How
To Deal With Venus In Retrograde
Sure...
everybody knows about Mercury in retrograde... now get ready
to meet Venus in retrograde:
Love,
Relationships, and Values
The
astrological planet Venus (planetary ruler of Taurus and Libra)
is named for the luscious and voluptuous Roman goddess of love,
lust, pleasure, the arts, harmony and beauty, and fertility.
The
planet Venus only turns retrograde in the sky
approximately
once every
18 months. In 2009 she turned retrograde on March
6 and remained retrograde for approximately 40 days until April
17.
Retrograde
Planets in General
For the "uninitiated," a retrograde planet is a planet that (when viewed
from the perspective of the earth) appears to have stopped and then temporarily
reverses its regular movement through the sky. The planet then goes "retrograde" (backwards).
After a certain length of time (depending upon the planet involved), the planet
then appears to once again stop and reverse its movement through the sky. The
planet then goes "direct" and is back on it's normal cyclic path through
the sky.
A
Look at the
Deeper Side of Venus Retro
There
is an ancient Roman saying: “Vocatus atque non
vocatus deus aderit.” Called or not called, the
god will be there.
According
to astrologer Richard Idemon, the ancient Greeks had a saying
that when passing by the temple of a god, you must honor the
god by quickly making the appropriate sacrifice at the appropriate
time. One
should never offend the gods by ignoring them.
So
let's draw ever nearer to archetypal Venus (known
to Greeks as Aphrodite), so that we can learn how to offer
up the appropriate tribute when she looks our way.
From
Plato's The Phaedrus
“so
does the stream of beauty, passing through the eyes which
are the windows of the soul, come back to the beautiful one;
there [255d] arriving and quickening the passages of the
wings, watering them and inclining them to grow, and filling
the soul of the beloved also with love.
And
thus he loves, but he knows not what; he does not understand
and cannot
explain his own state; he appears to have caught the infection
of blindness from another; the lover is his mirror in
whom he is beholding himself, but he is not aware
of this.
When
he is with the lover, both cease from their pain,
but when he is away then he longs as he is longed for,
and has love's image, love for love lodging in his breast…” Phaedrus – Plato, translator – Benjamin
Jowett 1871
Wow!
Did you catch that? Let it sink in for just a second or two...
"the
lover is his mirror in whom he is beholding himself..."
According
to astrologer Liz Greene, this particular passage from Plato's Phaedrus contains: "the
most profound meaning of Venus – the beloved, be it person,
object or intellectual idea, as the mirror of one’s own
soul.” Liz
Greene from The Inner Planets
Venus
- The Beloved As Person, Object, or Intellectual Idea
So...
symbolically speaking... in the case of the Venus retrograde,
what is the appropriate sacrifice
that the goddess Venus requires of us? How do we
both as individuals
and collectively as a society begin to properly acknowledge
and honor the unknown visitor of Venus?
While
musing over what words of wisdom I might impart, I
had a flashback to something I'd written many
years ago on the May
2000 Taurus alignment.
In
regard to the 2000 Taurus Alignment:
"One
thing, however, does appear certain. Individually and
collectively, during the next twenty years, the Zodiacal
sign of Taurus [ruled by Venus] will
be asking us the hard question, "What do you value
most in your life?" Whether on a societal or individual
level - honoring the Taurean energies contained in this
great planetary
alignment will involve:
*
the offering up of our values
* the reevaluation of our values
* and then the fortitude and slow, steady, staying power required to stand
solidly behind what we have chosen to value."
As
I, almost 9 years later, write this article on how to honor
Venus during her time in retrograde... our planet
is
obviously
still hip deep in the
middle
of
this
20 year
Jupiter/Saturn
Taurus
cycle of reevaluating our societal values.
Whew!
We've
all been through a lot during the past decade... and even
more during the past few months...
Frankly,
it's rather hard to remember now... but prior to September
24, 2008 9:01
pm EDT, most of us were totally clueless about what our world
was about to face. Yep! With Mercury (commerce) still stationary
and
located in the
6th house (service industry) conjuncting the planet
Mars (action) and quincunx Uranus (surprise, shock) US President
George W Bush managed to catch most of us with our pants down
when he went before the nation to announce the Economic Pearl
Harbor
of
our generation.
So...
how are we doing in the reassessment of our values? I'll
leave it up to you to decide (and reevaluate) for yourself...
Honoring
Retro Venus - A Time For Reassessing Our Personal Values
Anyway... Venus, and honoring Venus during her retrograde, holds
on to this same sort of archetypal energy, albeit, on
a much smaller scale.
-
How
clear is your mirror of the soul?
-
How
willing and open are you to reconsidering and reassessing
your values?
-
Are
you ready to stand fast for your values?
Astrology
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