Venus rising

 

The lunar eclipse  of July 17th (7.38am AEST at 25º Capricorn) highlights Venus, in Cancer and close to the Sun.

Since Venus invites us to open to the joys in our life, and to choose what really matters to us, this is a timely reminder of what to focus on now.

We’re under the hammer, all this year, of big hitters like Pluto & Saturn together in Capricorn. This pair of divine blacksmiths are working in tandem, melting down our old s/crap metal in the alchemical furnace and forging our new destinies. I’ve discussed elsewhere this interplay of forces that challenges us to sort the gold from the dross.

Venus glides into this scenario at the left hand of the Sun (she’s currently the morning star, rising just before the sun to herald the new day). I’m tempted to go into the Goddess significance of left-handedness but I’ll spare you that today!

She surveys the chaotic scene at the forge – yes, depending on what’s going down for you, when the dross is being burnt away in whatever area of your life, and your old orders and systems and safe-holds are dissolving, it is deliberately destabilising…

And she says with the serene calm of a Cancer Queen:
“find the thread within yourself that really connects you into the world. That will pull you through.”

Wherever Venus sits in our chart she offers us an invitation to be more of who we really are.

Not who we think we have to be in order to be more successful, more attractive, a better mother or lover…
Because in being the gift that we are, we will naturally be all of those things, minus all the guilt and efforting.

I’m not saying this is always an easy task. Depending on how much s/crap we’ve collected, how much we’ve armoured ourselves against the slings and arrows of unkindness (even our own unkindnesses to ourselves!), there might be a lot of layers to chip away, some melting down and re-forging work to be done.

And now is the time for that. With this powerful team of Saturn and Pluto already at work, resistance is no longer an option.

How are you being called by this energy?

For me, circumstances, serendipity and a touch of divine inspiration have lead me deeper into the realms of Venus… one of my favourite places I confess!

Even if it sounds overly dramatic (and somewhat Biblical!!), I’ve had an epiphany in the last month as Venus reveals herself to be deeply significant in the next stage of my work. She is the thread that brings together 30 years of jewellery (Venus is all about beauty and pleasure), 20 years of astrology and the work of my PhD that merges science and spirit to arrive at bodyfulness. And you can probably tell that I’m more than a little bit excited about it!

Venus qualities are the key to the fresh rising of the feminine which we’re all feeling now. And her gifts are open to men as well as women, as we’re all learning how to balance the yin and the yan within ourselves.

She has long been minimised as a fairly unimportant player in the cosmic drama of astrological energies. But Venus has plenty of mysteries to reveal, and like those values considered ‘feminine’, has been much under-rated in the scheme of things. I’ll come back to that another time….

Right now though, during this eclipse season as the sun moves through Cancer, we are being called us to reconnect with what nurtures us, and sustains our sense of belonging. Capricorn, the opposition point triggered by the lunar eclipse, loves order and structure. But the deeper pull comes from Capricorn’s foundational commitment to what really matters. It understands that we manifest what we value most. It also knows, as one of the elder signs of the zodiac, that values can be distorted when they’re only in service of stability.

Another image for Saturn and Pluto in the fiery earth of Capricorn, is of two tribal elders in intense negotiation over what is the best way forward for those in their care.

Whatever is happening within us and around us now is simply another reminder that we need to continually re-examine our lives to see what still holds value.
And to create from this place.

As Saturn & Pluto re-wrangle order, it’s the Cancerian insight into true belonging and the Capricorn commitment to manifest what we truly value that will restore our place in the world amongst all the apparent chaos of the times.