June 5 - Oct 8, 2023 - Venus Retrograde Period : July 22 - Sept 13
: HEART OF THE SUN :This Summer, Venus, Goddess of Love and War, will change her evening gown for a morning dress in Leo. She will bask for four months in the constellation of the Sun, of which 40 days in a retrograde motion. During the Venus Retrograde Period (July 22-Sep3), Venus will kiss the Sun (August 13th).
We call this conjunction the “Heart of The Sun.” Arielle Guttman calls it the Venus Star Point.
Venus does this every 9,5 months in one of 5 chosen constellations. The time it takes for a soul to grow a body in a mother’s womb. But she only retrogrades every 1.6 years to draw a full 5-petal flower in the sky in 8 years time. The numerology of Venus' journey corresponds to the Golden Ration and the Fibonacci sequence.
:: BEYOND DUALITY :: The Venus Star Point marks the transformation of Venus from evening star to morning star. As a morning star in Leo, Venus will inspire a self-love journey. Whether you go about this in relationship or solo, is irrelevant to Venus. Venus is the Goddess of both love and war. It is through conflict that we can find harmony. Through oppositions that we can discover the field of unity or love underneath. Venus is a sacred planet; she has spiritually evolved far beyond the duality of Mind. She speaks to us through art, and draws, together with the Sun, over the course of 8 years, a mandala in Earth’s sky. At the heart: a five-pointed star, the Venus Rose.
::TRAVEL BACK TO 2015::
Venus kissed the Sun last in its own zodiac sign of Leo in 2019, but has not retrograded in Leo since 2015. What started & sparked for you in the Summer of 2015?
Who did you love?
What did you love?
And most importantly: how did you love? What was your heart’s desire?
:: BANG BANG :: This time around, Venus warms up Leo with a bang. On June 5th, Venus at 0° Leo will stand across Pluto in the sky at 0° Aquarius. Venus opposing Pluto is a fatal attraction or a life-altering love story. It’s a love story in times of war. It’s a heart-exploding break-up; it’s a gorgeous collision of souls. A deep dive into the alchemical potency of love. Venus-Pluto illuminates the truth about where we are at in relationships. It’s something we feel about.
::THINK FROM THE HEART:: Leo rules the heart. Leo is the constellation of the Sun, the heart of the solar system. In our bodies, the consciousness of the Sun is found in our hearts –the first organ to form when our soul grows our body in our mother’s wombs. Connecting with the energy of your heart is remembering your soul’s essence. Your true nature. The fact that you chose to come here, be born, and reach for the star of consciousness: your sun.
Leo provides the playground of life where we can learn think from the heart. Venus-in-Leo will shine a light on the edges of our personalities so we can learn to live from our souls.
::CONFIDENCE & FAITH :: Venus in Leo brings the gifts of confidence and faith. From most exalted to densest, the scale of confidence goes: faith – humility - self-confidence – self-esteem – insecurity – unworthiness – self-hatred – narcissism.
In Sanskrit, the word ‘sraddha’ means both ‘self-confidence’ and ‘faith in God.’ For God is a force within us, and we are expressions of God. Our souls, and the lives our soul creates, are God’s party.
God threw this party to get to know itself.
What makes a human self-confident? A self-confident person trust in the unfolding of their lives according to a greater plan. That is faith. They trust in their inner guidance systems and their ability to say ‘yes’ to their North Star and ‘no’ to what does not serve that.
How does a confident person act? A confident person has fun at the party. It’s all about how you show up. Your best self is a great costume.
:: HEALING
As the love- or Christ-principle, Venus comes to harmonize oppositions and expand our hearts. The Leo-Aquarius axis is about the love-mind duality. Venus comes to infuse the mind with love and meshes love with intelligence.
In Leo, Venus comes to help us
- beautify the personality
- healing the ‘ego’, judgement and entitlement
- expel the inner/outer narcissist and other labels
- release guilt
- heal the relationship to the father, especially father-daughter dynamics
- correct our relationship to God or divinity
- heal our romantic lives
- regenerate our creative mind/vitality
- re-write the story of our childhood
- heal our focus/ADD
- heal commitment issues
- restore trust in the unfolding of the plan
- heal from the label atheism unconsciously/rebelliously used because of the distorted way religion portrayed God and crime in the name of religion (shadow of Piscean Age)
:: HEALING THE EGO:: The time of calling oneself a God or a Goddess is over. King and Queen might make a comeback though. Personally, I am all for an oldschool hiphop-party.
We need a healthy ego to function in this world. We have to play the role of child, parent, student, boyfriend, partner… To create a healthy ego that supports these roles is the task of Leo.
How do we cure inflated ego? We focus on the responsibilities of the role rather than the benefits. This rids us of entitlement.
One of Venus’ missions in Leo is to beautify the personality. In such, Venus also comes to heal highly charged labels like ‘narcissist.’ What is a narcissist? It’s a charged term to begin with. I offer: someone with below-zero self-worth, below-zero faith, so much unconscious childhood trauma, that they create a false, grand persona and hide behind this mask. A narcissist is someone who needs desperately to feel special and to be seen and loved, but is terrified of true intimacy. A narcissist can’t connect, so they seduce, manipulate, love bomb... The attention they give screams ‘please-love-me’ but there is no conscious intention or ability to love.
If we "get hooked by a ‘narcissist," underneath this form, lies our true desire to repair our childhood. The other’s, but also our own. Because we yearn to give our own inner child the love and affection it craved, we externalise the need for healing in someone “even more in need.” We want to save our past selves.
Because Saturn dwells in Pisces, inconjunct Venus in Leo, Piscean shadows like saviour-victim dynamics will receive well-deserved adjustment.
Self-sacrifice is also an ego issue. Just on the other end of the spectrum. You came here to do you. We came to shine our star. We are our own parent. We are responsible for ourselves.
::MEDICINE:: As a medicine for the collective, cultivate your true friendships (Aquarius). Play with your friends in the sun. Let your inner child out. Have fun. Do sports. Make art with children. Hold a baby. Anything that cultivates presence and joy in the present moment.
Also, WHAT PUT A SMILE ON YOUR FACE WHEN YOU WERE A KID? Do more of that. Some of us get stuck in endless cycles of self-development. Always becoming better.
Venus-in-Leo will help us celebrate who we are now.
Do what you love and release worry about what is next.
::TRUE ROMANCE:: Venus-in-Leo comes to sculpt the more beautiful life she knows in her heart to be able to gift herself. To help us create the life of our dreams, Venus comes to remind us of our unique talents and gifts. Venus comes to beautify our personalities, infuse them with soul. With True Romance, I am talking dream lifestyle – what kind of life do you want to create for yourself?
Who do we have to become to live that life?
And when it comes to to giving our love to someone - Venus is a relationship planet, after all –the over-arching question is:
what kind of person desires this life too?
Starting off with an opposition to Pluto, this love story has quite an arc to it.
In June, what is not love, will be burnt to the ground. There is a wonderful conspiracy of the invisible that guides us to moments and places where we meet the key people of our lives. But this can be a collaboration between Venus and any of the outer planets, really. Venus-Pluto has this purpose: destroy that which falsely carries the name of love for a truer love to be born.
Pluto wants your freedom. Venus wants you to follow your heart’s true desire. Hence, the skeletons come out of the closet, dressed in black. Glamorous instant connections, mysterious attractions soaked in synchronicities: souls we were involved with in past lives reappear in our lives. Souls we were involved with in this life and with whom things aren’t clear, reappear. Shelved needs or blind spots within our current relationships will come to the forefront. Pluto’s weapons may hurt. Pluto teaches us that nothing lasts. Pluto is not preoccupied with form. We can’t even see him with the naked eye. Collaborations between Pluto and Venus are about the force of love that wants us to evolve beyond the relationship karma of this world. Fatal Attraction on the densest plane, a transformational love that keeps on renewing itself on the lightest plane.
Wanting to grow through relationship, Venus gives our love a face. At the start of this transit, Pluto rearranges the letters: “At the end of our lives, it won’t matter who we loved, it will matter how we loved.”
Venus in Leo invigorates our faith. This ‘unfinished business’ we have with other souls Venus-Pluto brings forth, is our own unfinished business. It’s also our medicine. Through the mirror that is the other, the parts of ourselves we have not seen and integrated in love, are revealed. The only way out is in.
Some would call this true love. To give another, or to be given, the gift of knowing oneself. But it’s not for the faint of heart.
Ultimately, the connections present in our lives at the start of this transit show us where we are at in our personal love revolution.
Are our boundaries still in place? Are they reasonable? Are they loving?
Can we be vulnerable and emotionally sovereign at the same time?
And further, can we be grateful simply to feel a furious storm raging through our hearts, regardless of the outcome?
Eventually, every Plutonian experience is an emotional initiation –it’s in the water, baby leading to a higher, more attuned expression of love.
:: SUN+VENUS :: Eventually, as Venus moves forward through Leo, and we burn what is not love, the focus is on the love story between the Sun and Venus. Their love story is a passionate one. It’s artistic. It’s a party. There is a good DJ. There is dancing. Whatever breaks, solidifies, or births at the start of this journey, direct your mind towards our aspirations. Consistently show up for them. Like the sun. Cultivate true friendships. Consistently show up for them. Like the sun.
During this transit, show up for yourself – how would a person who loves themselves rise to the day?
What would they focus on?
Venus in Leo is a healing experience, not only for our hearts and our immaterial ego, but also for our bodies and our vitality. This is a great period to address health issues. How? By doing what you love, and by loving. If you haven’t taken a vacation in forever, this is your time.
This long Venus-in-Leo season helps us define what lifestyle would truly make us happy. What does not practically function will frustrate us enough to change course. The North Node–Jupiter conjunction expands the vision of what we want to experience. This transit teaches us to enjoy the present moment, and to give our all to the now.
We can get what we need AND what we want.
Love wants to shine –think with your heart and You’ll know what you did this Summer.