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Venus Transit: The Message is Love

The Mayans thought 2012 was portentous, due to the ending of one calendar round and the beginning of another, and due to the occurrence of a Venus Occultation, or Venus Transit. During this transit on June 5, 2012, Venus will appear as a dot on the face of the Sun. Venus averages a conjunction to the Sun every 1.6 years, and it takes eight years to complete five superior conjunctions, forming a giant five-pointed star in the sky. We are in the midst of two visible conjunctions, which are inferior, i.e., Venus is retrograde, slower, and more powerful in her effect. This phenomenon of Venus’ visibility to the naked eye across the Sun only occurs once every 243 years (go to lunarplanner for an exquisite 3D demonstration of this cycle).

Sometimes this visible conjunction comes in pairs separated by eight years. This is happening at this time, as there was a visible conjunction on June 8, 2004, at 17º Gemini. The second visible Venus Transit is June 5, at 15º Gemini. On that day, Mars is at 16º Virgo; one day earlier, Neptune will station retrograde at 3º Pisces, and, on the same day, there is a Super Moon Lunar Eclipse at 14º Sagittarius. This creates a Mutable Grand Square between Sun-Venus, Moon, Mars, and Neptune. Just two weeks later, there is a partile square of Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn, the first of seven Uranus-Pluto squares during the next three years. At that time, Jupiter will be in late Taurus and Saturn will be retrograde in Libra, where it stations direct the day after the Uranus-Pluto square. Taurus and Libra are both Venus signs, giving even greater emphasis to the power of the Venus Transit. On June 25th, the day after the first Uranus-Pluto square — and the day of Saturn’s station — Jupiter will ingress into Gemini. Jupiter in Gemini will form a square to Neptune in Pisces. Jupiter and Neptune are co-rulers of Pisces, which is also Venus’ sign of exaltation. The Mayans were aware of the star formation and the Venus Transit as an indicator of the life cycle of beginnings and endings.

As ruler of Libra, Venus has a lot to say about personal relationships, as well as the areas of social justice, fairness, and equality. As ruler of Taurus, Venus has a lot to say about what we value. Exactly halfway between the first and second of the visible Venus Transit conjunctions with the Sun, the economy of the U.S. collapsed. Some say we are now in a slow recovery, yet, as individuals, we can see that some of us have been affected more than others, and if the following transit degrees are sensitive points in your chart, it is likely that you are one of the people more deeply affected. Conversely, you may be needed to help in the recovery and assist our need for realignment/reassessment of what is truly important or of value in life. The degrees highlighted in this star formation are: 7º-10º Aries; 15º-18º Gemini; 23º-24º Leo; 4º-5º Scorpio, and 21º-23º Capricorn.

The area of your chart where the middle degrees of the mutable signs fall may denote areas of your life that need a change due to crystallized thought patterns. Potential examples of Venus issues are: having lost touch with the value of relationship, having overvalued possessions, or lost touch with the divine feminine. Gemini issues include: valuing the head over the heart, talking when we need to listen, learning the need for right speech, cyberspace replacing the natural world. This powerful transit highlights an emergent period of rebalancing the yin/yang energies of male/female polarities as we reengage with the power of the feminine, which has been suppressed for more than two millennia. The period initiated by the first Venus Transit (in 2004) involves the dissolution of duality and separation from the divine, and a crisis of healing from divisiveness and fear. I refer to this transit as a Passage of the Heart.

In 2004, during the first visible Venus Transit, the war in the Middle East, which had begun the year before, was at center stage. On June 8, 2004, the day of the first Venus Transit at 17º Gemini, the UN Security Council adopted the Iraq Resolution, which provided for the handing over of power to an independent Iraq — in essence, a peace-keeping resolution. Yet we have seen evidence that our government has attempted to exert control over this process. June 8, 2004 was also the beginning of a three-day G-8 summit meeting in Sea Island, Georgia, during which nearly every branch of government, from the local to the national level, cooperated to diffuse protests and deflect terrorists. Anti-globalization protests did occur, however, with National Guardsmen giving bottles of cold water to over-heated protesters, a gesture of peace.

Astrology isn’t only a mathematical equation; there is also a mystical quality in communing with the stars that requires intuition, imagination, and sometimes a mythological grasp. For the coming Venus Transit of June 2012, we can use archetypes and imagery to imagine the Sun (representing persons in power) as a great lord or king, such as Midas, with the golden touch, who sits on his throne controlling everything with his gold; in fact, all he touches turns to gold. Everything he sees is for his use and everything has a dollar value. Our king is nearly exhausted with this tiresome ‘golden touch,’ when, from out of the shadows, glides a graceful and beautiful goddess in flowing robes. The king notices her just as she emerges into the throne room; she is dazzling and he is stunned when she touches him as she brushes past. He is almost as startled by her beauty as by the fact that, unlike everyone else, she did not turn into gold or stone or a groveling sycophant, the behavior he is most accustomed to among his minions. What he didn’t notice was that as she swiftly made her exit, some of his gold rubbed off onto her skin and her hair, and the folds of her skirt and her pockets filled with his gold dust. She doesn’t keep it for herself, however; her heart is much too big for greed or self-aggrandizement. She intends, like Prometheus with fire, to give it to us. I believe that, during this perfect storm of a Venus Transit, combined with a Super-Moon Lunar Eclipse Mutable Grand Square, Saturn and Jupiter in Venus signs, along with Uranus perfecting a square to Pluto, as Jupiter squares Neptune and Saturn stations in the Venus sign of Libra, we will have an opportunity to witness the blossoming of a peaceful, non-violent world revolution.

The Occupy movement began on September 17, 2011, five days after the Full Moon in Pisces, the sign of Venus’ exaltation, and one day after Pluto stationed direct. In her recent TMA article, J. Lee Lehman says we are in a time of “conflict and tension without resolution” (1), just as the peaceful, non-violent movement begun by Gandhi led India through a long and deliberate period of ‘conflict and tension without resolution.’ Barely a week after the Venus Transit, Jupiter moves into the mutable, ‘common’ sign of Gemini, lending his weight and swelling the ranks of the common people to this higher purpose. Further, at that time there is a conspicuous absence of fixed signs. We will enter a period of great change and flux, when there will be no objective news reported, only influence peddling; truth, perhaps, will only be found in social media. The Uranus-Pluto square drives the action of the worldwide revolution in cardinal signs. Uranus in Aries gives people the will to act against the established empire of dark forces, corporations that pollute not only our environment but our political sphere as well. But the common Mutable Grand Square/Super Moon Lunar Eclipse in Sagittarius will define the revolution and, with the Venus Transit in Gemini, the people will demand their voice back and the main issues will be justice and ethics.

Pluto in Capricorn also defines the conflict as being concerned with social responsibility and management (Capricorn) of resources (Venus), capital as well as natural, and the Uranus-Pluto square tells us it will not be a summer of Love. Conflict comes before resolution and nothing can be truly foreordained due to the fact of human agency; we have a choice. The future will manifest from the choices we make, and it is up to each of us to act. An insightful warning comes from Evan Bortnick, in a TMA article from a decade ago:

“Anyone who under-estimates Venus….makes a grave error. Even the most cursory glance at Venus in mythology shows her to be, indirectly, the first cause of much war, destruction and suffering. On the stage of human events and transactions (both personal and collective), the desires for accumulation of goods, for security and stability, for lebensraum (“room to live”), for ‘peace-keeping,’ and for relationship — all under the aegis of Venus — have been the impulses behind some of the most brutal and gruesome dramas ever played out.” (2)

The Maya felt Venus to be a symbol of the life/death cycle, and the approaching time of endings relates to our way of thinking (Venus transit in Gemini). Hence, it is not so much that God/Jesus will return, but, rather, we will return to the Divine through the realization that the cosmos and all life are manifestations of Divine Consciousness: “All objects and phenomenon will be seen as expressions of the living divine force that pervades the cosmos of which we ourselves are a part……..cosmos will be recognized as an expression of the Divine.” (3)

After completion of the second visible transit, Venus chases her closest platonic friend, Mercury the Messenger God, around the zodiac for more than a year, waiting to share the gold (power) with him so he too can assist in the change of consciousness that will be occurring. They finally meet in Venus’ sign of exaltation, Pisces, on March 7, 2013, not for a pity party, for a Pisces Party — an opportunity to bring together the forces of mind and heart. Nearby are none other than dark lords Saturn and Pluto, inferring that discipline, suffering, and transformation will be required to create change. Saturn forms an exact trine from Pluto’s sign (Scorpio), and Pluto forms an exact sextile from Saturn’s sign (Capricorn) to the post Venus Transit meeting of Venus and Mercury — the Goddess of Love meets the Messenger God: The Message is Love.


References and Author bio:

1. J. Lee Lehman, “Sustainability Issues in 2012 and Beyond,” TMA, Dec. 2011/Jan. 2012, pp. 38-42.

2. Evan Bortnick, “Creativity and the Shadow: Oscar Wilde, Richard Strauss, and Salomé,” TMA, Oct./Nov. 2002, pp. 27-33.

3. Carl Johan Calleman, Ph.D., The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness, Vermont: Bear and Co., p. 209.

Bio: Annalee Smith is an artist, writer, and astrological counselor living in the Oregon forest by Silver Falls State Park. She has an MA in Transpersonal Psychology and has studied/practiced astrology for 40 years. As a student of the transpersonal, she became deeply immersed in Buddhist practice and philosophy, incorporating her spiritual beliefs into her work. She is a recent cancer survivor who is deeply concerned about the survival of the planet and believes that peace can only come one person at a time. As her recovery continues, she will be working as an astrological counselor with a new age/metaphysical store and wellness group in the Willamette Valley, Journeys, A Center for the Soul. She can be contacted through Journey’s at (503) 991-5091, or at P.O. Box 957, Silverton, OR, 97381.

16 Comments

  1. Wow. Wow. Wow! I’ve read this blog for months and enjoyed every column. This one is superlative. Thank you. I carefully traced the dates and events in my life from June 2005 to the middle of June 2008, and they correspond with the incredible changes occurring in my life right now. My first novel was accepted for publication by Viking Press in summer 2013. It’s been a long and winding road to becoming a successful writer, but those dates were key. My Mars at 17 Virgo squares Ur/North Node/Asc. at 19/20/22 Gem.

    • Judy, congratulations on getting your novel accepted for publication. That’s great!

  2. Correction. Make that June 2004, not 2005. Very excited by this great information.

  3. Just what I was thinking, Mary. I repeat what Judy shared: “Wow. Wow. Wow! I’ve read this blog for months and enjoyed every column. This one is superlative. Thank you” for all your good work. You are an asset for my subscription to TMA.

  4. Hit submit too soon! Thank you, Annalee, for your contribution to TMA. Excellent article for these times of transformation! I wish you continued healing and many blessings.

    • Thanks for your kind wishes!

  5. This is very interesting material indeed. I have read many article on this site but this is the first one I have been compelled to comment on. I have been watching/feeling the political and economic tensions slowly building all over the world. It is good to know that we are moving toward not only a resolution, but a “message of love”, even if the journey will be a difficult and tumultuous one (though Scorpios like me enjoy the tumult almost as much as the resolution).

  6. Thank you for such a beautifully written journey through the upcoming changes and challenges. Hope you’ll write more for us through this blog.

  7. Not so sure about your ‘summer of love’ comment. I think it could be ‘the summer of higher love’ myself. There will be some kind of follow up to the Uranus/Pluto conjunction of 1967 I feel sure. The imbalances created since then need to be corrected. For instance people might stop gazing into their I Phones- perhaps even begin using them to make and receive actual calls! “Let’s get together”. Venus is flirting with Mars in a series of squares- the first of which involved Neptune.

    The signal has been given for higher love to evolve.

    Thoroughly enjoyed this piece- thanks

    • Thank you, I appreciate all of the responses so much! The Summer of Love was an expression of freedom created by kids living in a society of abundance which allowed them the opportunity to be ‘experienced’ and create a unique moment; those kids had Pluto in Leo and Neptune in Libra, a highly creative if not terribly responsible combination (I can say that because I am one of them). It was 1967 and by April, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated and in June, 1968 Robert Kennedy was assassinated, probably the two most important and caring leaders for the people of America during the entire 20th century. In May of 1970 anti-war student protestors on the grounds of Kent State University in Ohio were shot by National Guardsmen. These were tumultuous years during which the popular culture of free love and anti-war protests created a fierce back-lash from the people in power; those people continue to dominate to this day. Your assertion that there have been consequent imbalances which need to be corrected couldn’t be more accurate. The primarily corporate forces of the 1% have accrued a towering inferno of power during the last half-century, the likes of which the world has never seen before. They control virtually every facet of our government and will resist any and all change with great force. However, the current generation has Pluto in Scorpio and Neptune in Capricorn and many of them have Saturn in Capricorn as well. These kids are all business, they are deeply concerned about the use of power and with Pluto in Scorpio they are all about the take-down of this corrupt system which only functions for the 1%. They are up to the task, they are fierce, determined, pragmatic and technologically savvy and there are many born leaders among them, which is why they can create a leaderless movement, they are all leaders. Bill Herbst has indicated in his recent TMA article, that there will be pockets of resistance and pockets of awareness. This generation is not going to inherit a society of abundance as did the 60’s generation, still they have attempted to create Pockets of Love, which I am sure they will continue to do; only they will generally do it more responsibly in spite of being faced with greater obstacles. In Zuccotti Park they set up stationary bicycles for participants to cycle for the creation of electricity and they set up a free library while Mayor Bloomberg was stripping funding for the NYC Public library. The Pluto in Scorpio generation will purge the corruption through the creation of entirely new systems and change will come, but not without a fight; they know that if we want our democracy back we will have to take it back and they know it has to be done with non-violence. Gandhi was a Scorpio; Scorpio understands the value of non-violence. The quarter phases are symbolic of tension in developmental crisis. We are in the waxing first quarter (square) phase of the Pluto/Uranus cycle that symbolizes a crisis in action and which Dane Rudhyar has said can be both a repudiation of the past as well as a building of new structures. And yes, the call to a higher path of universal love has been issued and the Pluto in Scorpio generation hears it, loud and clear.

  8. Annalee
    I totally agree. Love your writing. I too was there in the sixties. My novel documents a part of that. And I love the statement: “They are up to the task, they are fierce, determined, pragmatic and technologically savvy and there are many born leaders among them, which is why they can create a leaderless movement, they are all leaders.”
    I’ve seen ample evidence of this. I live in Oakland, teach here and see it all up close. As the saying goes, it’s on and popping.

    • Thanks for your insight Judy. You said your novel has been accepted for publication next year (congrats!). I am interested to hear more about that; can you let us know the plot/premise/theme, the title and author’s (your) last name? Also, what do you teach? I’m especially curious because I too am working on a novel about growing up in the 60’s in So. Cal. (still a work in progress!).

  9. It is a very interesting article to say the least! I, too, am a child of the 60’s, born in 1956…I also have Venus in Gemini, 2 degrees, in the 4th, opposite exact Saturn in Sag 2degrees in the 10th with my South Node at 9 degrees in Gemini in the 5th and my North Node in Sag, 9degrees in the 11th…my own generational Pluto in Leo is at 26 in the 7th, conjunct Jupiter at 21 in Leo..Uranus is 26 degrees in Cancer, also in the 7th, Sun and Mercury 16 degrees Aries in the 3rd…Moon in Aquarius 18 conjunct Chiron at 10, Mars in Capricorn 24 degrees in the first…why am I telling you this? My chart is like a poster child for the New Age Movement and hence I have been involved in it as Teacher of Metaphysics, Psychic, Medium, Astrologer, Tarot Teacher and Reader,and Writer, Radio and Tv since the 1970’s…what is missing from this article is not how the 60’s did or did not fulfil it’s “hippie mission” but that NOW is the time to be opening up to The Bigger Picture of why we are here, what is our true purpose, life after death, knowing we never die and what is the point of life on this planet as to why each comes to fulfil a divine and yet unique purpose..etc. We have been side-winded by religion, lies upon lies, chemtrails fill our air, pollution our rivers and oceans, food poisoned/tainting our soil with Monsanto, vaccines maiming and killing our children and so on…these are the real issues at stake…no one even mentioned this! It is not a guessing game, as a professional Astrologer myself for nearly 30 years, it is clear the rise to fighting the New World Order has begun and it will last at least up until after the date of the so called Mayan extinction date of mankind! Dec. 21, 2012!I am an American living in London for nearly 28 years (A Saturn cycle)…we are hosting the Olympics and what is expected to happen there is a huge fake terrorist attack…this kind of fear mongering to take over the world has just got to be exposed and finally rid of! The people, our entire family of humanity.. WE are not going anywhere…this planet will spin for always but with so much of the American civil liberties/collapse of Europe.. being in debt, etc.. being taken away…how can the people be so asleep? It is a huge wake up call..hence you can mirror it to the 1960’s but look how much WE actually accomplished! Women’s Lib,Planned Parenthood, Social and Racial equality…so many programs to help people were developed then, even psychology was coming in strong with many turning to self development, spiritual awakenings, meditation and so on. We demonstrated and got our boys out of Vietnam! It can happen and it did. I am just expressing my opinion… and so what I see is a HUGE WAKE UP call to the lies and distortions which are all around. Venus wants love and peace but first she must see the truth…beauty and truth..truth is beauty and beauty is truth!

  10. Did the Pluto-in-Virgo, Neptune-in-Scorpio generation really inherit a ‘society of abundance’?

    They were born into families, countries and cultures in which the Elders had experienced two ‘mechanized’ World Wars along with all the complexities and confusions of psychospiritual post-traumatic stress and soul loss.

    Ignore that silent toxic groundswell to your peril. Pockets of resistance. Pockets of awareness.

    Abscesses.

    Do not confuse transition for transformation; external ambition for spiritual achievement.

  11. There seems to be some confusion here as I referred to the generation which participated in the ‘summer of love’ in San Francisco in the late 1960’s as having been raised in a society of abundance; that would be the generation with Pluto in Leo and Neptune in Libra. The 1950’s and 60’s were a time of material abundance in America. It does seem to be the case that some of this generation has spent the intervening decades paticipating in a societal transformation of consciousness while others have busied themselves with ‘external ambition’; many have been involved in a combination of each of these endeavors. If there is such a thing as ‘spiritual achievement’ I am not so sure; but it is clear that material striving and ‘external ambition’ are activities often encountered, even required by some, on the path to spiritual awareness. The 20th century was filled with an abundance of toxic experience,this is quite true; but I would suggest that these toxic experiences may actually be considered fodder for soul development and conversely it is the very abundance of modern society and its consequent consumerism which offers the fertile ground for loss of soul (if there is such a thing) or perhaps more aptly put, as ground zero for the wanderings of ‘lost souls’ who, in the end of course, are always redeemable.


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