Venus in the Underworld

Venus retrograde in Leo

The Empress card from the Tarot of the Spirit by Pamela and Joyce Eakins, and the Demons card from the Mike Willcox Tarot & Oracle

Happy Venus retrograde everyone, it’s ok if you’re not quite ok! The goddess of love and beauty and relationship stationed retrograde in Leo last weekend on Saturday, July 22nd, and will turn direct on Sunday, September 3rd. Her pre-shadow phase (when Venus first entered the degree that she will retrograde back to) was June 19th, and her post-retrograde retracing of steps will go until October 7th. So whatever is going has been brewing for weeks. The house in your chart governed by Leo is the area of your life you may be feeling this most. Venus is on an underworld journey here. You might be revisiting or even re-experiencing your broken heartedness here, or circumstances might be conspiring to reveal more of your internal or external relationship patterns here, especially any that have kept you from being fully aware of your power and shininess.

The first movement of this six-week transit can be destabilizing—its the descent. And during the descent our usual defenses get softened; we are made vulnerable to our deepest feelings, and sometimes our shadow parts surface. This is all happening for me personally in my 7th house of intimate relationships and partners. And as Venus was stationed retrograde, I happened to be literally leaving my husband behind and going down to Los Angeles to see my family, mostly my mother—my first intimate relationship. My mother has Alzheimer’s and Lewy Body dementia and has recently been moved into a memory care facility, where she is really struggling with feeling abandoned by her husband, who, bless him, just couldn’t take care of her at home anymore, even with help. At least a part of every day this last week has been spent with her, physically holding her, singing along to Foreigner and Bette Midler and all the power ballad love songs from the 80s and 90s, occasionally crying my eyes out. So, I am soft as hell right now.

I’ve been drawing cards every morning from two decks — Eakin’s Tarot of the Spirit and Willcox’s Tarot & Oracle — and for three days in a row I’ve pulled the Empress card from one deck or the other. The Empress and the Priestess. The Empress and the Demons. The Empress and the Lovers. The Empress is very much a mother card: Mother Nature, the creatrix herself, the archetype of a portal or a door for something to come into being. Her esoteric name is “Daughter of the Mighty Ones.” As my mother goes through this process of dying, and I mother my mother, and I mother myself; as I have to be with her shadow parts and mine, out here on the edges of what we can take, feeling all that we avoid feeling most of the time, Venus is clearly inviting me to heal some relational core in me. Some part of my origin story is being exposed. I’m not going to try and understand it right now any deeper than that.

I truly hope this isn’t as intense for you! But if it is, just know I’m out here with you, and many others are as well. This part can be tough, but it’s leading somewhere, it’s brewing some kind of potent healing potion. For anyone who is really in it right now and wants to learn more about Venus retrogrades, I thought I would share the notes from one of my lectures from the Embodied Alchemy course — a talk on shadow work that includes an explanation of Venus retrograde and the myth of Inanna and Ereshkigal. It’s below a paywall, and if you’re like oh no! I need this! and you are not a paying subscriber, send me an email through my website and I will hook you up. Maybe not until I’m home but I will! And if reading this cracks some part of you open, and you’re like wait, maybe I need to take this whole course, you can head to my website thecultofmindy.com to read all the details. The next cohort will gather this October, registration is open now, and there are still 5 spots open for the live group journey. Ok — see you all for the full moon in Aquarius coming next Tuesday. May we all be brave, and tender, and full of grace.