Building Beauty: Saturn’s Gift to Venus

I’ve recently joined Bharatnatyam (a traditional Indian dance form) classes as a way to connect with my body and also learn this beautiful art form of my ancestors. However, I knew before my very first class that it would be a challenge to do this because I had a brief encounter with this particular dance form back in school. In general, in many areas of my life, I love doing difficult things. I love challenging myself, pushing my limits, and seeing how far I can go with my body and mind, because there is immense pleasure in being able to achieve competency and perfection in areas of life that we may feel intimidated by.

Tantra often praises Viras — the ones who are fearless, the ones who dare to do something despite its difficulties. Before I was initiated into Sri Vidya, the idea of sitting for hours and doing an anushthana or performing 444 Tarpanams to Ganapati seemed like unnecessary and intimidating rituals; I couldn’t imagine being someone who could still themselves for so long that they would be able to bring the rituals to completion. But I did it anyway, and it’s true: ritual, beauty, and discipline make things easier over time.

In my article on Venus being distorted by social media addiction I talk about cheap dopamine reinforcement and how that affects us by dulling the senses and enjoying 'slop' in our day to day lives. Good taste is something that cannot be purchased and is definitely not a trend that one can participate in. Our consumption (2H ruled by Venus naturally) defines who we become, what we're drawn to and what our legacy is at the end of the day. In the article I forget to mention that the time wasted on doing things that are objectively not building any kind of beauty (doomscrolling, bedrotting, porn addiction, video gaming etc.) is time being wasted on feeling separated from the inner self, where one becomes a shell of a person — a passive recipient of life happening.

When we lead disciplined lifestyles or dedicate our focus to just that one thing that expands our senses and creates beauty (true beauty, akin to truth) in life, we gain self-mastery and also begin to get familiar with the parts of ourselves that were lost, hidden and taken away from us. Beauty when done right; in solitude, as a religious practice and as a loss of the false identities we've gathered creates more time. This is Venus's grace on Saturn, the ruler of time, as time begins to expand and we don't feel limited when we engage with something truly beautiful.

Cheap dopamine is the antidote to joy because it’s not associated with happiness that comes from within, but small bouts of pleasure linked to external factors that can be taken away as quickly as they’re given to us. For many people, this might feel like Lakshmi, the wealth of things in huge quantities. The wealth of getting hollow pleasure at our fingertips like it’s our slave is never going to fulfill us. Joy is something we must earn like most good things in life. It is Lakshmi with value and quality, and it makes us competent enough to sustain ourselves in the world, the same way Narayana sustains us.

Kali: The tastemaker

Maa Kali's tongue as Rajas guna

To me, all Mahavidyas are essentially the same, it is our gunas that creates distinctions and our taste, preferences which create these different and unique forms for us to engage with these energy points. Maa Lakshmi or Kamalatmika is often associated with beauty, marriage, love, arts and money; all typically Venusian things. Maa Kali on the other hand is associated with time, dissolution and the darker aspects of life -completely Saturnian in nature.

However, any upasaka of Kali you meet or anyone who has tried doing Her mantras will tell you one thing; She's the swiftest when it comes to removing obstacles for your spiritual growth or your main goal/desire. Many people often mistaken this as the power of Ganapati but He does the opposite by making you immune to obstacles by continuously bringing them up. Maa Kali is often viewed as violent because many people don't actually want to get rid of the things that give them pain. Every emotion we feel is serving us in some way and our addiction to certain things and certain emotions explain to us what we truly think about ourselves.

Saturn is the planet that rules over the domain of labour, any kind of labour done requires the sacrifice of time which is why Kali removes the limitation of time (kala) for Her sadhakas to understand that the nectar of immortality is within them.

Think of it this way, writing this article is eating away on precious time where I could sit in front of the tv and laze on my couch and then two hours would pass away swiftly. However I choose to sit here and do this because it has no external benefit apart from you reading it and maybe taking a few things from it. Writing, painting, movement etc. all things we do is to experience time in a beautiful way and when we do them, we might feel a little isolated from the world around us or as the young ones like to say, FOMO.

There is also something to be said about people who spend an extraordinary amount of time trolling others on the internet, saying cruel and unnecessary things under the illusion of anonymity. Time, once again, is being spent, but not in the creation of beauty, depth, or understanding. Instead, it is used to circulate hatred, malice, and jealousy. It always reveals the same thing: an inner life so impoverished that it can only sustain itself by reacting to others. One does not need astrology to see this. A person who is building something beautiful simply does not have the surplus time or mental space to behave this way.

Saturn becomes king in the sign of loss, Pisces because he enjoys solitude. All creativity and beauty also takes birth in solitude which is why Lakshmi is born in the very rashi of Pisces in Uttarabhadrapada nakshatra. This solitude and separation we feel from the world is the very thing that builds beauty and novelty. This is what having good taste is about; extremely personal, unique and something that stands out. Kali's tongue is such a beautiful metaphor for good taste, it's stark red against Her black body but it's also the thing that adorns Her so beautifully that it can often scare the insincere ones, the ones who are filled with fear and duality away.

If Venus refines taste, then Kali decides what is worth tasting at all.

Many artists often go to 'retreats' to reconnect with themselves away from the world and create exceptional art. I don't think we need to go on expensive retreats necessarily to experience this kind of connection with ourselves. For example, every Navaratri (there's 4 major ones during the year), I go off grid and try to work on doing some kind long ritual, anushthana, paint, meditate, cook and even spend a lot of time bathing and beautifying myself and this on its own becomes a wonderful retreat that gives me a break from the noise of the external world.

Saturn's gift to Venus is this solitude, this stretching of time, of pleasure but one needs to truly love Saturn for its sake in order to be receptive to grace of Venus. I often think of Sri Vidya Tantra as a very Saturnian tradition because even chanting the complex Lalita Sahasranama is an act of penance and the Sri Chakra puja that takes almost 3-4 hours to do is the worship of all different aspects of the self and when those hours pass by, you realize that the beauty was unraveling within you while you were engaged in it.

Art answers the riddle of existence: it tells us why we exist by imbuing our lives with a sense of fittingness. In the highest form of beauty life becomes its own justification, redeemed from contingency by the logic which connects the end of things with their beginning, as they are connected in Paradise Lost, in Phedre and in Der Ring des Nibelungen. The highest form of beauty, as exemplified in those supreme artistic achievements, is one of the greatest of life’s gifts to us. It is the true ground of the value of art, for it is what art, and only art, can give.

-Roger Scruton, Beauty: A short introduction.