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.