Venus Retrograde 2018

Venus Retrograde in Scorpio/Libra 2018:

Awakening the Soul Through Love

Part 1

The heavens are always moving and changing and telling us stories about the energies of life and death, love and desire, responsibility and possibilities. Since ancient times we have projected our experiences of life onto the night skies, telling stories about the star-groups we call constellations and onto the planets as we all revolve around the Sun. And we do this because intuitively we know we are part of the awesome mystery that sets the stars shining and the planets spinning.

Once thought of as gods and goddesses, the planets have become symbols of the archetypal processes of life. The archetypes are the cosmic laws of life, giving structure to collective energies that we each individually incarnate and make our own. They are self-organizing principles, so we experience them even when we’re unconscious of it. When we work with these archetypal energies consciously our own transformation quickens and we understand the meaning of our experiences.

Then we get to use our Free Will, making choices from a deeper understanding of who we are and what we really want.

Collectively, we have been immersed in a story of cultural transformation for the past 60 years, and it has only intensified over the past six years. The crises of climate change, overpopulation and continual warfare, and the pain and suffering they create, have to be faced consciously and resolved so we can let go of the past and create a different future for our planet and our children.

That means each of us has the responsibility to open to that change. The planetary energies and their cycles can help us understand what we can do to change not only ourselves but the world. While all the planetary cycles effect us, there are two important planetary energies we must look at and transform, for they are very personal and relate to men and women, and to how we work with the energies of the masculine and the feminine. These two planets are Venus and Mars.

Botticelli's Aphrodite & Ares

This summer when Mars, the planet of action, assertion, will power and desire, went retrograde in Aquarius over the South Node of the Moon, we hoped for a realignment of our collective masculine attitudes and energies. We see in the news that the old masculine attitudes are still entrenched in the places of power, but with ‘regular’ people, there is a new masculine attitude arising in men and women that gives us the courage to defend life rather than dominate it. I believe it will win out. Evolution happens.

Now it’s Venus’ turn to re-evaluate her priorities. On Friday, October 5^th, the planet Venus turns retrograde in Scorpio. Planets appear to ‘turn retrograde’ when the Earth passes that planet’s orbit and from Earth’s perspective, the planet appears to go backwards in the sky. During a retrograde, that planet’s energy turns within and we engage those energies within ourselves rather than projecting them out onto others.

What are the energies we’ll be healing and renewing as Venus disappears from the evening sky to later reappear in the morning sky? Aphrodite, the Greek version of Venus, is the goddess of Love, Wisdom, Sexuality and Harmony. She shows us what we value and why. As the spirit of Love and Wisdom and the Body, she is really at the center of our being. Perhaps that’s why Aphrodite is the only other goddess besides the Virgin Mary to survive under patriarchy, pretty much intact despite her degradation by the patriarchs.

Astrologically, Venus is said to represent sex, self-worth, values, beauty, relationships, money, the sacred Feminine and the Arts. In the ancient world, she also symbolized war, especially in her Morning Star phase. Why does this love goddess also go to war? Because we fight for what we love, don’t we? The struggle, as well as the surrender, is part of the process of loving and valuing people and things. 

Aphrodite's Bath ~ William Blake Richmond 

As we work with this Venus retrograde energy, we can descend into the Underworld with Venus, where she (& we) can shed old skins and emerge renewed from her sacred bath. It is a time to reassess our values (ruled by Venus/Aphrodite) and let go of ideas, people and things that no longer serve what we value most. In the intense sign of Scorpio, you can be sure that women and the divine Feminine will persevere until we achieve equality and some justice for our wounding by patriarchy and its adherents. Venus will see to it. And she will challenge Mars to help her.

 

The Venus Cycle

The planet Venus and her unique 584 day cycle is getting much deserved attention in astrology these days. The beauty and elegance of her repeating 8-year cycles forming pentagrams in the sky speak to the order and unity of our cosmos. 

 

In Gnosticism, it is said that Sophia, the Wisdom of God, would not permit anyone to enter her Realm of Light unless they were in complete balance within themselves. And the sign of this balance was the pentagram/ pentangle. This endless 5-pointed star (you can draw it without a break in the line) is a symbol of the Divine Feminine energy of life, the energy of incarnation. Its five points hold the energy of the integration of the 5 elements: air, fire, water, earth and the quint-essence, spirit.

The association of the 5-pointed star with the Goddess is as ancient as those long ago astronomers/astrologers who studied the planets as they moved across the night sky. They saw this pentagram drawn upon the heavens, experiencing the truth of the Alchemical saying: As Above, so Below. As Within, so Without.

The Venus cycle was studied by ancient astronomers/astrologers (they were one and the same) from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt to the Maya in South America. There are many phases of the Venus cycle (see Adam Gainsburg’s The Light of Venus) but let’s keep it simple and stay with the four basic phases of the cycle.

Also see (http://www.astro.com/astrology/in_mrmvenus_e.htm) for a fuller explanation of the Venus cycle.

There’s the Morning Star phase, the superior/exterior conjunction to the Sun (when Venus is on the other side of the Sun furthest from Earth), the Evening Star phase and the inferior/interior conjunction to the Sun (when Venus is retrograde and closest to Earth). When Venus rises before the Sun as a Morning Star, she is called Venus Lucifer the Light-Bringer. In this phase, she is spontaneous and impulsive, ready to experience life on her own terms. Many ancient cultures saw this as a dangerous time and attributed warlike qualities to it. And perhaps it was for patriarchy. When Venus becomes an Evening Star, she is in her wisdom aspect and is called Venus Hesperus, which is a more mature, responsible expression of her nature. In general, Morning Star Venus is spontaneous as she searches for new values while Evening Star Venus integrates the meaning of those values and makes them part of our social expectations.

We’re about the enter this last/first phase as Venus disappears from the evening sky, turning retrograde for 40 days and coming closest to the Earth (interior/inferior meaning between Earth and the Sun) and getting lost in the rays of the Sun. She goes invisible and so we talk about Venus’ ‘descent into the Underworld’. Because Venus is close to the Earth, once she goes retrograde they pass each other rather quickly. Unlike the external superior conjunction that initiates the Evening Star phase, when Venus disappears from our skies for weeks, Venus reappears after about 10 days in the morning sky before the Sun.

While both of the Venus conjunctions to the Sun take us down to the Underworld/Innerworld, Venus is retrograde for only the inferior/interior conjunction. This is when the planet is closest to Earth; when our feelings are most involved. It is a time to reorient ourselves toward the future and reassess what is of most value to us. It is a time that initiates us into the deep feminine mysteries of life – the mysteries of death and rebirth – because we have to let go of someone or something we love that no longer serves us. And because we love them, it’s hard. But we have to let it die so it can be reborn on a higher level of consciousness; we get to realign our collective and personal relationship to the Divine Feminine’s continuing evolution, in both women and men.

The Divine Feminine has returned to us as many end-time stories have prophesied. We saw a sign of Her return when Venus transited across the face of the Sun in 2004 and again in 2012. This rare ‘conjunction’ of Venus and the Sun happens twice (within 8 years) every 105 – 122 years. This pass was especially potent since it occurred as our solar system finished a 26,000 year cycle in 2012 over the galactic center. 

Venus cycle over many years creates this!

 

I saw both these Venus transits and the beauty of it made a deep impression on those of us who saw it, and it definitely brought hope to my heart. It also reminded me of the true heroine of our Christian end-time story, The Book of Revelations. While many Christian fundamentalists like to point to this Book as a sign that we are entering the ‘end times’ (which we are as we leave behind the Piscean Age), they neglect to address the fact that the catalyst for real change is ‘a Woman clothed with the Sun, standing on the Moon, crowned by 12 stars, in labor giving birth to the Savior’. It is the Divine Feminine, who I believe comes to us now as Wisdom, who will birth this new age of ours. And it is women who are leading the way to a ‘new heaven and a new Earth’. Much to the dismay of these patriarchal fundamentalists.

The synchronicity of Venus’ upcoming retrograde in Scorpio, the sign dealing with sex, power, money, death and rebirth and the public spectacle of the Supreme Court hearings about possible sexual harassment by Brett Kavanaugh is hard to ignore. Venus turns retrograde on the day the FBI has to report back to the Senate on Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford’s (as well as others) accusations. There isn’t a woman I know who hasn’t been sexually harassed, abused or raped, just as this mighty goddess has also been denigrated by patriarchy and turned into the Scarlet Whore of Babylon. It is patriarchy which has turned sex into sin, pornography and violence. Aphrodite’s sexuality is sacred.

So as Venus descends into the Underworld for renewal, we will all be watching to see which side of the issue the power structure of the American government stands for. Have women’s rights progressed since 1991 when the Senate voted in another man accused of sexual harassment to the top court in our land? Astrologically, this time is different. But we’ll have to wait and see what our collective psyche has decided.

Will this be a defining moment not only for women’s equality but also for the need to accept the truth of other, more feminine ways of knowing? As Dr. Ford and many women know, when you’ve been attacked like this, the knowing stays with you, despite not remembering the facts. The return of the Divine Feminine demands more than the literal equality between men and women; it demands that we also recognize the validity of emotional intelligence and intuition alongside facts and rational reasoning. It’s interesting that during the Senate meeting it was the men who come across as over-emotional and ‘irrational’ as they fight to maintain their dominant position in our society. Their own feminine natures need renewing.

Sometimes we need something to help fire up our passion for change. With the help of the stories and myths of Venus/Aphrodite as well as those of the planet Venus, we can recognize, release, birth and integrate the new energies associated with this planet and this archetype.

I’ll be back to talk about this Venus retrograde through looking at the astrology of the retrograde as well as the myths associated with Venus, Aphrodite and the other ancient goddesses associated with the planet Venus.