The Loveliness of Things—Venus Retrograde—March 1st to April 12th
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Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time—Maya Angelou.
In these first hope-filled days of spring, a benevolent sun settles over city parks and woodlands. And for a brief moment, people look up from their screens and smile at the loveliness of things.
February is a month dedicated to Love. As cloyingly sentimental or overtly commercial as this celebration may seem, Valentine’s Day has survived world wars and financial crashes. On February 14th in most places on this earth, millions of people demonstrated through chocolates and cards, music and flowers, their longing to love and be loved. “Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved”, writes author Alain de Botton.
At sunset this month, Venus, goddess of beauty and love, shimmers in a sky striated with peach and gold. On Valentine’s Day Venus was luminous, reaching her greatest brilliancy as if declaring Love’s power to overcome all human sorrow. She lingers languidly in the evening skies and dazzles us with her beauty till mid-March, then she vanishes beneath the horizon, triumphantly reappearing as morning star in the last days of April.
The ancients tracked the passage of Venus in a perfect pentagram across the skies, ascribing her disappearance from sight to her descent into the Underworld. This descent into the darkness was a dangerous time for humanity. When Venus vanished from the skies, the pre-Colombian Mayans believed, kingdoms became unstable, regimes toppled, and an ancient bloodlust stirred in the heart of warriors.
In myth, Innana (Venus) is stripped of all her valued regalia and exquisite clothing. She enters the Underworld vulnerable and exposed for 40 days and 40 nights. In modern times, the Underworld is a symbol of our own unconscious where we may encounter a truth that reverberates viscerally. The trial of these times are a cosmic reminder for us to dissolve, discard out-worn values and beliefs. In astrological language, Venus describes our self-worth and self-esteem, as well as the people or things we cherish and admire. Venus describes our loveability, how we give and how we receive love. We may be prompted to reconnect with our heart’s longing as we reevaluate our intimate and business partnerships, our friendships, our finances, our creative expression, and importantly, what value we place upon ourselves.
Between late January and mid-May this year, Venus becomes a maverick, expressing her qualities in unusual and unexpected ways as she moves over the Aries/Pisces area of our birth charts as well as the birth charts of our fallible leaders, and of nations.
Venus entered her shadow period on January 28th at 24° Pisces. On March 2nd, she stations Retrograde at 10° Aries and stations direct at 24° Pisces on April 13th. She will leave her Retrograde shadow on May 16th at 10° Aries.
The last time Venus moved Retrograde through Pisces and Aries was eight years ago, so as we reflect back to the themes or our responses to events in 2017, we might get a sense of where we might need to focus our attention over the coming months. Venus and Mercury meet in Aries on March 12th then Mercury stations Retrograde on March 14th as we pause before making decisions and pay careful attention before signing any important documents. The few days before and after Retrograde and direct stations are risky times to enter into negociations or make long term decisions.
As Venus moves apparently backwards through the heavens, she will accent the building energy of the important Neptune/Saturn conjunction at that first initiatory degree of Aries, mirroring trigger points politically and economically, as well as important events and choices in our own lives as we grapple with what is “real” or illusionary.
As Venus begins to gather speed, moving direct, she passes over the important Aries point on May 1st, she will also energise this jetstream of powerful political and cultural currents that will sweep away what has been built, and will ebb and flow, long after we are gone. As civil rights activist and writer, James Baldwin once said: “No time can be easy if one is living through it.”
As we move through the turbulent maelstrom of this moment in human history, with its darkness and its light, we might remember that there are cycles within cycles. As author John Steinbeck wrote during the darkest days of the second world war, “all the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up… it isn’t that the evil thing wins—it never will—but that it doesn’t die.”
In our own private lives, Venus accents the impulsive, assertive, risk-taking Aries energy in our birth chart, as well as the caring, compassionate, intuitive part of ourselves as she moves through Pisces between now and early June.
Venus’s Retrograde passage may expose our vulnerabilities, our blind spots, and our lack of self-compassion.
Most of us are unskilled at self-love. It is often easier to look for what is wrong in our relationships or in the world around us, than to place our attention on what brings joy to our hearts. As we take time to hear our inner pulse beat, may we honour the stability of our own substance, resist the meaningless quantification of likes and retweets, and protect our tender hearts and minds from corrosive comparisons.
As our earth strains beneath the weight of our appetites and numbers—and so many of us sense the ultimate ending—Jonathan Franzen writes in his book, The End of the End of the Earth “even in a world of dying, new loves continue to be born… this is now the time to give yourself over to what you love, perhaps in new and deeper ways. Your family and friends, your animal friends, the plants around you, even if that means just the little sprouts that push their way through the sidewalk in your city, the feeling of a breeze on your skin, the taste of food, the refreshment of water, or the thousands of little things that make up your world and which are your own unique treasures and pleasures.
Make your moments sparkle within the experience of your own senses and direct your attention to anything that gladdens your heart.”
These posts continue to remain AI free and free of charge to all lovers of astrology. If you’d like a private astrology reading, please get in touch: ingrid@trueheartwork.com or visit the consultations page of my website: www.trueheartwork.com
Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes and denies us the present by promising the future. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately. Lucius Annaeus Seneca 4Bc to 65 AD.
If you are poised to travel or make a commitment that concerns a relationship or money, there may be delays or setbacks as Venus and Mercury go retrograde in Aries back into Pisces in March. March 14th to April 7th for Mercury. March 1st to April 12th for Venus.
In March, a conjunction of Saturn and Neptune nudges close to the North Node in the very last decan of Pisces, moving within half a degree orb at 0° Aries in July. As Saturn and Neptune dance together all through 2025 what we knew to be safe and sure may become untethered. Neptune breaches, erodes and undermines the steadfast structure of Saturn, which release a tsunami of disillusionment and disorientation. We may be called to make sacrifices for the greater good. We may discover qualities of resilience, steadfastness and courage as we draw from our inner reserves of strength and passion.
Life meanders like a path through the woods. We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again. George Eliot.
Now as we tend to the cherished customs and savour the familiar rituals of this holiday season, may we glance back over the months of this year almost gone and allow those moments of pleasure to glitter across our memory—our daily walk with the dog, a swim in the ocean, a birthday meal shared with a dear friend—or the Big, heart-blossoming, life-changing arrival of a precious grandchild.
It was not by a serpent, but by paper and ink that evil came into the world.
Societal reform, often accompanied by bloody revolution and fanaticism shattered societies during Pluto’s passage through Aquarius in the 1700s long before we had “discovered” Pluto in the darkness of our solar system.
Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby—awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess. Lemony Snicket. 
For those who are the mouthpieces for the collective, the gods seem to be smiling on Donald Trump. The day before voting, expansive and opportunistic Jupiter in Gemini conjoins Donald Trump’s
A slow soft light settles over the meadows. Leaves flutter, bronze and golden butterflies in the cooling air and choirs of migrant birds begin their long pilgrimage south.
Pluto has circled slowly through the darkness of outer space to the to the place it stood on July 4th, 1776, when the nation of America was born. Over these past 16 years, America has experienced the long slow process of its first Pluto Return. As reminders of the painful legacy of dispossession, enslavement, ecocide, and genocide seep through a nation experiencing so much polarisation and collective angst, America is also experiencing a Chiron Return. America’s origins must be either confronted or repeated.
Darkness will always give you an opportunity to create your own light—Iain Thomas.
Mercury Rx times typically highlight setbacks, detours and delays that challenge our resourcefulness, hone our ability to be grateful for small wins.
The vibratory signature of this grand finale Supermoon may light the way to a flowering of purpose, a deeper way of listening, a different way of seeing, an outward rush of a life force that floods through us even in the darkness. “Despair is our chance to wrestle with fire and come through,” writes Christina Baldwin. Trust. Don’t let go.
Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore. Leonard Cohen.
The assassination attempt on Donald Trump was intensified by the malevolent the presence of Algol, a fixed star charged with passion and potential ruthlessness, according to astrologer and fixed star virtuoso, Bernadette Brady. This energy accompanies sudden, often shocking events that ricochet through our lives, upending our ordinary routines, shattering our best laid plans, sending a shockwave of lightning bolt energy that tosses us over the cliff edge, sets ablaze those aspects of our personality that might have lain dormant for years.
“After the ecstasy, the laundry,” author Jack Kornfield reminds us as governments turn to the daily task of translating the collective hope for change into an imperfect political system. Saturn, the ruler of this moon, turns Retrograde on June 29th, a collective ebb of the tide, an invitation to slow down to allow something new to seed and gestate over the next nine months. As Saturn moves Retrograde, it’s energy turns inward prompting us to reassess, to perhaps to respond to outer events with more maturity, more caution. Typically, the last passage of Saturn over this degree point will quite tangibly manifest what was seeded and has grown very gradually over the slow months of Saturn’s slow retrogression, so it will be in our Pisces house that we may encounter a necessary delay, an internalisation, or a phase of withdrawal. Saturn begins to form a tense square to Jupiter from 17th to 23rd August and again in December 23rd to early January, requiring us all to temper our hopes with a good dollop of reality, to think clearly before adding more fuel to the narrative delivered by political performers who shock and dazzle the punters with their sociopathic rudeness and preposterously impossible promises.
“May is the month of expectation, the month of wishes, the month of hope,” wrote Emily Brontë.
