It’s been only a month since Venus turned retrograde: how the goddess’ pot has been stirring! During her once-ever-18-months retro periods, Venus typically puts on a good show. She peels back the cultural and personal curtains to reveal what troubles her in the areas that she rules. Her big topics of course are are love, money, and happiness. But there are also women’s issues, creativity, Nature, the arts, beauty, fashion, social etiquette and diplomacy.
Predictably in the past month, world economies have been wobbly, with stock markets plunging and bouncing back without much rhyme or reason. No surprise there are fault lines there. And there’s always a diplomatic crisis somewhere, but the escalation of tensions on the border between South and North Korea was another August surprise. Venus retrogrades are especially hard on love. Celebrity romances have seen better months. Among the surprising breakups–longtime partners Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner, Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale, Reba McEntire and Narvel Blackstock, and Kermit and Miss Piggy. Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert split. And the members of One Direction are going their separate ways, breaking a million young girls’ hearts at once.
Venus is retrograde in Leo, a fire sign. For those of us in the Pacific Northwest, Nature is burning in record-setting forest fires. The skies in my Oregon town have been smoky ever since the retrograde began. We’re all a bit hot and unnerved. I’m not saying the retrograde is causing these events–I’m saying the retrograde italicizes them. They deserve our greater scrutiny. When the Goddess of Nature is in the Underworld–we should pay attention to any news of her domain. She’s burning in the Pacific North West; in Greenland, the largest ice chunk ever witnessed falling, just broke off, oddly, from the very glacier that is said to have sunk the Titanic. The earth is speaking if we’ll listen. Science is not divided about global warming, yet even now, California is pumping ground water at such a rate, the state is sinking. And then there was that beautiful lion the American dentist killed. If you’ve got a connection to Venus, you’ve likely been outraged in recent weeks about at least one of the many violations against innocence.
But it’s not all serious. Venus is retrograde in Leo, a party sign, a fun sign, the sign of celebrity and romance, something that has perhaps benefited the strange candidacy of Leo Rising reality show star Donald Trump, whose unorthodox style has thrown a strange wrench into the media/establishment’s long election buffet, which increasingly has acquired the feel of a high school prom king contest. But perhaps the cruelest cut of all—was what was done to 30 million Ashley Madison customers—the online cheaters whose private lives have been exposed to the world as though they were celebrities. But they were just normal people whose love lives were a little messy. Their credit cards were published too.
It would be dangerous to say that Venus was exacting her revenge against this website of predominantly male cheaters. If we believe Aphrodite’s myths, she wasn’t above a little infidelity herself. It is likely this scythe of public shame was dropped by Saturn, squaring Venus and in the last degrees of Scorpio—continuing on themes he’s been developing over the last two years, including massive violations of privacy (remember Edward Snowden?) and the sexual abuses of celebrity (Bill Cosby, anyone?). Now there’s Jared. And another Josh Duggar scandal.
It’s been an interesting summer. But fall is approaching, and what matters now is what we do next. If Venus sent you a message during her retrograde, pay attention. Promise that going forward, you’ll honor her values. Vow that when Venus goes direct in two weeks, you’ll adorn yourself, feeling radiant and renewed, and stepping brightly, into a happier more self-resonant tune.
Thanks everyone for making my Venus retro sale a resounding success. I’ve heard from many of you that “Your Venus Unleashed” helped you find the frequency of your inner Venus. Once you tune in, you’ll want to linger, making her playlists a part of every day. Even without the retro discount, the report is a bargain! Sample and order info here.
Also, there’s quite a lot of potent activity happening for indigenous movements right now-regarding very specific events or incidents that are timely to this Venus cycle. Hawaii (2 mountains, Haleakala and Mauna Kea) and GMO/pesticide ground zero community poisoning, Native American (Lakota, Apache and others at the moment) and Canadian First Nations, plus fracking and GMOs in general. This is all global, too. It’s busy! The thing I notice is that there’s a tipping point happening-enough connections are finally being made by enough people-that all of these issues are related and that we as humanity have to help each other, not through further regulation and surrendering more sovereignty to corporations, but through recognizing what IS human vs. “man made” corporate entities and governments. I think it’s a pivotal time and of the connections between all of these issues is crucial so that activists will not see their work in isolation any longer-but as part of a larger picture, one that pits political parties against one another and creates divisions along many other lines-divide and conquer behind the scenes, as it were. [I’ll leave the comment with 21st Century Cures Act and TPP as yet more showing of corporate jockeying that is vying for more control, along with who owns (and poisons! The EPA admitted the animas spill and that’s an awful lot of spillage to be an accident, according to many writers/thinkers) our water, food and medicine/healing supplies.
Also, more people are awakening to what is being done to both the earth and humans during this time of Venus R, it seems. Venus beauty is experienced through the human body and conscious relating with the earth….Geoengineering (having great influence on weather patterns, drought, fires, etc for many years now), forced medical mandates (vaccines, fluoride) and questioning WHY poaching and game trophy hunting occurs in Africa and other areas is also part of Venus’ domain, for me. Humanity needs to dig deeper, including astrology, in terms of how it sees expressions of archetypes, cosmic forces and cycles. Too often, it’s viewed through partisan politics, liberal politics and business as usual—echoing the mainstream media and establishment’s determination of what is actually happening. Seen through the lens of astrology, it’s a new perspective, but still fairly standard understanding of the mechanics. Venus has infinite layers and so do we-in terms of how we view the world and its current events. For me, Venus also represents a non dualistic understanding that is insightful and yes, encompasses and utilizes the power of both Virgo and Pisces, intuition and logic, art and science/observation/analytics. That’s the oneness Venus reveals, and that is the ‘beauty is truth, truth beauty’ that Keats spoke of. There’s great discernment, not a state of new age non-thinking as the representation of ‘oneness’. In the end, Scorpio/Saturn also helps Venus and vice versa-for people to uncover deeper truths. Not just for what a person currently ‘perceives’ as the truth to be ‘revealed to the masses’, but for an individual to reach new layers as well.