is that soil and so that's why.
Fertility is this word that comes up again and again for me that I've been sort of seeing when I'm doing my Venus work is this idea of like the fertile soil that we plant seeds in and they can grow and be nourished and you know the seed sprouts and it grows into a you whatever it's going to be. the fertility is it's not something that you go out and do it's something that you create within yourself.
It's something that you create by being in your body and by taking care of your body and being that sort of like vessel and nurturing yourself and caring for yourself. And I don't necessarily even mean fertility in terms of getting pregnant. I'm talking about just like being able to create anything. It's like we need to have that fertile soil that our ideas can come into.
such that we're able to grow healthy creations. And so it's this sense of, you know, having an embodied experience and way of living and being in that kind of relationship with yourself and where you are embodied and where you don't just sort of like check out and forget to eat and forget to drink and not sleep.
Lucy Baldwin (16:37.976)
but actually just really simply take care of yourself in those ways. And then...
ideas and anything that comes into your field, like you have, you're this fertile, rich soil that you can take what is right and true to grow. Which isn't to say that we don't all sometimes accidentally grow weeds, you know, things that are, end up being distractions. But that's okay because
we need to have that fertility in order to be able to create anything. And so we need to have, we need to be available and able and have kind of the space and bandwidth for ourselves. And so that means being open and being receptive and being able to receive. And of course, you know, the connection part of this is so huge because it's like,
We all need each other. We are a network of humans that we're all connected. And we need each other and our relationships are what keep us together. It's what holds, it's what keeps us all alive, I mean, on some level, but it also it's what supports us. And
When you think about it, like on a larger scale, our entire society, our entire world is just one big human network that we're all connected on. We're all connected to, we're all hooked up to it. I'm not talking about like the internet, I'm talking about just like relationships, just human relationships. you know, I remember when I was a kid, there was this idea of like six degrees of separation that everybody...
Lucy Baldwin (18:34.262)
is connected through only like six degrees of separation. And I don't know if that's true. I think that it's actually less than that. And I don't mean like online. I mean people that you know, people that you actually know. And I do wonder if the internet is changing now, like if there is maybe more connection online, but less people that we all actually know in real life. I'm not sure. I don't know. But what I do know is that
We are becoming more more isolated and it is incredibly important for us to connect with each other. And Venus encourages us to love each other and to prioritize love and prioritize connections and to be open to other people and...
to receive from them. And I keep talking about receiving. This is something that is honestly really hard for me. think it's one of my biggest challenges is to be willing to receive help and just all kinds of things. We really struggle. And there is actually good reason for this. Reciprocity is really important to humans.
And I found that I can receive as long as I feel like I'm reciprocating. And probably you can relate to this because it's actually very natural and inherent for us to want to reciprocate because it was important in our evolution that we be giving back to our communities and giving back to our group such that we weren't taking more than our fair share. And we tracked that.
Like we keep track of those things. People do. We actually, we are really good at tracking and sort of keeping score, not because we're selfish or anything like that. It's just part of how we evolved. It's just a really key piece of like the human puzzle is, you know, maintaining these healthy networks requires that we sort of monitor them and that we make sure that we're all contributing.
Lucy Baldwin (20:48.934)
and that we feel good about the ways that we're helping each other and receiving help. so I just, you know, I think that there's a lot of people we want to be an island, we want to be able to do it all on our own, we want to be able to be independent and self-sufficient, especially women, you know, it's a response to feeling like we've been told that we can't or we shouldn't and...
And I'm not saying that you shouldn't, but I am saying that let's work together because that's actually what is true for us. What is natural for us is to do it together and to help each other and to have giving and taking and to receive from people. Yeah. So I want to end by giving you
a couple ideas of ways to work with Venus and to call in this receiving energy and also to do like manifestation magic because we love that. That's like so natural to us to do that in this way. And so what I want to recommend is, well, first, I think that I would say just as kind of a little offering to Venus is
Hold on, let me see what I
Lucy Baldwin (22:30.734)
Okay, so I'm gonna recommend just a little quick Venus ritual where you take a small container of soil and plant, I mean, I think it would be fun to plant like a little gem, like a little, if you have like a little quartz crystal or something like that, just like something pretty or something that's associated with Venus. just like quartz, any kind of.
pink or green gems, but really any color. And you can also kind of infuse this with other planets if you want to. you could do, you know, if you want to bring in a little bit of like Jupiter, you could do like a lapis. I mean, lapis is, you know, you can get like little pieces or you could do, you could plant like a blueberry or something that's more like Jupiter associated.
or if you want to bring in like some mercury magic, you could plant like orange seeds. I don't think they'll grow, but it's not about having them grow. You could plant some kind of like Jasper or something like that and basically just bury that in your little piece of your little soil and just maybe say out loud.
So I would, okay, so now I'm giving you ritual instructions. I would probably light a candle. You could read a poem to Venus to call Venus in. You don't have to, but I would, you you can just search on Google orfic him to Venus, read your poem to Venus, and then take your soil. You can make a little offering too if you want to. You could put like some chocolate out for Venus or something like that, some strawberries, maybe just like a drink.
of a chocolate beverage or something like that, some hot chocolate, maybe some tea. And then you could even put on some jasmine perfume if you want to spruce it up. And then...
Lucy Baldwin (24:37.302)
make your offering. And then I would plant something like I would plant something in some soil and I would say Venus.
Lucy Baldwin (24:49.666)
Make me maybe say, well, I mean, it depends on what you want to do. You could say, show me what wants to grow. You could say, if you feel like you want to have more ability to create and sort of like bring things into fruition, you could say, like, make me fertile. Venus, help me be the fertile soil to grow my ideas. Maybe you have something.
You could say, you know, you're planting the seed of manifesting something that you're trying to manifest. You could ask Venus to show you who do you know that could help you create this thing or manifest this thing. And, you know, anything you want to ask Venus for. But the idea is that we're planting something in the soil and
And we're covering it and I would leave it for a couple of days, maybe three days three is associated with Venus and then on the third day you can. And in the meantime, you can put it anywhere and maybe on the third day, you can take it out and and either look at the thing you could bury it in the ground outside you could do any number of things with it. you're not going to mess it up.
just want to tell you that. yeah, so just planting something in the name of Venus and asking her to guide you in whatever it is you're trying to create, whatever it is that you're trying to do, or whatever it is that you're trying to become. And then of course, thanking Venus. It's all about thanking Venus and thank her, thank Venus for bringing you such amazing people, bringing you such amazing...
connections for helping you receive whatever it is that you're trying to receive. And yeah, that's what I'm gonna leave you with here today. So thank you so much for listening to another episode of The Seven and let me know in the comments what you decide to do with Venus, if you do some Venus magic. Thank you so much. I will see you in the next episode.
New to Lucy’s work?
Start with Lucy Baldwin’s complete overview of planetary magic here
This episode is part of The Seven: Living with the Planets, a podcast exploring planetary magic as a path of self-growth, ritual practice, desire, embodiment, and spiritual transformation.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Venus magic?
Venus magic is planetary magic focused on desire, beauty, pleasure, love, attraction, embodiment, fertility, relationship, and receiving.
Is Venus magic only for women?
No. Venus is an archetypal current, not a gender. Anyone can work with Venusian energy.
How is Venus magic different from law of attraction?
Venus magic is more embodied. Instead of trying to force thoughts or mentally convince yourself, Venus works through desire, pleasure, receptivity, beauty, and felt truth in the body.
What is the shadow of Venus?
The shadow of Venus can include external validation, over-attachment to comfort, illusion, fantasy, and confusing surface beauty with deeper truth.
How can I start working with Venus?
Start by making yourself more receptive. Bring beauty into your space, notice pleasure, connect with others, and try a simple ritual with soil, a candle, an offering, and a symbolic object to plant.
Listen to The Seven
This post expands on an episode of The Seven, Lucy Baldwin’s podcast on magic, meaning, shadow, desire, and transformation.
Next Steps
If this episode resonated with you, continue exploring Lucy Baldwin’s work here:
You’ll find current offerings, free practices, podcast links, and ways to go deeper.
A good next step is the free guided Existential Kink practice available there, especially if you want to explore desire, shadow, receiving, and radical approval in a more embodied way.