Venus and the Story of the Workaholic Priestess.
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One thing that Venus has really taught me is how to have fun.
I feel that shouldn’t be something you have to teach a 20-something. By the looks of it, we are all off partying at festivals all the time, going out clubbing, that sort of thing.
Here’s a secret: I have never been to a music festival. I did my 20’s wrong somehow. Instead, I spent them stuck in a weird, working-all-the-time, no-fun, never-good-enough kind of space.
I can say now that I am a workaholic.
I used to think you could only be called a workaholic if you were some kind of barrister or CEO or app developer who worked from dawn till midnight, being all fancy, rushing around in power suits or filling out forms and writing important documents or mainlining coffee while writing code.
I thought hilariously that I couldn’t be a workaholic, because I like to procrastinate a lot and because I simply wasn’t making enough money.
Truth is, I was never much of a smart worker. I was always more of a worry-a-lot-that-I-am-not-good-enough kinda worker who does busy work but shrinks from the things that would really move me forward and make me money and happiness.
When you are self-employed, not only does it mean that you are on the front line with your inner demons every day, but everything at work depends on you, and so it’s easy to fall into a trap of workaholism every day.
I would say I was a workaholic because I put work above everything else. I would use work as my means of deciding how worthy I am as a human being, and if I hadn’t reached some point of financial or professional success in my work, I was completely undeserving and let it ravage my self-worth.
I used this as an excuse to not enjoy myself for years. I haven’t worked hard enough, I don’t deserve any fun, I should do more work instead, etc. Spoiler alert: this method doesn’t really work!
In fact, for years, the only dimension to my life other than goddess was work. I wouldn’t allow myself to do anything unless it had a knock-on beneficial effect to my finances. And I mean anything. Holidays. Buying sandwiches. Going and hanging out with my friends.
I was no fun at all. And it really doesn’t feel good to be in this place.
Enter Venus.
I started working with Her intensely a year and a half ago. I’d already started the process of allowing myself to have fun. I think after about eight years of you-don’t-deserve-any-fun-keep-working, my brain just went, “Fuck it, let’s just buy a nice sandwich and go on fucking holiday.” I was beginning to learn that, actually, the more I enjoyed myself, the better everything was financially.
When I started working with Venus, I started to really reorient my priorities towards my work with Her — honoring Her, looking for the presence of the Goddess of Love in my life.
And you can’t be a devotee of Venus without surrendering to pleasure.
Venus is all about pleasure.
I would describe pleasure as being fully present to enjoying something. Being totally lost in the moment while dancing to Bieber. Being fully there to smell the scent of cherry blossom, or watch the sun set, or get all involved in singing along to Mamma Mia on Netflix.
Honoring Venus, bringing Her into your life, is very much an embodied process. Like much of Goddess Spirituality, it has to be felt in the body. Her worship is in the actions you take, the priorities you focus on, what you love and and actively honor in your life.
This means, in my opinion, you can’t worship Venus, or spend a lot of time with Her in your spiritual life, without beginning to open yourself up to more sensuous fun and pleasure in your life.
She is the Goddess who rules love and sex, of course, but don’t forget She also rules parties, social gatherings, friends, great dinners, good wine, and the feel of fresh cotton sheets. She loves luxurious things, relaxing into wealth, silk bathrobes, and indulgence.
Honestly, since I have been working with Venus, I think I have worked less than I ever have. Last summer, instead of having a gruelling hustle-and-gig season, I spent most of the time lounging around in parks in the sunshine, eating strawberries with my new lover.
And since I have been working with Venus, I have finally begun to truly understand how to put into practice this old chestnut: Work to live, don’t live to work.
Thanks to Venus, I now know that work isn’t everything, that if something doesn’t get done, the world doesn’t collapse, and it doesn’t mean I am a lazy jerk of a person. I now know that the joy of enjoying the fuck out of my life is way more satisfying than trying to work hard, and, actually, I make more money having fun anyway.
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Demelza Hillier is a Priestess of the Goddess, a dancer, artist, writer and passionate enthusiast of the colour turquoise. She runs The Venus Working, a course aimed at crafting your life into a lavish Venusian spell, and the yearly Spellbound Magic and Marketing retreat in Glastonbury Avalon with her biz bestie and marketing maven Kris Oster, where people run around in the sacred springs, doing powerful rituals and talking branding. You can join her at her website, where she talks about Mermaids, Goddess and Morgan le Fay, as well as lots of Venusian yumminess, and on her free Facebook group.
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