The plan­et Venus has been mov­ing ret­ro­grade since Octo­ber 8 and tonight reach­es the halfway point of its ret­ro­grade cycle. This is known as Venus mak­ing its Infe­ri­or con­junc­tion to the Sun. This is because we find Venus now at its clos­est approach to the Earth, posi­tioned between the Earth and the Sun.

This align­ment makes this phase of the Venus cycle sim­i­lar to a New Moon, where­in the Moon is also posi­tioned between Earth and the Sun. And, just like a New Moon, this moment in the Venus cycle cre­ates an oppor­tu­ni­ty for us to make a new begin­ning. In this case, since it is Venus, a new begin­ning in our under­stand­ing and expe­ri­ence of Val­ue is offered to us.

All ret­ro­grades of plan­ets cre­ate a peri­od in which we can and should go back and review, reflect and repair our expe­ri­ence of what­ev­er that plan­et has ruler­ship over. Venus only ret­ro­grades every 18 months or so, (it ret­ro­grades the least of all the plan­ets!), mak­ing this time a very spe­cial time indeed. And the actu­al length of its ret­ro­grade peri­od is quite prophet­ic, Venus ret­ro­grades for 40 days! There are numer­ous ref­er­ences in all major reli­gions and meta­phys­i­cal sys­tems to the num­ber 40 as being sig­nif­i­cant, but the ques­tion is what are we to do with Venus retrograde?

Venus rules val­ue, it rules the feel­ings we have as regards our attach­ments, our wants…it rules what we call Love. What Venus ret­ro­grade asks of each of us is this, it asks us to look with­in our­selves and see what are the val­ues that are unique to me and make me me?

Of course, we must and will share many aes­thet­ic, cul­tur­al and spir­i­tu­al val­ues with our fel­low human beings. How could we not? We are social beings, we are nur­tured and unfold our giv­en and unique poten­tial with­in a par­tic­u­lar fam­i­ly, with­in a par­tic­u­lar vil­lage, town or city, with­in a par­tic­u­lar cul­ture. All of these cre­ate and rein­force the essen­tial lan­guage of val­ue in our life.

Yet we also find a need to be spe­cial, to be our self, and to com­bine in our own unique way the var­i­ous themes and forms of expres­sion of val­ue that are in and around us. We take what is pro­vid­ed by our envi­ron­ment and mix it with the essence of our self that comes from with­in, our spir­it, our soul, so that in the end what we make is a life of val­ue that stands as a tes­ta­ment to our own soul’s journey.

Along the way, the Uni­verse pro­vides moments to pause, to reflect and if nec­es­sary adjust our jour­ney. With Venus ret­ro­grade we have all been doing this, most­ly uncon­scious­ly, dur­ing these last 20 days. And now, an answer is offered. The con­junc­tion of Venus with the Sun releas­es a mes­sage, again, for most, a very deep and prob­a­bly unseen answer to our prayer for guid­ance and help. But it is there, tonight.

Do not expect fireworks…expect a breath, a feath­er, a hint of anoth­er way. To hear the mes­sage we must be still and open to the Wind of the Spir­it in which we live and find the true mean­ing of our lives.

And Venus will keep mov­ing back­wards for anoth­er 20 days, till Novem­ber 18. At that moment the ener­gies will shift again. We will be able to take that seed of a new under­stand­ing and begin to act on it, still unsure of its true impor­tance. The rev­e­la­tion of our new under­stand­ing comes lat­er, much lat­er, when Venus again aligns with the Sun and Earth around August 16, 2011.

But we can be com­fort­ed tonight in the knowl­edge that the Uni­verse is offer­ing us help, as always, if we can take a moment and be still and reex­am­ine what is good, what is beautiful…what is love to me…tonight.

The Sun moved into Scor­pio today. The next month will high­light a new theme for us to con­sid­er. The theme for Scor­pio is the nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion from Libra. We now move from the struc­ture and forms of rela­tion­ship to its heart, to the expe­ri­ence of Union.

The Libra Full Moon arrives this evening. The Sun pro­vides the theme, and the Sun in Libra will make this a rev­e­la­tion about rela­tion­ships. This oppo­si­tion of Sun and Moon cre­ates an oppor­tu­ni­ty for each of us to exam­ine our rela­tion­ships more objectively.

The Moon being in Aries pro­vides the coun­ter­point of the kind of ener­gy, the kind of under­stand­ing, that we always need to improve our expe­ri­ence of rela­tion­ship. I like to call the expe­ri­ence of Aries as being the expres­sion of our “pres­ence” in life. Each of us is who we are, inter­nal­ly. But we present a dif­fer­ent aspect of our­selves to the var­i­ous types of peo­ple in our life. We present one kind of our self to our fam­i­ly, anoth­er to our friends, and anoth­er to our part­ner. We are always who we are, but we use these masks to bet­ter inter­face with the world around us.

The ques­tion then becomes, have we cre­at­ed the right masks, the right per­sonas, for each per­son or group of per­sons in our life? When we do, then oth­ers find our pres­ence welcoming…we nei­ther “come off” too strong nor too weak. We bring to bear the right ener­gy appro­pri­ate to each and every sit­u­a­tion. If a sit­u­a­tion seems over­ly ner­vous, we bring our calmer self to bear, and if a sit­u­a­tion seems a bit slow, we call upon our more live­li­er self to stim­u­late the experience.

The full Moon in Aries should be expe­ri­enced as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to exam­ine our masks and see whether or not we are reveal­ing our­selves tru­ly in our rela­tion­ships. Are we mak­ing the best pos­si­ble case for who we are, or is it appar­ent that there is some mis­un­der­stand­ing and we need to clar­i­fy our­selves to one another?

The full Moon says look at your rela­tion­ships and see whether you are present in them. Or are you try­ing to be some­thing for some­one, or they are for you, and that is why cir­cum­stances are com­ing to a point of stress now? Take a deep breath, and then look at your­self and see whether or not you like the rela­tion­ship you have.…with yourself.

The Moon has entered Aries as we move towards the Full Moon on Fri­day. The pace of activ­i­ty picks up as we pre­pare for the rev­e­la­tion that every Full Moon deliv­ers. Of course, this time, it is a rev­e­la­tion about rela­tion­ship that awaits us.