Do The Dishes, Baby. That Really Turns Me On.

Relationship planet and cosmic lover Venus is currently coming together with asteroids Vesta (tending the sacred flames we're personally invested in) and Eros (sexual love and beauty) in a late Virgo conjunction, and cleaning out the fridge has never been hotter.

Dusting the blinds or cleaning the shower grout (and doing a realllly good job) is a major turn-on. Little details like adding sprouts to a salad or using an exceptionally well-placed semi-obscure word can really get the motor running. Applying some elbow grease and showing that you're not afraid of a little hard work? Highly attractive.

And someone who flosses regularly? Forget about it. Total babe/dude magnet.

Daily work, words, personal investment, love and sexual undertone are all intermeshed with this conjunction at tail-end Virgo.

Venus and Eros are in almost exact conjunction all this month and up until this fall's Venus retrograde (October 8 - November 18), adding a spicy undertone to the proceedings. Venus has just entered a 27-month period of prominence as the dispositor of Saturn in Libra. This means whatever is going on in Venus' world becomes a major factor in our Saturn in Libra relationship structuring and restructuring work. Paying attention and integrating what we need to from Venus' movement is a major key to Saturnine success.

So at the moment, that means working those Virgoan details and showing off what we've mastered from the Saturn in Virgo transit.

Venus and Eros join Mars in Libra August 6/7 and immediately oppose Uranus-Jupiter in Aries, conjunct Saturn in Libra and square Pluto in Capricorn within the big cardinal t-square. At that point and into early September, being fair and mannered with a refined aesthetic sense really starts to do it for people. A keen awareness of social justice issues? Very sexy. And if you're easy on the eyes, all the better.

With Saturn in Libra's influence, a certain level of restraint and a cultured sense of formality in our relations are suddenly very appealing. Displaying fine breeding and then making potential suitors work for it a bit becomes an integral part of the mating ritual dance. Think Pride and Prejudice's Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. All that simmering love and sexual attraction smoking up their stuffy meetings in formal sitting rooms surrounded by sisters and cousins and old aunts and such. Hot.

The conjunctions with Saturn on the early degrees of Libra are an initial maturing checkpoint setting the tone for our relationship work over the next 27 months. With Eros in the mix, the sexual form of our relating and expression of love is right at the forefront. Saturn will give us an initial status report on how we need to become more mature, more respectful or more balanced here. Any ways that loving human relating, especially sexually, has gotten undignified, unequal, unrefined or just plain unlovely will be areas we need to work diligently on while Saturn transits Libra. The current mainstream media-enforced version of human sexuality is pretty much the definition of undignified, unequal, unrefined and unlovely, so we've got a lot of work to do here.

These themes deepen this fall with Venus' retrograde in Scorpio, the sign of, among other things, sex, death, core-level soul connection, spirituality, and deep energy exchange and merger. We've got some brass tacks to get to as far as the interactions between men and women (and men and men, and women and women) and the fair and equitable energy exchange and merger of the feminine and masculine.

This will involve many hidden dynamics generally kept firmly under the collective rug being brought to the surface, often in confronting ways, so expect some volcanic activity - personally, if not on the world stage.

Until then, eat your leafy greens and hang some art to woo the apple of your eye - or to become someone's apple.