At 9:50 pm GMT on 21st December, Venus stations retrograde in Capricorn. Venus, the planet of love, beauty and sensuality turns retrograde every eighteen months, inviting us inward for an honest look at these aspects of life. In the sign of Capricorn this is a fairly ‘take me as you find me’ look with little softened by the often rose-tinted glasses of the goddess of love. Here Venus asks us what we value, where we find beauty in our lives and how we comfort ourselves when life isn’t meeting our perceived needs.
Venus is an intensely personal planet and what we experience through her may, despite her role in relationships, be quite difficult to share with others. Whilst we seek out connection to meet our Venusian needs, how we experience those needs is an intimate and personal experience. My appreciation of beauty may be very different to yours, and no matter how I describe the beauty I perceive in something, if you don’t, no description can change that. Venus speaks of our ability to recognise where we resonate and where we are repelled, in order to pursue the former and avoid the latter.
It is not without significance that this retrograde passage of Venus begins as Mars hints at a T Square to the on-going Uranus/Pluto square. This T square features strongly next year, forcing intense encounters with powerful potential. Receiving our first glimpse of it as Venus stations retrograde reminds us that we need to take responsibility for our own well-being when the going gets tough and the pressure’s on. Yes, we can reach out to others for support and encouragement, but if we can’t first and foremost encourage and support ourselves things could get a bit dicey next year when Mars, Uranus and Pluto really begin to do their thing.
In Capricorn, Venus is down to earth and practical. She doesn’t seek beauty elsewhere in another realm but right here in the midst of everyday life. She prefers useful to beautiful, recognising the value of effectiveness as opposed to a sheen of beauty on an object without purpose. Venus in Capricorn is a hot cup of tea on a cold day, good quality appliances that make life easier, love expressed as efficiency and competence. To be in the presence of Venus in Capricorn is to be safe in the knowledge that needs will be met and material concerns managed deftly, with knowledge and skill. She understands the world of form and issues of social standing. As such she moves through the world with confidence in her ability to manage it. Thus she creates security and peace of mind.
When retrograde, she offers her abilities for our own personal use and reminds us that seeking external security in a material world can sometimes leave us vulnerable to the abandonment of treasured values and priorities in favour of ‘safe’ predictability. In the coming few weeks we have an opportunity to look within for that same measure of security, whilst keeping those priorities intact and ignited as guiding lights on the path ahead. She reassures us that whatever happens we can look after ourselves, keep our own head above water and deal with the demands of the material world. And if we fear that we cannot, that others must take care of us because we can’t do it for ourselves, she assures us that when this is true those others will be there to lend their helping hand, to make that hot cup of tea. We won’t be abandoned to a cold and lonely fate, but likewise we won’t be rescued prematurely just because we believe we can’t make it on our own.
Between now and the end of January, we have a valuable opportunity to discover inner resources we didn’t know we had and skills we’ve neglected because they were someone else’s domain. Venus retrograde in Capricorn is all about taking a ‘common-sense’ approach to ourselves, getting on with the business of life in the knowledge that we have what it takes whether or not we have someone stood beside us for support. That way, once she turns direct again we can offer our own inner strength to each other when necessary, standing strong together and alone, in full knowledge that 2014 can be a year in which we discover a whole new level of resilience and deep inner peace. Venus reminds us there is an abiding beauty to be found in living life from a place of inner strength, according to values which cannot be bought or traded for security. It is that very beauty she now wishes to reveal.
Solstice blessings everybody.
Sarah Varcas
