Rhiannon as Venus in Aries
from the book MythAstrology
Pwyll is a young mortal prince in Celtic
mythology. He appears also in the tale of Arawn (see Uranus in Capricorn) where
he exchanges places with the Lord of the Underworld for a year and a day,
gaining wisdom and becoming a better ruler. The tale of Rhiannon comes at a
later point in his life than this story, however. He is the ruler of a fruitful
kingdom, but no mortal woman has taken his eye for long.
One morning, Pwyll sees a beautiful young woman on a white horse emerge from out of an ancestral mound. Pwyll attempts to catch her by riding his horse as fast as possible, but the faster he pursues, the further ahead she seems to get, even though her horse does not seem to be moving any quicker than a leisurely trot. Finally she disappears out of sight, and he is heartbroken. The next day, however, she reappears again out of the mound. Pwyll tries again to catch he and again fails. The third day he borrows a faster horse, to no avail. After a week of this, he is frustrated, and finally gives in and calls out to her to stop. She wheels her horse and stops, and he approaches her; at this point, she tells him that it would have been better for him if he had called out for her to stop several days ago.
Rhiannon's behavior is a good example of the Martial Aries spirit when it is transformed by Venus. Aries is competitive even in love, and Venus in Aries has a tendency to set little tests for her lovers; to send them off on quests and inspire them to great deeds. This is not done out of Scorpionic suspicion or Aquarian whimsy; it's just that Venus in Aries is plagued by conflicting urges. She wants to be taken and subdued by her lover, but she'll be damned if she'll submit to anyone but the best, and her tests are a way of checking out her future conqueror's mettle. Male or female, Venus in Aries often indulges in a Red Sonya-like courtship rite - "The only one who can have me is the one who can best me in battle!" and so forth. Except that battle, in most cases, is likely to be a battle of wits and wills. If you really want me, she says, you'll work for it. Rhiannon is in love with Pwyll - she confesses immediately that she has seen him from afar and fallen in love, and her daily rides were a way to attract his attention - but she will not turn her head to look at him until he gives up pursuing and begs her to stop.
Once they connect, however, she tells him a tale that inspires him to anger. Rhiannon is not a mortal women; she is of the race of immortals that lives under the hill, and her father has promised her to another suitor. This offends her independent spirit, and asks Pwyll to help her escape from her father's kingdom, and also to humiliate her bridegroom-to-be. Venus in Aries doesn't like to be told what to do when it comes to her love affairs, and tends to rebel against those who would control or judge her decisions. However, she can also be impetuously angry, and say and do things in the heat of the moment that she may regret later. She may also, with Venusian persuasion and Martial passion, be able to attract champions who are easily convinced to take up her cause and run with it, sometimes further than she might expect.
Having set the eager and lovestruck Pwyll to this mission, Rhiannon returns home. Her father and fiancé are having a feast to celebrate the joining of their families; Pwyll and his men burst in on the feast and claim Rhiannon. Knowing that Rhiannon wants to see her fiancé humiliated, he puts the man in a sack, and he and his men kick the sack around the room until the poor man is half-dead. At this point Rhiannon's father cries out and begs for his guest's life, and tells Rhiannon to be gone from his court forever. She leaves with Pwyll, and they are married in his mortal kingdom.
However, Rhiannon reaps a terrible harvest from her impulsive cruelty. As sorry as Venus in Aries is after the harsh words have been flung and the angry deeds finished, it is not usually enough to assauge the feelings of others. Her plan to take vengeance on her fiancé and father for their attempt to control her has gone entirely too far, and it is she, the instigator, who will pay. On the night that she bears her first child, her abused former fiancé sends a terrible monster to climb in the window and steal the baby. Her maidservants, terrified that they will be blamed for the missing babe, smear her with blood and accuse her of child-murder. Pwyll manages to avoid making the accusation public, but the same thing happens again with her second babe, and her third.
At this point, Pwyll himself suspects her of killing their children, but he cannot bear to execute her. Instead, she is sentenced to a lesser fate: she must sit outside the palace in a little hut, telling every traveler who comes by her story, and offering to bear them and their goods on her back to and from the palace. This goes on for six years. Rhiannon is a horse goddess, one of the free and fiery horse goddesses of European legend such as Rigantona and Epona and the Cailleach, but her sentence reflects the other side of being a horse: the fate of the beast of burden. It is a hard lesson for any Mars-ruled sign: bad deeds done in the heat of anger cannot be merely apologized away - "Oh, I didn't really mean for it to happen, just forget about it-" because they destroy trust, and the hope of future relationship, symbolized by the missing children. It is altogether too easy for her to gain the undeserved reputation of someone far crueler than her basically honest and impetuous Aries nature makes her - to be, in fact, wrongly smeared with blood. The only way to undo these mistakes is long, hard, patient work, as well as the need to tell her story, over and over, until someone believes her.
At the same time that Rhiannon's children are going missing, newborn foals are also being stolen from the stables of neighboring noblemen. The monster set loose by Rhiannon's actions is completely out of control. The night that Rhiannon's third child is stolen, a nobleman interrupts the creature attempting to rob a foal from his stables, and kills it. In its knapsack he discovers a beautiful infant and he and his wife decide to raise it themselves. Six years later, they hear the tale of Rhiannon and her stolen children, and realize where their son must have come from. They return the child to Pwyll along with the tale of the creature, and Rhiannon is exonerated and reinstated in his affections.
Years later, Pwyll is killed in a battle, and Rhiannon remarries the wise sea god Manawyddan. This may suggest a slow transformation in time for the Aries Venus, going from the sort of person who is most attracted to the impetuous warrior to the sort who values the older, wiser, cooler head. Yet the deeds of Rhiannon=s past follow her; her former fiancé, still determined to wreak vengeance, sets a trap for her, her husband, her son Pryderi, and his wife. They are accidentally transported to a different time, and Pryderi and his wife are trapped in a strange palace. Rhiannon bravely goes in after them, showing Aries courage, and between her bravery and Manawyddan's cunning, they manage to defeat the enemy and convince him to leave them alone forever.
It's hard for the watery, feminine Venus to function well in fiery, masculine Aries. At its best, it can be a union of the two forces within one person, sort of an internal hieros gamos, that brings balance. At worst it can make someone intensely combative towards those that they love, putting the competitive urge to win at any cost ahead of their love, and often losing those relationships in the process. It is also important for Venus in Aries to claim her own power, and not try to get others to act out her aggression for her while she sits back claiming to be innocent. She is possessed of great courage and stamina, and can go harder and further for her loved ones than anyone else - if she remembers that they are never the enemy. Even when they become the opponent - for example when they face her across an argument - she must treat them as an honored opponent whose respect one hopes to keep and whose friendship one wishes to obtain. No matter her fiery nature, she must learn that love is the one place where a scorched-earth policy is never the right move.