Time with Venus…

Just thinking about blog subjects is a creative venture.

Like everyone else, I’ve been watching (anxiously) as Mars retrogrades, heading back to perfect the cardinal cross in April, not to mention the April 14 lunar eclipse, the day of Pluto’s station retrograde.

Volatility and abrupt, upsetting, and precarious moves are obvious everywhere we look. This week alone I know of six people who have suddenly decided to move.  (1)

However, amidst the intermittent chaos of the cardinal energy, I wanted to write about something else: Venus, now reaching her maximum brightness as a jewel in the morning sky. (Do get up and see her when you have clear skies.) It was only after I started writing about Venus that I realized that Sunday was my Venus return.

Venus conjoined the Sun on January 11 at 21°11’ Capricorn in her retrograde phase. (2) That degree will remain highly sensitive for awhile, at least until the next conjunction. (3) If you have 21°- 22° Capricorn on an angle, or with the Sun, Moon, or other important placement in the birth horoscope (or solar return), all matters of Venus significations will be pronounced. (4)

On January 11 at the conjunction with the Sun, Venus was invisible, of course. She started to appear in the morning sky before dawn around January 17 and made her direct station on January 31 while conjunct Pluto at 12° Capricorn.

The Morning Star, or Venus Lucifer (“the light bearer” to the Greeks) Venus will move to her farthest point from the Sun (maximum elongation) — and rising well before the Sun — on March 22. Look in the early morning sky, as the waning Moon will pass by her on March 26-28.

I remember Arielle Guttman’s work on the Venus Star Point (VSP), her terminology for the degree of the conjunction of Venus with the Sun prior to an individual’s birth. The degree of the prenatal conjunction, in which Venus can be either in retrograde or direct motion, is predictable and easy to calculate. Guttman wrote about that point as symbolizing “the manner in which we reach inside of ourselves to reflect the love, beauty, and heart-felt self-expression we innately possess and share with others.” She also suggests that the Venus Star is reflecting the concept of Eros, “a deeply moving, creative life force.” (5) (It is clearly an evocative point; the conjunction occurs when we are in the womb.)

There is a five-pointed star pattern formed by Venus’s orbit in relationship to the Earth, and the Venus conjunctions occur in only one of five signs. We are all born as part of a particular star pattern, with all five points forming to create one full star. (6)

Whether we consider the inferior or superior conjunction of Venus with the Sun as the beginning of the cycle, Venus has a very regular eight-year cycle that creates a pentagram, or five-pointed star, in the sky. Just click below for a graphic showing the perfect geometry in her orbit around the Sun:

Venus synodic cycle

If we could see from above the earth (located at the center of this diagram), the pattern looks like this – the Venus rose pattern:

If you want to keep it simple, just take note of your pre-natal Sun-Venus conjunction and look for connections with people in your life.  I had a lovely friend whose VSP (the degree of her prenatal Sun-Venus conjunction) is at 23° Scorpio, the degree of my Ascendant. She is someone I have greatly admired and loved. She passed away suddenly with Saturn stationing on and transiting that degree. I will never forget her.

On a happier note, my first husband’s VSP is within 2° of my natal Moon; my VSP is is within 2° of his Moon and is also on our son’s Ascendant and our granddaughter’s Mercury. Today is also his birthday – Happy Solar Return, Christopher.

Here’s to remembering all of Venus’s gifts as we learn to cherish our world and each other in all ways.

Footnotes:

(1) As I was beginning to write today, I got a call from an astrologer and her niece passing through Ashland, checking out the area for a possible relocation. I did not know them before today, and I met them for tea, as ever curious about the timing — and always open to a distraction when I’m about to focus. They both have planets (e.g., the Moon and Mars) at 13° Aries; their stories could be the subject of a whole blog, but back to my topic.

(2) See Gary P. Caton’s blog for much more on this conjunction. (Here’s a link to his podcast on this conjunction.)

(3) Although most modern astrologers (i.e., Robert Blaschke, Gary Caton, Adam Gainsburg, Daniel Giamario) consider the start of the Venus cycle at the inferior conjunction, Deborah Houlding’s article, The Beauty of the Venus Cycle in TMA Feb/Mar 2010, considers the start of the Venus cycle to be the superior conjunction. It is important to remember that Venus has an “enduring symmetry.” No matter where one considers the start of the Venus cycle (i.e, at heliacal rise, at the inferior conjunction, or the superior conjunction), Venus will always make the five-pointed star in her eight-year journey with the Sun and the Earth.

(4) Robert Blaschke’s research showed that the Venus cazimi (i.e., “the heart of the Sun”) degree in a prominent place in the natal horoscope would bring an important relationship into the life during the time of that transit.

(5) Quotes from Venus Star Rising: A New Cosmology for the 21st Century by Arielle Guttman, Sophia Venus Productions, 2010.

(6) See Arielle Guttmans’s work for more on this. Here is her comment from an earlier blog:
“Our friends, families and special relationships — the important people that populate our lives – fill in the other four points of the Star. Together, then, when all five points are activated within our own special group, the group is empowered by the full star of Venus — something very powerful, magnetic, enduring, creative, and transformative in our unfolding spiral evolution. Check out the relationships on the star of Venus. I have found it quite a profound way to look at the heart and soul of how we connect and with whom we connect on our journey.”
Venus: Enduring Symmetry