Venus Turns Ret­ro­grade, July 22 to Sep­tem­ber 3

It seems quite time­ly for our solar jour­ney through Leo this year that we also begin today to expe­ri­ence a won­der-filled oppor­tu­ni­ty to realign our expe­ri­ence of val­ue, beau­ty, and love. Venus turns ret­ro­grade today, turn­ing direct on Sep­tem­ber 3, and mov­ing from the 29^th to the 12^th degree of Leo. Venus ret­ro­grades once every 18 months for around 40 days, so it is one of the rar­er oppor­tu­ni­ties pro­vid­ed by the “dance of the planets”.

Of course, no plan­et “goes back­ward”, and for an inner plan­et like Venus it is formed by Venus pass­ing Earth, like a rac­er over­tak­ing anoth­er rac­er on the inside track, in her orbit around the Sun. But of course, what you and I need to under­stand is what does this means for us here on Earth; what can we learn or under­stand about our jour­ney from this sto­ry of Venus now?

Venus is the avatar of our expe­ri­ence of val­ue, the ves­sel for your appre­ci­a­tion for the hier­ar­chy of val­ues in your life, hold­ing your expe­ri­ence of all the many forms of beau­ty, and it equal­ly shapes the embod­i­ment for your per­son­al forms of love too. In your own chart, what­ev­er sign Venus is in will hold your expe­ri­ence of your per­son­al val­ues and love.

But for all of us, when­ev­er Venus is mov­ing through Leo as it is now, we are made more aware and sen­si­tive about the Leo expe­ri­ence of and approach to val­ue, beau­ty, and love. Venus in Leo cen­ters our expe­ri­ence of val­ue as being root­ed in our need to love and cre­ate with the divine light of self-ful­fill­ment. We are here to be true to our­selves, and this authen­tic­i­ty is forged and pre­served by your uncon­di­tion­al love for your­self and in your uncon­di­tion­al love for one another.

The ques­tion you are being asked with Venus ret­ro­grade is are you being true and authen­tic? Are you being true to your deep­est nature, so that your per­for­mances, your cre­ations, and your love for anoth­er is gen­uine and anchored in your love of your­self and equal­ly by your respect for one another.

But if your cre­ations and actions are cir­cum­scribed and cal­i­brat­ed so as to gain the approval of oth­ers, when you seek to get the love that you believe you lack, so that you must get it from anoth­er, then you will hear the applause but know it is not for you, and no mat­ter how much they seem to love you, it will not heal your heart.

Venus ret­ro­grade in Leo is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to go with­in and see your­self more tru­ly, to love and respect who you are. And then with this under­stand­ing of truth and beau­ty, you will go out and show a greater love and respect to those with whom you share this life. You will stretch your­self to become more of your true self, you will free your spir­it to soar into the as yet unknown heights, and by this you will reveal the love that shines at the heart of one and all. And when you do this, you will be seen and loved for who you are, a spark of the Divine.

What this means is that you will spend the next few weeks reex­am­in­ing your own val­ues, con­sid­er­ing your own means of self-real­iza­tion, of cre­ativ­i­ty and lead­er­ship. And by this you will find that you will equal­ly need to con­sid­er the val­ues you share with oth­ers, the val­ues that you make, share, and live through one anoth­er. The prin­ci­pal ques­tion will be the one of respect, respect for your­self, respect for one another.

From this gift of Venus ret­ro­grade, good rela­tion­ships will get bet­ter, dif­fi­cult rela­tion­ships may be repaired and healed. And for those rela­tion­ships where the bridge of shared val­ues has been erod­ed or bro­ken, it may sig­nal a time for each of you to let go of that form of rela­tion­ship altogether.

Sun Enters Leo

Today we mark two shifts in the “Hous­es of the Holy Ones”. The Sun leaves Can­cer and enters Leo, and on the same day Venus turns ret­ro­grade in Leo too. The dance of the plan­ets is shift­ing tunes now, and you should pay atten­tion to the oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges that are pre­sent­ed to you by your com­pan­ions in the stars.

Of course, we must take spe­cial care, and we know that this is true even more than it was before, to con­sid­er what we might encounter in the phys­i­cal weath­er we meet with day after day. And that is why we lean upon and rely upon sci­ence, along with our own intu­ition­al nature, to nav­i­gate the dynam­ic dance of the ener­gy forms that form our ever-chang­ing weath­er pat­terns, and cope as well with the larg­er cli­mate changes we are cer­tain­ly expe­ri­enc­ing now.

But there are many dimen­sions in this uni­verse, and many types of ener­gy-forms that form and shape what we expe­ri­ence here on the Earth. For us, the Dance of the Plan­ets forms the great “Sto­ry of Spir­it”, with our Earth trav­el­ling around the Sun, and then in com­bi­na­tion our plan­e­tary com­pan­ions danc­ing with one anoth­er and with us, they form intri­cate pat­terns of mean­ing and inspi­ra­tion that can guide and inspire us as we walk the path of light which forms our spir­i­tu­al awakening.
One of the prin­ci­pal shapers of our awak­en­ing is the year­ly jour­ney of our Earth around the Sun, as it forms not only one of the pri­ma­ry dri­vers of our phys­i­cal forms of weath­er, but equal­ly forms or informs our spir­i­tu­al-psy­cho­log­i­cal jour­ney of humanity’s awakening.

You have spent the last 30 days with your star mov­ing through the space of Can­cer, and the oppor­tu­ni­ty you met in the first of the Water Signs was to find your way to the cen­ter of you, to tru­ly feel the warm embrace and con­nec­tion with what lies at the heart of you, (and as you go deep­er and deep­er, what lies at the heart of one and all). In hav­ing met with your “self that is your cen­ter”, it is in this time of Leo, and cer­tain­ly some­where always in your own chart too, that you know you must be you. In Leo you strive to release your true self, as you stretch your­self upon the stages of the world, to live and embody the life divine, and reveal to one and to all who you are, which is a cre­ator, a leader and lover of life, as you shine like the star that you are.

Yes, it is in Leo that you stretch into the undis­cov­ered nature of who you might be and become, you attempt a new form of expres­sion, an exten­sion of your­self into new spaces, into new roles, new dances of spir­it, new ways of being “you”. And if you can do it, if you reach that high­er mark, then oth­ers see these gifts of the cre­ator in you and they smile, and they laugh, and yes, it is all about this, they love who you are. Because this is the heart of it, this is what is in your soul and out there now for the world to see too, it is the Spark of the Divine, pure uncon­di­tion­al love made man­i­fest by the cre­ator that is you.

For­ev­er some­where in your chart, and espe­cial­ly at this time of the year, you cel­e­brate the spark of the Divine whose cen­ter is “Every­where” and whose cir­cum­fer­ence is “Nowhere”, for you are one of ones of the One, danc­ing these songs of Spir­it in every step that you take through the won­der that is Creation.

And when you are true to your­self, then you shine like the star that you are, radi­ant with the joy and the love that is your spark of the Divine. But just like the stars in the fir­ma­ment above, your light divine will not, does not, and can­not ever shine alone. You feel this in your heart, and you know this in your soul, that you were made for one anoth­er, and you make one anoth­er who and what you are. So that every one of us is who they are because of the love we have for one anoth­er, for the love we share with one anoth­er, and so you can only be you if you live with love for one another.

For this is the heart of the teach­ing, you are made of love, and you are here quite sim­ply to love one anoth­er. It is in your space of Leo, and always at this time of the year, that you see the won­der in all of the cre­ations of Cre­ation. And what is that? It is the One, the Cre­ator, it is the Divine, which is shin­ing in every­thing and every­one, illu­mined by the Love of the One.