Welcome to Venus retrograde, a 6-week period in which we’re offered a rare opportunity to re-visit, re-vise, re-evaluate, re-consider, and even re-volutionize how we respond to the Venusian themes of beauty, pleasure, money, and/in relationships. It’s a time to slow down, go inside, and finish old business in these areas and the area in your birth chart where the planet is retrograding. (Look for 26 Pisces to 13 Aries in your chart; the themes of that house or those houses will also be at play in this retrograde.)

This is a particularly interesting retrograde period, as on Saturday (4 March) when Venus stationed retrograde in the sky, she was at 13 degrees of Aries, and 13 is her number—the number of the Goddess. (She makes a 5-pointed star in the sky over an 8-year period; 5 + 8 = 13.)

AND, when she stations direct in April, she will be exactly conjunct Chiron at 26 degrees Pisces. Stationing direct means that the planet apparently stops moving backwards (it only moves backwards from our perspective) to move forward again. Stations, when a planet “turns” backwards or forwards, are moments at which the influence of a star is particularly strong.

Now, Chiron is the asteroid discovered 40 years ago that is represented by the mythical being Centaur. This “wounded healer” will offer healing on the money/relationships front, especially if you don’t resist it. Mythologically, Chiron is best known as a healer of duality. So if you have “this-OR-that” ideas around money and/or/in relationships, Chiron will help you to come to a place of “this-AND-that.”

(Oh, I am SO looking forward to that, because, like many of those whom I’m in regular contact with, I’ve been working to see through that illusion for a long time. You, too?)

Because Venus starts her retrograde period in Aries—the sign of “me first” and the warrior—relationships may become strained if you aren’t being extra-conscious of how your words and actions may impact others, particularly as everyone on the planet is under the same Venus Rx influence. In about a month she will be back in Pisces, where she is more comfortable—the sign of Unity, oneness, dreams, and collective consciousness.

In short: this particular Venus Retrograde, because of where she begins and ends her inward-turned cycle, can be both a moment of conscious Goddess Rising AND a healing/loving-into-wholeness of the feminine and the masculine. I invite you to look at the next 6 weeks as a period in which this kind of fresh perspective is available for you—from this day forward. Planet Earth will thank you if you if you do!

In our Patriarchal culture, we are taught to think that masculine is better and feminine should be hidden away, the source of shame. The truth is that every one of us—man, woman, gay, straight, or somewhere in between—is a brilliant combination of masculine and feminine. So shunning one in favor of the other is one of the reasons our culture is so off-kilter. And it’s time to heal that so-called divide.

The Feminine has an inward, insular, circular orientation: inner strength, inner knowing, intuition, stillness, being, connection with the inner-circle, creation, gathering, nourishment. The Masculine has an outward, spiraling orientation: expression, broadcasting, spreading into the outside world, action, fixing, protection. Neither the feminine nor the masculine can function properly without the other, nor should we expect it to.

Every idea or project is too. The creative spark is feminine, and bringing that idea to fruition is masculine. A manuscript is a feminine production, and the published book is the result of the addition of the masculine. You can’t have any whole thing without both.

Wholeness is all about bringing the apparently separate together. If we consider—as our culture does—that masculine and feminine are polar opposites, what happens when we bring the two ends of the spectrum together?

I think you get the picture.

My inquiry today: how are YOU healing that apparently-great divide between masculine and feminine? Between doing and being, head and heart, the individual and the collective? This is a great time initiate a daily ritual meant to suture two apparently-different pieces together. If we are all one—a single fabric or tapestry—then apparent difference or separation is really just a tear in the fabric that can be re-stitched or re-woven.

What parts of you are you re-weaving? I want to know. We are all part of the same giant web, so your work impacts mine and vice-versa.

Own Your Magick + Your Legendary Self,