Venus Retrograde in Scorpio: the Dark Goddess
Continuing on from my last post, I find myself pondering Libra energies more deeply, especially with her ruler Venus currently retrograde in Scorpio, a deep dark place for Venus if ever there was one. Libra season this year seems to be highlighting just how out of balance the genders are, and perhaps also the false polarity of seeing male and female as the only genders at all. We all have a myriad of relationships in our lives, with a myriad of beings and energies.
All too often, we use relationships to make us whole, or at least to seek wholeness. So many of us act from the assumption that being in a relationship with another person is the only way we can become whole. But a meeting of projections and assumptions does not make us whole. Dumping all of our psychic baggage on someone else does not make us whole. We become whole by following our own path, by integrating all the aspects of ourselves. We may choose to do this alongside another person, but in a healthy relationship, we don't expect them to do it for us.
Venus, the queen of love and relationships, went retrograde in Scorpio on October 5th and will go direct back in her home sign of Libra on November 16th. A retrograde season, when a planet appears to move backwards in the heavens, is always a time of reflection and energies turned inward. Venus retrograde is a time to dig deep and look within, past the fear and the social conditioning and find out what it is that we truly desire. We can call time on relationships which are co-dependent, which are based more on habit than on genuine, living feeling, which do not give us the space to be our authentic selves. We can work to transform these relationships, down there in the dark transformative cavern of Scorpio.
Venus retrograde in Scorpio suggests the deep archetypes of the feminine rising back to the surface. Like all of western astrology, the symbolism we attribute to Venus has its roots in the patriarchal model - women are victims, whores, at best lovers and wives. Women who only exist, who only have agency in the world, in terms of their relationship to men. Venus retrograde in Scorpio says no more, and demands that we recognise the many and myriad ways that women, and indeed people exist in their own right. None of us needs a relationship to make us whole. Each of us is whole and sovereign to ourselves and each of us has our own value in the world.
Venus retrograde in Scorpio is the dark goddess, Hekate and Kali, Lilith and the Morrigan. All those aspects of womanhood our society is not quite so comfortable with. She is Ereshkigal, stripping away the layers of our social self as we journey into the underworld, compelled to embrace our shadow. She is Persephone as Queen of the Underworld, no longer just her mother's daughter but a woman capable of making her own choices and knowing what is right for her. As we move towards Samhain and the dark time of the year, its time to embrace the dark goddess within ourselves (whether we identify as a particular gender or not, we all carry Her within us) and find out what work She wants us to do in the work, to restore the balance.
What does it mean to relate to someone or something? It means that you have a connection, conscious or unconscious, visible or hidden. It means that something in you responds to something in them. It could be something obvious like a shared hobby or mutual friends but it isn't always. It could be an unconscious knowing, a hidden awareness of similar life experiences or similar reactions to life experiences. You may start out with nothing connecting you until the weight of shared experience begins to take effect.
All too often, we use relationships to make us whole, or at least to seek wholeness. So many of us act from the assumption that being in a relationship with another person is the only way we can become whole. But a meeting of projections and assumptions does not make us whole. Dumping all of our psychic baggage on someone else does not make us whole. We become whole by following our own path, by integrating all the aspects of ourselves. We may choose to do this alongside another person, but in a healthy relationship, we don't expect them to do it for us.
Venus retrograde in Scorpio suggests the deep archetypes of the feminine rising back to the surface. Like all of western astrology, the symbolism we attribute to Venus has its roots in the patriarchal model - women are victims, whores, at best lovers and wives. Women who only exist, who only have agency in the world, in terms of their relationship to men. Venus retrograde in Scorpio says no more, and demands that we recognise the many and myriad ways that women, and indeed people exist in their own right. None of us needs a relationship to make us whole. Each of us is whole and sovereign to ourselves and each of us has our own value in the world.
Venus retrograde in Scorpio is the dark goddess, Hekate and Kali, Lilith and the Morrigan. All those aspects of womanhood our society is not quite so comfortable with. She is Ereshkigal, stripping away the layers of our social self as we journey into the underworld, compelled to embrace our shadow. She is Persephone as Queen of the Underworld, no longer just her mother's daughter but a woman capable of making her own choices and knowing what is right for her. As we move towards Samhain and the dark time of the year, its time to embrace the dark goddess within ourselves (whether we identify as a particular gender or not, we all carry Her within us) and find out what work She wants us to do in the work, to restore the balance.