Photo by Amanda Painter.

I fell down a rabbit hole of details earlier this week trying to describe all that I saw going on in the chart for Venus stationing retrograde today at 9:33 pm EDT, and I had to step away from it. (Anyone else find themselves over-focusing on non-essentials recently?). But the part that really caught my attention — especially in light of my previous musings on the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon coinciding with Venus stationing — is this:

Venus is opposite the asteroid Eros (passion for life, what turns you on) in Aquarius (technology, groups). All that Venus represents (relationships, love, receptivity, the feminine principle, beauty) is coming face-to-face with the consequences of filtering our joie de vivre and passion and lust for life through the technology and digital innovations that have been sweeping through our collective experience.

It’s as though Venus — in confronting the current surreal situation of digital relating through texts and DMs, TikTok influencing, algorithms determining which friendships you cultivate (or even get reminded of) on Facebook, and AI proclaiming its “love” in online chats — is turning away from all that today. In turning away, Venus is TUNING IN to the warmth of the human heart.

Or rather, Venus is describing the opportunity YOU have to do so. Collectively we are on a fast track to insulating ourselves from human contact — all in the name of fulfilling basic needs more efficiently. But what happens to the “will to live” that Eros represents in an environment like that? What happens to compassion, true selfless leadership, or the courage to be real if we’re all filtering our profile photos and trying to be “influencers”?

True, Venus in Leo can be emotionally dramatic and attention seeking. But Venus in Leo is also known for tremendous warmth, affection, and generosity.

Leo is represented by the Sun, which itself enters that sign tonight at 9:50 pm EDT, right in the pocket of Venus stationing. The Sun is the center of our solar system: its heart — the heart being another symbol of Leo. Our Sun is the thing that holds together all the bodies orbiting it, simply by virtue of its gravity, and it’s the thing that makes planet Earth a habitable place for us and all our flora and fauna kin. Simply by shining its light.

What might happen if, for the next six weeks, we all turned away from more superficial “see and be seen” motivations, and instead turned toward the courageous act of remembering our full, true Self — and then letting that radiate out toward others, like the Sun does?

What if Venus’s retrograde these next six weeks describes a journey you can take back to your own inner source of Light?

Are you willing to rediscover the spark that makes you alert to your senses, able to give and receive compassion, and courageous enough to live your gifts in direct contact with those in your immediate orbit?

Venus is in contact with some other minor planets that suggest to me this current moment is colored by some tension: the tension that comes from how impossible it can feel to wake from the coma of our habits and truly reorient our actions on deeper values; the tension inherent in any message from “the gods” that proclaims to us the necessity of deep change and transformation if we wish to truly live who we are fully.

Even though the chart for Venus stationing retrograde today speaks doubly of patterns that describe significant tensions (I’ll post a description of the patterns I’m looking at later), that situation also offers the potential for great determination, originality, and creativity as we strive to reconcile those tensions.

To refer to my earlier post on this event: Venus, like the movie-version Barbie, is going on a heroine’s journey…to the “heart” of the Sun. Venus, like J. Robert Oppenhiemer, has an opportunity to understand and harness what is found there…spiritually rather than scientifically.

You and I — unlike Barbie or Oppenheimer — need only listen and feel carefully within to sense what truly brings us to joyful life. Not what feeds our ego, raises our social standing, protects us from the fear of others outshining us, or makes us look “better” in our digital profiles. Rather, what makes us feel like we’re shining on the inside, and not afraid for others to see who we are — even in the moments we’re not so sure we’re shining at all.

With love,

Amanda

Annotated chart for Venus stationing retrograde in Leo. I’ve marked out the two grand squares in pencil. The Sun in Cancer (yellow circle in the lower right quadrant) makes a square with the South Node in Libra, Pluto in Capricorn, and the North Node in Aries (they all have a bold “29” next to them). Venus is in Leo, just below the bold horizontal line on the right, conjunct the binary system Sila-Nunam (penciled in, as are the other objects in the grand square with Venus: Burney and Hermes in Scorpio, Eros in Aquarius, and Pelion and the binary system Mors-Somnus in Taurus).

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