Death's opposite is Aphrodite. Between Death and the urge to "be fruitful and subdue the Earth" is where we are constantly. Sometimes closer to Death, sometimes closer to material life symbolized by Aphrodite or her older name, Ishtar.
The custom in Babylon (which sounds pretty good to me from a genetic perceptive as well as just my perceptive as a man) was that every woman served at least once as a sacred prostitute in Ishtar's temple and had to be chosen at least once to have sex with a stranger. Heroditus mentions this. Later in Greece and Rome, Aphrodite Porn was worshiped in the same way.
These sacred prostitutes were virgins and could not marry until they fulfilled their duty to Ishtar by having sex with a stranger for whatever amount exchange was treasured and kept always by the woman. These women were also considered "virgin" after they had served in the temple. Children of "virgins" were raised in the temple and considered special to Ishtar.
(Venus is more passive and receptive to anything because her love)
A very important illustration, which I hope to reproduce somewhere on this site, called "Creation of Aphrodite" is also a treatise on alchemy, as well as a very famous painting. Sometimes refereed to by school kids as "Venus on the Half Shell".